[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. For more information, visit Nettle, Meadow, Cheese and Spirits.com. That's N-E-T-T-L-E, Meadow Cheese and Spirits.com. Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carbone from Beer Sessions Radio. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Raider Network.org for 1000s more.

[0:34] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. In Bushwick, Brooklyn, at

[0:47] Roberta's... pizzeria. You guys should see the drugs that Dave Huffs before he does that every time. So calling your, calling your questions. It's a sad show. Immediately after that, you just set a tier too. Yeah, it's a sad show today. That was a great intro though. Thank you. switched it up a little bit for you. Today is not in the booth today in the, what do you call this? In the room with us today, not in the room is Jack Insley, Jackie Molecules. his last... It's his last cooking issues. Jack is leaving us. And so, uh, it's, you know, it's, it's sad and he's not in the booth to give us the sad noise. I know. But like, you know, just picture him, oh, well, but the good news is he's going to go on tour, which he'll talk about in a minute for a couple of months, and then he's going to start his own radio station down in Washington.

[1:42] Why don't you tell us about it, Jack? Yeah, Washington, DC. It's going to be. I can't give too many details away yet. The ink is not dry, but it'll be a really, really exciting radio station. I'm starting in a really cool public space in DC. So some food. Now you play the sound, yeah. Nice, nice, nice. It'll be some food, lots of music. Of course, some politics by nature of the city. Counterculture, stuff, all kinds of stuff. Itll be fun. Wait, so what but before politics. What subjects? Food, of course. Okay, some food and those food shows, hopefully, you know, we'll be sharing those with heritage and a lot of music, a lot of DJ shows and live music. When you say DJ, like, like stuff like that you do are more like, like what kind of like, well, no, I want like, uh, you know,

[2:30] go-go is like the thing in DC or like, uh, For real? Like old school? Yeah. Like hardcore. Like, you know, there's DC hardcore. Like old school hardcore, like bad brains? Sure. I'm open. It'll be all genres of music. Definitely not really club music, I don't think so. No? Not even a little, just for a little. sibling night stuff. So, uh, here to uh, by the way, are you going to be open? You think the radio show is going to a station is going to open before the elections in November? No, but I'll be down. moving in September to DC. So if any listeners are in DC. I'm going to hang out. I need some friends. So, so get at me. And I'll be recording, like, compiling content starting in September and definitely covering the election. Nice, cool. And to wish Jack Farewell. we got a full full room here today. We got Peter Kim, who maybe he can piss off Jack today instead of pissing me off, you know? I think people want me or want me here to needle you, Dave. Yeah, but, you know, you can needle me all the time. is your last molecules. By the way. Colin, I like tech. I have a lot of... Jack is a high quality individual. We got we got cooking issues, friend, Paul Adams here from the popular, the science that is popular. How you doing? That's correct. I'm here Yeah. Also a fan of skunks. I don't know if you know this, and Fan of Skunks. For former captain included? I don't know. It's okay, yeah. Yeah. To be more accurate, skunks are a fan of me. And also avid, what's like rocketeer for drones? Like drone a tier? No, like droner. No, listeners, call in with your suggestion? And, as usual, the ever ebullient Nastasia the Hammer Lopez here. So, uh, for Jack's last day, we have some, uh, we have some bubbly. Anastasi's going to open it because if there's one thing that makes her happy. It's got to be the bubbly. That's true. By the way, Paul's a drone thug. Drone thug? Oh, which are you the harmony? Yeah. Wow. Now, now I need you to, like, during the commercial break... drone, drone, drone, drone. I didn't have to wait. didn't have to wait. I was like, you can rework the lyrics while we're... Quick. Strong, strong. You know, I saw a like a fast rapping, like my Dax is obsessed with rappers that can rap quickly. I probably already have talked about this on the radio show. I'm like, the ones you don't even know what you're talking about. But anyway, one of them like... I don't remember. See, he's like super, it's because I was going to meet, I think, Buster Rhymes at one time and I didn't get the meatbuster Rhymes. And then, uh, and so, and he thought Eminem was the fastest rapper, and I was like, you don't know what they're talking about. It's not even in contention. First of all, like speed isn't, it's speed with flow is what's important, not like, you know what I mean? There's one answer to this question. Twista. Uh, well, technically, yeah, but I mean, was is that the fast stuff that you'd listen to, like on a daily basis? Yeah, he's good. I mean, I have some of it. All right. Okay. Anyway, we can all agree it's not Eminem. No, it's not. Like, that part we can agree with. Anyway, so then, I don't know, I don't even remember how I got into it. Let's get to some questions. But before we do remember, you have a short time left to call in all of your molecule related questions to Jackie molecules. I wish we expert on molecules. We're gonna get that ringtone back. Do you have another thing? You can play it. I know if I still have it on here. Uh, two, 718-497-2128. 718-497-2128. Here we got a caller. Okay, caller. you're on the air Hey, guys. Hey, um, so before I ask my question, uh, just real quick, I wanted

[6:15] to, um, extend a sincere thank you to Jack for all the time he's put in. Um, just wishing things travel and good luck in everything that he's doing. you. Yeah. Wow. Um, so are you there? Yeah. No, wait, wait. And goodbye. So my my question is my brother recently got married and I was asked to make a

[6:42] groom's cake, and so I decided to make the milk bar, uh, mini chocolate chip cake with a passionfruit curd,

[6:49] and, um, because I couldn't find passion fruit curd locally, and it was, uh, there was a time constraint. I went ahead and used the really crappy mango nectar. And, um, I felt kind of like an enemy of quality, but, um, something something really weird happened because I followed the recipe to a tea. But when I made the curd filling, The egg mixture like totally curdled and like the little protein particles started to like block out and like

[7:16] agglomerate. And the weirdest thing happened because after I mixed in the butter in the food processor, it became totally filky smooth

[7:24] again. And I'm just wondering why it would like curdle and then be able to come back to being totally

[7:29] smooth again. Huh. Well, hold on a second. Let me cheers Jack while we're while I'm thinking. Cheers. Huh. So I don't know why it broke. That's it. It's interesting. Peter wouldn't cheers me. Speaking of enemy equality. So weak. I in the room there. He won't even choose like, oh, cheers, everyone, I've been updated. Uh, I don't know. I mean, I've never actually, interestingly, I mean, I've eaten a whole hell of a lot of mango in my life, including Nastasia and Harold McGee and I went down to

[7:59] pound mangoes in Florida once. It was a nightmare of the trip, actually. We can talk about that later. Complete nightmare. And led me to the knowledge that tropical fruit people are very possessive of their fruit.

[8:10] Whether they're ever going to freaking eat it or not. I'm like, up to this before, I'm like a temperate fruit person where they're like, hey, take all the apples. don't care. don't eat these things. I just collect the trees. Like the people in the tropics are like, touch my mango, you're dead. I'm like, you have billions. Anyway, whatever. But the strange thing is I have never cooked with mango ever. I've only ever eaten mango. I've made mango into drinks and I've used mango

[8:34] in cold prep, but I've never cooked a mango. Mangos are relatives of, uh, let me see, the relatives actually have like poison ivy and cashews. they're anacardaci. I think, but it's been a long time since I've looked that up. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So they contain a latex in them. But I don't know of anything that necessarily would break occurred. I wonder whether anyone out there in the chat room has had an experience cooking mangoes and can help us out. But as for the silky smooth, there's lots of times when you get like kind of a micro break in

[9:08] something and then when you blend the hell, uh, you know, out of it with another like smooth, especially emulsified ingredient like butter, it'll come back into shape on

[9:15] you. In fact, I have a recipe for milk syrup, which I'm actually going to talk about later because of

[9:21] a question we have if we get to it, where the whole point is you make a micro break in it.

[9:26] So you stabilize the milk with sugar, you make a micro break in it with a little bit of acid, and it curds it a little bit, and that, like, little bit of brake actually keeps it smooth because you break the

[9:37] pieces that have broken. You break them into pieces smaller than your tongue can taste, which is roughly

[9:44] 20 micrometers is roughly the limit that your tongue can sense in terms of. Now, you can sense different textures smoother than that. Like things can become more unctuous all of a sudden, but in terms of actual grit or

[9:54] particles. You can't really tell much below 20 micrometers. So, um... It is

[10:02] microchrometers, right? Yes. Yeah. Uh, the uh, getting my, I'm making sure that I'm metric. The, uh, the point being that, um, it's easy to do. And so if something is breaks a little bit, it can actually be more stabilized if the ensuing actions break it into pieces that are finer than your tongue can

[10:19] taste, and it no longer agglomerates afterwards. I don't know, is that helpful at all? Yeah, gotcha. That makes total sense. Yeah. So I'm thinking that's what happened. I'm thinking that you did some sort of partial break and then when you put it into the other thing, It just, you know, brought it all back together and whatever the partial break was, is stable now. Now, the flip is, I have no freaking idea what's in mango that would make it behave differently.

[10:43] If anything, I would guess passionfruit would be the evil thing because it's so acidic, you know? Yeah, yeah. Was it mango puree nasty or was it good? Did taste nasty? Uh, no, it was, it came out like exactly how I wanted it. It was super silky smooth and like you could not even tell that it had remotely even broken at all. So you did not ruin the wedding? No. Yeah, no, I was going to say, did you ruin the wedding some other way? Did you do some sort of like Steve B. semi toast at the end and like, you know... No, I didn't bring any plain white toast either. Oh, man. Well, we're working on it. We'll work on the plain white. We work on the good plain white toast. Thanks for calling in. Yeah, see you. Bye, all right. So, uh, see what we got here. Well, might as well do the milk question now, right? Unless any, do you guys, do you guys have any pressing cooking questions before I get to the... while you were talking about passion fruit? While you're talking about passion fruit, why is passion fruit so delicious? Ah, do you know there are very, very many different kinds of pasiflora, uh, fruits that, you know, the whole, the genus, right? Passifora fruits that are consumed worldwide, especially in South America.

[11:53] And we only get one of them. Maybe two. Like nowadays, you can sometimes get the yellow, like the grenadilla style ones up here. but we usually get the small wrinkly ones. And I like them all, but they aren't all strictly speaking delicious. Do you like, well, Paul does, I'm sure, but do you like musky flavors, folks? Stas. What do you think about a musky fruit? No, Peter? No? sound very good. There's like some very musky passiflora ones in like weird shapes. Like there's one that looks like an overgrown Australian finger lime kind of

[12:27] Koruba and it's got a very musky kind of note to it. So maybe that's not inherently delicious. But also, like, there's something, you know how leachy gets sweaty? Yes. Yeah. So I think sometimes passionfruit, it's not the same kind of sweat, but I can get some sweat on a passionfruit. What do you guys think? Sweat on fruit. But I like it. I do think it's delicious. It's just so acidic. I like anything freaking acidic, and I like the texture of the little seedy seeds. It's acidic, but it's also got that like juiciness that's a certain kind of acidity that Yuzu

[13:00] has and a couple of other tropical fruits. Also, related question. You know how like you group together tropical fruit flavors as sort of a category? Is there an actual common thread between tropical fruits? I asked someone that once. And you know what the answer was? They didn't answer my question. So I don't know. You think about like, right, like mango, banana, papaya. Well, okay, those are all your lactone fruits, right? Well, and like a lot of them have a lot of real high ester notes too. And, you know, like a lot of those really kind of like high volatilizing things. I don't know. Maybe there's something about tropical environment that requires fruits to be extremely volatile. And not like volatile, like I'm volatile, like volatile, like aroma chemicals. But the, um, it is interesting, but it's true. It's very there are very few temperate fruits that have tropical notes in

[13:51] them. Strawberries, right? Have a little bit of that, although they're clearly a temperate taste, but they can some of the other ones have some higher notes, especially when they start to go off. Uh, yeah, a good peach. Some apples. Yeah, the rare apple. But like, you know what? The one that really tastes like it's a tropical fruit, that is completely temperate is the may apple. The American, uh, it's, but you can't get it because it's poisonous, but it's not really poisonous, but it's like kind of poisonous. It's like meto-metopoisonous. It's like, it's like, it's poisonous to the extent that if they sold it in the supermarket, somebody would kill themselves because they would eat the seeds and they would eat it unripe, but once it's

[14:31] ripened, and I only got a couple of them last year, I have a whole like plot of them, and I was like, oh, I'm going to let them ripen one more week before I pull them in, and in that week, the animals came and ate everyone but two.

[14:43] I'm talking, I have, like, bigger than this studio of, like, uh, uh,

[14:49] may apple tree, but, you know, you know, whatever they call, little plants. You know what I mean? perennial. And um, all gone, but two. But when it finally ripened, man, that was delicious. It'd be worth dying for, the poisonous, because it's like tropical, but it grows in Connecticut anyway. When does it hit? They're on the thing now. Right now, they're the size of what size is that? They're this big. The size of off one right, man. the size of a large shooter marble. Yeah. But, uh, they're they're still green. I've just got to, I can't let him go. that one week. As soon as he starts to show signs of ripening, I'm going to pull him and let him ripen inside. You can get on this weekend, no? No, it needs to go longer than that. It says May because they show up in May, but like last year it wasn't like, it was after Fourth of July is when they got when they got taken. This year is so weird anyway with what's it called? What's it called? Weather. What's that thing? What's that thing? Weather. Anyway, so that's a delicious tropical fruit. You know what, a fruit that I've never tried that I grew up with, but I was always petrified of? You familiar, you guys remember with U, Y-E, W, U, the wood? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, tax sodium species, I think. And so, uh, so it obviously it doesn't have actual technical fruit because it's a conifer, so

[16:05] that's not an angius berm has no flowers, therefore has no fruit. Right? Right. So, but it has what's called an arrow that looks like a fruit, and it's like a red, we'll call it a berry, even though it's not a berry, but it's a red berry, and you can always tell a

[16:20] you, because it's got the red berries on it, and the red berries have like a hole in the front of them, like sunken, they look like a

[16:26] cup, right? like an olive, like an olive, like a pitted olive. Yeah, like a pitted olive, right? Like a red mini red martini olive. And, uh, and so, what's interesting is, is that even a couple of the seeds crushed will kill you. But the fruit, apparently, the actual arrow itself, the red part? Okay. I don't yeah, I'm not taking that. But I don't have I don't have the cojones. I don't got the stones. I do, but is it delicious? Oh, I don't know. I haven't found anyone that's actually eating it. Where's the seat? Right inside the damn thing. So you have to like squash them but not crush the seeds and like and make sure you spit the seeds out because literally I've read cases of like kids who've eaten 3 of them are down for the

[17:08] kids. Now strangely, strangely, the conifer hemlock, not related to the poisonous hemlock, totally edible. You can make a tea from the hemlock, right? And apparently nice beds because it's nice and soft if you're in the woods woodcrafting. But you, no, so you doesn't sound poisonous, sounds fine. is deadly poisonous. Hemlock sounds poisonous, is not. It's the water hemlock that's poisonous, which, as we all know, related to parsley and all those things, which is why you should never forage for what, Peter? Wild freaking partially, Peter. You're going to kill your whole family. Never forage for wild freaking parsley. Hey, there we got another caller on the line. Call her, you're on the air. Hey Dave, how's it going? Doing all right. Good, it's Chris from the green zone in DC. Hey, how you doing? Good, how are you? Hey, did you ever have any luck with like stabilized mint tea green liquors? No, not really. Have you ever thought, but did you ever try doing? I have a fruit question for you as long as we're talking about fruits and acids. All right, all right. Um, I'm doing a drink that has bitter orange juice in it, but bitter oranges are now out of

[18:11] season, and I wanted to know if there are any substitutes. Okay. Does, look, I don't know anything about DC. Do you have a hardcore Latin neighborhood in DC? sort of. Bitter oranges are never out of season in Latin markets, but they're not the good. I mean, okay, I don't want to be like, they're not the ones that you might think of as good ones. like they're not Seville's. They're not like, they don't have really nice skins or anything like that. No, that's fine, because I'm using the juice. Yeah. And the juice, to be honest, not like super on point point, but it's got not just a sourness. So like, you know, obviously at the bar, like I take regular oranges and I hit them with acid to get the acid profile that I like, but it doesn't have the kind of bitterness that the bitter oranges have, but Latin markets have their version of bitter orange, you know, that's like mashed up with garlic and

[19:00] whatnot. Like they have them like all year long. At least in New York, they do. They have them all year long. Yeah, and you can get it bottled. Oh, yeah, come on. Really? You can buy that in a bottle? Yeah, you need it bottled, but it doesn't sound very good. Well, it's with garlic, so you probably wouldn't want it in the bar. Yeah, and also, like, I can't think of anything. Do you like Paul? Do you like, uh, that like, that chopped last year garlic stuff? I haven't really tried it. You know what I'm talking about? It's that it's that thing that looks like convenience garlic. It's like weird. Yeah, that stuff nasty. My grandma used to buy that exclusively. My grandma, you know, died in the, I don't know, like early 90s maybe. Yeah, early 90s. She was like, look what they can do now. They can put chopped up garlic in a jar. I'm like, no, they can't, grandma. tasted this stuff. You know what I mean? Anyway, um, whatever. But so I would do that. Or I would say that you, you know, you could try acid adjusting it, but it's not

[19:57] going to have that, um, that bitter. What blend of acids is in a bitter orange. Well, okay, I cheat, and I just turn it into lime juice. And so, yeah, if you, I mean, like, I have the recipe for that in the book. But look, here's the thing. I would assume I've used straight, bitter oranges off the trees in Arizona and I've used

[20:19] straight, bitter orange shoes for cocktails before. I don't remember what the ratio is, but it's pretty damn close to lemon or lime juice in terms of total acidity. And so what you're looking at there is a 6%. You're looking at 6% of 80. So you can choose what kind of acidity you want. You know, if you want, if you want to stay more on the lemon side, then, you know, citric. If you want to shade it towards the lime side, you know, all the way to 2 to one mount. I wouldn't go more than 2 to one citric to Malik. go higher in Malik because I don't think it's going to taste citrus anymore. I think it'll take on some other kind of notes, but like anywhere in that, uh, in that ratio is is fine, and, you know, the, the, the ratio to turn it into lime juice would be, uh,

[21:04] 32, roughly, depending on the oranges. You have roughly 32 grams of citric and 20 grams of Malik per liter. So you're looking at an additional acid of, uh, someone

[21:15] help me out of 30 to 52 grams of acid per liter in any sort of ratio up to about 20 grams of

[21:22] Malik should do it. And that way all of your bartenders can just use it as though it were lemon or lime

[21:29] juice. And you don't have to worry about them like being like, oh, I got to flat or I got

[21:33] to use a fat half ounce of this because it's not the same. The crappy thing about the, the juice, the yield on the, on the Latin sour oranges is bad, if

[21:45] you, um, are going to strain it, because the pulp tends to be very coarse, and so you lose kind of a lot to the pulping, uh, the pulp is straining,

[21:54] but, you know, try it. They're okay. I like them, but they're different. They're very different from the Sevillees, very. Well, what about the bitterness element? Oh, they're bitter. I mean they're bitter-ish. You know what I mean? I mean, if I'm doping orange juice. Oh, yeah. I mean, you can, I mean, you can add any sort of like bitters, anything, I guess, or you could like throw some peel in there and let it macerate for a while.

[22:17] You know what I mean? And then that'll be... What about like, um... bitter orange essential oil? Oh, I never used it. I never used it. You'd probably want to suspend that in some alcohol and then stir it in, but it might break. You might need to have a little bit of... Yeah. See what sewer. I've caught that as you probably remember. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But anyway, like let us know how it works. Yeah, I'll give it a side. Jack should definitely come check out Green Zones in DC. Oh, that's right. You sure will. call in from calling from there to one of the shows and go and go do it. But you got to figure out the mint before he comes out. He's not going to come to you until you figure out the green mint. right. Yeah. All righty. All right, well we'll work on it. All right, so should we go back to the question? Got another caller too. Oh, call, okay, caller. You on the air. Hey there, Dave, I got a quick question for you, but first, I also want to say, thank Zach. Congrats on your new venture. pretty awesome, dude. Thanks, man. Yeah. Okay, so Dave, I've been doing a sourdough culture for a while, like a couple years.

[23:22] Um, and have fed it with all different types of flour, but recently have been feeding it with gold medal. Um, and they just had a big recall uh, because of possible E. coli contamination on some of

[23:38] their, some of their flowers. So my question is, um, Well, you remind me of the time and temperature killing regimen for E.

[23:48] coli, and like, am I going to have to toss out my 3 year old tower starter because I'm going to go ahead and say no. The chances, the chances of you, the god's honest truth is, I don't know whether, look, your sourdough starter isn't going to kill E. coli, but I don't, like, your sourdough starter is a huge melange of different microbes, and I think you're probably, the E. coli is probably going to get way out competed, especially over, if you're keeping it

[24:17] alive. It means you're feeding it and using it on a regular basis. And so it's going to get out-competed. And there's E. coli is what we in the trade like referred to as ubiquitous. It's everywhere. So, you know, if you have a toddler anywhere in the house. It's gotten anywhere near it, you like decolide, up and down, all over, like, you know, left and right all over that. unless you dip your hands and bleach every time that you're touching it, like their

[24:40] E. coli has gotten in it before. So I would say, no, I wouldn't worry about it. Also, unless you're eating sourdough raw, like you are cooking the hell out of bread, even if you, let's say you let your sourdough go for such a long time that it's an acid bomb and you need to bring it

[25:01] back, and so you make pancakes with a whole bunch of it so that you can have a small amount that you bring back to life again, which is a valid

[25:07] use, because as we all know, sourdough pancakes, you're using the acidity of the sourdough starter of an overdone sourdough starter in conjunction

[25:15] with baking soda as a base, you're not actually using the actual acid, the actual flora of it. anyway. So even in that, pancakes are you're cooking the hell out of a pancake and you're going to be killing the hell out of the cola. Yeah. Yeah, I think all the gold medal illnesses were from people eating raw dough. Yeah, raw dough. And remember this. Like, so what happened? Now, obviously, obviously, sourdough starter is a good place for bacterial and yeast growth. Otherwise, guess what? It wouldn't work, right? But I'm thinking you're going to be out competed, and I would not, I mean, like, there's so many chances for contamination. And just think of the lawsuits. I'm just kidding. No kidding. I kidding. I never recommend, never recommend, never recommend lawsuits. But I'll also say this. It must have been, I haven't read the research since I looked at it originally, but it must have

[26:08] been contamination of a liquid on a grain perhaps when it was going through the tempering step prior to being milled.

[26:15] There's a couple of places that you can get contamination on the grain. And then, uh, obviously, you know, you're not killing the

[26:23] bacteria, uh, it can go dormant in the dry conditions and that's how it can theoretically survive. Yada, yada, but I personally, I would feed it to my family. That's all I'm saying. Awesome. Okay. Cool. Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it. No problem. Okay. Back to the milk question. Yeah, what's this milk question? All right, this is Ben from Rhode Island. He says, making a clarified milk punch. I want to keep the punch base, grapefruit pineapple, whole milk, matcha tea, separate from the booze, so I can figure it out as an

[26:52] alacarte cocktail, use it with different spirits and minimize waste. I'm getting very small curds. That's my next band. Small curds. Small curds. Small curds. I'm getting very small curds. They are too small for even the finest of cheesecloth. The finest cheese cloth. Coffee filters work, especially super thick Chemex filters, but this is a brutal process. One of the things, as we all know, that Nastasia Lopez will never do. is filter liquor through coffee filters. Yeah. Never, never. You know what? She'd be like, no, and she'd walk away. That would be it. It's one of those things. Why? It's detestable. She's like, I'm done. You know how like, uh... No, I'll do liquor through coffee filters. I won't do grapefruit juice freezeball. Ever. Ever. Yeah. She walk, it's like, you know, but I think it's the kind of thing like, like, like pooping in diapers where you say you're done with it, but you never

[27:49] know you might go back to it later. Good. What? Well, you do? I do what I have to. You know me. It's like, it's like, it's like, if I'm in a situation where I have to do it, I'll be like, oh, but I'm getting better, nostasia. I am now choosing things that don't require me to do the awful

[28:09] thing. Like, it used to be so eager to please, that I would just choose the thing that I thought was absolutely the best, and then figure out how to do it later, which often meant screwing us.

[28:21] But now I'm like, I'm going to choose something that's really good. But it's also not gonna screw us. getting older. You familiar with the gangrene album, older Budweiser? Yeah, good strong. But they, uh, they were famous for a, uh... Yeah, older Budweiser. yeah. They were famous for, they did a cover of Voices Carey. They did a hardcore cover of Voices Carrie in the 80s that won some very important Boston Battle of the

[28:51] bands and it rocketed them to quote unquote fame in the comedy hardcore world.

[28:55] They, I think they, for a minute, they were past the dead milkman. It was like, who's going to be the comedy hardcore, like, you know,

[29:02] group, is it going to be gangrene or is it going to be dead milkman? And it's back and forth. I like them both. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, milk punch. How did we get on this? What were you talking about, small cards? I'm getting very small curds. They are too small for even the finest cheese cloth, coffee filters, work, especially the thick Chemex filters, but it's a brutal process. Would upping the acid increase the size of the curd, making it easier to clarify any other

[29:26] tips. Yeah, I don't think upping the acid. In fact, I've had someone over, like, somehow they were able to rapidly acidify it and then like stop it from breaking. Here's what I would do in this order, depending on whether you need to do it right now, like today, or you can wait. So I did a little test this morning, and the problem, one of the problems with your recipe is if your recipe has a lot of sugar in it, sugar tends to stabilize, as I said before, with milk syrups, it tends to stabilize and create very

[29:54] small, very, very small curds. In fact, sometimes such that it doesn't even look like it's broken. So I would not put any sugar into your recipe or as little sugar as you

[30:03] can. You know, I mean, as little as you can, until later on in the recipe after you've broken the milk. That's one. Two, uh, anything you can do to uh, destabilize um, the protein so that they go together in big clumps would help. So I did this. I did, I didn't know what your, I don't know your recipe is. So I did 50% water, 50% milk, right? And then I added, uh, so I did, uh, ounce, ounce, ounce, ounce, and then in

[30:34] one, I added another half ounce of water and some citric acid to break it, and another

[30:37] one, I added a half, a half ounce only of uh, 30 proof. I had some 30 proof old banana hostino vodka right in, but a small amount of alcohol just to help destabilize it a little

[30:48] bit, and citric acid, and I got much bigger fluffier curd and better yield out of the one that had even a small amount of alcohol.

[30:55] So if it doesn't need to be like alcohol, like, doesn't need to be alcohol free for kids, even a small dose of alcohol

[31:02] would help destabilize it if you need to do it right now. And also, your technique, how you move the curd around can cause the curd to be bigger. If you move it gently around, and as I like to say, sweep the spoon around, to let the Kurds get bigger and

[31:16] bigger as they pull casing in from outside, that's going to help. Lastly, it's pretty much universally recognized that Renet does a better job of making big curds than acid.

[31:27] So if you can, uh, if you can go on the internets and buy rent it to do your curting instead of acid, it's microbial, so you don't need to worry about it being, you know,

[31:35] killing some baby animals for it. I mean, unless you want to, in which case you can get to baby animal one, if you need to have dead animal in your cocktail, you can do it.

[31:43] Um, but the, um, Anyway, so I would do it uh, in that order. And that reminds me, last week we had a question about, uh, that's enough, right? So that was on that? Yeah. So last week we had a question about spices and freezing them. And I remembered, like, afterwards, what I forgot to say. Another reason to free spices. We were talking, the questionnaire was worried about, the questionnaire was worried about spoilage and all this other stuff and whether or not the freestyle would be a problem and moisture and

[32:12] blah, blah, blah. Here's a good reason to free spices. A lot of spices are infested with the eggs of insects, like weevils and other nasty little things. is especially true on like, the more artisanal your product is, the more likely it is, it's infested with some sort of

[32:28] crazy thing. Uh, even like uh, flowers that you get. If you get like small run flowers from artisanal places that don't have like, you know, don't have like E. coli spraying quality controls kind of situations in it. Um, they can have infestations in them. And if you're worried about long-term storage or something that might have insect eggs in

[32:49] it, freeze. I always get my spices at duel, the, like, Indian shop. You ever had any, ever had any hatching? No, they have dates on all of them, which is great. Date the date, not the fruit. You know what, though? People make those freaking dates up. Oh, I know so. I have seen it happen. But like the, uh, like the, but no, but it's good to know, it's, you know what? you know what a date's good for, it's good for you as a consumer to know how long you've had it anyway.

[33:18] But I'm not going to say where I bought it. wasn't dual specialty, but there was a particular brand of flour that I still to this day buy because I really like it. Uh, an Indian, um, uh, like a chapati flower that is, uh, that like is like, I love it because it's like, it's, it's whole. It's mostly whole grain, but it's really soft and it doesn't puncture like whole wheat

[33:39] does, so it's really good adjunct to like biscuits. If you want to give it a little bit of wheatiness. like I really like it. Biscuits. Biscuits. Everyone likes some buttonastas, yeah. I had something else in my heartbeat on that. Yeah, don't get me started. Please. You didn't know this? What? Peter you did not know this? Well, I mean, I would have guessed. You would have guessed? Why? Because they're delicious? Because everybody loves biscuits and they're delicious. too dry for me. Well, that's why they invented butter. as a category? That's why they invented butter in the stocksia. They have 2 they have 2 solutions to your problem. I'll name two. butter, jelly. I'll name some more. Honey, molasses, good molasses, not that bull crap that we get normally in the supermarket. I got a question for Jack or in the chat room. Nice. What the question? Jack, what is your favorite meal? Um, First thing that came to mind was like Kachue Pepe done right? Nastasia, why don't you give us your thoughts on that, on that? I know you have serious thought. No, you're the... When is they done right, it has to be like, I agree with Stas on this. Like, it's got to be Al Dente, and like... You like it, like, hard as, hard as, no,

[34:47] like, a little bit more than Aldente. Since that's you're saying you don't like it hard? I do like it. I made her do it. Made her say it. Wow. Yeah. But no, Nastasia likes it hard to the point of like small core on the inside. Oh, like they're still white in the middle of the news. A tiny bit. I kind of get down with that. Yeah? I like Bukitini. No, no, I like Bugatini. That shit. I mean, that's stuff. Oh, leave me out. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm too used to Lahey being on. Pepe. guess that's the answer. I think that's a weird word. It doesn't sound like it reminds me, like, I think there's a dude making it. I think I think it's like a dude named Pepe that's making it. Oh, Pepe's making. Like, that's why, like, somehow, like, I don't know. I don't I can't, you know, I don't know any. I don't know any actual Italian, like Nastasia here. So. Anyway, we have a question about should I talk about the rice? Or do you want to talk more about that? You want to talk more about you? We had a question in the crab. Is that enough? You want to talk about it? Yeah, I think that's enough. You make that for yourself? Yeah, I don't do that that great of a job, though. Why? you up your game? How can I up my game? It's the finishing step there, you know, it's just the consistency is never like perfectly... Do you like using pasta water? Yeah, of course. You have to. No, I actually tried it out. Kenji has a weird technique where he kind of, uh, cooks the pasta dry in a, like a, like a saucepan, like risotto style? Yeah, exactly. Porque. Why? I don't know. I tried it. I know a bunch of people that have talked about pre-frying their pasta. I never really bought. I never bought them. I never done it. I did it once and did it again. No? It's called like Pasoto or something. Really? I heard somebody say that, yeah. Pesto? Why would they call it that? Well, it's when you use the liquid that the pasta is cooking in as a sauce. Oh, no, he's talking about pre-frying the pasta like a risotto. Yeah. Peter's zoned out. a chance. Have we got another caller if you want to take it? I was sleeping. Okay, call her. on the air. Hello, Dave. Longtime listener, first time caller. What? You made it under the wire. You still have Jack here. Yeah nice. up? I know that's against the rules, but one is actually for a different show altogether called issues. Oh wow. Wow. Let's start with that. Longtime listener. Yeah, so my 1st question is for Jack, and it's in regards to Darcy's show, Chef's

[37:07] talk. Chef story yeah. And then that is going to fold into my 2nd question for cooking issues. All right. I was listening. I listened to a lot of shows on the Heritage Network, and the one thing I always can understand is why Dorothy can't remember your name when she thinks about the end of the episodes and

[37:21] always tells you Jack Inis. You know, Dorothy has a lot going on. She's a very busy woman. She's she's awesome. She's awesome. But I do laugh every time I get called Jack Innis on that show. Is that a thing? Is Jack Innis like a person? Is there an innis somewhere? No. Is it like a baseball player or something? She's called, she calls Aaron, Aaron Fairchild sometimes. Fairbanks. she just, you know, mixes up the names a little bit. Yeah. I'm glad you noticed that, though. Thanks. I just figured you'd fix it in post-production, but that's cool. Oh, no, you should do it the way I do it for everything. Just put a totally different voice in. Right. And thanks to Jack Insley. Yeah, yeah. Or just the Insley part. Right, yeah, yeah. Insley. Insley. My ringtone for Peter. I got to play that. If I have time, I'll play that. play my Peter ringtone. Oh, well, you start, you get your 2nd question going and I'll get, I'll get Peter's ringtone up here. All right, sounds good. So I was listening to an episode where Steve Jenkins was being interviewed and basically called out the olive oil industry and cold press not being a real thing. And I started to look into like raw juice and juice bars and I've always been a fan of the champion juicer and wanted to see what the fundamental differences

[38:32] were. And everyone that I see who puts out a cold pressed juice

[38:38] machine gets you to get a food processor where you blend the ingredients 1st and then cold press that. Yeah. You mean like Norwalk? industry, like complete horse hockey, or is it a legitimate thing? Uh, I don't know. Here, listen to this first. No child wants to play with a gator. In the box? No child wants to play with a gater in the box? Yeah. That's whenever Peter calls me, that's what I that's what I get on my phone. But the... Before that, it was the sound of me in pain from burning my hands on the

[39:09] puffing gun. which I'll also play for you. Yeah. I don't I don't honestly have any experience with the cold press, and I'm sure you're talking about like Norwalks. Uh, you know, where it's basically just like a carjack with a bunch of stainless steel surrounding it and it crushes it. The people I know who have juice bars. Like, they love it because they say it's low temperature, but like, like you say, if you have to put it through a whole bunch of blending operations first, there's the opportunity for heating it before it goes into the

[39:45] press. Paul, I bet you've played with that crap. You play with that crap at all? That sounds like something you would play with. Sounds like something you would call into popular science. Not yet. Paul, yeah. Yeah, because they're like 1000s of dollars for no particular reason. Brian Lamb of the wire cutter on the sweet home is a gadget guy and a cold juice guy.

[40:02] Brian, are you listening? I don't know. So, you know, call or tweeting, give us the answer. I, look, I'm gonna, I can't come down one way or the other on, on cold juicing. I'll tell you this. The champion juicer heats the hell out of the juice sometimes, especially like case 3 or 4 of apples and you're not stopping and you're cranking through. I've had the champion heat the juice. I've had the champion boil water. I've melted the magnets, the protective magnets in the champion juicer from going to town on it. And partially, that's why I love it so. But, you know, the different juicers do have different qualities and it's not just the temperature. It's the way the extraction works. I tested the Breville versus the champion on apple juice this year and the juice qualities were very different. Not better, not worse, different. We got a caller who claims to have the answer to the juicing question. All right, here we go. Caller, you are on the air with the answer to the juicing question. Hey, David, Antoine from Boca. I remember I told you I used to run at juice bar. That is true before you saw the light and started eating meat and, you know, cooking fish and all this other stuff. And I now work in the cocktail bar as well. It's just full circle. But yeah, there's really almost no difference as well. Having worked with both doing it at the taste wise, is minimal. If anything, the traditional juicers that are on cold press actually last longer. Really? From what I've used? Yeah. Huh. Huh. Wait, when you use traditional juicers, though, are you using neutrafasters? or are you using champions? Champions. Champions. Because the neutral faster is so fat, literally, I mean, that I bet you it doesn't heat juice at all.

[41:39] It's such a monster. Did you have a neutra faster at your juice bar? No, we used, um, it's called the good nature, which is basically a super version of the

[41:49] Norwalk, essentially. Okay. Same principle, which is bigger. Even more expensive. Yeah, about 10 times more expensive. And you were like, this is Holcomb. Pardon? You were like, this is horse hockey. This is BS. This makes no difference. Oh, totally. So much so. I mean, yeah. I, uh, the cold juicing is the biggest sham I could ever. Nice. But if your concern is enzymes acting on the juice. As long as it's not warm for very long. I don't think you're going to run into too much trouble. I was talking regards to the whole cold juice, like in raw thing altogether. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. It's good to know I mean, I have no experience, so, you know, I'll, I'm gonna put, I like that you threw that out there over the bow. Maybe I hope we get other people and being like, man. Let me tell you something about cold pressed juice, though. looks fantastic on a menu. That stuff sells. You put cold pressed juice on a menu and people

[42:49] were like, copress. I think it sounds like I should care, right? Doesn't it sound like I should care? We've, we didn't heat the juice and destroy all of its vital nutrients. Dave, it's like our idea for calling milk boob deuce. Yeah, so Peter had this idea yesterday to have a milk brand called boob juice. And Peter, obviously, habitual line crosser, as we've known, takes it just to the edge of the family show and then crosses over

[43:15] it. But the reason why we were talking about Hagen-Dazs. We're like, I got in an argument with Peter because, um, you know, I hate

[43:23] any any labeling on any food of any type, claiming health, of any sort at all. I just don't like it at all. I don't think, I hate it when people say the X, Y, Z piece of garbage is healthy because, you know, just, you know, I hate it.

[43:39] It's like, it's like just, whatever, leave it off. And so we were saying that ice cream should get the healthy label, but the ingredients should be boob juice, vegetable juice, rare

[43:51] orchid seeds. Yeah. Cold pressed. Cold press. Very cold pressed. Well, no, but you have to heat the vanilla to get it to ferment right. So it's a cold pressed boob juice. Cold press boob juice. Coldpress boob juice, vegetable juice. Which is, you know, sugar, cane, and rare tropical orchid for your health. Vanilla. yeah. Health, health. Is that a Steve Brule reference? Health. But that's for Philly style. Do you have an alternate label for eggs? Like, that's Philly, that would be a Philly style. That's old style briars. is boob juice, vegetable juice. and tropical orchid. Yeah. Chicken seeds. Huge. can see. Oh, man, you go, you go some sort of weird, creepy gross, like, that's like, someone who thinks of a chicken as a plant is like, that's like just

[44:46] some, like, weird. It's weird up in this. Nastasia has a different face than normal. It's kind of a freaked out face. little bit of a freaked out face. Nice. All right. Okay. Shyra. Well, you know what? Any of you guys experts on Japanese rice?

[45:07] Yeah, of course. Look to me. Nastasia really showing her true colors here. She thought I was Chinese for the record. She did not think you were Chinese. She did not think... For years. We knew each other for years. Last year, we clarified that I'm not Chinese. I mean, last year. the day I've known you, I know you're Korean. Yeah, yeah, you. Stas is brain. I was Chinese over the last year. is not the case, man. I know that. She's not disputing. She's got her shut up face on right now. All right, so the, uh, you know what? I'll do the Japanese rice thing next, next, next week because this gets too long and involved Japanese rice. Yeah, okay, okay, okay, okay. Shy writes in. Hello, cooking issues team. Thanks for answering my previous questions. You spoke before about making tofu from peanuts. I've wondered if you've tried using other pulses. I think I have, but I can't remember. It's been a long time since I've made non-traditional tofu. Modernist cuisine's done a lot of work on non-traditional tofus. You can go look up their stuff. And the peanuts. I didn't have super great success with them because it didn't clot as well. I mean, other people have had good success. I looked it up on the internets today. And I know the modernist cuisine folks did a lot. anyway, whatever. I made tempeh from peanuts. Earlier this year. It was a successful tempe, but it was disgusting tasting. Successful, texturally, it the mold grew correctly. Yeah, looked good. Smelled bad, tasted bad. Not like toxic bad. If you think it smells bad. Paul's, remember, that was Paul Adams, the man who brought an open can of surfstraming in a taxi home with him and didn't think it was a problem. So if Paul thought it smelled bad, it stank up. It stank. It stank. I previously made a ginko tempe. Oh, my God. What? Gecko nuts are the worst, most foul smelling things. You have to wash the bejesus out of them before they're even usable. Oh, all right. Half ginkko nuts, half dried soybeans, delicious tempeh. You know what people used to write? you ever read old, like, horticultural books? I haven't. I mean, doesn't say right, I meant read. Ginko, they're like, people only plant the female ginkos because, I mean, sorry, the male

[47:29] ginkos because the nut stinks so bad. I was thinking nuts, male, but no, in front of the female tree. But the point is, is that that's not the case, right outside the Mofads offense, there used to be a ginkgo nut that a ginkgo tree that would drop its stinky nuts all over the tree all over the sidewalk.

[47:43] Used to step on the stinky nuts. are you talking about? Stars, you remember the stinky ginko nuts. Red ones? No, they're like this and they're on the ground. You step on and you're like, oh, what smells like vomit? They're our old office. Yeah, yeah, yeah. of course. There were stinky nuts all over there. Stinky. We're getting the high sign over there. Oh, man. All right. Well, listen, I'll answer. I'll answer Shy's question about Burmese tofu from chickpeas next week. Hopefully I can get Francis Lamb. You couldn't talk about it this week because whatever. Hey, listen, all love and thanks to my man Jack Insley for all the years of cooking issues and being a part of the show, being a part of the team, being our

[48:21] friend. We'll miss you. My favorite part. Cheers, Paul. Not you, Dave. I'll come make cameos. I'll come prank you from all different places. We'll be back next week with more cooking issues, but it won't be the same. Oh, bye guys.

[48:42] 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.