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[1:08] Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Hartle, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 or one o'clock Heritage Pizza Heritage Pizzeria. Kind of heritage pizzeria. Roberta Pizzeria in Bushwick. Brooklyn, welcome to the holiday. Yeah, Christmas. Any holiday, really. I mean, you and I happen to be Christmas folk. But any, you know, any holiday of your choice. Happy, yeah. Chronica starts on the same day as Christmas Eve. Come on, it's so late. That's unusual, right? Why is it so dang late? Don't know. We need to synchronize these things. We did. It is. Oh, semisynchronized. No gods, no religion. Wow. Wow, wow. This is not a, you know, this is not that kind of a show, Dave. All right, sorry about that. That kind of show. Sorry for going off the handle. All right, so, uh, anyway, uh, calling your questions to a 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Um, Cooking, not really, you know, not cooking related. We do not have Harold McGee today. Booker is calling me on my phone. I don't know, we like, he's, well, maybe. Well, all right. Is he home or is he? No, he's doing the world. He's doing this thing called rail fanning. Hold a second. He's going to get mad at me if I actually put him on the line. Is it some kind of extreme sport? What is that? Kind of. It's these people, uh, my son included, who love, uh, riding on the trains. It's, and it's really all they care to do is ride on the trains and see what, see what he has to say here.

[2:49] Yeah, maybe whatever it was, it's not important anymore. He found his train. Found his train. He's usually just calling me... Hi, dad. Hey, Booker. What's up? I'm on the radio show right now. do you need? I'm on my way back home. Okay, I'll see you in a little bit. I know I'm at Court Square. Court Square. Yes. Did you have a good rail fanning trip? Yep, I'm coming back home now. Bye. Bye. People, listen, I know I'm in the middle of a radio program here, but when your son calls you and he's

[3:21] twice and he's out, you know, by himself on the subway system, you take the

[3:26] call. Am I wrong about distance down here? right. Wait, are these older people that go on the thing with them? Are they young? Okay, so if you want to see what the rail fanning crew looks like. I think you actually, you might have missed your opportunity this year. Have you been on the holiday train? So one of the fun things to do in New York City during the holiday season is every Sunday. They won't do it this time because it's Christmas, they run antique trains

[3:50] on from 2nd Avenue to Queens Plaza along the F-line. Um, And so you can ride it. And, like, it's there's exactly 2 kinds of people on that train. Have we talked about this already? There's 2 kinds of people on that train. There are like the people who are dressed up in fake 40s and 30s clothes, taking pictures of themselves, and then they're hardcore rail fanners. And those 2 groups of people could not be any more different. The hardcore rail fanners, like typically are wearing some sort of like railroad a finalia. You know what I mean? Some sort of like, you know, 207 street track workers thing or whatever. You know what I mean? Some sort of, like my son Booker has a baseball cap with every pin of every subway train on it.

[4:37] I think he's missing one anyway. So, yeah. It's an interesting cross-section of New York, and it's just the cost of a subway ride. It's all it takes. All right, well, let's get some, uh, get some questions. Do you make anything good this week, Nastasia? No. What about your holiday party? What do you cook? I made pasta and salad like I usually do. Whoa, happy freaking Christmas. Pasta and salad. Pastas? What kind of pasta did you make? Pesto because there was a vegetarian. Peter's wife. And she's vegetarian? Peter Kim, museum of food and drink. Wife is a vegetarian. Shame. She's French. She's vegetarian. Like, vegetables only. No fish. I don't know about fish. I'm sure she eats fish. Didn't Thanksgiving 2 years ago? Didn't they bring some sort of like meat stew, some sort of southern meat stew? No, that was an Ethiopian meats too, right? No, it was Southern French. You can't tell the difference between Ethiopian and southern French. Anyway, point being that did she just suddenly become a... No, I've known her

[5:42] for, we've known her. She always been a vegetarian. No chicken, no fish. Not as far as I know So you made pesto for Christmas? Because basil, nothing's more in season than basil this time of year. Ragu. meat ragu. I thought you said you were cooking vegetarian. 2 different types No, you see, you're basically, you're just saying that you cheaped out and you made pasta because it's cheap. Like, it's cheap, but not because of a vegetarian that was there. You know, truth pasta because of vegetarian. No, no, no, but I couldn't serve the ragout to everyone, so I had to make a pesto, too. No, so it's a secondary fact. Like the vegetarianism isn't the reason that you had pasta for your Christmas party. No, that's because it's cheap. Do you ever do the in your family, did you ever do the meatless Christmas Eve or is that Italian only? We did the Meatless Good Friday, not Christmas Eve. Meatless Christmas Eve? You mean 7 fishes? that how many fishes? Yeah, that's what my family does. Why seven? Is that like a Bible thing? Probably, yeah. I mean, it's just one of those days that you're not supposed to be eating meat back in the

[6:43] day, Italian style. You know what I mean? So we have a ton of fish instead. What do you, what, do you, does your family do the bakala? Oh yeah, that's my favorite. Yeah? How do they make it? So we soak it for a few days and then my grandmother cooks it with marinara sauce,

[6:59] onions. It's delicious. It's the best. your favorite, huh? My favorite. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever spilled the soaking water all into the laundry hamper? Uh, no. I have the salt water? Yeah. Yeah, because we used to soak it downstairs. Like we had like a, you know, like, you know, like, you know, you've made it. your family's made it when you get that 2nd fridge downstairs. It's like you have the fridge in the kitchen, but then you have that 2nd fridge downstairs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my mom used to soak the bak a lot in the 2nd in, like right next to the 2nd fridge downstairs and she had it

[7:31] out because I guess she was going to change it. And I dumped, this is like I was in, I don't know, junior hire, high school. I dumped the entire water thing into like the clean laundry basket. Because, you know, the washing machine's right next to the 2nd fridge. You know what I mean? Yeah, this is the setup at my grandmother's house too, actually. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, this is how it works. You know what I mean? It's like, uh, man, that was a nightmare. That stuff stank. Oh my god, did it stink? You know what the worst thing is? is when you say you take all this time soaking it. And if you let it come up to temperature even too high, you let it boil even a little bit and the

[8:06] bakala goes hard. you hate that? Yeah, well, so I actually don't like it to soak too long because I love the saltiness of it.

[8:12] I like when it has that tang. Yeah. Okay, so another thing people might not know. Bakala, by the way, like, uh, is the dried, uh, salt, whitefish, you typically, you know, the high

[8:23] rents does cod, but now they use pollock or whatever they, whatever they. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, hey, yeah, the thick stuff is expensive. You know what I mean? But a lot of people find it, you know, somewhat challenging. It takes a long time to cook. What is delicious, though, and can be done right away is if you buy the cheaper stuff, right? Uh, and it is, is, uh, is you just basically, um, it's thin, so it

[8:51] rehydrates and soaks out really quickly. Just like bring a large pot of water up to a simmer, turn it off, throw it in, right? This is not bakalada, but this is with this fish. throw it in, and then, like, do that like once or twice your taste,

[9:07] then, like, basically shred it, and then make, like, a mashed potato, right? Almost like a brandad, and you mix it in with that, delicious. Like delicious. You can also make it with actual mashed yams, and it becomes closer to like a Trinidad Tobago kind of thing, but like saltfish, and like smash traditional yams, or even like potatoes, more of a

[9:30] brown Dodge style, delicious and easy way to get into it. My favorite weight. Nastasia, did your family ever eat salt cata in any form? Did you ever go out like to restaurants and get it? Have you ever had salt cod fritters? Bacalitos? No. God. That's another really good way to have salt cut. Anyway, so you're not supposed to have meat. So we used to have the bakala. We would always have some form of octopus and we would always have, and this would maybe think of it, the pasta with the anchovies. Dave, you ever do that one? No, we do the anchovies with the Savoy cabbage. Oh, I haven't had that one. You like that? Oh I love it. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. And they get they just melt in the cabbage. You can't even see them anymore, but the flavor is there. Yeah, but we used to do the, we would do the, the anchovy pasta, but the trick with the anchovy pasta is not only you're not supposed to have meat, you're also not supposed to have really dairy on this night,

[10:22] right? So it's a fish only, like it's similar to Lent, right? So we would do breadcrumbs instead of the cheese. You ever do that once to us? Yeah, you got to get the, you've never done breadcrumbs on pasta? Yeah. But not this thing you're talking about. Which, well, what thing? The anchovy process. I don't know what that is. Well, instead of cheese, like for like texture and to soak up extra stuff, you put breadcrumbs on

[10:43] top and actually it's really good. Like breadcrumbs on top of pasta, sounds stupid, like Starch on starch? It's good. really good. I never heard this thing about no cheese, but now that I think about it, there isn't really any cheese in this meal. It's because, yeah, all the recipes are designed to not have cheese. You forget that it was a religious injunction against having many, it wasn't just Lent and Fridays. It was like Christmas Eve, uh, and not only no meat, no dairy, typically no egg, uh, because these are all like Lenten fast rules built around kind of religious strictures from uh,

[11:16] religious. Well, you know, some really good, really good cuisine. Why do you think it does anyone really think for even 12nd that the reason that Italian fish dishes don't contain cheese is because cheese and fish don't taste good

[11:30] together? Anyone that's had a fried fish sandwich with melted American cheese on it knows that cheese

[11:35] tastes good with fish, right? I mean, anyone that's had shrimp and grits realizes that shrimp and cheese and grits and bacon are all on

[11:46] friendly 1st name basis with each other. It's that all of the fish dishes from the Italian repertoire are designed to be eaten on fast

[11:55] days where you're not consuming dairy. That's why you don't get kind of, you know, creamy fish sauces. That's why you don't get, you don't get cheese on your fish sauce. That's why. Fact, history fact for you folk. Was that a call, Dave, coming in? There is a call. Caller, you were on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Matt Mystic. How you doing? How you doing? Um, so we have a little holiday party coming up, and uh, I'm gonna make a festive, sparkling drink, and I was thinking about doing like a carbonated French 75. Nice. Since it's already semi carbonated anyway, right? Yeah. I was thinking, um, but I was wondering if I could use like a sweeter, sparkling wine, like an

[12:37] aspi, instead of like sort of skipping the, skipping the simple syrup and doing like an

[12:42] ass beat. I like how you're doing it with the full, like, kind of like East Coast, Boston, Italian pronunciation,

[12:48] Diasti Spomonti. Yeah, already like jersey. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't see why not. You might have to adjust the other stuff, but I don't see why you couldn't do it. Um, when you're, when you're gonna, um, let me see. What, do you know what, what recipe you're going to use for it, what the build is? I don't, actually. I was going to look in liquid intelligence and see what you called for, but... I think I have that recipe in there. One of the things is, is one of the, I can't remember, it's been such a long time, if I don't have the recipe, it's because it didn't fit my normal analysis

[13:18] methods because it's got the added champagne afterwards. And so, um, what happens with the added champagne is, uh, it didn't fit into any one of my kind of normal dilution equations because it has like

[13:34] post dilution afterwards. And so I can't remember whether I made an exception to it and tried to fit it into like one of the standard kind

[13:42] of drink categories that I did because I didn't go into a full-on analysis of that style. So I don't know, but I mean, but it is a, uh, obviously a delicious drink. If you're going to do an actual force carbonated version, Are you going to clarify the citrus or no? I'm going to do like a lemon acid with citric acid. I would instead, since there's you're not going to have that much, probably acid in each cocktail, depending on how you balance it out. I might just carbonate it all and you could basically pre-batch that stuff, and then I would, um, just add a little bit of the fresh at the end, unless you won't be

[14:22] able, people to be able to pour it from the bottle like themselves. Everything depends on what you're going to do. If you're going to use straight acid, I mean, like for a drink like that, if you're going to use straight acid, I would also use a little peel to kind of like brighten it up a little

[14:34] bit. Um, you know, but, uh, you know, give it a test, but that should be uh, delicious. And, you know, what I, what I can do is I can have my family, uh, entire family come by your house

[14:45] and mystic. on Christmas Eve, because I'll be there. And we'll just, you know, we'll be rate you as an enemy of quality if we find that the cocktail is not up to

[14:55] Snuff. What do you think? That sounds good. It's 60 Washington Street. right up the street from the liquor store. Wait, down by where the A&P the old A&P liquor store? Yeah. On the other side. You're on the other side of the bridge, man. What if the bridge is out? I could be hours on Christmas Eve before I get back to the house. Has anyone seen the bridge? The bridge, so in the middle of mystic, is this thing called like the mystic? I don't know what a Bascule is, but it's a Bascule bridge and the people are Mystic, they love this freaking bridge. They, every couple of years, they raise, you know, $8 jillion so they can repaint it. You know what I mean? And, uh, what happens is, is that, is that the 2 sides of Mystic are separated by this

[15:34] drawbridge, and all it takes is like one knucklehead with, with a boat that's too tall and a

[15:40] horn, and the traffic's tied up forever in the middle of town. You know what I mean? Anyway, anyway. I'm not going into this. Maybe, I don't know. Depends. mean, we'll be down in town. We'll be walking around on Christmas Eve, depending. It's gonna be crappy weather, though, I think. Yeah, I don't know what the weather's going to be. The party's Friday. So if you're around and you want to come, you know, I'll hit you up on the Twitter. Oh, yeah, hit me up. I might actually still be down in Chester on the Friday because, believe this or not, this New York City schools are running on Friday. And then, like, they didn't even cancel after school programs. So Dax has basketball freaking practice. so stupid. Anyway, let us, if I don't make it, let us know how the cocktail is. Speaking of enemies of quality. Oh, yeah, Nastasia, pump it. We made our shirts finally. Yeah, anime of quality shirts. So go online and look up. I'll just go to bookerandax.com. slash enemy of quality, and you could see Nastasia and myself, the queen and kings of anti-quality.

[16:37] You want to take another call? Yeah, sure. Call her. You on the air. Yeah, hi, Dave. Fashion, Merry Christmas. Happy Christmas, Hanakwanza, whatever we call it now. Oh, nice. I had a question about breezing. Okay. In lots of different recipes from all over, There's different temperatures for grazing, and some of

[16:58] them, and some people prefer lower temperature braising like 200 to 225 degrees versus 350 degrees.

[17:06] Right. Um, the temperature of the liquid inside the braids can't get above the boiling point. Is it beneficial or not to do a lower temperature braze or a higher temperature braze. And does the food really interact that much with the radiant

[17:26] heat different? Uh, I think a lot's gonna depend on exactly how you, um, how the whole thing's configured, right? So like, if you have a braising vessel in an oven. And the vessel is sealed, then, uh, anything, in other words, like the lids on it or it's got foil on top of it. Uh, any temperature in the oven, uh, assuming the oven is accurate, above 212 degrees, uh,

[17:55] Fahrenheit is going to cause the liquid and eventually the meat and or vegetables inside to reach 212

[18:03] Fahrenheit because there'll be no evaporative cooling. If you remove the lid or allow there to be evaporation, you know, and they're in between zones, right? A levels amounts of evaporation, then the meat and the product will evaporatively cool itself, and so it will

[18:21] not typically reach boiling temperature unless the heat input into the product is so high that the entire thing can actually reach the boiling

[18:34] point. Now, meat will never reach the boiling point until the surface dries out and there's no longer evaporative cooling at the surface. However, the parts of the meat that are underneath the liquid can reach those temperatures if you're in a hot, hot oven. So higher temperatures, like, you know, 35360 can be enough to overcome some of the evaporative cooling effects and push the surfaces of meat up above those kinds of

[19:03] temperatures, whereas lower temperatures in the 200s don't, because you're never going to overcome the kind of evaporative cooling effect to get the full drying and crust formation on the top of the meat.

[19:15] So, um, I mean, I don't know if I'm answering the question. I would say that those lower numbers are, um, you know, safer in terms of

[19:28] like if a piece of meat's poking out, it's going to stay more braised and not kind of crust over as much. You're not going to get above that above that level. But then, uh, you know, you might be in a situation where your heat input is not necessarily fast enough and it just takes a lot longer for you to get, um, your

[19:44] brays done. That said, I really don't think it's going to make too much of a difference. I think your main difference is going to be if you seal it or if you don't. If you don't seal it, the difference between a 250 and a 325 is going to be kind of minimal, I think. It might just take a little longer, one way or the other, because it's going to go above 212. Uh, you know, all of the interesting stuff happened what happens once there's evaporative cooling. Sure, no, I was kind of going along with that. It's also interesting to see how fast. How fast does college is in, another connection, does you break down? Is that just the result of the time and the temperature or actually a higher temperature? Has the result of doing that faster? If it's sealed per se, you don't really care about the, the, the meat being exposed above the liquid, let's say, and you don't care about that, but just breaking

[20:34] down connected issue in college. Yeah, so the hotter it is, the faster it'll happen. like all other things equal, right? So assuming you have the same, um, so to convert collagen uh, to gelatin requires uh, heat, time uh, and uh, moisture,

[20:57] right? So, like, obviously, it's hard to break down collagen and beef

[21:00] jerky, uh, because there's no moisture there. You know what I mean? So it's, uh, it's like a combination kind of of of all those things. typically there's enough moisture and meat to have it happen. But then you're looking at, and also moisture is being released from the meat as it heats. So there might there might be some effect in in higher temperature situations as opposed to like sub- sub-boiling temperatures where there might be. So, in other words, like, take a look when you're doing low temperature work, like, let's say you were going to do a short rib, let's say, for like 3 days and you're going to cook it at, um, like 55,

[21:39] 56 uh, Celsius, which is, you know, down in the kind of meat, high medium rare range, uh, or medium rare range. So if you're going to cook down there, the connective tissue never breaks down. Now, I mean, it breaks down, it gets soft, but it doesn't kind of melt out. And so I don't, I'm actually researching this now. I shouldn't talk about it, but the next book's going to be on low temperature cooking. for probably for more home applications. Not probably. It's going to be on low temperature cooking in home applications. Uh, but the, um, one of the interesting things is the texture of meat in those situations kind of stays the same, uh, structurally, even though it

[22:17] gets uh, softer and softer. And so it's probably some combination of, um, the

[22:22] collagen, not maybe breaking down as much because there was not as much moisture release because the meat doesn't squeeze out all of its juices as much because you didn't overcook the meat, right?

[22:32] Which kind of how you say is a nice thing to have, if that's what you want to have. If it's a lot of stuff for low temperature cooking, that people are saying, well, this is, at this higher temperature. This is like a breeze, but it isn't exactly the same thing because it's not high enough to actually constrict that meat tissue and melt all that college.

[22:52] It's just softening it and breaking it down. Right. It doesn't actually, it doesn't actually render it in the same way. If that doesn't render out. You know, the gelatin, the gelatin doesn't suffuse the entire piece of meat. And in fact, if what you want is a traditional

[23:09] braise, and that you go in and expecting a traditional braise, in general, most people don't want the low temperature product in that case.

[23:18] in that case. So what's like the temperature that that sort of stuff uses and melts out? Well, that's an interesting question. I'll probably have to do some research on that. But in general, in my head, right, there is such a time penalty for doing long-term, low temperature work that roughly

[23:40] anytime I go above like 60,

[23:45] four, 65 Celsius, I'm just like to hell with it. And I go all the way up into the 80s. So when you're in the 80s, right, you don't have to worry about overcooking things, you

[23:56] also your water bath isn't boiling over a lot, makes it convenient. See, if you're actually doing bag work, uh, in boiling water, it can be a pain in the butt because the bags can touch the sides of your, um, I think

[24:09] melt and, and you get like really fast evaporation at boiling, you have to replenish your water constantly.

[24:15] So typically, like when I want a traditional high temperature, um, texture for something like a confit, um, which I like doing in bags a lot because it's easier to store, uh, you know, they last a lot longer. Um, it's, you know, a lot, uh, you don't have to have that kind of excess of liquid or fat. You can do, you know, with very little amount of fat and or liquid and braise. It's not quite the same because you don't get any evaporation, but I do those in

[24:41] the in the 80s because I want that traditional texture. And once you're up like 82, 83, you know, you're going to start, you know, you're going to get those kind of traditional textures. Very cool. I appreciate it. All right, cool. Okay. Let me see. We had a comment, Anastasia, about our pine nut conversation from Carlos. Uh, I want to start by thanking you guys for the hours of uh, entertainment on the show. entertainment. Show actually makes me look forward to my commute, doubly so, and Mr. McGee drops by. We love having the Herald. That was good, man. Like Heaven Herald. Also, he knows all this stuff. Yeah. Yeah, good man. I was very relieved when you mentioned that the taste bud blowout pine nuts are a specific Chinese nut. In New Mexico. We eat pine nuts like crazy, pretty much year round, but especially so in the winter months. We eat roasted salted pine nuts in a similar fashion to sunflower seeds. Pop a handful in your mouth, one by one, crack the shell, and enjoy the nut and spit out the shell, and repeat. Do you ever see people like eating the sunflower seeds sitting there spitting the... In the subway? Oh my god. people, jeez, Louise. Constant assault, New York. It's just, you know, it's like... Like, why would you think that that's okay to sit there and spray shells out of your mouth on the freaking subway?

[25:55] Why would you think that's okay? We're living in a society. Yeah, you don't do that kind of crap, right? Okay, let me ask you a question, because my family, people in my family are on the other side of this from me. Okay, so are you guys familiar? I don't like, uh, okay, remember, I'm a wasp. I'm a 40, what am I, five-year-old wasp, okay? Now, to bear that in mind. So, like, I don't like kind of, like, I don't like dueling music. I don't like hearing 2 different stereos at the same time bothers me. And it bothers me in like public situations where I have to listen to somebody else's music.

[26:35] Because, I mean, like odds are, like if I was listening to my house, I would probably like it because I like all forms of music, but it's just kind of like, why do I have to listen to this guy's music for?

[26:43] You know what I'm saying, Stas? Are you the same way? Because why? Because I feel like, you know, I don't get to go over there and like, I don't know, harangue them. Maybe your presence just harangues them and you don't know it, though. Well, I'm sure my presence harangues them, but that's whole, that's the whole bargain you live, make for living in New York City. Anyway, that's not my point. So my point is, is that there's these, like, the new thing is bicyclers have,

[27:07] like, uh, boom boxes, but there are these new mini boom boxes, like the new Bluetooth things, and they strap them to their

[27:15] personage, to their bicycles. And they zip around the town playing loud music on their bicycles, right? Now, the reason is that they want you to know that they are coming so that you don't hit them and or walk out in front of them, which I totally

[27:29] understand because how many times have you had some idiot walk in front of you when you're riding a bike? They walk, they look the wrong freaking way and they step right into a freaking bike lane, and then you're the bad person because you slammed into an 80-year-old lady. Yeah. Is it your fault? Anyway, but like my point is, is it, so where do you, where do you feel about the music blaring on the bicycle? Uh, I've only heard like old school R&B on the bikes. My brother has James Brown going 100% of the time. Dave, what do you think about the bicycle music? I think that's fine. It's more like when it's in an enclosed space, like a subway car that it bothers me. out on the street is whatever. What are your thoughts about those idiots who they invest in a giant stereo for their car, but they don't invest in enough automotive adhesive to glue all the parts of their trunk

[28:21] down? And so their entire car sounds like it's rattling itself to pieces when the bass drum

[28:26] hits and they can't hear it because it's so loud. Their hearing is so distorted out on the inside of the car that they don't know that their that their car sounds like a baby rattle. Yeah, I mean, enemies of quality, what else can you say? That's right. If you're going to play music that loud, which I endorse heartily, then, you know, have the decency to have some, you know,

[28:45] quality stereo work done on your vehicle. No? Anyways. Um, speaking of James Brown, I had a request to do some James Brown, uh, but I'm not, I do own James Brown's Christmas album on, on, not on vinyl, I wish I don't

[29:00] know a vinyl owner on a cassette. Before I finish the pine nut thing, Nastasi, what are your favorite Christmas girls? Oh, uh, I like the temptations, Rudolph the

[29:08] rednosed reindeer. Really? Really? Because of the base guy who comes in? Yeah. I forget what part he has. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, I don't know. I listened to it just the other day. Dave, you? Donny Hathaway this Christmas. Yeah? Okay, here's what I like. I like, uh, I like Mahalia Jackson's Hark the Herald Angels saying because Mahalia Jackson knows how to, like, belt some crap out. You know what I mean? First of all, let's just stipulate and Nastasi, the entire, the entire Andrew sisters, the entire Andrew sisters, Bing Crosby album, is like as, consider that one song. That's like one whole song, all the way from Adeste Fideles or Silent Night, all the way through to Meli Kaliki Maka, that whole album is like a song. And it's like a classic, right? But I'm I like Feliz Navidad. I like Holly Jolly Christmas. like that. I know I'm forgetting one of my favorites. Oh, I like Perry Como's version of home for the holidays. Mm-hmm. Anything that can cool. Really? You're not King Cole kind of a Christmas? Oh he's great. Yeah? All right. Anyway. James Brown's Christmas is interesting. Yes, I will. James Brown's Christmas album is interesting because he's incredibly crazy. He has a song called Soulful Christmas Tree. I think this is a song where he sits around and basically says that Merry Christmas to the people that bought his album and saw his show. And that's it. He's like, I love you because he bought my album. It's on my show. Jim Rander, honey. All right, call her, you're on the ear. Is he? Is she or she on the other? Hello? Hello? Hi, how you doing? Is it me? What? Yeah, you're on the air. All right, awesome. Dave, what's up, man? Thanks. Nothing, how's it going? I'm cool, man, calling from Westchester. Nice. Um, you know, so I had a question about Guanchali. I went to make Guancshali last year. I had a £5 of pork cheeks sitting around, so I go on chalified them. Nice. Um, and mid, mid, mid Guanchalian, I got a little nervous, uh, food safety nervous, I guess, and I decided

[31:14] to, uh, throw them in my dehydrator to speed up the Guanchalifying process.

[31:19] Ooh, really? And they didn't come out bad, but it definitely did something of the texture where the fat had like a snappiness to it. And, uh, you know, they weren't the best, they weren't the best thing in the world. Right. Um, but I got thrilled. So I got another £5 of Guancelli or Pork Cheeks, and I wanted to try it again. And one is the shapest way. So I did like a weak soul cure, and then I then I hung them on my porch. The thing that got me nervous was, the porch cabin during the day was getting a little warm, and it was kind of melting my fat a little bit and all that. Yeah, where's the best spot to hang these suckers up? Where I'm going to get consistent? Did you, did you, did you, did you salt them flat and then roll them after some of the initial

[32:05] cure or what do you do? Are you curing them fine? I had him like sitting at a half inch or saw it with like a half inch of salt on top of them. Right. And so then after you hang them, they're already basically an equalization stage and they're pretty thin, right? I mean, they're pretty thin and like most of it's fat. I think you're all right. I mean, like I just, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I would keep it a little bit cooler. Are you a spice on your Guanchale guy or not? You know what? I'm pretty sure I had like allspice or juniper, but I can't remember them. Yeah, I like that. I'm a huge Guancali fan. I wouldn't worry about it overly much. Look, it's thin and it's very high in fat and, um, you added some curing salt to it. Nothing bad, I think, is gonna happen, right? Okay. So I could just let it rip. It's okay if that is rendering out a little bit. Midday. Dripping on my... I mean, uh, I mean, from a safety standpoint, yeah. I mean, like, you don't want, you don't want that happening. I don't think. You know what I mean? Like, but like, uh, I think from a safety standpoint, you should be all right. Okay, cool. All right. Cool. Hey, speaking of fat. I took, you know how, like, you know how, like, different pork fads have different textures, depending where they come from? Yeah. Yeah. So, like, uh, one of the things I did in the spinzle is I took, it's not, I haven't posted it yet, but one of the things that

[33:25] is the centrifuge I'm working on. One of the things I did was I took regular rendered lard, right? So regular rendered large really hard to bake with because it's too unsaturated, right? It's not like the back, you know, the back lard or the leaf lard or any of that stuff. So what I did was I took regular lard and spun it in the spinsaw with some ice cubes around the outside of the

[33:44] of the bowl, and I was able to get hard lard out of it that I can bake pastry with and then a

[33:51] soft like kind of pig oil that I can use for frying stuff. Pre sweet. best biscuits, right? Oh, best biscuits, not Nastasia cares, but yeah, best pie. Like lard biscuits, lard pie. I mean, there's, look, lard was the primary fat for a whole group of people, right?

[34:11] I mean, like, you know, butter was relatively expensive. Um, and, you know, uh, you know, nut oils and or olive oils were not available to, like, you know, a lot of people

[34:21] in uh, in the north of Europe. So in America. And so Lard was the stuff. You know what I mean? Like Lard was the way to go. Lord. Also, my large piece is kind of extra trimming the fat off of briskets and things like that, just to render it

[34:37] down, because what you end up doing, you end up spending a ton of money on olive oil, you know, but meanwhile, you're throwing away perfectly good cooking fat every time you trim a piece of pork or a piece of beef. Yeah, and I think if you do that stuff, render it down, you're good to go, right? Yeah, I do the pressure. I do pressure cooker rendering, typically, because it's easier. I mean, I think like saving fat, I think it's a bad rap because the only fat that most people save is bacon fat and the problem with

[35:04] bacon. Yeah. Yeah, you're shot, you're shot. Yeah, I pressed the corn beef for Christmas. You trim the fat off the brisket. You got yourself 2 weeks worth of fries fat. Yeah? Definitely true. All right, save the fat, my brother. and everything, all right? All right, cool. Let us know how they go on Charlie turns out. It's true. save the fat. The problem with bacon fat people, obviously, is that it goes rancid fairly quickly. So, and it's been exposed to such a high temperature during the bacon cooking. It's got like all salt in it. There's everything that can assault fat is happening inside of bacon fat. So cooking something in bacon fat right away is delicious, but saving the bacon fat for a long time can be problematic because it develops

[35:53] rancidity very quickly. You think, oh my god, Nastasia, you're wearing the shirt. Nastasi Lopez is wearing her, for those of you that don't know. There's there's one thing on earth that Nastasia loves, and that is the rank and bass production of Rudolph the

[36:11] red-nosed reindeer. Uh, and she is wearing, so in that production is uh, an abominable snowman, but he's not called the, he's called the

[36:22] Abominable or the Bumble. And she is wearing a bumble sweater. And in fact, not just that, but your shirt is incorrect because he has teeth. And he's hanging the mistletoe. So the bumble who hangs the missile or the, you know, mistletoe stuff is a toothless bumble. So, you know. I can black those out. This is not the official rank and bass Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer. Right, but it's the only one we can afford to play. I have you know, it's Burl Ives that sings Rudolph the

[36:55] Red-nosed Reindeer. We can only afford the general MIDI version, sorry. But Bert Lives is dead. Can't I guess we still have to pay him? Somebody still owns it. The ranking a bass corporation. Wow. goes way up the way up the chain. Wow. rough. Dude, like Nothing sacred. Let me tell you something. Like, Christmas music with, like, anything midi is like, unless it's like Super Mario Brothers, like all the soul has been removed. You know what I mean? Anyway, back to Carlos and the Pine Nuts. You pop a handful in your mouth, one by one, crack the shell, enjoy the nut, spit it out. If you drive through New Mexico and Arizona, you'll see vans parked on the side of the road with

[37:36] Piñon painted on the side in big red letters, they fetch a pretty penny. haven't been to Arizona in like 2 decades. I need to go back. I love the way Arizona smells sometimes. Like the desert has a very particular smell, especially if it's a little moist, if it's not like one of those

[37:51] plus hot days they have over there. Uh, they fetch a pretty penny, usually upwards of $20 a pound. I have a friend who sells them and they roast them in a big metal drum over an open

[38:00] flame similar to how we roast green chilies. I'll be in New Mexico for the holidays and we'll make sure to replenish my stash. If you're interested in trying some. I can part ways with a bit and send you some to drive. I'd love it. Yeah, please. I find that tastes better than pre-shelled European and Chinese from the store, but I know I'm biased. Happy holidays and best of luck with the spins off. Thanks, yeah. By the way, people, by the way, just, you know what? Pre-order the freaking spin zone. Will you pre-order the freaking spins all? Will you pre-order? Will you do me a favor and when you pre-order the freaking spin, so listen, we need enough people who are early adopters who have the

[38:35] cash. Look, what do you need me to see it do? What do you need? What do you need? I've done citrus. I've done tomatoes. I've done coffee. I've done fat fractionation. I've done, uh, what else, Nastasia? I've done like gin. I've done I've done yogurt and balanne. I done butter. You've done chocolate butter. I've done, I've done, what do you need? You're gonna do wheatgrassing. Oh, wheat grass taste terrible. Let me tell you something. I'll give you guys thing. So like, uh, so I was trying to do something for, we're doing the 12 days of Christmas with the spins all 12 days of spinning all, spinning

[39:07] everything. And so I, uh, Paul Adams, who's, you know, helping us out. He was like, uh, six, six cheeses d-weighing. And then you get like ricotta. I was like, oh, genius. So I get ricotta, but I'm doing it, not doing it for taste. So I don't go to Di Palo's and get the nice ricotta. I go to, you know, the supermarket and buy garbage brand parade, you know, garbage ricotta. I put it in, I spin it. Nothing. I look at it and 0 my god, the ricotta is so heavily stabilized with Xanthan,

[39:37] Guar, and LBG that it doesn't get rid of any of its way, even when it's like, you know what I mean? I wish I wish I had my 4000 G centrifuge running or I would have thrown it in that just to see whether it could do anything to it. But it was like so hyper stabilized. So I was so pissed. Then I took wheat grass, right? So wheat grass is poison. I took wheat grass and I put it in my Vita Prep. I hit it with every enzyme in the book, right? And I got actually a good amount of wheatgrass juice out of it, and I tasted it, and I was like, yes, the spins all can do this, but you should not do this. I was like, this is not something you should do. This stuff tastes. But people do it. This is horrific. And it's a lot of work. I mean, like, in other words, you take, you take $5 worth of wheatgrass and you get one little shot out of that $5 worth of freaking

[40:25] wheatgrass. So you're spending $5 and you're working hard to get something that tastes poisonous. Like, why would anyone do that? Do you like this stuff? No. No, I don't. You know what it does? It smells good. It smells almost like fresh pressed olive oil. It's got like a kind of green. I think you're supposed to hold your nose when you drink it, right? Or, you know what? Or I'll only drink stuff that tastes good. How about that instead? Michael writes in on cider. I like fresh cider and hard cider, but my favorite is in between. The stuff you get when you leave fresh cider in the fridge too long and it just gets slightly effervescent alcoholic and less sweet. Conveniently for my stingy and lazy butt, the cheap pasteurized cider with potassium sorbet works great. I ferment it with champagne yeast, and it stops right about at the point I like. Questions. Any safety concerns when bottling it compared with drier, more alcoholic cider? I expect the sorbait and atmosphere to be even more hostile to mold than yeast, and the acid should inhibit bacterial pathogens, but I'm still concerned about the sugar.

[41:25] Ah, you know, look, I looked it. So, remember, there's keying is a whole technique of making cider specifically where the fermentation is

[41:34] arrested and there's sugar left in the bottle. And I couldn't find any records of safety issues with Keith Cider anywhere. I couldn't find anything, nothing. Anyway, is the yeast killed or just inhibited by the sorbet? Can I expect priming the bottle of sugar to restart fermentation or do I just need to bottle it before primary fermentation ends? Uh, okay. And then how come pasteurized cider stays cloudy forever? Well, raw cider sediments out eventually,

[42:03] gelatinize, gelatinized apple starch? That's the other question. That's how I let you know that that's a question part. Thanks, Michael. Here's my feelings on this. First of all, I don't think it's starch. I think something happens with the pectin where it doesn't settle out once it's cooked, although I don't know. It was interesting to look at it. It could be a starch thing, but I doubt it. I do know that even in a centrifuge, pasteurized apple cider is more of a pain, much, much, much more of a pain, uh, to filter out

[42:29] than uh, or to sentiment out than um, fresh apple juice or uh, uncooked uh, apple, you know, what you would call cider. It's much, much more difficult. I had always described it to because a lot of our apples don't really contain any starch because if they did contain starch, some apples do. But, you know, most apples don't have that much starch, otherwise they'd be difficult for me to clarify at all because starch doesn't do that much. So I know for a fact that cooked apple juice can be a pain in the butt. I've always ascribed that to pecknin, although I could be wrong because I've never actually investigated it. I don't really have the tools to investigate it. Um, As to your other thing, what's going on with the sorbets? So, sorbet does a number of things. First of all, the amount of inhibition that sorbet

[43:13] provides for yeast and other things growing is highly dependent on the alcohol concentration. So the higher the uh, alcohol concentration, the less sorbet is required

[43:24] for um, for uh, inhibition, uh, for growth uh, inhibition. Also, sorbet tends to sorbet won't necessarily kill, this is what I've read. Sorbet won't necessarily or doesn't kill yeast. What it does is prevent yeast from growing. So, um, and you know, prevent them from, uh, you know, doing their thing. At a certain level, it will also, I think, you know, kind of wipe them out. But, you know, at the levels we're using it, it's an inhibition to growth. So if you if you take a champagne yeast and you pitch it into a starter,

[43:59] right? So that the yeast can become active and you have all these yeast cells that are alive, they can keep fermenting in the sorbet up to the level where the alcohol

[44:07] in the sorbet match and they stop working, and then fermentation won't restart at that point.

[44:14] So I think you might have problems, adding more sugar and getting it to start again, unless you pitched a fresh starter with maybe with a little bit of sugar, in which case you might be able to get it to go

[44:26] again. But that's my feeling, and that's kind of how the sorbet works. So a sorbet with sorbet. I think that your kind of auto-kieving situation here is due, uh, in keeping, the way it works, is you have uh, pectin, the pectin traps the yeast nutrients, and the

[44:43] yeast, the lack of yeast nutrients means that they can't keep producing up to their finished

[44:48] level. So they're inhibited by the alcohol earlier than they otherwise would be, and you're left with residual sugar. Um, and I think once they do that at the end, they hit it with sorbet just to stop anything else from growing in it. But in your case, you're not doing that, you're just

[45:02] pre-inhibiting it with sorbait and letting it ferment up to where it gets to. So anyway, I would assume that different brands of cider will have different interactions, depending on how much sorbet they put into it. anyway. Caesar Delgado writes in about beer. Hey, Nastasia, Dave, Dave, and Guest in case there is one. Long time listener, 1st time emailer. I'm wondering what the maximum temperature this spins all can handle. I homebrew beer and was wondering if I could use it to spin out all the hops and other gunk that come out of the kettle before passing the beer through the chiller. From what I know, the cold break, which are the solids that precipitate after chilling

[45:36] beer, are good for fermentation, but all of the hot breaks, solids that form in the kettle due to boiling, and hop residues are best kept out of the

[45:44] carboy. I figure the spins all as continuously would be great for doing that if it can survive boiling hot wort, that is, as well as anyone try to spin the yeast out from bottle conditioned beers to harvest the yeast on the prototype.

[45:55] I figured you could run Star Sand through it, which is a sanitizer, and Stasi now that you give a rat behind. for a couple of minutes to make sure it's sanitized and then pour the bottle of drags into it. It might be a fun experiment for yeast wranglers. In fact, um, uh, in fact, Caesar is from Caesar Delgado. In fact, I have some really nice beers that were sent to me by Blapins to spin

[46:21] out. I drank one. It was delicious. The name, for some reason, just went right out of my head. But I'm going to try to harvest the other 2 yeast, but the thing is, I have to find something to pitch it into, and then like put it into a liquid and mail it back up so someone can repitch it and see whether it works.

[46:35] But yes, I am considering doing it. I'm going to do that probably right after I get back from New Year's. The other thing is, uh, I think it'll handle, it's not going to be 100% boiling by the time it hits the rotor, uh, because it has to go through the peristaltic pump first. You're going to have to get rid of any big residue because like leaves tend to kind of get clogged in the peristaltic pump as they go through, but anything smaller than like

[47:00] leaf, like little fine particles is fine, like albumen particles all fine. And it should handle it fine because this dishwasher is safe. I've run, uh, I've run boiling water through it to do, I forget what I was

[47:12] doing. What was I doing? I was running boiling water. Oh, for nut milk. I basically, the way I did nut milk because I did a very, very stiff nut milk and then let that go through because I didn't want to have to do double work, you know, to blend

[47:24] twice. I blended all the nuts in the Vitaprep once, sucked it through the spins all, and then just put boiling water through it, not boiling,

[47:30] but like, you know, simmer, simmer, I boiled it in the microwave and then just pumped it through to kind of steep out the rest of the nut milk products to make nut milk.

[47:37] So at least in the prototype, and the prototype is less tough than the real one. So yeah, it should handle those temperatures just fine. Uh, okay. Uh, we have uh, 2 questions from Patrick. Patrick says, how much time have we got? Yeah, 2 minutes. All right. Thanks for holding the show together. I'm going through the back catalog and have begun to develop a theory. This is about you, Nastasia, that the presence of a stern organized woman might be the best treatment option for the management of adult ADHD. Without your, this is Eunastasia's influence. I fear that Dave might just be holed up in a kitchen lab somewhere, filling up notebooks with information that would otherwise never see the light of

[48:14] day. That said, I think a lot of us listeners would like to hear you chime in more on the show. You can see yourself organized assessment. Stern, I agree with. Stern, I'll agree with. Speaking of Stern, last week we had we had sun chokes here. After we had the McGee conversation. Stasi went out and ordered a giant sunchoke pile of sunchokes. And did you get your butt sun soaked? Yeah, my stomach was not so good. You were fine? I mean, yeah, that was fine. Really? Yeah. Yeah, that was fine. I mean, you know, I'm an animal, though. Yes, that's true. Anyway, here are the questions we have from Patrick. When I'm reducing liquids, I frequently see no visible evaporation when the

[48:56] saucepan is on the flame, but then a ton of evaporation as soon as I pull it off. What's going on there? Is it actually invisibly evaporating while more on the flame, uh, on the flame or does it speed up reduction to pull the pan and stir periodically, which seems to be how I get maximum visible

[49:10] evaporation? I think what's going on here is that, um, when you have it over the flame, you have a lot of hot vapor coming around the sides of the pan and up, and you are inhibiting the condensation of the water that's coming off of the pan because of the extra

[49:27] heat. And as soon as you pull it off and you don't have that extra like heat around the outside, it takes a lot less time for the water vapor to

[49:37] condense. And so you see less visible vapor, but there is probably much more actual liquid coming off of

[49:44] it when it's on the flame. It's a guess. What do you think, status? Yes. Okay. She's like, I wasn't listening. I'm texting somebody. Second, and probably more theoretically, I often get preposterously hung over from drinking craft

[49:55] beers for a long time. I assume this was just a pure rate of alcohol consumption issue that was getting fuzzed up by variable ABVs

[50:01] and serving sizes. I've been paying closer attention to actual total alcohol consumption and running into situations where I've woken up feeling like crap from the craft beer alcohol equivalent of

[50:10] 2.5 80 proof shots, which would normally not even register the next morning for me. Any idea what's going on here scientifically. Thanks for doing the show. I try hard to redeem my morning commute with informative but reasonably entertaining things to listen

[50:23] to, and y'all nail that balance, like a steak with just enough fat on it. Let me answer your question before your sign off thing. I think, look, the cause of hangovers has been studied kind of extensively recently. I don't think it's 100% determined. I haven't looked at the research in the past like 3 or 4 years, but like prior to that, it was kind of shown that, for instance, hangovers are not necessarily dehydration related because people used to think that it was dehydration. Instead, it's just in mimics kind of what goes on with dehydration. One of the other theories is that things that are higher in congeners, right? Like, so things like fusel oils, higher alcohols, other fermentation things can lead to a angle. I don't think it's necessarily been proven. However, if you're drinking craft beers, so when you're not drinking a craft beer, you're probably drinking a lager. Lager is going to happen at low temperatures, produces relatively fewer congeners, fewer higher alcohols, fewer

[51:14] ass, few of all these things. So, like, higher temperatures, more during fermentation,

[51:21] which, I guess, can happen in a lot of craft beers and aren't being lagered, right? Because they're doing it more at ale temperatures. We're talking about ales here. They can develop a lot more of these congeners, which we perceive as being good taste, but maybe can lead to hangovers. So, um, maybe that's what's going on. I don't know, take a look at that. Okay, one more thought before I sign off. I have no, I mean, no economic position to drop $700 on kitchen equipment, but I really believe in the project and want to talk about the

[51:47] spinsole and want to see this thing work. Is there any way you could open up the spins all Kickstarter to general supporter donations? I think... Yeah, I think it is, but here's the idea. Here's the Patrick's idea. After all the hours, the cooking issues I listen to, I'd love to drop $20 in the hat and imagine there's a lot of others like me as well. Even better, you could do some sort of raffle where everyone that donates 20 or 50 to the Kickstarter gets entered in a drawing to win a

[52:09] spin zone. It's interesting idea. a Good idea. Anyway, so listen, uh, when you're making your holiday uh, meats, if

[52:16] you were doing a roast, let me just suggest, I said this before, the day before, the day before, don't bother doing anything to it, just get it in a bag. Maybe it already came in a bag. Low temperature cook it. I'm talking about rib roast here. Low temperature cook it through to like 55 degrees, right? For a long time. Reb, you don't have to watch it. Then pull it out, and then the day of, right? Just put it in a high heat and just put a thermometer and as soon as the inside of the meat gets even barely warm, like enough so that it's just service temperature ready. The sucker's done. The sucker's done. You don't have to worry about it. Low temperature for insurance people, for insurance. Not necessarily for cooking effect, but at the holidays, what you want with your fantastically expensive rib roast that you're serving to your whole family and praying it comes out. Is you just don't want it undercooked in the middle and you don't want it overcooked? You just want low temperature for insurance. And with that, Merry Christmas, happy holidays, cooking issues.

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