[0:00] This episode is brought to you by Jule, the immersion circulator for

[0:03] Sous vide by Chef Steps. Order now at chefsteps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. 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 heritageraidernetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:27] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage

[0:36] Radio Network every Tuesday from like, you know, 12-ish to like almost like, you know, one o'clock. Uh, at Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. How you doing? Yeah. Listen, listen, I need you to call in all of your cooking related questions too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. We have no one in the studio today with us. It's just engineer Dave and myself. How you doing, Dave? Good, how are you doing? But we have Nastasia, the Hammer,

[1:07] Lopez, joining us from Washington, DC on telephone, and do we have our special guest in DC? Yes, we do. And folks, you ready for it? Jackie Molecules. Jack Insley from DC. What's up? What's up, Dave? Nothing, how you doing? So have you started this new radio thingamajig down there yet? What going on? You know, it's under construction. I'll be opening, uh, it's going to be called full service radio, a entire podcast network here in DC in an awesome yet to be opened hotel. So it's basically still a construction zone, but uh, 11 DC so far, man. really cool over here. So do you like wear blue blazers every day and like, I mean, what? No, no, no, no. The Knicks hat stays on. Yeah? Do you like, do like, just wake up in a Starbucks every morning and hang out with the political people? Is that what happens? What's going on? And I have had more Starbucks here in DC than I have my entire life in New York, unfortunately.

[2:08] That's actually true statement. Yeah. Yeah. So are you are you busy rigging the election while you're waiting for the construction to happen? I've been rigging it. Yeah, I've been actively rigging it, doing everything I can. Yeah, I mean, you get to tour the White House though, Dave. I got to tour the West Wing, which is pretty awesome. Yeah? What did you do? Did you notice stuff that you had seen in all the television programs or what? Well, I mean, you know, I got to see like pictures of Michelle on Barack's desk. That was kind of cool. Wait, you got to see the Oval Office? The Oval Office bathroom. Wait, you look, wait, you were like, you were in the Oval Offices restroom, but not in the Oval Office itself? Yeah, there's like a bathroom right outside. I was like, you know, if you want to use the bathroom, now's your chance. You could use it at the White House. You peed in the Oval Office's bathroom. Yes, I did. Now, people who know Nastasia Lopez will know that she cannot be in a new place without using the restroom.

[3:05] This includes like, you know, if she could have used Elvis's death toilet at Graceland, she would, you definitely would have been all over that Oval Office toilet. Am I right, Nastasia? Oh yeah, there's still time. I'm still here for like 12 more hours or something. Now, are you allowed to say why you're there or not? What? Are you allowed to say why you're in Washington or no? Uh, no, I don't think so. So we can talk about it next week? Sure. All right. All right. Well, so that's exciting that we know you're in DC rigging the election, but we can't talk about exactly what you're doing. All right, we'll talk about it next week. So in other news, Booker and Dax, the bar is officially closed. Booker and Dax one. At Sambar is officially closed. So, you know, that's that. It was a crazy... Mustasi was away. It was a crazy, crazy Saturday. It was fun though. It was good. Uh, you know, people are like, are you sad to see it close? I'm like, no, because it's going to be better the next time when we reopen it. You know what I mean? Yeah, were there piñatas? Okay, so I had 2 piñatas on me. I went to a place, a local place in New York called Economy Candy and bought a bunch of candy for these piñatas. Do you know the piñatas now are freaking horrible. I went to party city. Piñatas have been going downhill for years and years. They've just turned into garbage. You know what I mean? Like, 1st like, they started making them out of this cardboard that doesn't break right. You know, I mean, no one, but no one makes a ceramic pot anymore. You know what I mean? But whatever. I'm okay with not having the ceramic pot, like traditional star piñata, fine. Uh, those are awesome, right? Because you knock the like those star points off and then eventually you get to the pot. You know what I mean? But it will break. I've seen these new cardboard piñatas where like I've seen kids break on them for like like 20 minutes and they're getting bored and they walk away from a piñata. What the hell is that? You know what I mean? I mean, what the heck is that? So, like, uh, so anyway, so I hate the modern piñata, but over the past couple of years,

[5:16] Mistachio, they've gotten even worse, they're now just flat. Most of them are just flat cardboard with like a picture on them of what you're supposed to hit. And a little and a little cray paper around the outside. I was like, yo, like, give me a traditional donkey and a unicorn. You know what I mean? Which is basically, it's like, it's like Carvel ice cream, like they make

[5:38] Fudgy the Whale into Santa. They took the donkey and made it into a unicorn. So I got a unicorn and a donkey, but... I'm just saying, I think that they didn't trust me on the last night to be reasonable, so they didn't allow me to break the

[5:51] piñatas, uh, uh, there. So we all went to, uh, you know, my, uh, someone who, you know, used to be at work at Booker and Dax, Reynolds, opened up his own bar, Black Crescent. So we did a late night after party piñata breaking at Black Crescent. So yes, piñatas were damaged. Some piñatas were harmed in the making of the closing night of

[6:12] Booker index. I will also just mention this. Um, for, so, Nastasi, you're familiar with Dai Cook and Mentos, right? Yes. Yeah. So you take the Mentos, you stick it in the Diet Coke, and Diet Coke is the one everyone uses, you stick the Mentos in the Diet Coke, and you throw it down, you get all of these nucleation sites, and

[6:33] the Diet Coke bottle basically turns into a rocket, right? Okay. So, you can do that with liquid butane or with liquid nitrogen,

[6:43] and, you know, you can see it on the internet. You could see people doing it with the liquid nitrogen and the thing. So I'm like, oh, I'm not saying I tried this. What I'm saying is, is that if you try it, be extremely careful to not put too much liquid

[6:56] nitrogen. So what happens is, is that theoretically, let's not say that I did this. But if you were to pour out like, you know, half or a 3rd of the bottle of the, oh, I just did a trump sniff, if you were to pour out like half or a 3rd of

[7:08] the of the diet Coke from a fresh bottle and then pour in, um, pour in some liquid nitrogen, right? Now the liquid nitrogen's floating on the top of the bottle. Now, if you flick that, if you like tilt that bottle down, what happens

[7:22] is, the liquid nitrogen will rush through the liquid of the

[7:27] Diet Coke trying to float to the top, and while it's doing that, it's explosively boiling and creating super multiple nucleation sites.

[7:34] So theoretically, it makes a really nice rocket. It turns out that I guess if you wait a little bit too long or maybe you put too much liquid nitrogen in, that when you turn it upside down, it

[7:45] takes off for like a foot and then explodes with like the sound of

[7:50] like, of, you know, like a, like, like bigger than, bigger than a groochie firework. We're talking like a very loud explosion. And you definitely do not want to do this. In Manhattan. at like 4 in the morning. It's definitely not something that I did or that I would recommend that any of you do. Um, anyways. So another thing, Nastasi and I, a while back, okay, so Nastasi and I got paid,

[8:23] right? For something, finally, right? So Nastasia and I got paid, Johnny Walker. Not yet. Not yet. All right. Well, theoretically, paid promise of payment, baby steps, Nastasia, baby steps. So, um, Basically, these guys came in and they're saying, we have this new Johnny Walker,

[8:40] Red Rye cask, you know, that are, you know, our new, one of our master blenders, uh, Emma Walker, no relation, came up with, and we want to come in and

[8:49] do like a cooking issues where you talk to her about this product, right?

[8:53] This is basically how it went. Yeah. So it wasn't one of our normal cooking issue things. And yes, we were paid, but it turns out Nastasi and I had a good time. We liked the product and we actually liked Emma Walker. We thought she was fun. And so we have the cooking issues episode. Dave, how do we, how do they get to? What's not going on our normal feed? Because, listen, I bleeped out some of the crazy parts. I redacted somebody's name, who I didn't want to publicly embarrass, and I cut out some of the cursing, but it's still not really a family show. It's about drinking and there are some, uh, you know... Yeah, there's some off color stories in it, let's say, even with the bleeping. Carlo Marachi from Carlo from Roberta's

[9:35] makes an appearance towards the end. So Dave, how do they how do they get to that because it's not part of our normal feed. Right. So if you go to the Heritage Radio Network website, heritageradionetwork.org. And if you just use the search bar at the bottom and look for cooking issues. Johnny Walker. It'll come right up Now, now, so you need to actually go to our website to get this. You're not going to it's not going to appear in your iTunes or whatever. You have to actually go, which is always a good idea. Don't you think, Dave, to go to our carriage radio website? Absolutely. Forget iTunes. Forget that. You know, I wish I had used that bleep. I was talking about bad ways to, like, you know, like in the 1980s, when they used to overdub curses, my least favorite was the

[10:14] forget for the F-bomb. Forget you. You know what I mean? It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't have the same force. You know what I mean? No bad replacement. a bad replacement. It's a bad replacement. So you just say FU. Just say F. think that's better. Or just like silence it or something. So my friend, uh, Eric Bonenstiel, uh, who uh, I was hanging out with, you guys don't know him. I mean, maybe you do. I don't know. I was hanging out with him over the weekend. He said that he saw something and literally they dubbed the full, like, FU as get this. You ready for it? And it became his favorite thing to say as a substitute curse, Chinese dentist. Say that again? Chinese dentist. And it's good because it makes no freaking sense. Yes, Chinese dentist. has no meaning. Has no meaning. So, like, whenever he would like smash his hand with a hammer or something and go, oh, a Chinese dentist like that. And it makes no sense. And said it was literally... racist, I think. That's racist. How is it? I mean, like it has no meaning. It can't be racist. Like, what does it mean? How is it how is it racist? It happens to have the word Chinese in it? Does it have any relationship? We just looked it up and it says it's a mythical person who is said to exist in remote areas of

[11:31] China, but has never been cited by a reputable source. That's what a Chinese dentist is. What does that mean? What does that mean? saying they have bad teeth. Oh, you racist? Oh, you see? That's like racist now. That's so deep that I didn't even, I didn't even get the reference. I get it now. But why would they use that? Why would they use that as a as a as a dub in a movie? Some, some, you know, some Klansman was doing the overdubs. Dang. I'm going to have to tell Eric never to use that. Yeah. We shouldn't have told you. See, now this is classic Nastasia, right? She would prefer that I walk around, like accidentally insulting people, then, like, tell me what's going on. I want you all to kind of realize, you know, where Nastasia is on this sort of a thing. Crazy. Crazy. All right, speaking of things that may or may not be offensive, Elliot wrote in, can you discuss a cook's integrity as it relates to trying to replicate dishes and techniques seen on social

[12:45] media? What is crossing the line and what is the sharing of ideas? Curious what you think, and hopefully there is a guest today that can also weigh in, Elliot. Well, I don't know. I mean, you guys can weigh in. Um, I can't believe you looked it up that fast. You guys are crazy. Well, thank you. Thank you for saving me from going the entire episode without knowing that I was

[13:09] like accidentally spewing hatred. Yeah, who knows how many more times you would have dropped that. Right. Throughout the episode, like 8000000000 and someone would have like written in and been like, uh, uh, you know what I mean?

[13:20] Anyways. So, um, Here's what I think. I think. A lot depends, right? I'll give you a short story about the bar and then we could talk more about other stuff. So, like, I've had many bartenders at Booker and Dax, who have gone on to do,

[13:43] um, you know, bigger and better things, their own programs, uh, go to work at, you know, the best bars in the country or run

[13:51] them. And, um, The thing is, is that they tend not to take some of the, um, some of the core technique, most of the core techniques from Booker and Dax. Now, some of that is because, you know, they can't afford a centrifuge or whatever, but a lot of those recipes and techniques tend not to get, uh, taken

[14:10] from, or, you know, did not get taken from Booker and Dax and kind of promulgated to other bars. And I always wondered why. Now, it could just be that those techniques suck and nobody wants to use them, right? That's the 1st way, right? Stars could be that. Uh, right? Maybe they just, there's not good. Or, uh, alternatively, um, I put such a, um, I put such a, uh, uh, kind of

[14:38] a premium on not doing anyone else's stuff, like not doing other people's specs, uh, not using techniques uh, that were developed,

[14:49] modern, recent techniques that were developed by, uh, you know, other people or people I knew, uh, you know, or that we hadn't come to independently.

[14:58] And I think, um, that kind of made them feel that using that stuff

[15:04] would, would is bad, right? That using it would be a ripoff or whatever. And that's actually the opposite of what I want. Like, I want those techniques to be to be used, right? I mean, the issue of anyone, what people don't like, I think, everyone wants their stuff to

[15:23] get, um, used, uh, their recipes and techniques to get used. What they want out of it is, to be honest, like some sort of like credit, right? So what they don't want to have happened. Like the worst thing that can happen, it's happened to us, how many times this happened? Like you come up with something, somebody else uses it. They're the more famous person, it gets credited to them and your host, right? That's that's the worst case scenario. Um, the other thing to do... That's my favorite. my absolute favorite. But the other thing that happens is that, um, the other thing that people hate is when, you know, someone

[16:01] will take a technique or a recipe to a different market and then allow reporters and other people to say that it was their

[16:10] idea. That's also not kosher at all. But, um, you know, I think if you use a recipe or a technique, or anything, and as long as when the reporters come and ask you, you're like, yeah, this was an awesome recipe from whoever from Sean Brock, from Wiley

[16:27] Dufrain, from Johnny Azini, from Dominique and cell from whomever. You know what I mean? I think, um, I think it's, that's that's the, the issue. What people don't want is someone to take credit for a

[16:42] recipe. I mean, it's famously said, you don't patent, you know, these recipes that, you know, they're basically their open

[16:48] source as long as you can figure out how to make them. But there is in the in the higher end, food world, and drink world, at least like some sort of sense of honor in it. And I think that, I think as long as you are respecting that kind of code of honor and ethics, you know, use

[17:07] it. I would love it if people used, you know, recipes. Jim Mian, uh, kind of famously said from, you know, PDT that, you know, the goal, at least of a bartender, is to create a recipe that becomes a classic and

[17:20] has made everywhere, right? I mean, uh, and I would think the same thing would hold true for, um, you know, a chef. What do you think, guys? Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I mean, just, you know, don't. Except for techniques. Tell them what your technique is people's soul. Which one? The, uh, rapid infusion. Oh, yeah, but no, people know that I came up with that with the ISI infusion. whatever. I mean, it depends. The right people know. You know what I mean? It's like, what are you gonna do? The, the, Again, the issue is that this is why, like, people like Floran Adria put a year on everything that they do so that they can kind of date it and plant their flag in

[18:04] it. And the only reason it even really matters at all is, I mean, it's weird. When you're a cook, you're in the business of making ephemeral things that get consumed on a daily basis, right? And yet you still, for some reason. And I think part of this has to do with kind of the group of people that are

[18:24] becoming, um, cooks these days is you still want to have some sort of, uh, um, you want to exist past the last meal you

[18:35] made. You want to have some sort of, um, impact or some sort of, uh, you know, note that you have existed other than the fact that you just

[18:43] happen to have cooked. And so that's why, you know, people, and you look back at old chefs that have famous dishes or famished cook famous cookbooks. There's another reason why it's a good idea. Like if you're well known to actually make a cookbook, you know, because then at least you plant your flag in

[19:00] something and people can look back on it. Um, That's initially why we started cooking issues blog years and years and years ago was so that we had some sort of record. So it wasn't just we would do stuff, teach other people how to do that stuff, and then, you know, it just gets forgotten. Um, but it's kind of a weird. It's a weird impulse. I mean, I do have that impulse to wanna plant that flag, but it's a weird impulse to have in a business where you're making stuff for people to

[19:26] eat. You know what I mean? Yep. Yep. Yeah. I mean, because, you know, in the old days, and it's entirely honorable, right?

[19:36] To all you care about is good execution, right? Like, you don't care necessarily about making a name for yourself, whatever that

[19:45] means or having some sort of posterity. All you care about is the food that's in front of you right now. I mean, that's the Zen way to go. You're not supposed to care about your own kind of personal, um, baggage or what, you know, what you need out of, uh, you know, so that you can, when

[20:02] you're, you know, an old person and people come up and you're like, you are the great cook,

[20:07] blah, blah, blah. you know, like, that's not necessarily what it needs to be about. Um, and, you know, especially if you're one of those kind of, uh, cooks like these kinds of issues aren't really, um, a problem. So, the short answer is, is that if you fancy yourself, an extremely creative cook or someone is doing cutting edge

[20:26] things, or if being original is important to you, it is still okay, in fact, encouraged to use other people's ideas as long as you're not a dirtbag about it,

[20:39] right? Right. All right. Jared, yep. I actually have a question from a listener that I met here in DC if you want to take that real quick. Yeah, cool. This one's coming from Josh Seaberg. It's a throwback. He wants to know if he can find a practical use for a veggie behind the bar. Oh my god. Oh my god. Well, I mean, I, in my mind, Jack, I had about 8000 inappropriate references immediately pop

[21:13] up and I have suppressed them all. Thankfully, I... No, don't suppress. No, no, no. I can't, especially... That was unintentional. That was unintentional. You might as well just go all in, Dave. No, no, no. No, especially in today's political climate. I am not about to like stop. Now more than ever, you have license, you know? Not going to be dropping. You could just say whatever pops into their heads, so... Dropping veggetty bombs, all over everything. Well, I'm going to actually attempt to legitimately, so for those of you that don't know the

[21:49] Vegeti, a.k.a. the spiralizer, was one of our favorite topics back in the

[21:57] day. Who was it, Nastasia that originally sent us to Vegetti? Claire. Yeah. And I think that, you know, it doesn't take someone with a dirty mind to see how stupid that name is,

[22:10] right? I mean, it's, it's a, it's like a thing with an orifice that you jam, like cylindrical things into and it shreds them in its

[22:24] teeth, and it's called a vejetty. I mean, you don't need to travel too far mentally to get to the scads of

[22:32] Vegetti jokes because Claire, Nastasia's friend would call in kind of seemingly unaware of what she was talking about while we were asking

[22:40] her what manner of things she was shoving into her Vegetti. And she would say, things that were like, you know, if your mind was taking the leap that everyone's

[22:50] did would seem inappropriate. But I think the problem with making veggie jokes behind the bar is that, well, the bar arena is less sexist than the kitchen arena, I'm talking professional, it still has a

[23:07] long freaking way to go for gender parity.

[23:11] So I will merely say this. I want to see as many veggettis behind the bar as is humanly possible. Uh, because, uh, I think it's, uh, it's a problem, but it is, it, well, but it is a notion, it is an

[23:29] area, I'm taking it on the metaphorical sense here. It is an area of food service, I think, that is making inroads faster than the back of house

[23:39] kitchen is. And so I think anything that goes that direction is good. Now, to the serious question of should I put an actual vegetable spiralizer behind the bar? If you are the kind of person that prefers to drink your cocktails with chopsticks, then I

[23:55] say, go ahead and just fill your cup with whatever kind of the jetified garbage you want to like put into it. But I can't imagine. Um, I can't. I mean, maybe it's just because people, like, I don't like gloppy drinks, I don't like tons of garbage in my drinks. I don't like I don't like drinking my cocktails through a brillo pad of fake spaghetti. So, I, I mean, I can't conceive of like, okay, okay, let's just say there are people might do this. People might take some sort of, like, Apple, let's say, and, you know, shape it, such that you could jam it into your

[24:39] vegetti, vegetify the apple into these strands, pour a liquor over it with some acid that causes the apple not to go brown. And then you have it'll fairly rapidly infused because of the high surface area of Apple or you could do a light mash down of the Apple, but I wouldn't because then it would get ugly, then you drink the apple flavored

[24:57] stuff, and then you could take chopsticks and eat it afterwards, but it's just not my style. I would not do that. You could answer, though. Yeah. And you could substitute anything for that. Like, I could see someone doing, like, some sort of

[25:10] like uh, Lady of the Night, which is a clarified, bloody Mary, and having some vegetified vegetables in there that would, you know, infuse and then be a meal afterwards, because let's face it, a

[25:21] bloody Mary is basically a liquid alcoholic meal anyways. So, I don't know. What do you think, Nastasia? That was a nice way to answer that question. Mm, all right. Now, Jared wrote in about a zucchini. Thanks for answering my questions in the past. This one is about zucchini, and it's sticky, slimy residue. We never actually finished this one last week, right? Dave? I don't think we did. don't think so. When I dehydrate raw zucchini pieces, much of it tends to stick together and I suspect that this residue is the culprit, do you think that's the

[25:58] case, yes. Residue? Get ready, Nastasia. I'm going to use the word exit date. Uh, which is, yeah, I'm imagining nostalgia right now. Yeah, you should have seen her face. Wow. Exit date. Yeah, it's like, she like that, because you know why? Because whenever you say exit date, she's thinking like pimple popping. That's what she's thinking about. I can now Jack's got the nostasia face on. Exit date. Uh, she, whenever, like, for instance, this is a little, like, knowledge drop knowledge on how Anastasia's mind works. Nastasia, like, Nastasia doesn't like look, the reason Nastasia, and I'm guessing, this is a guess. We haven't actually had this conversation, but the reason she hates looking at pictures

[26:44] of like leaf fungus and like those weird things that grow on plant leaves is because in her mind, I think she instantly equates it with human skin.

[26:53] That's that's my feeling. I think so. Yeah. think so. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Is that? That's Dave on the on the vomiting sound effects. Do you know, I used to be able to do a very passable, uh, fake throw up

[27:11] noise. And as I've aged, it puts too much pressure on the back of my eyeballs and

[27:16] like, I almost black out. Nobody does it better than Stephen Colbert. That was him? No, no, no, but I'm saying he has the best fake throw up sound in the world. Well, he better, like, keep using that now, because I think the older you get, the less good you're going to be at the fake throw up. Just like jamming up your diaphragm like that just puts a lot of internal pressure on your system. You know what I mean? Yeah. Just like a Vegetti. Whoa. Okay. Anyway, do I think that slimy stuff is the is the culprit, yes. Now, going on, Jared writes, other than making sure pieces don't overlap. This is going to become a not family friendly show at this rate. We got Vegettis, we got accidental racism. Horrible. It's horrible day. Other than making sure pieces don't overlap when dehydrating, which is unavoidable for my application. Can anything else be done to neutralize this sticking? Um, the main issue is when I reconstitute the zucchini with water, the pieces tend to remain stuck

[28:12] together. I prefer they come apart within a few minutes. Thanks for your help. Jared. Okay, so I looked up a, uh, an article called, uh, This

[28:22] Extra Fascicular Floam is made for fighting, which it's like,

[28:27] like nowadays, all these scientific papers have, uh, like these catchy titles. So, um, Zucchini, strangely, I don't have the good version of the thing here, but zucchini

[28:40] is, um, is a cucubit, right? The same way that pumpkins are cucubits and watermelons and, uh, uh,

[28:49] Deste pumpkin already, cucumbers, zucchini, all that stuff. All same. same family. And they all have these, uh, exit, like these, like,

[28:58] like this, they say it's flow and based, but they can be like exudates. So for any of you who've ever peeled a pumpkin, like for soup, like you'll notice it gets that weird stuff and your hands get that like crazy skin on them

[29:10] from like that stuff drying. And apparently in pumpkin anyway. There's like 100s of compounds in them. There's sugars, there's proteins, and they're surface active. And I think that that's what's what's going on because they're also present in in zucchini. Now, the problem is you can't just peel it to get rid of it because I think these things are pretty dense into the zucchini. So I don't think you can rationally just peel it and get rid of the stuff. What I think, and this is just a guess, uh, is, maybe if we treat it, and I didn't have a chance to look it up, what the components in cactus slime are. But for those of you that use Nopalis, like, you know, cactus things, they're slimy, and you can either do a quick pre-boil on those to help out with the,

[29:55] or like, you know, you cut it, you do a little pre-boil, which I guess boils the slime off, drain it, rinse it again before you dehydrate it.

[30:01] Or, um, you can salt it, right? And then rinse it off and the salt will help dry out, you know, pull out the slime. So I would bet that either one of those techniques and a little bit, let's be honest, a little bit of salt is not going to hurt the zucchini. Am I right, guys? I mean, come on, please. If you, yeah, if you salt the zucchini out a little bit 1st and then rinse the salt off and then

[30:22] dehydrate. I think that might help too. But I would look up, um, like treating cactus slime. I'll do a little more research. Maybe I'll run a test on, although I don't have scads of time to be cutting up zucchini, which is one of my least favorite vegetables

[30:36] anyways. But, you know, maybe Anastasia, maybe we can get clear to vejetify a bunch of it and test it out. She's still making her zucchini, her zucchini veggetti strands. It's evolved. It's evolved into a bigger and worse face. Yeah. Vegetty strands. Well, Nastasius... Nastasia's friend. I guess because she didn't want a carbo load. I don't know what her deal was, like, um, was making fake zucchini spaghetti, but then she would overcook it and then fry it. She fried it. She fried it, yeah. Yeah, all right, whatever. I try to imagine something more horrifying than like just an oil soaked strand of zucchini. How do you ate it? Was it actually bad? I didn't eat it. I've never eaten it. You were sitting in front of it and you couldn't bring yourself to taste one bite? You would just tell me about it, how great it is. Well, you need to have some at this point. I mean, I feel like we've talked about it enough. need to have it. Jack's like, nah, nah. Yeah, nah. Simon wrote in about ultrasounds. I recently have acquired a centrifugion, a laboratory, ultrasonic cell, disruptor, which is a, so basically, it's

[31:53] a, like they're powerful ultrasounds, and they just, they vibrate so rapidly that the cavitation from it at the tip causes things like cells to kind of break, break

[32:03] apart. And Nastasia, you hate the sound of it, right? Oh, I hate that. Yeah, that high pitched thing? Yeah, yeah, people go running. It's crazy. Anyway, I recently acquired a laboratory, ultrasonic cell disrupted from a restaurant closing down. I'm very familiar with the centrifuge, but I have very little experience with the sonicator. Being a bartender, one of my main interests in this piece of equipment is to make

[32:25] confusions. I'm waiting for a replacement cap for the probe, so I haven't had the chance to use it yet.

[32:30] Do you remember when Ford used to have a Ford made a car called the probe? And literally the commercial was, is there anything hotter than a hot new probe? And I could not have been the only guy who was like, are you kidding me? You just said, whatever anyway. So he's waiting for a new probe? Are there any benefits to using a sonicator versus classic infusion or ISI infusions? By the way, I'll probably also have access to a road of app soon. Should I make ultrasonic absinthe? Thanks, Simon. Well, listen, if you're going to wrote of that, but you can blend that stuff. You don't need to worry about any sort of like highfalutin infusion stuff because you're going to distill it afterwards. The one trick that actually Nastasia, I think, came up with for the Roto app, is when you're going to distill something that has plant matter blended up in it, add a little bit of

[33:15] Pectinex ultra SPL to the product that you're going to distill. Why? Because blended plant residue, without it, tends to foam up a lot. And one of the main problems when you're running a rotary evaporator is getting boil over into your distillate, it ruins everything. How many hours have we spent cleaning out rotovaps after failed boils like that, Stas? So many hours. So many hours. So Nastasi was like, Dave, idiot, why don't you just put some SPL into

[33:42] it? so that the pectin breaks down and then it won't boil over. I mean, it's pretty much how it happened, right? I do not remember that. Maybe you just did it by mistake. I don't know, but you did it, and it caused me to never, never boil over habanero pepper into my, if you boil, if you blend habaneros or

[34:03] Nagajolochias or fatale peppers, and you boil those over into your

[34:08] roto vap. I used to clean it twice with soap, lick

[34:13] it to verify that it wasn't hot anymore, then reclean it to get rid of the fact that I had just licked it. It would take forever to clean those things. And so the SPL trick in the Rota app, I think, is a good, uh, a good pro tip versus the, uh, now

[34:29] we talk about the ultrasonic uh, homogenizer. I have one. I never really came up with, you know, I know people who use it for infusions, but I've never had

[34:39] it side by side where I'm like, yeah, that stuff's delicious. Philip Preston sells them. I know some people that use them, but I'm not the guy. I mean, I could test it. I still have one, but I just never built it in as part of what

[34:51] I, what I was doing, maybe because it sounded so freaking

[34:55] got awful that I never wanted to hear it. Um, I think some people who have them now have these like soundproof. It's even worse than that. It's even worse than that noise. It's like, how do I describe it? It's like someone's drilling a hole in your head, but at like a super high, high,

[35:14] uh, the closest thing without buying it is when you throw a dry ice chunk into

[35:20] a, um, into a hotel pan. And have you ever done that? Nastas, you know that noise where you drop a chunk of dry ice in a hotel pan? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Terrible. Terrible, terrible. Okay. Uh, we have uh, Darren wrote in about a transcript taminates. He said, 1st of all, this is not hate mail. By the way, transglutaminates, for those of you who don't know, transglutaminates is an enzyme. It's a meat glue, right? So it's the protein that you use to glue any one meat to any other, but it also strengthens does,

[35:58] right? By reinforcing protein bonds in does, it also can strengthen cheese, tofu, but it's

[36:05] colloquially the chefs know it as meat glue. This is going to become important later to this story. Uh, meat glue. The transgutaminates that we use in the kitchen is what's called microbial transglutaminates. It's derived from, you guessed it, microbes. And it is different from, and another fact that you

[36:25] that will become important later to the story, is that your body is filled with transglutaminates, because it's necessary for a bunch of things like blood clotting, hair growth,

[36:35] uh, skin, um, you know, manufacturing skin, all these kinds of things. And it also occurs in your intestine. Now, tissue transcriptamines, which is the stuff that's in your body, there are many. There's not just one. There are many tissue tanglotaminases in your body. They do relatively similar thing to microbial

[36:55] translutaminates, but they are, in fact, different and the structure of the proteins. The structure of the enzyme is different. For instance, among many things, the transcotaminates in your body require calcium to work, whereas microbial transglutaminates does not. Now, a ginomoto, like I said, makes the microbial translutaminates and then sells it to chefs. All right, so that's the background for what's about to happen in Darren's question. All right. First of all, this isn't hate mail. I love the results of transglutaminase has produced in my limited use of it. I've never eaten a chicken mousse that didn't that didn't contain transglutaminates that didn't also have an odd grainy texture. Aside from this, I was reading a study with a link below that they

[37:38] give me. And it reminded me of another study that was done showing the dangers of transglutaminates for celiac patients.

[37:44] Further reading could not unearth this supposed groundbreaking study, but I came across several sources indicating that celiac disease

[37:53] attacks certain kinds of transglutamine series that our body naturally produces. I'm no chemistry, professional by any stretch, but this makes culinary, but this makes sense because autoimmune syndromes attack our own body functions, suggesting that culinary transglutaminates is similar to the transcript contaminates our body

[38:11] produces giving a theory as to why it helps some celiac patients, as I remember you mentioning before. Now already it's starting to get complicated, which we'll get into. What bothered me after reading this is the discovery of several studies indicating the use of

[38:24] transglutaminates in several gluten-free products to strengthen protein cross links and mimic the texture and spring gluten puts in bread and pasta.

[38:32] If celiac disease is, in fact, targeting transglutaminate series in the body that may react to gluten in their body, then adding it to gluten-free

[38:41] products seems counterintuitive. Again, this doesn't affect me, and I don't really condemn any food additive, as I

[38:48] accept, is it a fact of our food cycle now, but if you or anyone you know might have something that could shed some light on the subject, I'd be grateful. Miklu already gets a bad enough rap as is, and then below are some

[38:58] links in the studies that Darren link to, where the function of tissues, transglutaminates, and celiac disease, and then something about some stuff of how they

[39:07] use. There's an interesting article, again, with the funny article names, food

[39:12] industrial micro microbial transglutaminist. That's not the funny part. In celiac disease, treat or trick, which is apropos for Halloween, it's coming up. Now, I was reviewing some of these articles, and I

[39:25] got to be honest, it's a little more than my morning perusal could get to the bottom of in terms of what's going on, but basically, here is kind of what's known, not

[39:34] known, and what's going on. So, in your gut, there are tissue transglutaminates, human

[39:40] transglutaminates in your gut. When you consume gluten proteins, which contain gluten, which is the protein, that protein makes

[39:49] it through your gut relatively undigested because it's difficult to digest proline. Yeah, well, anyway, protein. But protein. But what gut? But what happens is, is that the transgutaminates there,

[40:03] Gliodin is relatively interesting in the fact that it has many, many, many sites that

[40:10] transgutaminates can use many free glutamines to bind it to other things.

[40:15] So gliodin reacts very strongly with tissue transglutaminates. This, like, further bulks it up and maybe makes it more reactive for celiac

[40:27] diseases. Disease suffers. Maybe. What also is known is that tissue transglutaminates not only cross-links the proteins, but also does something called de-amidate them, which means it's knocking off a functional group. And as far as I can tell, that really is one of the main problems that is causing, um, the autoimmune response is this

[40:49] deamidation, okay? So, uh, that's what's happening to this uh, gliodin uh, that's in your system. Now, furthermore, transglutaminates in your gut might also be implicated in other aspects of the pathway besides simply its functioning

[41:05] with glutin, right? So there might be multiple things that are, or gli, I don't know how you pronounce it, that might be happening and all of that is unclear to me. Now, when you go to read the studies on microbial transglutamines. Because remember, that stuff's transgontaminates. already in your gut. Microbial translutaminates, you are, 1st of all, basically, if you cook it, you're deactivating

[41:29] it, the greater part of it, you're deactivating it. And 2nd of all, it functions slightly differently. The problem is when you go to look at the studies, right, so some people have said this. Some people have said, if you add microbial transgotaminates to things that contain gluten proteins, what you're actually doing is

[41:49] pre-react, you're making them stronger, so you don't need to have as much of them, and you're also pre-reacting those proteins together so that they can't really undergo those reactions in your gut.

[42:00] Therefore, maybe it makes it less reactive for celiac suffers. That has been, as far as I can tell, inconclusive. On the other side of the coin, perhaps these larger um, proteins that are made by cross-linking actually are more uh, inflammatory and actually um, cause more inflammation. This has also not been shown, conclusively one way or the other. The 3rd question is, is if the microbial transglutaminates somehow survives

[42:31] cooking, or if you're eating it raw, and makes it through the gut, could it mimic what's going on with tissue

[42:37] transglutaminates in your gut? Also, this has not been conclusively tested one way or the other. So as far as I can tell, none of these things have been tested. Now, what has been tested, because Aginomoto is worried about this, are the very, these things. But I will say this, when you read the studies, some of the studies that I've gone through, I

[42:59] think including that food industrial microbial transclutaminates article and some of the other ones, that if they're paid for by a

[43:08] Ginomoto, just take that into account, right? that the people that make the transcontaminates are have an axe to grind in this in this situation. Now, the, and their main points are these. One. Uh, they took uh, pasta, and they transvotaminated the heck out of it, and then they tested to see whether it uh, created more reactive uh, antibodies, I guess, in the human, in the human body, and they were not able to cause that to happen.

[43:41] So they're basically saying, it doesn't seem to make things like pasta that have been reinforced with

[43:47] transglutaminates more reactive than they were before. That's their 1st point. Their 2nd point is, is that, is that, you know, you should not, if you

[43:57] are suffer from a celiac or intolerant of gluten, then you shouldn't contain things, you shouldn't eat things with gluten in them to begin

[44:06] with. And therefore, if there's gluten and transglutaminates, then that won't be a problem, right? Now, what that kind of leaves out is the fact that there's still the possibility, as yet untested, that things that are reacted, that might cause a response, um, and, and you, when they're cross-linked by translutamines, um, wouldn't have caused a reaction in someone, if they hadn't been linked by

[44:34] translutamines. So it's theoretically possible that you could have 2 things which someone with celiac could consume

[44:40] without without problem, you meat glue them together, and all of a sudden now it will cause a problem. This has never been shown that there is a case of this, but it is a theoretical possibility that needs to be looked at. Now, a further thing that Ajinomoto says is that look at the real problem with transglutaminates

[44:57] in in in your gut isn't the cross-linking, the real problem is the de-amidation. And in fact, they say microbial transglutaminates is much less likely to deamidate the protein, then tissue transglutaminates, and they did that

[45:14] not, here's the problem, though. They didn't do that in someone's gut. They did that in vitro. And so their in vitro studies of microbial translutaminates did not effectively increase how much the protein had been

[45:28] deamidated. So that's their argument that it's not going to do that deamination thing. And their last and final argument is if you eat raw fish, if you eat raw meat, they're full of transglutaminates anyway, actual tissue

[45:42] transglutaminates from the animal sources, and you consume those things raw.

[45:47] And so if those things don't cause a problem, microbial transglutaminates doesn't cause a problem either. But as far as I can tell, that's the long and the long, frankly, because all of that was long, uh, current story

[45:59] on, um, transgotamination, celac disease. That make sense to us? Yeah. You're already asleep. she's got all that. She's already asleep. All right. Hey, Dave, taking notes. No, she's been taking notes. Yeah, sure. Taking notes about how to call me a racist when we get off the air, even though I had no

[46:15] idea. That's what I'm just taking notes on. Oh, yeah. Hey, can I just interject really quickly? I just want to shout out, I want to shout out Ed from Milk Cold ice cream. Remember, he sent you all those ice cream sandwiches. Yeah, so do you get to go there on a regular basis now? Yeah, I've been I've been hanging with him. a cool guy. Cool. Really good guy. Just want to shout out Ed from Bill Colt. Shout out. What do you got, Dave? That's it. Dave, I got chat room is asking if you ever had a chance to look into that nitrootini thing. Did you read about this? Oh, I forget. It's this bar in Charleston that serves a martini made with liquid nitrogen at like -320 degrees Fahrenheit. Wait, is with liquid nitrogen and not with nitrous? Liquid nitrogen. All right, Dave, in the next couple minutes, if you can call up or actually, Nastasia, if you can call up how this is done and figure it out so you can give it to me, then I can rant it out real quickly.

[47:04] I've got it here. Oh, yeah? All right, read it. So this is the warning label that comes with the martini. It says liquid nitrogen is served at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. Nitrootini should be given the same respect as fire. Avoid rapid ingestion of any nitrotini before consuming. Please allow a minimum of 3 minutes, wait for the cloud like liquid nitrogen, LN2, to completely dissipate or evaporate entirely. Do not attempt to inhale the water vapor during dissipation, as it may disrupt the balanced ratio of nitrogen to oxygen gas in the

[47:35] air, that you breathe. Failure to follow this warning in its entirety may result in severe burns, permanent internal organ

[47:42] damage, and other detrimental health problems, please enjoy safely and responsibly. Why would you serve that? An eater in Charleston describe the taste of these as it says, tastes like type 2 diabetes. Well, you know, uh, Leo Robachek, one of my favorite uh, bar uh, people here in New York, whenever he drinks a drink that's too sweet just goes diabetes. That's all he says. That's his only thing he says, diabetes. Like Wilford Brimley? Like, Wilfred Brimley, my favorite, my favorite diabetic pitch person. But the, um, he's the best. I mean, it doesn't get better for pitching diabetes stuff

[48:17] than, you know, than him. I got diabetes, right? I mean, it's the best, Bittus. So anyway, so that's what Leo Robachek says. Here's my thing. Why the hell would you serve that? Why the hell... Also, they're $19? I don't care how much you charge, right? Charge a 1000000000 dollars. It doesn't matter to me. Like, if, you know, God bless, restaurants out there, bars out there. If you can charge something and somebody wants to pay it, God bless. You know what I mean? Like, everyone's got to make a nickel. Think of how much money, Dave, people make for doing things that we don't respect in life. Think of how much freaking money people go out and make for

[48:52] anything. So the fact that a restaurant or a bar can charge whatever they want to charge for whatever they're doing, God bless. What do you think, Stas, right? No? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, if you think they're, if you think they're ripping you off as a customer, don't go there. I don't like them when people are like, I can't believe what they're charging. A drink should only cost $12. They go to a place that charges $12 for drinks. Yeah, don't order a drink. Don't order a drink. Go somewhere else Right, but this is also a drink that can cause permanent organ damage. That's the problem. So, like, it's the cost of it is not a problem, but why would you ever serve that? That's like, 1st of all, that's like straight up gimmick. Second of all, no drink. It's very hard to get an accurate chill with liquid nitrogen, very hard. And believe me, I've been doing it for years. So one of the reasons it's really hard is because you can't even see what's going on. It's very hard to judge how much you've added. So unless you have some sort of special volumetric liquid nitrogen adder, it's very hard to figure out, you need more than you'd think to chill it down. So odds are, you're going to get some nasty crust on the top of your drink and then a liquid underneath, very hard. If you mix it. Well, it's got liquid nitrogen. froth and spit and boil over into, into the face. And, and I don't like being told to wait. Someone's gonna drink it. Someone's gonna do it. You know what I mean? I think a better drink would be to hand someone a, 1st of all, why is there sugar in a martini? Why the hell is there sugar in it anyway? They just hit me. Why is there sugar in this martini? It's not a martini if there's sugar in it. Why is there sugar? I don't have that answer. Okay, so I think a better thing to do would be

[50:35] to, uh, have a bunch of spinning razor blades, they use suspend from the ceiling right in front of the patron's face, and then say if you lean forward, your face will get cut off, and then just serve them a normal

[50:51] drink, because it's the same amount of danger, if they don't follow the instructions, they get their face cut off, but at least the drink will be good.

[50:58] You know what I mean? Like, I'd rather have like some other physical harm or, like, have a whole bunch of chef knives sticking straight up out of the bar

[51:08] surface, and if you put the drink down wrong, you'll impale yourself. Like, it's the same same level of stupid. Why would you hand somebody a drink that could harm them? It's just really, really stupid? What do you think, Nastasia? Yeah, no, it's very, very stupid. And, you know, when somebody messes up as they will, uh, in a situation like that, you know what's going to happen? Like, people like us are not going to be able to use the liquid nitrogen anymore, even though it's completely

[51:36] valid, because someone will have will have ingested the liquid. To me, it seems like it's the same level of shock as any one of any one of the other weird shock things that people do. I mean, look, again, God bless your place

[51:51] if like this is the way to get the customers in. Just don't do it in a way that could theoretically harm A, your customer, and B, other people who want to use the technique in a different way. This is why we can't have nice things. This is why we can't have nice things. Exactly. That was, what's the name of that comedian that she, when she said that about her own body when she got cancer? She's hilarious. What her name? Yeah, she had she got cancer and then said, this is why I can't have nice things. about her own body. Awesome. Amazing, so hilarious. If you can laugh about that, like, you are a strong person. You know what I mean? Anyway, so, okay, I got a question here. I want to get to before we go. Emily Burns writes in. All right. I've been wanting to make hickory syrup and all the recipes I've seen use the bark of the

[52:36] Shagbar Hickory. So this is not a tap the tree in the early spring, like a maple situation. You're making a bark tea and then adding sugar to it, a bark tea. Stus, what do you think about bark tea? Does that bother you or are you all right with that? She's gone. Jerry's still out. Yeah. My neighbors have a shell bar hickery tree. So I've been searching to see if there would be any difference in a syrup made from that bark. I haven't found any answers online, so I'm wondering if you had any idea. Thanks. Love the show, Emily Burns. Well, 1st of all, I looked it up again. So for those of you that don't know, Shagbar Hickory is like one of the great nut trees of the United

[53:15] States. It's Karya Ovata. It's related to pecans. And I've cooked Nastasia and I and Piper when he was with us, did a lot of work with Shagbar Hickory, nuts. They're amazing. They taste freaking amazing. I like them more than a pecan, but it is really hard to get the nut out of. Now, there are various, one of the things about Shagbar Hickory is it's called, it's one of the most aptly named trees you can find because the bark looks super shaggy and

[53:41] is coming off in big things. So you can go into the forest, grab the bark off of it without hurting the tree. Make a T. There's some art to making the tea, apparently, from what I've read, and then you dope in because it gets bitter. You dope in sugar and there you have your syrup. Now, the shell bar hickory has, is also known as the king

[54:03] nut, and the nut itself, has the largest, I think, hickory nut, and then nut itself is as sweet as the nut in a shagbar hickory. And I think it's bark, well, not as shaggy as a shagbar hickory, is still quite shaggy. And so if you can remove the bark without damaging the tree, I'd

[54:20] say, go ahead and do it. I have some shagbar hicories up in Connecticut. So then if I can ever get back up to Connecticut, I'm going to try to get some and make some of this. Now, what I don't know, you know, a lot of the other hickories, I have a lot of what's

[54:32] called like mocker nut hickories and pig nut hickories. Uh, pig nuts especially have terrible tasting, uh, nuts. They're super tannic. I've, you know, I've always tried to find ones that are completely edible. I don't know if that would translate to the bark, but the other problem is those trees don't have the kind of bark that sheds off properly. So I'm going to go ahead and say that Shellbar Hickory will probably make as good a syrup as

[54:56] Shagbark. And one of the reasons you don't hear about it is that Shellbark is a lot rarer than Shagbark. And I also read that in some places, the shell bark is also called Shagbark, even though they're actually 2 different species, the

[55:10] shell bark being uh, Karya, uh, uh, Lasenosa, which I don't know, but Karya Alvada is the one we get Shagbark. So give us a try and let us know. I'll try to make it with my shag bark and maybe we can compare notes over the radio. Shout outs to Raymond. Loichero. Is that how you pronounce that, Dave? Lochichero? I don't know. What? A donor. I was giving a shout out. I was giving a donor shout out. Thanks for donating. Oh thanks. And that's it. back next week, back next week with more cooking issues.

[55:45] Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.