[0:00] Today's program is brought to you by the Christmas Tree Farmers Association of New York, partnering with Grow NYC to make Farm Fresh Trees and Wreaths available at

[0:08] green markets. For more information, visit Christmas trees and Y.org. I'm Damon Bolte, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for 1000s more.

[0:31] Hello and welcome to Cooking issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you at a live from a British Pizzeria in

[0:40] Bushwick, Brooklyn, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 or one o'clock. Uh, on the Heritage Radio Network, joined, as usual, with Nastasio of the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Good. Got Dave in the booth. What up? And we brought everybody's favorite person to beat on. Peter Kim. Once again, here, the Spreadhaven vacation. The director slash client of and and short order cook, as it turns out, for the Museum of Squad. Nice. Oh, you guys in your freaking dish. Oh my god. Like, these guys, Nastasia, right or wrong. They're like, they live in that old school old school office world. It's like literally 10 people working in this big kind of like law space. In one space. and they still no walls. No walls, giant space, and they still have the same, like, weird office arguments. Over email. We copied on them. someone didn't put away their sauerkraut. It's like, like, you think you're trying to get away from like offices to get away from that. I've noticed the spoons are stacking up. And I'm like copied on these emails. Well, here's the funny thing, Dave. Here's the funny thing, Dave. You don't read any emails that come in, including ones that are pertinent to

[1:53] your business interest. That's because whenever I get you respond to the what you call inane dish

[1:59] emails. You just send me these little needling messages being like, kill me, period. That's the reason, folks, that I don't respond to email. If I only got 3 emails a day and they were important, then I would respond to them. But instead, like, whenever I glance, every once in a while, I never answer emails. Whenever I glance at my emails, it's something incredibly worthless, incredibly worthless. I used to have I'm terrible in meetings people. I used to have this tactic in meetings where, remember this is the French culinary anastasia? meetings, like people would start just saying inane things, just crazy and like wasting

[2:35] time, and I would just start going, and you would just start like tapping your hands on the table, and they were like, what is he doing? He's like, this is what this is what you were doing to me. You're hurling our time into the ether. Hurrying like, I'm a firm believer, people, in never responding to emails. Now I might take it too far, but I think everyone responds to emails too often. There's a there's a mental cost to switching back and forth between tasks all the

[2:58] time. Maybe this is why people don't ever get anything done. Well, there's something called teamwork, Dave, that requires something called

[3:05] communication, and it either has to happen by phone, email, or in person. It's 2 different schools of thought. You're saying, wait, wait, wait, wait. Peter, what Peter is saying is that that nothing ever got done before the age of

[3:18] email because there was no team building back before they had email conversations back when back when back when everyone, yes, where you say, you know what? Like, you don't really need to meet every 30 seconds, which is what email is. An email is a meeting every 30 seconds, right? What you, and it's totally inefficient because you're like, 0 my god, what do they say? Do I have to get angry? How many people don't have the CC, and then you have to craft a response. And then they have response to the response and so on and so on. This is how Hillary got her classified email issues, by the way. like 18 levels of response. I don't care. It's a truth. Like, these are, like, long email things. And like, What's the point? What's the point? especially people. They all work in the same box. Walk over, walk over. emails, theirs is a reason for emails. Literally people. But these ones are crazy. Literally, they, like, I can reach over. should I choose to, which you know I never would. I can reach over and touch Nastasia on the shoulder. However, at MoFed, they would send an email from me to Nastasi, that's how it would freaking work. Literally, I could be staring you in the eyes and be sending you an email. Maybe they want to have it on record. Well, so much hate in... to like, so it never happens again. sauerkraut, spoons, so let's... Dude, I have never worked in an office where you don't have some of that. sort of day-to-day crap. I mean, you just have to. You don't, actually. Yeah, you do. You actually do not. You could choose to say, you know what, people? I am looking at my email 4 times a day. And that's it. Four times a day. Realize that after I respond to you, I am not going to see it for another quarter of a day. That probably wouldn't cut down on the flow of useless email though. Uh, well, it would cut down on, not the ones, not the external useless emails, but once people didn't weren't in the position where they felt like they were going to get a response within 10 seconds,

[5:04] that it wasn't going to be like, bidding. you're like, oh, yeah, oh, wait, oh, oh. You're changing hearts and minds. Here's the other thing, dude. Have you ever like, this is especially true in kitchen, in offices where I'm not saying that offices are bad, but in offices where like productivity is

[5:17] punished and it's more about like the amount of emails you send that determine whether you're a good human being or

[5:22] not? In kitchens, this becomes a nightmare because you can't actually sit and have a real conversation with someone because they're constantly being interrupted by

[5:29] texts from other venue. No one can actually, there's a huge chunk of people that just can't get anything done because they can't focus for 30 seconds to a minute and a half on the actual important crap that's being told to them

[5:42] live and instead are focused on freaking text. Nastasia, you've seen this a 1000000 times, right? Especially once people are bored at work. Like once you get people who are bored at work, then all they do is focus on their texts. That's it. Yeah, so in your mind, there was a golden age when things got done that stopped around the 90s. No, I'm saying like all these tools are great. It's just they're being used by people, uh, like in a knucklehead way. I'm saying all these tools are useful. I'm just advocating, like I say, not being constantly plugged into something that can pull

[6:15] your attention. Maybe you have a job out there, people, that doesn't require you to think, but if you have to think, then being pulled from conversation to

[6:23] conversation every 20 seconds is not helpful. It's just not freaking helpful. It's like with cooking. It's like when you're cooking in a kitchen. My wife always says, why is it, you know, what is it that's like, what is it about the kitchen that, you know, you think is hard for people to

[6:37] get? It's hard for people to stay in the flow of the kitchen because they get bored and they get sucked out into other

[6:42] things and then they lose track of what they're doing mental, their mental flow of what they're doing in the kitchen. And so, yeah, they burn the sauce. They don't take the thing out of the freaking oven. They don't have the timings work out right when the stuff comes out of the oven. Because they're a bad cook, well, maybe, but maybe part of the reason they're a bad cook is that they're not focusing on the flow of what happens in the kitchen. Good kitchen work is supposed to have a little bit of that in the flows, then like, I'm working, and this is what I'm doing. I'm not doing some other garbage, right? I'm doing this. No? Yeah, anyway, whatever. Had to relate it back to the cooking. So, uh, Peter, why are you here to harangue me about something? And Mason accomplice, I think. Yeah. No, you were going to harangue me about something. It's going to keep coming. Yeah. You're not learning anything? Not promoting just here to just here to needle you, man. All right. So now I'm owed some needling. Yeah. So I just got back, not really. I got back at the end of last week, but I haven't done the show since from Chef Steph's 1st time I visited Chef Steph's in Seattle, went to Jamie Boudre's

[7:48] Bar Cannon. very nice. Nice place. I think they might have just won some award or something. I don't know. Great bar. The most ridiculous liquor list I have ever seen in my life. Like the crazy, like, they, like, they can't print the liquor list because it'd be like a phone book. So it comes out in like iPad form. To give you an example, they, I don't know, I don't know, I don't really understand this, but they have a whole bunch of like super, super old whiskeys.

[8:15] like super old, like from like the 1800s, that are like $1,400 a shot ass, the waiter. I was like, is that very good? That that whiskey. And he was like, no. He's like, but when someone like, some like, you know, Microsoft or some like, you know, tech dude shows up there and makes a giant

[8:30] deal. He's like, what do you got? that's really expensive. And then once you spend $1,400 each, this guy bought $2,800 worth of whiskey, 2 shots, $2,800 worth of whiskey. Uh, you're gonna love that crap. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's the advantage of charging so much for something. The customer is inherently going to like it because. too much cognitive dissonance, if you feel like, oh, that was not really exciting. Right. You would have to be so rich. Like, you would have to be, you would have to be billionaire rich to be able to be like, you know

[8:58] what? I can be, uh, I can be entirely objective about this $1,400 ounce and a half poor of liquor that I just drank. Yeah, they have, so... Is that the place that has a giant wall of bottles? Is that it? Uh, I wasn't facing a giant wall of bottles. And I didn't look around because that's the kind of guy I am. They have really tall ceilings. I'm that guy that like walks in, sits down, just stares down at his napkin. couldn't miss this. Right, Nastasia? So annoying. Were you by yourself? I was not by myself. I was with a chef steps crew. Yeah. And you're, well, he's part of the chef's group, your boy Michael Napkin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and so I said, how did I say Nastasia still loves you? Yeah, the only vegetarian Nastasia likes. I said, I said you're still enjoying his cookbook. I said, you know, maybe you should write another vegetarian cookbook. Yeah, right? Well, the only vegetarian that Stas likes is not really that much of a distinction because there's how many people that she likes. Yeah, but if there's 5 people that she likes, and only one of them is vegetarian. I guess you're right. Like, not really much of a yeah. All right, fair. Fair. So anyway, I went out to chef steps and demonstrated the spins all they seem to they seem to enjoy it. Did a Facebook live, which I still don't really understand. I don't like, I don't really understand his Facebook live. I think it's very new. Yeah, it's not that new. It's like 6 months ago. Yeah, it's very new. Why would I want that? Because people can text in as you're doing it? Actually, that's true. People ask questions. It is useful. It's kind of like this, but with people. I'm just joking people. I'm just kidding with you guys. We did a Facebook live about the sort of dish situation that Mof had the other day. Dating? Yeah, yeah. All 5 of you chimed in? So, anyway, so during that, like one, and I visited Kenji, Kenji, over in San

[10:41] Francisco, saw his digs, did the centerfuge demonstration for him. Here's what, by the way, we're talking about the spinsaw, which is the new centrifuge I'm selling on modernistpantry.com forward slash. I'm not supposed to say forward slash. sorry. Just slash. It's just slash. It's freaking forward slash. Back when I was a kid. When I was a boy, we had backslashes. We had former slashes. Now it's just slash. So, uh, modernistpantry.com slash uh, spins all. We got to sell, frankly, we got to sell more of these freaking synergy just people. I think there's a lot of people out there. don't know why they I mean, not you people. If you're listening to this, right? I mean, you know why you want a centrifuge. But I think a lot of people just don't get why they would want a centrifuge. They only think of these modernist kind of techniques. And I'm like, just like being able to make strawberry juice all

[11:22] day all night is like enough for me or banana Justino or any one of them. you get one, Peter? Yeah, it's, I mean, it's like exponentially cheaper than any other alternative or something like that. Hey, Dave, we actually got a question about the spins all in the chat room. They want to know what would happen if you put molasses in it. Molasses is pretty much a solution. So I don't think it would do much to it. Um, so that's another thing. is like most people, what I realize is, is that I've used a centrifuge for so many freaking years, that like, I, um, I kind of know what a centrifuge is going to do and what it's not going to do. But when Kenji said, what should I spend in this? And there was a bunch of responses to him about what we should try to spin in the centerfuge. I kind of realized that people don't really understand what a centrifuge at this kind of

[12:06] level is for. Like, for instance, it's not for clearing meat stocks, although I'm trying to think of a way to do

[12:13] it. It's not for that. It's, you know, if you take milk, if you take milk with cream, yeah, I can, you know,

[12:21] unhomogenized, I can separate it out. But, and if you take cream, I can make butter. But like molasses, like I say, is a solution. There might be some crap floating in the molasses that I can get out, but I'll give you some examples of stuff to do. Uh, like, let's see, with some sugar stuff. So I did a, uh, someone wanted me to do chocolate milk and I'm like, I don't think I'm going to get a lot out of that. So I wanted to do, I did chocolate cream. I made like a cocoa cream, and then with some sugar in it, and then I spun it, hoping to get cocoa butter, not cocoa butter, but chocolate butter, you know what I mean? And what happened was I got an amazing, I got a triple separation. So I got like a chocolate buttermilk, which I used to make pancakes. It was very good. Then I got a very light chocolate butter because basically the only chocolate that was in it was in the whey that was in it. And then I got a hyper smooth kind of like cocoa paste, like Nutella, but totally smooth and liquid, which was pretty awesome as well, because it had been totally

[13:16] hydrated. Uh, and uh, I ended up mixing those back together to make like a chocolate butter, but like a chocolate compound butter. It was really good. So you could do that kind of stuff or like Greek yogurt. Like I could take yogurt. I can remove some of the whey. then you do that, you know, and you get like a, you can either do Greek yogurt or like a yogurt cheese, which I

[13:34] made. So it does that on that kind of dairy, but it's not, it's or for like clarifying juices, but it's not for like breaking stocks. It's not going to take things that are that don't ever naturally settle or break on their own and make them break.

[13:47] You know, it will spin blood down. I'm told it will spin blood down because it's at the same speed. I got a lot of people asking me about that, I guess, to fortify blood sausages, or whatever, and that will work. But anyway. Here's a question for you, man. When was the last time there was a sort of previously inaccessible technology because of the price point that

[14:06] like seriously dropped like this? The circulator went from about $2,000. The immersion circulator went from about $2000 in 2002 to about $800 in 2005.

[14:21] Uh, mostly as a result, the Philip Preston, um, just wanted more chests to have them, and so the price got dropped because when only labs were buying it, labs were relatively

[14:31] inelastic uh, market. They're just going to pay whatever you ask. And so when the chef market kind of got big, you know, Philip knew the price needed to drop. So that was kind of the 1st big price drop. $800 is still relatively expensive, but that was the kind of the 1st explosion in into the market. And that's kind of, you know, I'm taking a bigger price jump there with the spins all. So I'm going from an 8 to $10,000 machine down to like a $1000 machine. So I'm trying to hit some of those early adopters who would have gotten an immersion circulator back

[14:59] into $800 days. Um, then we pop, soupy pot, bam, uh, who was one of my interns, came out with uh, the Nomaku, and the Nomaku was, to my knowledge, uh, the 1st commercially available sub $500 uh,

[15:14] circulator. And then I think it came in at like 300 and something originally. And then Philip came out with one and then, you know, a whole host of others have really driven the circulator market way

[15:24] down until now it's hard to get someone to pay more than $250 for a circulator.

[15:30] And then you have people adding like chef steps with jewel is added the app and the Wi-Fi capability. And so that market is really expanding. I mean, that's the one. That's where a previously inaccessible thing has really gotten into, um, into kitchens. Because, and the reason it doesn't happen very often is that there's not many technologies that are taken from other realms that have like instant and obvious kitchen applications.

[15:55] Um, like the, you know, blender was like they have laboratory blenders, but like the blender was intended to be a piece of kitchen equipment. Um, so, uh, you know, and other things are always going to be inaccessible, like puffing guns

[16:08] or like uh, extruders or, you know, pasta extruders and things like this. Although pasta extruders are becoming more popular, but they're at like the 3 and $4000 level. So it's, it's, there aren't going to be that many, uh, there aren't that many things that I've experimented with where I'm like, yeah, that needs to be really popular.

[16:27] Immersion circulator was once. People used to say, which one of these technologies is really going to make a big deal. They asked me back in, you know, 04, and I was like, oh, the emerging circulator, clearly, you know, and it's one of the very few things I've been right about, you know, in terms of future

[16:41] predictions. And so, uh, and the other one that I've always wanted, I want to, I want to roto that to be more

[16:48] accessible to people, but the, but the reason I'm not building a roto app is that although we could make a more accessible roto app, it still is not going to have the wide range of use for people that, um, a centrifuge would, just because it's always going to, no matter how, uh, you know, cheap I make a roto app, no matter how

[17:08] brakeproof I make a roto app, no matter how bulletproof it is, it's always

[17:12] going take like a lot of skill to operate one well and it's gonna take like a fairly steep learning curve, whereas with a centrifuge, once you learn how to use it, you're just pumping product out. And so, um, yeah, and also like a road of app, no matter what is going to require chilling, so you're either going to have to bust through a bunch of

[17:31] ice or you're going to have to bust through, uh, you know, buy a chiller, you know, it needs heat,

[17:36] needs all this, needs all this ancillary stuff, like a lot of power. And so, um, yeah, uh, you know, I always thought the centrifuge is the item that should be available in the kitchen. But what it really needed is someone to design one for the kitchen. Um, anyways, but we're not selling enough of them. So if you actually ever want there to be a culinary centrifuge, who knows, maybe in, you know, 10 years, if the market or five, 6 years, if the market opens up more, maybe they'll eventually be a $300 centrifuge, who

[18:03] knows? You know what I mean? Or, you know, a $200 centrifuge. But, um, we're just, Nastasia and I simply aren't making enough of them. Well, right now we're making 0 because we haven't been able to pay for the tooling or

[18:12] the production run, but yeah, if you don't buy it, we won't make it. If I may, I'll say that I have the luck slash misfortune of working with you about as much as anybody else.

[18:25] But I will say that, yeah, I mean, I can vouch for the fact that Dave puts a ridiculous amount of time and thought into this thing. So, um, if there's anybody who could do it, I mean, really. is the only product I really like. Really? That's because also you hate having to run a normal centrifuge too. It's big... Yeah. Um, like the, the, like, I'm very thankful that this is not on the list of things Nastasia will never touch again because the list grows every, every day.

[18:52] So not about my centrifuge, but so because I'm working on the

[18:57] centrifuge, I'm getting a lot of tweets in about this coffee machine, have you heard of it? Spin, spin. And so it's a centrifugal coffee machine. It's actually something I've been interested in. So what spin does is, they don't show you the inner workings or the guts of it, but what it is, is it's got a bunch of like, you know, application hoo-ha attached to it. Uh, you know, you can like make a coffee while you're on the road so that by the time you get home, it's cold and ruined, if that's what you want to do. I'm kidding. But, uh, or you can wake up and you, you could tell Alexa. Is it to Alexa or Alexis? What's the name of that? Alexa. Alexa? Is that a real human name or is it name that because it's not a real human name? I don't know. Anyway, Alexa, blew me some coffee. And so the spin, like, well, listen, the Alexa will tell the spin. I saw Kenji, by the way, turn on his immersion circulator like that. He was like, he's like, Alexa. He doesn't talk like that. He's like, Alexa, turn on my jewel. And like, and the jewel, like, turned on and started running. He doesn't talk like that anymore. Wait, so it's connected to every single appliance with what, Bluetooth? I think it can, I think Alex is just on your network, and so it can probably do a Bluetooth enabled device or a wired wireless device or even a

[20:00] wire device. I think it's just a question of, I don't know how it works, to be honest. Hopefully there aren't that many people named Alexa. don't have one. Yeah. Do you remember the Wizard of Oz? Remember the Wizard of Oz? Like when he's like taking off and like Toto jumps and she goes out to get Toto and they're like, come back. He's like, I can't. I don't know how it works. Remember that? That's like one of my favorite, like, Wizard of Oz lines. But I don't know where I got in that. So anyway, so people ask me about this spin. So what it does is, it grinds whole beans and then presumably puts the, presumably because I don't know, puts it into the, into a basket dry, spins it up, thereby, like, evening and, like, you know, pseudo-tamping the coffee grounds down, and then introduces the hot liquid to the basket while it's spinning, and

[20:41] then generate, because of the force. The theory is it generates the equivalent of a certain amount of pressure. So by altering the speed at which the basket rotates, it can produce something that is espresso

[20:51] like or drip coffee like. Now, a lot of people on the Internet are like, that won't work. And and people have asked me, do you think that will work? And the truth is, I have no way to know because I haven't tested it, right? So, I will say that there is no way, I believe, it's going to produce something exactly like espresso and here's why. When you were when you were making a puck, an espresso puck, right? You're basically, you're trying to create a hydraulic puck that, you know, compresses extremely evenly, you then saturate that puck, the puck kind of inflates, and as you force water through it, the fines migrate to the bottom, increasing theoretically, I

[21:29] guess the hydraulic pressure, but at the same time, you're decreasing the amount of solids left, so your rate of water goes through faster. Anyway, it's like that. When you are spinning a basket and letting the water in at the same speed, your compacting pressure is the same as your theoretical liquid pressure

[21:46] walking through. Now an espresso pug. Clearly you're tamping with much less force than you are putting water through. So it's the equivalent of like maybe £20 of force over the entire disk of coffee puck versus 150 PSI, you

[22:01] know, of the water pressure coming into it. So clearly there's a differential there that you can play with with espresso that you're not going to be able to play with with the spin. Um, The other thing is, I mean, that's that's kind of the main thing. I mean, so it's going to be different. Also, in espresso, as soon as the pressure is released, it stops. This is actually going to pull more stuff out of the coffee grounds because of the

[22:25] certifical force, then you would get if you just forced water under

[22:30] pressure. It's a different kind of a situation. Now, I did just as a test, take some espresso grinds, mix them with hot water, spin them in the

[22:37] centrifuge for 30 seconds. I got or minute. I got all of the grounds back out. I tasted the coffee. It tasted fine because I wasn't pushing it through. I didn't get any aeration, and so I didn't have any of the body that you would have in a normal espresso cup. It had some of the espresso flavors that you would normally have, and it had 0 grinds in it because, you know, I was able to spin it fast enough. But, I mean, the answer is, I don't know. I'm willing to test out a spin machine if someone wants us to test it out, but I don't know. I mean, it could be a way to do individual servings well as opposed to like those cups. I've never had a cup-based machine that I thought was the greatest thing on earth. You ever had a cup? The worst. Not just bad, the worst. See, a lot of times, uh, Peter, what people are focusing on when they're making those single service things is, is this, and this is a, like not the way I focus in life, but this is a valid

[23:25] thing. Is this single serving better than what the average

[23:29] Jokomo will make given a system that they have to control? So if you're dealing with like the EC pods, for instance. The question is, is this EC pod as good as the greatest espresso that you could make? No, even the guys at, uh, uh, sorry, Ely. I mean, say ECL type, Ely. Is the Ely pod as good as the best espresso someone can make? No, it is not. And they will admit that. But is it better than what 90% of the people will make? Yeah. And so if you're one of those 90% of the people that's going to make a garbage espresso, then the Ely pod is a good solution for

[24:06] you, except for the sustainability and the fact that you're hurling all this plastic into the ether. And the spin, theoretically, if you like the coffee it

[24:13] made, is going from bean to bean to cup.

[24:16] So it's not going to have any of those sustainability issues. The Brevel, by the way, makes the, with the automatic grinding stuff, which I was very dubious of, does make a cup better than about

[24:29] 90, what 90% of people would do. I just think there are so many easy ways to make good coffee that, okay, maybe not espresso,

[24:35] but like, I don't see why you'd want to use one with machine. I don't like the word pour over. No. Right? What about an arrow press? And say it with an Australian accent? I can't. Can you? You hate you have an anti-Australian accent thing, though. What about Olivia Newton John's old access? She's okay. Actually, gooseneck things annoy me. What? It just seems really precious when you're pouring the water over the

[24:58] pour over. I understand a rationale. Why

[25:01] do people say precious all the time? Well, because Peter used to work for precious moments. Well, that's okay. I mean, there's the greatest moment of my life is when Peter brought a picture of himself in like a precious moments, like furry

[25:15] outfit, and it was not some sort of cosplay thing. It was his parents made him dress up for the Hallmark store where they used to work. Anyway. Okay. Brandon wrote it about carbonation. Hey, Bushwick crew. I'm trying to rebuild my carbonation rig with interchangeable adapters. One adapter for the liquid bread carbonator cap, which is the carbonator cap of choice, people, and one for a direct injection into an easy

[25:37] whipper into the whipped cream whipper, I hope, because I don't really like the soda ones

[25:42] for really just all you need is the whipped cream one. I have not had any luck getting direct injection from CO tank to work a CO2 tank to work properly. I've tried pressing a small barbed fitting around the EC puncture valve and some CO2 gets in, but not much. Does this UC puncture valve have to be pressed down for proper airflow. Would love any suggestions on how to get this working. Thanks, Brandon. Okay, Brandon, you're in a little bit of a pickle here. Here's why. You did not need to press on that valve to get it to work. However, when you're putting a cartridge onto that thing, what happens is the cartridge gets punctured, pushes against that rubber grommet, and is injected into the EC under high pressure, because remember, that cartridge contains either nitrous or

[26:25] CO2 at a normal, you know, temperature in the atmosphere of roughly 800 psi. So it's shooting in there and it's shooting in a particular weight of CO2 or of nitrous, a weight, not a

[26:39] pressure. And so because of that, the check valve doesn't have to be have a particularly low what they call cracking pressure. And so there's a good 5 PSI, I haven't measured it in many years, but it's a good 5 PSI of

[26:51] over-pressure, uh, required to get any flow at all uh, through um, that EC valve. What I used to do in the day was, I would build an adapter that actually had the, the cheapest, easiest way to do it. If you don't have access to a machine shop or anything like that, is to take your barb thing, push it against

[27:11] the thing gently, then screw, like put some release

[27:15] agent. Please put a boat ton of release agent. Like, do not allow epoxy to get onto your actual EC, uh, whipper, cut off. you know, say I'm talking about the thing that you screw the chargers on with, cut that off, and then embed the thing,

[27:29] embed your bar fitting and all that into it and seal the top with epoxy. This way, when you screw it down tight, you have a fitting that can screw and unscrew onto it easily. But it's never going to be ideal because of the pressure drop you're getting across that. So if you're trying to set your tank to have the correct pressure for carbonation with a normal carbonator cap, which is a free flow situation, you're never going to get the same amount when you have to force it through a through that check

[27:54] valve, and that's going to become even more apparent when you're trying to shake and get that last little bit of carbonation in because right

[28:02] there, you're driving carbonation in under what is essentially equilibrium pressure.

[28:06] So it's difficult. The way that I did it, when I really wanted to carbonate in EC bottles from a tank, and I did, because when I opened Booker Index, originally, that's how I thought I was going to do

[28:17] it, I took an old EC whipper head. You can get them on eBay real cheap that are plastic. They used to make plastic whipper heads for their non-commercial for their home line, but the screw threads are the same. I then cut everything off of that thing that I wanted. Um, I bought like a, you know, screw in valves. I tapped. I put basically Bondo on it, tapped it with a drill and a tap, and then I cast it in, I cast it 1st in silicone to make a

[28:48] mold, and then did a bunch of food grade polyurethane cast to make a bunch of carbonation heads that fit directly onto an

[28:56] EC whipper. They used EC brand, gasket seals, et cetera, et cetera. And that's actually what I was going to use to open the bar with. But, you know, it takes a little bit of work, but, I mean, okay, it takes a lot of work, but if you're

[29:07] going to do it for a living, it's, and you really want to do it, it's worthwhile. Anyway. Did I answer that question? Yes. Yes. Julian writes in about sous vide sauce. Hey, y'all, I'm writing to ask about making sauces with the liquid left in low temperature sous vide bags. I'd like to use this to make a simple pan sauce just mixed with stock or red wine, but the delicious sous vide liquid quickly

[29:29] curdles whenever I heat it further to reduce it, leaving my reductions with weird textures. Beyond weird, it's freaking gross. It looks like, well, we'll get into it in a second. It is my best bet to curdle it and strain out the curds. Yes. That was easy. But why don't you take another 10 minutes to answer the question? Yeah, is there some way I can prevent the, is there some way I can prevent the protein from curdling or at least get some flavor out of

[29:52] it? Thanks for any tips, Julian. I don't know actually. Not any tips to prevent the curdling that you would really want to do. Like, you could probably very heavily salt it or very heavily sugar it. But yeah, the way to do it is to, as soon as it comes out, just break it really quickly and then strain it. And, like, it's just, it's just a protein that's in

[30:11] solution, and, um, it's never been raised at a temperature that makes it, um, that makes it

[30:17] curdle, and so it comes out and that's it. Um, you know, the same way that if you cook a fish too high, like that liquid will come to the

[30:25] top and then once the heat hits it, it goes white, it turns white. It's that same sort of stuff. It's the stuff that when you start heating, floats up to the top as ponds gum. When you're cooking meats, and you gotta get rid of it. AK family meal. Yeah, yeah, family meal. Well, you know that story that Alex Corn Shelley tells, right? Eating the raft. I think about it. I look at it like eating the raft. So anyway, so yeah, so the quickest, easiest way around it is to just heat it and then strain it. And as a side note, a lot of times when you do that, the liquid will actually

[30:56] self clarify because the proteins as they coagulate will hold onto some of the cloudy bits. Speaking of self- clarified, did I talk about self-clarifying cordials? Yes. All right. There you go. Don't need to talk about it again. Done. So there you have it. Now, the problem with that, of course, is you got to lose some of the product when your curdles are not a lot left. So, I don't know whether you want to add some product to it, then curdle it, then strain it. We should take a break. Take a break? Take a break and come right back with cooking issues.

[31:37] Ever wonder where your Christmas tree came from? Now you don't have to. New York State grown Christmas trees are now available in New York City. Trees grown on farms here in New York State are harvested just a few days before arrival to the city. Trees cut close to home, stay fresh longer, and trees cut close to home travel less, which reduces fuel consumption of delivery vehicles. Did you know that buying a real tree helps to sustain agriculture in New York

[32:06] State by supporting local farmers and keeping important open space in agriculture production? The Christmas Tree Farmers Association of New York is partnering with

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[32:20] Queens, and Manhattan. So when you shop local this holiday season, you can include the tree in that list, for more information and a full list of locations, visit Christmas trees and y.org.

[32:39] And we are back. So, Christmas Tree Farms, Pistasia, do you know how long it takes to grow a Christmas tree? No, 7 years. Really? Yeah, it's about 7 years. At least so I'm told in Oregon. I know a guy who was a Christmas tree farmer in Oregon, and he was like, yeah, it's about 7 years for the trees to get fully mature. I have to say, it always weirds me out to see right after Christmas how everybody just chucks their trees. What are they

[33:05] going to do with it? First of all, 1st of all, you know, I wish we had the Christmas tree farmers in New York here because you were providing jobs for someone. You don't mind wiping your butt with paper and flushing it down the toilet. Instead, you get enjoyment from a tree. It makes your whole house smell nice. It provides jobs. It's like low impact farming that you can do on a travel land. Did you get one? A tree? Did you get one from New York State? I don't have a tree. Why do you not have a tree? I saw a hipster walking down a tree with something that looks theoretically nice, but is not. Here's what they did. They had a big piece of tree that they cut a disk out of. They drill the hole in the center. Then they took their Charlie Brown tree, right? And they shaved off the bottom of the trunk like a

[33:49] cork so it fit into the hole in the tree. But this is a far cry from the old time, old time. You had that little wooden cross and you nailed it from underneath. Now, that's okay because you're not shaving off all of the xylum. How the hell is this little tree supposed to drink if you shave off all of its

[34:09] xylons? Sad. So sad. So history. It's such a history thing. I'm going to have something that looks like old, old school, but like it's like, it's like, it's more dead than dead. See, a tree is basically a cut flower. I mean like, you know what I mean? You have to treat it like a cut flower. And when you sit there with someone hand you cut flowers, you'd be like, oh, thanks. and then take the stem and crush it between your fingers. Depends on, I know, you're the master of, what's the book, Nastasia? Uh, the, the grand ouis flower decorating book. Nastasia is a firm believer. She hates almost everybody. Have you ever been to the restaurant? Yeah. Was it good? But anyway, they're flower decorating at the... Is it lagren we? Frogs are feminine? Yes. Okay. So it's La Grenouille, apparently they have like one of the great. Okay, do the, say it, say it, X. Now say it, now say it with African fresh accent. Oh, geez. Do it. You're the one that made me do it. Oh my god, you're not bringing me in. where you learned French. Yeah, I know. So you're... What, that's not funny? That's that's not funny. That's true. He learned French initially with an African accent. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. How does that sound? Well, just instead of the ho, you do a roll dar instead. Dave's just waiting expecting. not going to do it. Peter's not gonna do it. He does a good he does a good accent anyway. But the, what were we talking about? So flower decorating, that's like, that's, you actually like it. But it treats every different flower in a different way, the way it's supposed to be treated. Anyway, yes, back to Christmas tree farms. Do you remember the one of the last things we did, the 1st things we did for Booker and Dax, one of the last things we did was Nastasia and I at the French

[35:43] culinary. Nastasia, I went down and got a Christmas tree and they're like, this one looks better. like, don't care. Don't care. We're just just smelling the Christmas trees and figure out which one we like to smell of, took it back up to the French culinary suit and then completely denuded it of needles.

[35:56] We just took the Christmas tree and just instantly stripped all the needles off of

[36:00] it and people were like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Shut up. And then we like distilled the entire tree. Yeah. We sat there and distilled the entire tree. Threw a roto app and then we made like 1500 pine drinks for MTV.

[36:13] Remember that? Oh, yeah. It was like MTV and we did all of those pine things. And that's actually where I was using those easy bottles that I made. So angry at that event. I don't remember. I mean, that was the one where I didn't even... No, that's no, that's the event where, remember, all I did was shake. We had one fun. We had one person who batched one person who

[36:31] I uh, who added ice to the uh, EC's. I shook all night long and another person had poured because we were just, there was just boom, boom, boom. And we were carbonating on the minute. Remember that? 1500 drinks. Ridiculous. 500 people, God knows how many drinks. Yeah. Yeah, Christmas trees. fun. Uh, so our auction went for $2,550. Oh, nice, good. That is very nice. We're not going to call out who bought it, but we eagerly

[37:02] wait. You coming? and sitting down and cooking. Remember, though, when you show up at cooking issues, you're gonna get dragged into the conversation. It's just the way it works. And also... Well, no, I mean, we're nice to guests, I think, except Peter. And we also like to thank during the fundraising drive. These people for supporting Heritage Radio Network on behalf of cooking issues program. Peter, Grego, Carlos, Zachary, Thomas, Dad, Ko. Oh, like him. Remember, he bought us the modernist cuisine book. He's down in, where is he, Texas? Texas I think. Nick and Mark. Anyway, thanks so much, folks, for supporting cooking issues in Heritage Radio Network. Next, we got Matt, Cholic writes in from Seattle, Dear Nastasi, and Dave. Thanks for the show. My question covers cocktails, acidic things like lime juice, orange juice, and even some sodas tend to really upset my stomach. I'm a big fan of margaritas, though. I mean, who isn't really? Margaritas are delicious. I mean, as long as you drink alcohol. margarita is delicious. Do you like margaritas, Peter? Love margaritas. Nastasia? Okay. What do you suggest? My question has 3 parts. What do you suggest I use to bring lime juices pH up to 7 so I can see what cocktails taste like with lime

[38:12] flavor, but without the sour? Baking soda comes to mind, but I suspect that will compromise a drinks flavor. It will. And by the way, you're never going to get it all the way up to seven, I don't think. I'm guessing sour is pretty essential to the drink's taste, but only loosely correlated with the actual acidity, such that there are substances, such that there are

[38:28] substances packing equivalent sourness to lime juice that leave a drinks pH closer to neutral. Any thoughts of some options? And finally, do you have any ideas for a solid lemon lime juice substitution that I could request at a bar, asking for a margarita, shaken with an

[38:41] anacid tablet seems unworkable for multiple reasons? I tried making myself just a quantro, tequila, and simple syrup drink, but it wasn't particularly

[38:50] good. No, I don't imagine it would be. Remember, if you are going to reduce the acid. You have to also reduce the sugar by a lot lot. And if you're going to make low acid drinks in general, this is not answering your question, but

[39:01] which I will answer in a minute, but when you're making a drink that doesn't have any acid in it, like an old-fashioned, like typically to add brightness to an old-fashioned,

[39:10] and 1st of all, remember, it has a minimal amount of sugar. So 2 ounce porn and old-fashioned is not very diluted and has about a quarter of an ounce to 3 eighths of an ounce of

[39:17] normal, a 50% simple syrup in it. To add brightness to that. A twist. And the central oil from like either a grapefruit or a lemon or an orange or sometimes a lime, although I'm not a huge fan most of the time of lime

[39:30] twist, that fresh, bright, inherently citrus note of those oils gives you a sense of freshness, which is part of what acidity

[39:40] brings, is a freshness. So you should always start by, if you're going to reduce the acid, if not eliminate the acid, adding

[39:47] twist to things, because that's going to help punch up the brightness. Also, reducing sugar content substantially is going to allow you to use less acid. Anytime you have a high sugar content. You're going to require more acid to bounce it out. So if you were allowed to have minimal amounts of acid, like they're in sodas, like you say, you might want to switch to carbonated margaritas, because carbonated

[40:08] margaritas have less sugar, more water, but less sugar overall, and also less

[40:13] acid, and they're delicious. Um, but what I would not do baking soda, uh, because it's going to make it salty and weird. I would actually try. I was gonna try it myself. But I don't have any left at the house. Sodium citrate. So sodium citrate is a salt of citric acid, but it acts as a buffer. And I did some basic calculation. So the classic margarita spec that we use, has in it about, is about 172 milliliters after it's been shaken and

[40:46] strained and contains about one. 34 grams of acid as citric. It actually a mix of citric and malic. Uh, and that ends up being a malarity of 0.04%, uh, and a

[40:58] titratable uh, acidity of a roughly 0.78. Orange juice, on the other hand, has an acidity of 0.8 of titradable acidity of 0.8. Now, I test it, like, if you go on the online and you look up the pH of something that has a citric acid with a malarity of

[41:18] .04, you get a pH of 2.29. However, orange juice, which has a very, very similar titradable acidity, very similar molarity, has a pH of 3.3 to

[41:28] almost up to four. And the reason the pH is higher is because not all of that citric acid is going to, um, uh, you know, uh,

[41:36] deproted. It's not going to, the word's not coming in my mind. It's not going to turn to acid there. It's not going to actually reduce the pH as much. But anyway, so what you're looking at with a margarita is basically the acidity of orange juice. And so I would just test with orange juice because it's a lot cheaper to test orange juice than otherwise. And I would add to your orange juice for

[41:59] every, like, 172 grams of orange juice. If you add about a gram and a half of sodium citrate, you might increase the sourness, but you're definitely going to also increase the

[42:13] pH. You might be able to knock it up like a whole point, which is a log level, 10 times less acidity. Uh, now, you said that I should recommend a pH uh, meter to you uh, so that you can get one. I don't use them in the bar because I care only about the taste, which is correlated more to titradable acidity and less to pH, but for your case, where you're actually trying to reduce the actual acidity, you get a pH

[42:38] meter. Go ahead and get one. Me telling you to get one helps you get one, get one. The one I use is the XTech. I, pH meter is a little bit of a pain in the butt because you have to change out the sensors and once the sensors dry out, they kind of lose their efficacy. There are some cheaper ones out there now on Amazon that I don't have any experience with. The

[42:56] XTech is not that much more expensive and I know it works. So anyway, there you go. Hey, we got a color online. Oh, never mind. Central well, it's like his name, Twist. Caller, you're on the air. Hi, yeah, um, my name's Arlene, I'm calling from Brooklyn. Actually, it was at Otto a couple weeks ago, and you made these 2 great Italiano

[43:16] Staliamas, so thanks. Um, but I had a question about food mills which you were complaining about last week. Um, so for the holidays, my family makes homemade applesauce. Um, and we like cook down the apples and then throw them in the food mill, skins on. Um, but it's a pain in the ass because the, the skins get stuck under that crank. Right. So I was wondering if you had any thoughts about other ways to make applesauce. Well, that's a good question. And so I just did some, this is kind of, like, related to what you were saying. I just did some experiments with tomato juice and spinning tomato juice to get the paste out of it. And we had this argument with Mark Ladner about food mills and the way he does tomatoes. And it is true that tomato, done through some form of strainer like that, is better. The tomato paste was so much better and the juice was so much better. And I'm sure we get applesauce, it's so much better. I don't know of a good, mean, you could pass it through a tammy, but that's also a pain in the butt. I mean, I could I would just try passing it through a Tammy. Um, do you have a, you know, you can get a big tammy for pretty cheap and then just a plastic scraper and it's got such a larger surface area.

[44:29] I mean, how much applesauce are we talking about? We make like, uh, maybe like a gallon, gallon and a half. So not like a ton. Oh, yeah. get a big salad bowl and a big tammy and then just pass it through with a spatula because you're basically doing that with a food mill anyway. Like, let's not pretend that a food mill is anything worse than an, better than an ineffective scraper on a, on a really crappy tammy that's hard to like open up and clean. You know what I mean? Right. I would go Tammy on that. Now, uh, what I would like to experiment with, but I haven't is there's a bunch of hand crank, um, uh, tomato strainers that are meant for like, you know, old grandma sauce,

[45:08] right? Now I don't know whether they're any good or not. KitchenAid makes a tomato strainer attachment for people that make a lot of tomato sauce.

[45:15] It might also work for applesauce. I don't know. You know, it's designed to let through enough pulp to have like a bodied

[45:22] thing, but to exclude the larger thing. So it's not going to be as fine a grain as something like a, you know,

[45:28] champion, which lets very little through, uh, or even like the Brevel juicer, which lets slightly more pulp through, but it's a

[45:35] strainer. It's meant to let the, you know, most of the particulate through, but exclude like seeds and skins and stuff like that. So I would try also, I would, I would look into whether they're a reasonably priced to try

[45:45] that for a gallon, yeah, and you're not gonna, no one's ever said, oh, I wish I didn't have this

[45:49] Tammy when it comes time to also sit flowers. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, that sounds good. Whereas I've heard everyone be like, I wish I didn't have this freaking food meal because now I feel obliged to use it and it was too expensive to throw away and that's wasteful and I feel like a bad human, right? There's nothing but regrets and food mill land. They're pretty cheap on Amazon now. What, is food mills? Yeah. They're never cheap. Think of your labor. Think of your labor. Value your time. Food bills are garbage. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, let us know. Tweet us back or whatever. Let us know how works. All right, thanks so much. All right, thanks. Oh, you too. I had a Twitter question in on grinding spices. Someone wants to know how do I grind small amounts of spices because, you know, they use the whirly blade spice grinder, like the one that we have to

[46:36] grind. They're going to say what? Marijuana thing. No, I'm actually not because those are good to carry around in your knife kit if you need to grind something on quickly. That's what I use that marijuana grinder for, for grinding spice, you know, that you can carry in your knife kit. But at home, mortar and pestle, man. Mortar and pestle is the way to go. I think everyone forgets like, you know, this era of high tech everything, that a mortar and pestle can take down like a single clove into a fine powder that you can put into anything that you

[47:05] want. And so I don't, I, like, it is a pain in the butt to use a mortar and pestle on really large quantities of things because things kind of slide and pop around and stuff like that, but if you can take a small amount of spice and just go,

[47:16] with the, with the mortar and smash it into a 1000000 pieces, right? That's the way to go Stop using email. That wasn't on email. didn't have. Well, none of that I should take gadry, bring out the mortar and pestle. You should smash your phone with the mortar and pestle. You know. Yeah, Darren writes in about Martini Madness. Hello, it's Darren. The bartender's where I work, uh, were recently given a little speech uh, about and a push to win a competition called Martini Madness in the Sonoma

[47:43] Valley. And although I have nothing to do with it, being a line monkey, I have a few questions regarding the subject. The only 2 rules. Um, oh, my phone just decided not to. Okay. The only 2 rules are that is made with an olive, and also that it uses prohibition brand spirits, which is a company based out of the area. Anywho, I thought long and hard on the olive and the drunkenness responsibly and came up with an idea which requires floating the cocktail, even though I am pretty sure that the clientele are not going to appreciate this entirely.

[48:11] I want to make a sun-dried tomato, orange, and lemon water that has thickened ever so slightly above the average density of vodka around .916. That is a density of vodka, that is true. Uh, whereas, you know, water is one and sugared water is higher than one.

[48:26] Uh, so it allows vodka, which is infused heavily with uh, manzania olive. I like the buttery flavor to easily float above it, topped with a time oil. The thickening also serves as a textural contrast as this pairing is a favorite pasta sauce for my family, and I thought the idea of pulling a straw up through the

[48:42] cocktails you drank, it would be a fun concept. So my question is, would Xanta and gum or a lightly heated gel and low acyl provide a better texture to actually drink while giving the appropriate density to float

[48:52] and infused vodka or do you have a better solution? Um, And this is not exactly radio talk, but I would happily set up a payment plan to purchase a

[48:59] spins all. If that is something that could be set up before or after you reach your target goal,

[49:03] be it lay away or otherwise. I can't justify the cost for personal to potential professional use at this time, but either way, you guys are badasses for bringing such an invention to the market. And if you can do what it says, I can't see why any kitchen wouldn't find a use for it. As we say, verbal bravogram, yeah, from your lips to God's ears there. But I don't know. I haven't thought about it. You know, we'll see what happens in the future. If we get it funded and we actually have them in stock, then you know, we have a lot more, um, a lot more leeway. Now, back, yeah, flexibility, which is not a word Nastasia and I use very often, flexibility. Compromise. What? So let's get back to our question. I wouldn't use Xanthan. Xanthan thickened, like, you could ever so slightly put Xanthan in it, but Xanthan has a very particular look to it, a feeling to it

[49:48] that I, you know, that's not so pleasant. Like, I mean, if you're going to do Xantan, you want to keep it well under a quarter of a percent. A low asyl fluid gel, I think would be your best bet, but it has to be really, really light. Um, Now, I'll have you know that, uh, and I happen to have it. I told you before, some tomato water sitting around in my fridge and I took it out of the fridge and floated some vodka on top of it and just did it on the back of a bar spoon and was able to get a pretty good

[50:16] float. There was some mixing along the line, but, you know, just a good old-fashioned Pousse Cafe technique was enough to float vodka right on top of the tomato water. Okay, so, but if you want to thicken it because you want that textual difference, then I would do low

[50:30] acyl geland. Another thing you can do that doesn't jack the sugar appreciably and you don't want to drink too much of it. You give them the runs is you could hit it with a non-sweet or a low sweetness, sugared, like isomalt or something like that, but it will increase the sweetness. I've done densified cocktails with that or with, you know,

[50:50] low DE, um, glucose syrup because it adds a boatload of density. And you're not actually thickening it, but you're just increasing the density of it, which is, I think, what you want to look

[51:00] at. If you actually want to thicken it, sure, go fluid gel. But if you just want to increase the density, I would go with something like a low DE, like very almost unsweet, almost no sweetness, glucose syrup, or, um, something of that nature, but vodka will float directly on the top of tomato water.

[51:14] And, of course, the oil float on that. You just have to be careful when you pour it, right? That makes sense? Yeah? All right. And we're about to get kicked off the air, but lastly, we had we have nothing else we need to talk about, right? Anthony from Nashville writes saying, hey, Dave, I just wanted to shoot you a quick thanks for speaking out against sexual harassment in the hospitality industry on the show 2 weeks ago.

[51:38] As a longtime kitchen worker. I been witnessed to many acts of casual sexual harassment, sexism, and plain old bullying in the restaurant. Regretfully, I sometimes behave the same way in my ignorant use, so I know how easy it is to not realize or understand that it's wrong.

[51:51] No one should ever be made to feel uncomfortable like that, especially when they go to work. And I think you deliver that message quite clearly and effectively on the show. I know a lot of bonehead cooks who think that cat calling at the hostess and alcohol addiction are just fun parts of being in the pirate crew. A lot of these same guys, as well as many liked them, I'm sure, are frequent listeners of cooking issues and hold you in high regard. So I think it's great that you can use this platform to spread a positive message that hopefully will touch some

[52:15] lives. Thanks and keep up the good work. Anthony from Nashville. And he says, PS, I would be super stoked if book 2 turns out to be the miracle of moisture management, which I doubt it will be,

[52:25] Anthony. I think I know what the next book's going to be about. We could talk about it maybe next week on cooking issues.

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