Hello, you're listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. I am uh Dave Arnold, the host of Cooking Issues, the show where you call in and ask all sorts of cooking related questions, whether technical or not. Uh today I'm in the studio with uh Nastasha Lopez's cooking cooking issues owned hammer and special guest. We're very excited to have Jeffrey Steingarden, one of the great writers on food uh of all times, the food critic of Vogue and uh personal friend of mine. Hi, Jeffrey, thanks for coming.
Hi, Dave. Hi, Natasha. So uh actually we have some email questions in while we're waiting for oh, by the way, the number to call 718-497-2128-718-497-2128. Uh, don't miss this opportunity to call in and ask Jeffrey a question. Uh we had some email questions that came in, um, kind of, you know, stirring things up a little bit.
Uh Greg wants to know, uh, I'm pretty sure Jeffrey can't answer this but for contractual reasons, I guess, but he has to ask, really, how seriously do you take Iron Chef America? It seems like this is really just a faux competition, and it's a great way to get publicity for great regional chef cooking more than national expo uh uh for more national exposure. What do you what is your response? You don't have to answer this if you don't want to. Oh, I'd love to answer it.
Oh, perfect. Um I take it seriously, and I've found out about chefs by being a judge. The um uh I almost never really light into a chef from outside of New York. Because they're usually a a hero in their hometown. Uh the last thing they need is to to be on the show and uh and have their reputation destroyed.
The only people I'm really mean to are the iron chefs when they do something that's not to uh not particularly good or really awful and uh or or disgusting. And um people from out of town obviously start looking for national publicity. Um and the good ones, like David Kinch, for example. David told me that after his appearance on Iron Chef he won. Uh that he's never had an empty seat in his restaurant, which is as you may know, in a very remote place in in um Silicon Valley.
I can't even remember the name of the town. Los Gatos. Mountain View or you know, one of those. It's in Los Gatos, isn't it? What?
Isn't it Los Gatos manies? But it's only remote to Jeffrey because he lives in New York and then was in Southern California, so he doesn't believe in that northern California source. I know so I like Northern California, but this is in uh in between. Also Los Gatos uh means the cats. Yeah, yeah, not doesn't both less.
That's true. And by the way, on a personal note, uh I've known Jeffrey many years and he does take this sort of thing very seriously. There's there's very little about food that he does not take seriously. Um that has been my been my experience. We have two callers apparently, so rather than make them wait, why don't we uh why don't we take one of them?
Okay. Hello? Hey, uh I have a question. Um I wanna know like food myth. You know, people say you can't eat oysters uh without if a month doesn't have an R in it, and you know, white wine with fish.
I was wondering if you could like dispel some of I mean, including that oyster one, dispel or confirm some of these food myths that uh my generation grew up with. Uh um, I don't know what generation yours is. Actually, you sound familiar. I I I think I recognize that voice. I believe that's the one and only Patrick Martins, but I'm not sure.
I figured I could call in rather than walk across the street. I see. Well, actually, the whole idea of oysters in a month with R is only that you're s it is to not the greatest thing to have oysters um in um you know, from warm water. That's why I'm always a little suspicious of uh Gulf oysters. Yeah.
And the Gulf Oysters are also, I mean, before the oil that's spilled and everything, they were the only ones that used to possibly give the uh you know, contain vibrio. And um Right, which is why they're subjected to that ultra high pasturiz uh ultra high pressure pasteurization technique, which I've never tasted whether they're any good or not after that's been done, you know, where they put it under I've never tasted it at all, but why bother when you can have real oysters? Yeah, that's true. That's true. Um now as for white wine fish, no, I that's all silly and uh and um Yeah.
But you know, white wine doesn't generally go with steak. I mean it's it's generally too weak, but uh too soft. But red wine goes with fish, we know that that right. Yeah, yeah. They they've cut him off, so he he can no longer reply to us, but I'm sure he's agreeing.
Well, I wonder whether he knows any um uh uh old wives tales stuff regarding pig jowls, because I just ordered a pink gel from him. Really? Well I'm sure that'll go with with many different things depending on how you how you cook it. Right. Are you gonna cure it or are you gonna cook it?
I did cure it. Oh yeah? But only for a short time. I mean I actually got the recipe from Carlo at Verbertus. Oh, nice.
All right. Well, a very fine chef. You'll have to invite me to try some. Do we still have that second caller on the line? I think so.
Yes. Hello? Hello. Hi. How are you guys doing?
Doing well, doing well. Excellent. So I actually have uh sort of continuing the the non technical question theme today. Um young chefs and and aspiring Tamaliers are always sort of admonished to develop and expand their palates. I figured you guys and Mr.
Seingarden would be a great place to start with. What does that mean? How do you go about developing your palate? Is that a active process? Is that something that just develops over a lifetime of work?
Well, you you happen to hit one of Jeffrey's big pet pees about people that talk about food in general is that they haven't eaten enough, so I'm gonna give it to uh Jeffrey. But I remember there was a uh a young man who was just graduating but from high school. He wanted to be a food writer or a chef, but and it turned out that he was kosher I mean that he had a grown up kosher and I ban he kept on wanting to know what book to read or but and I told him the main thing is just eat everything you can. I mean you've eaten so little in your life and um but it also kind of helps t to eat new things with people who know. So for example, if you go to Italy for the first time, um and you're eating food you've never had before, or you or you've only had it in America, then it kind of prepays to eat with a native, I mean with the native who knows what the uh you know what he or she is doing, t to uh just so you can get a sense for what you're looking for.
There's also all of us have about the same taste buds. I mean, there are super tasters, but I don't have to worry too much about them. But you develop your uh your sense of taste or your uh uh your ability to you know to distinguish, I think, uh by putting words on it. And um therefore, all those taste words that sound so uh so pretend well the ones that are too abstract are obviously too pretentious. But taste words can be very, very useful.
And then finally in the uh in the introduction to my first book, uh um I described how I became a perfect omnivore by undergoing uh an intense program that I had devised myself. And uh and it was um I wanted it to rid myself of all preferences, um, positive and negative. So for example, whenever I would go to a restaurant, a good restaurant, I would order only things I didn't like, but or that I thought I didn't like. What about NATO? Down, that was easy.
But to later, about a year later, um, I I uh did become a uh I'm an absolutely perfect omnivore by um well by eating some really delicious um bamboo worms, uh deep fried bamboo's uh uh in Thailand, they're like French fries, just as long as you don't look at the little face on the end. And um and I was in India, I was in that paid in Punjab, and I had some home cooked uh meals, and those desserts were just delicious when they're made right. So you've come to terms with the aptly named Barfey? Oh, yes. Yeah, okay.
Uh but you know, this advice from Jeffrey, I think really you should take this to heart. I think to become a critical cook or a critical eader, even if you don't uh like something, it's wise to eat enough of it so that you can at least distinguish what's going on, uh, even if you can't make yourself like it, as Jeffrey was able to. Um, I think we have another caller. Yes, we do. All right.
Hello. Hi. Hello. My name Hi, this is Matthew. I'm actually calling you from the Los Angeles International Airport getting ready to take a flight.
But I didn't want to miss the opportunity to ask you this question. Where are you going? I'm going to Sacramento today. Not as far away, huh? Uh dreaming.
Yeah. Sacramento's a really bad food city, by the way, but that's a whole other subject. Wow. But you know, there is a uh there's a very good Shi, a very good sushi place uh in Los Angeles, and I'm not one of those uh you know who thinks that Los Angeles is is overflowing with good sushi places. Um but there's sushi mori, and he uh grows his own uh rice near Sacramento.
Oh, really? Yeah, so there's an example of a good thing about Sacramento. Since you're in the airport though, well, let me get to your question before they make you get on your airplane. You got it. I I know that you've been a guest judge on Iron Chef quite frequently.
Yes. And my question is given how much they do and the very narrow time period they have to cook and all the shortcuts they have to take, how good is the food really? How does it compare to say uh uh a really good first class restaurant in New York or Los Angeles? Good question. Well, I was surprised at how uh good the food was.
Um obviously it's not always good, but almost all the time the actual Iron Chefs, I mean I was naturally I was I was skeptical about it all. Um the main three Iron Chefs and also Michael Simon, you know, you really want to eat what they're cooking. And um or most of the dishes that they're cooking. Um and a lot of the challenges too. Now I'm I'm trying to think of see this is yuppie food.
But you have to understand that. It's um the Mary Sue and uh pan uh uh Pan Susan and then maybe only one other two other two other cooks that I've seen have actually cooked to uh what you might call old fashioned food. Food that's extremely good, but it's not colorful. It's not in small pieces, it's not um intensely flavored. It's probably you might call it comfort food.
That doesn't go so well in Iron Chef. Um did they win? No, they lost, but they probably should have won. But uh their food was very good. Um I think it may have been my fault that they didn't win, actually.
I feel bad. Because they're very good coach, and their food is just so good to eat. It doesn't uh you know, surprise you, it doesn't astound you. It's um well so anyway, that's what I have to say. It but you know the food can be very good, but as I say, it is yuppie food.
But but uh food that is is uh made to kind of surprise you. Um combinations you've never had before. It's uh the it's uh very hard to judge combinations you've never had before. Um is um for example, Wiley Dufresne but when he was a challenger, he did a f a fabulous job until dessert. Right, and then there was a combination, there was a smear of uh by the way, he's Dave's brother-in-law.
And I was at the taping for this, so I have some hard feelings about this, so yes. And it was a papa in the dessert there was a smear of chocolate and a smear of licorice. First of all, Jeffrey hates this sort of brushwork on a plate. He has a personal bias against it. He actually thinks it's evil.
No, I actually did not have a personal bias then. I do have a personal bias now, uh, only because you have to work very hard to get that stuff off the plate into your mouth. And uh and if it's really good, why do you have to do that? Uh you know, and the thing on this dessert, it was a coffee was it coffee flavored couscous, or is that not in the dessert? It's been a long time uh since that happened.
But uh it was between Mario Batali and my brother in law Wiley Dufresne, and I'm sure I tasted none of it. I'm sure that uh Mario's food was delicious, right? Uh, Wiley had attempted a much more kind of uh a mental thing, a a text a textural tasting of tilapia. tilapia, which is a vile, vile, vile fish. Mario, I think made the smart play, which is uh, you know, cover the tilapia with all sorts of flavorful stuff, and uh Wiley, I think, took the harder and I guess in the end, less successful route of uh trying to work with the fish itself.
What do you what are your thoughts? Uh, they I would agree with you if you were correct. I love that. Oh man. In my story, in my metal score, because you don't actually score until the end, Wiley was winning by a hair, because Mario is very hard to beat.
I mean, he's so but he knows how to do Iron Shaf, right? Or or knew he's not on it anymore, uh because he's probably too rich. Um Mario was fantastic, but and also but also very inventive, too. So it but it wasn't as though Mario, you know, took a a cubic a um say you know a cubic centimeter of a tilapia and uh had covered it with spaghetti or something. It was like two cubic centimeters.
Tilapia is an evil fish and uh very bad fish, but in any event Well wait, let's get to the nitty-gritty. Remember how they killed some live tilapia on that, and I believe Mario used one of the live tilapia that was killed, served it to the other judge, and she found it inedible because it was too tough, and then said that it wasn't Mario's fault, it was the fish's fault. This was cut from the airing, but basically she got served a piece of ex basically inedible tilapia, and how did that not get put into the store scorings? Do you remember this? I'm sure it was.
My story, however, didn't involve her tough fish. Uh because how do I know that it was tough? Right. Well, I actually asked her for a piece. Oh, she didn't give it to you?
I don't remember whether she gave it to I don't remember that. But as I was saying while he was not marked out for anything else he did, his food was sort of uh compared to most of his food, conventional and delicious. I mean after all but after all he worked at uh the the uh but very successfully Jean George. I mean while he knows how to cook many kinds of food but it was only the dessert. No one liked the dessert.
So but you know I guess he got way marked off because of that. It was only the dessert Dave it was not anything else. All right all right well well before we go to our first commercial break I will answer one of the caller one more I'll take the caller and then after the commercial break I'll answer an email question about uh purging clams. All right caller Hello Hello Hi. Hi.
W what is your question? Oh great I'm on the air. Yep. Excellent. Um I have a souffle related question.
Um so I'm a private chef and my main client loves it when I make a souffle. Problem with the souffle you have to start it and finish it when you're gonna serve it. So I've been trying to think of ways of pre making it. Um one idea I had which I tried and failed last night was to use an ISI thermo whip. Um and I just wanted to pick your brain it didn't didn't seem to work.
I put about into a pint size ISI whipper um about four egg egg whites and it it just didn't foam up. I I foamed it with two nitrous oxide containers and it just it didn't do anything. Um you well did you get fired? Did I get what? That's Jeffrey for you because he he doesn't like the whole egg white egg white foam thing.
Uh most of the time when you're phoning, Dave? Yeah, I'm saying you wouldn't like just a straight egg white f egg white foam out of an ISI. Oh no, he didn't serve it to his uh he's testing, he didn't serve it to his client. Oh, I see. Right?
You didn't serve it to him. No, no, no, I I definitely didn't. Um I've never foamed directly egg whites in an ISI. Have you, Jeffrey? Egg whites tried to do it directly?
Yes, I tried it. Without success or no? I didn't spend enough time on it. Uh most people who do pre-made souffles use uh a stabilizer of some sort, like a carrageenin, uh to stabilize the foam. I think they make it somewhat traditionally and then um stabilize it and uh and then cut it into pucks and then uh bake it and it rises up.
Uh I can think of cuisine solutions uh has a commercial preparation based on uh that uses this and it's I believe based on carrageenan and Xanthan gum along with the regular uh base for a souffle. Have you done any experiments with pre-made souffles, Jeffrey, at all? Not exactly pre-made. I remember uh a long time ago, and I wish that I could remember the details, but I probably have them somewhere on my notes. There was a restaurant in Paris, uh there is a restaurant in Paris that called La Regulade.
It was uh the uh first of the cheap bistrobes. I mean, the the uh cheap bistrobes with excellent young chefs. Maybe ten years ago, and one thing he was famous for was his uh you know, Grand Marnier souffles. Um and I was in the kitchen watching him, um, and he showed me that how during the baking, the uh souffle would rise to the top, uh, and then he'd open the oven door and it would sink, and then he'd shut the oven door again and it would rise and it would rise again. I but in other words, it was not so uh duh delicate that you had to you know not even talk loud around it.
Right, right. And um I can't remember the formula, but I'm sure there was no uh so-called molecular so-called gastronomy. Right. Oh, the the awful term. Well, look, here a souffle is basically this.
You take and you make a base that's somewhat pre aerated, right? And then you bake it so that the it it inflates by uh by created steam and by the uh bubbles that are inside are expanding, or actually both. Uh uh when it gets hot enough, it sets, and if you're good at it, the inside stays custody and delicious. So the way to make it stick around for a long time is to somehow set that initial base with something that when it's heated will release itself and allow itself to expand. So things like uh I've never experimented, things like gelatin, although gelatin's not free sauce stable, things like kerragen that are gonna melt once they get up above about 120 degrees, which is really below uh Fahrenheit, which is below or 140 if I have to look it up, uh which is you know below where the maximum expansion of this thing takes place.
So you want to use a thermally reversible gelling or stabilizing agent or a combination of them that will allow you to get the rise that you want uh after the stuff remelts but will gel up at a lower temperature. I I don't have a particular recipe, but that's the that's the tactic I would take. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Uh all right, thank you so much for your call.
I th do we have to go to a break or we have time? We have to go to the Okay, we have we have to go to a commercial break, but please call in 718 497 2128, 718 497 21 uh 28 for the uh great Jeffrey Steingarden. Remember, he pulls no punches. I don't want to people to know you're in here. How you feel, fellas?
Sure getting down. Look at him. We're gonna have a bunk good time. We're gonna have a bunk good time. We're gonna have a bunk good time.
We're gonna have a bunk good time. Now take them up, Brad. We've gotta take you high. All right. Yeah, let's go on.
We're gonna take you high. Brother. Yeah. Now I won't have a body. Let Red blow up by two cores.
Let's go and do that with dinner. Yeah, all right. I'm gonna get that belly with a little horn over there. Brad, get it take us higher. Yeah.
Take us higher. Hello, this is Dave Arnold. You're listening to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. Call in with your questions for Jeffrey Steingarden at 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
And before we get on to our next caller, uh, we had a question uh come in about purging clams beforehand, presumably to get the uh sand out. This comes from uh Adam Lazaric and he's a chef down in Philadelphia and he wants to know whether any of these purging uh methods really work. Salt water, freshwater, cornmeal, etcetera. I would not purge a uh clam in in freshwater because they uh the ones we usually get, the hard shell clams are uh they're seawater animals. I know from experience that uh if you put uh clam in flavored uh water that like uh for instance uh bacon uh bacon and onion soup that has the same amount of salt in it as the ocean, that they will open up, eat that and and get flavored like delicious bacon onion soup because this is something that I've done.
Um and then you eat them raw, then it tastes like bacon onion soup. Uh so I know I know that works. The the cornmeal presumably is um to get them to start eating. Uh I don't know whether there's any truth to whether the cornmeal it really makes them eat. I don't know why it would be cornmeal, let's say, and not flour or s or something else like that.
Presumably some of the starch from the cornmeal is gonna dissolve and make them uh make them eat it, whereas the rest sinks to the bottom. Maybe that's why cornmeal, but I don't I I wasn't able to find any specific studies. But the the premise behind putting cornmeal in the clams is to get the clams to start to start eating. Um David, what about snails? Uh I try getting snails to eat rosemary ones to purge them out in the old uh uh Spanish style.
Uh I was not successful. They died and smelled god awful, and my wife basically forbade me from ever running an experiment on snails in the bathroom again. Well, I would do it. Oh, don't do it in the bathroom, do it in the bedroom. Yeah, well, I think that might get me in even more even more trouble.
But there certainly it's but you're uh in the in the kind of uh the you know a classic style of paella uh from Valencia. You purge the snails not just for a day, for a whole period of time on herbs so that they taste like rosemary. And um I've never tried that. But I believe it. I've tried it unsuccessfully, and uh my friend Johnny Azini and I in London tried to fatten snails on milk, also with only marginal success.
That's an old Roman uh technique. So uh I have not had much luck with the So it's your theory that the Romans and the and the Spanish are lying. No, it's my theory that I'm bad at it. I see. Yeah, how about Johnny?
He's bad too. Yes, we're both both both bad at it. You know, it uh I guess it takes more than a tech guy and a uh three-star pastry chef to to fatten a snail, at least to try and relearn how to do it. But hey, I'll try it with you sometime if you if you'd like. You want to try.
Uh when I lived half the time in San Diego, uh every once in a while, your garden would be filled with snails. Every leaf would be uh would have a snail on it. Um and so I was going to eat them. But I had to do research first to t on the uh genus and everything and on whether there was going to be any uh poison involved. And by the time I did, and then I started waiting for the next uh snail infestation, there was no more snails.
I I happen to have a copy because I visited a snail farm uh, you know, just north of Tuscany, uh a copy of a book on snail farming that ha it deals with most of the famous European snail varieties. It's written from an Italian viewpoint, but translated into wretched English, so uh I can read it. Uh and we will go over the book together and see whether we can learn anything interesting about feeding snails. But finally I was told that these snails were the same as the snails in Burgundy, uh uh France, and that there was no reason uh not to eat them. Can do an oracle after the reference.
I didn't know that the Italians ate uh land snails. Yep, yeah, I I went and picked a whole bunch. They uh they had a special Etruscan variety that's still grown in very small quantity at uh this farm called La Chocola that's uh way up in uh or however you say snail in in Italian. And uh yeah, and I went and go went to pick them. The variety is called uh rigatello rigatello, something like that, like round like a pinwheel thing.
Yeah, they're good. But uh they're smaller than the bigger ones that you get in Burgundy, they're a lot smaller snail. But they were they were good, they tasted good. Uh do we have a caller or no? Yes.
We have a collar. Hello. I got a question about avocado puree. Alrighty. Uh the whole pit thing, that's just bogus.
Put in the pit in your avocado puree. Correct. That never worked for me at all. Yeah, great. Uh lime juice is what I currently use, about three-quarters of a lime to one avocado.
But uh sometimes it comes up just too acidic for me. Is there anything else I can use to combat the oxidation other than uh citrus juice? Ascorbic acid, straight ascorbic acid vitamin C from the from the um um what what am I talking about? The the pharmacy, whatever. Make sure it's doesn't have rose hip and stuff in it, just straight ascorbic acid vitamin C has a lot more antioxidant power and a lot less of that uh acid taste than using a lime, which is a mixture of ascorbic acid, malic ac acid, cis citric acid, and a pinch of succinic acid.
So the ascorbic acid alone's gonna work. Sodium, uh what is it, sodium metabisulfite? Is that correct, Jeffrey? Sodium metabisulfite also works. Or packing in an actual va uh, you know, a bag that's uh oxygen proof.
Current plastic wraps are not uh are not very good oxygen barriers. No, not at all. But also remember that a lime of all the common citrus uh limes are are the most acidic. Why would you use lime? As you mean as opposed to lemon or yeah.
Yeah. Oh, I actually tried using some users and some other things, thinking that more acidic is better, but uh user can be very acidic, though. Yeah. It's it's not the acid, it's not straight acid. It's not the pH that's preserving it, it's the ascorbic acid itself, which is uh which is an anti uh uh oxidant that is uh actually stopping the browning from happening.
So it's not it's not really that you need to make it more acidic. So you might go for a l less acid fruit with a higher ascorbic acid balance like lemon, or just use straight vitamin C. And a lot of people, you know, uh when they go out to buy vitamin C, they mistakenly buy citric acid, and um citric acid isn't near the uh doesn't have near the antioxidant power that uh ascorbic acid, vitamin C does. Yeah, Dave, can you just mash up a vitamin C pill? I've never done that because I think they have all sorts of other things uh to make it into a pill form like uh you know, like little bits of calcium and whatnot and uh chalk and all this stuff.
Uh I buy the straight straight powder, 100% vitamin C powder. Um but I hope this answers your question. Thank you. And uh we have another caller apparently for coming in. Hello?
Hello? Hi, you're on the air. Hey Dave, well of the show. Uh my name is Jason. I was calling from Brooklyn.
Hey, Jason. Uh I have a question. I'm into juicing and making smoothies and stuff like that, and I've had terrible experiences in the past picking out juicers and blenders and I was leaning towards getting one of the uh you know one of the expensive uh blenders that I've seen on the internet and or on TV, and I was wondering if you had any suggestions on what would be the best uh the best method to go about uh picking out a blender. Um it depends on what you want to juice and what kind of results you want. If the question is should I get a Vitapep, the answer is undoubtedly yes.
Uh right, Jeffrey, or no? Yeah, I mean the Vitapep is an excellent piece of equipment, right? It's not a juicer though. Um I would get a champion juicer for they're doing things like apples and carrots, and I would get a Vitapep for for blending things. I mean the ultimate juicer is a Vitapep, a bunch of enzymes, and a uh centrifuge, but that's a little above most people's uh.
I bought um I bought a different blender uh uh some kind of restaurant show because it was on the floor, and uh at these shows you could often kind of offer them something and they'll let you take it home. Right. Um and it was the big wearing, which is has the uh same power or a little more than the vita prep. Um and I've I've never found anything that is not pulverized within seconds. The only thing you have to do, um I um I didn't do it the first time is to hold down the top because otherwise it goes all over the kitchen.
Well well uh have you ever side by sided uh compared it with the Vitaprep? No, I'd like to. Do you want to bring your Yes, I would like to I would like to do that. I mean uh your Vitapep over? Well, here here's the thing that the the two major blenders that I've used on the power side, so I've not used Jeffrey's wearing, is the the K Tech blender and the Vitaprep blender.
Uh you know, look, when you're talking about blending, there's there's two main things that you're worried about. One is the tip speed of the blades as they spin around because that is what's going to determine how much force is applied to your product. The other thing is uh presumably the sharpness of the blades might matter for some for some applications. And then the one that's not looked at a lot, where Vitaprep actually kind of falls flat sometimes, is in the pitcher design. You want you want good movement of the product through the blades, otherwise you have uh problems with improper mixing and also cavitation where you get the you know big pockets of air where the blades aren't hitting things.
So these are the three main things you want to look for in a blender. Uh you know, and and the power is basically a rating that just uh correlates somewhat with the ability to spin a blade around and to get a high tip speed going. Um but you know they're not really great juicers. Blender is more of a blender. If you want to mix juice, right, the the choices in the low range, I would get a couple hundred dollar champion juicer, which juices most things, won't juice wheatgras or a sugar cane.
Uh but they're great juices. Oh, smoothies. Oh, yeah, then a blender is what you want. But if you're gonna make juice, I mean when I think juice, I'm thinking like a liquid juice. If you have a lot of money, the neutrafaster kind of kicks butt.
That's the big one that that that but they're monsters, man. I uh went to a show uh uh and I, you know, and I'm used to juicing carrots and apples and stuff like that, and we all joke about how we're making our uh forearms into you know giant monstrous forearms by jamming apples case after case into these machines and juicing them. So I walked up to this other, you know, this neutral I think it's neutral faster's name, tried to, you know, I thought I was gonna have to force the apple through, and it basically ate the apple. I didn't even have time to push on it. That's how that's how awesome it is.
But that's like a five thousand dollar problem, right? The champion's like a $200 problem. How much is the Vitaprep? Like a three hundred dollar problem? $400?
Yeah. Um but I I will definitely side by side mine with uh yours, Jeffrey, and we will see we'll see what we think. The reason the K Tech is bad. Dave, didn't you invent a hand blender? I did.
I invented a hand blender that is almost as good as the Vitaprep. It has uh it's got a very high tip speed, it spins at uh 24,000 RPM with a quite a bit of power and it's got a variable speed, uh it's got a variable speed trigger. I mean it's pretty it's nice. It's not I mean it's nice, I'm not gonna lie. Uh when when I make another batch, you will definitely be on the first list of people that will that will get one.
Um, uh let me answer a couple of questions. I have a one that uh a quick one uh from uh Michael at Herbav Herbivarace how do you spell it? Herbivoraceous. Uh wants to know whether there's any transglutaminate, uh transglutaminate is meat glue, it glues meat together, uh actually any proteins. Wants to know if there's any um applications for vegetables.
Uh well, tofu can be strengthened with transglutaminase and uh yogurts and other dairy systems can be strengthened with transglutaminates. You c you can glue vegetables together with transglutaminates, but unfortunately you have to use gelatin as a helper protein, and this is something that Wiley, my brother in law, has uh tested out quite a bit, where he um cross links gelatin to form noodles out of vegetables um using transglutaminates, but unfortunately uh gelatin is not vegetarian. Uh the second question he has is can melons be compressed without a vacuum machine? Uh it's tough. No, yeah.
You can infuse without a vacuum machine, but you can I j uh could I have not found any way to compress uh without a vacuum machine. I have never eaten anything. I believe that was made with meat glue. That was worth eating sorry Dave Wow Wow what does that mean how do you know that you've how how can you first of all the question is what what do you mean? And secondly how would you know whether or not meat glue was used necessarily because you asked them how did you make this in every case?
If someone just hands you a piece of meat that's not necessarily obviously been meat glued you ask them whether it was meat glued or not? So then I would love probably would love to taste it. Most people don't do that most people use it to play tricks. For example your and Nil's turduccin first of all you had a very early version of it. First of all let me just say you had a very early version of it.
Traditional turduccan is an abomination because it cannot possibly be cooked right. It is not true that there is an over K uh okay way to overcook duck. And it's also not true that it's okay to just bathe uh overcooked duck in fat and sauces and then pretend that you haven't overcooked it. Well who said there was well I'm presuming that you're sticking up for traditional turduckin no. No okay uh but you had a very early early version of the meat glue version.
No well first of all as I said you had a very early version. Uh second of all I think you're wrong that uh most things are used for special effects. The the most general use for uh meat glue is just in making uh portions that cook evenly and nicely. I mean that's the majority of the use it's just it doesn't get any of the press well we'll have to discuss the um um I can't remember the name of the cut anymore that they have at um uh um with your brother in law's restaurant to pay a flat iron. Yeah and you take out the uh cartilage piece?
Yeah, yep. Uh because uh although you hate this sort of thing, there are people who don't like to cut around the cartilage when they eat something. Well, it would be better not to have cartilage, but um maybe the flat iron isn't the best uh stake to eat in the first place. You don't think it tastes good? Not as good as uh say the thirty other parts of the cow.
Wow the steer. Yeah. All right. Well, let's let me let me hit one more quick question because I already asked uh one question from Greg, but not the one he actually wanted us to answer. Um so uh Greg emailed us and said, uh can can I talk a little more about reducing the uh capsation level in uh peppers, uh hot peppers habaneros, specifically uh because he uses a surgical technique to remove the inside of the skin to get rid of the uh majority of the capsation to make them not as uh hot.
Presumably he does this because habaneros have a unique and amazing floral aroma and taste. Uh he's interested in using an enzyme that we use called uh uh SPL with a or former one called peelzyme that kind of destroys tissue. He wants to know whether we can basically erase this layer of tissue on the inside of the pepper that has the capsation. Unfortunately, the stuff that it that in a pepper, the thing you eat is the mesocarp, right? That same mesocarp in a citrus fruit is the albedo, right?
So the stuff that's dissolved by peelzyme, which is this enzyme, is the actual meat of the pepper. Now, the majority of capsation in a pepper is contained on the inside surface of the uh of the inside skin of the of the pepper inside uh and somewhat in the veins. So you could preferentially melt this top layer away with this enzyme, but then you're gonna contaminate the whole the whole pepper with it. So I don't think it's necessarily gonna be helpful. I think you're much better using what you what you do now, which is use a knife.
It's just a pain in the butt. Another um another uh route you might take is to is to look for a source of ah how do you pronounce it? Ahi ahi dulce? Ahi ahi pepper? Ahi AJ Dulce?
Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Anyone? Uh the uh it's called it's a sweet pepper that looks like a habanero and supposedly has the aroma and taste of a of a habanero comes from uh without the spice. It comes from Venezuela. I've only had three or four of them in my life and I didn't find them to be quite as floral or or aromatic as a habanero.
But um they're in the same ballpark and they require no manipulation whatsoever. I believe they are a characteristic ingredient in um some traditional Venezuelan dishes but I have never been to Venezuela so I don't know. Uh but also Peruvian food and um but but also in Ecuador in Ceviche. The the the Aji Dulce? Yeah.
Yeah. Uh do you think it has as good a an aroma or taste as the habanero? Well it's inter uh I think this is a a a very interesting question and an interesting idea because we all know that different peppers have wonderful different kind of aromatic and floral tastes but you can rarely taste them because your tongue is thinking about other things. Right right. So I think this is a wonderful question.
I don't see why it's such a Dave what did you call it pain in the butt? Is that pain in the butt well yeah the words you use yes yeah to uh um you know, uh in the past in in restaurant kitchens, they used to even peel grapes. Or um for a a terrible dish, yes, so silver on eat, right? That's a terrible dish. That's right.
Yeah. Or um uh David Boulet uh uh uh when he was introducing uh uh a version of Joe Robichon's um famous mashed potatoes, uh using the hot potato, although he was using fingerlings. And they have to be peeled and they're small. And so he had a whole he said he supported a whole Salvadoran family to peel hot potatoes um all day long for his potato puree. And so that was a good thing, supporting them by rather than supporting them by doing something else.
Well, one of them went on to Harvard and got a Nobel Prize. This is what we call a lie. Is this true? Is this a lie, yeah. Uh yeah, that seems like uh, you know, Marx's dream, someone sitting in a basement peeling tiny little potatoes constantly uh, you know.
Uh nice great way the kitchen. What should he have had them do? A lot of kitchen work though is nice and dehumanizing. You gotta get into the zen of it, right, Jeffrey, you like that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, but he's not peeling the outside of these peppers, it's peeling the inside. And the real problem is is that any sort of contamination, and you've just ruined your whole job, you know what I mean? That's kind of uh probably the panel. No, could you explain that again? So uh he's like he's like taking and cutting the cap off and removing it carefully without cutting all the way through, popping it off, opening it, and then removing the inner skin, presumably without slipping and contaminating and getting the super hot parts into the not so hot parts.
Seems difficult. Well, he doesn't have to be one thousand percent accurate, you know. I mean, he's trying to get rid of of of uh much of the you know, of the jalignaro's hotness in order to be able to to taste the floral part. It can still be a little hot. Yeah, I I guess I guess you are correct.
And I think the other thing to do is to buy a rotary evaporator. I don't know. I was specifically told last week not to mention buying a rotary evaporator as as the one that's. Oh, I'd love to have one. I've never played with yours.
Well, you you're welcome anytime, Jeffrey. And uh uh here is another question that comes in, uh Matt from Chicago, uh, and this is right up Jeffrey's alley as well. Uh I recently bought a bag of MSG from my local Asian grocery store to experiment, but whenever I use it, I can't help to be reminded of instant soup mix. Is there a secret uh to help using uh MSG to blend with other flavors? And uh before I let Jeffrey launch into this, because this is a subject dear to his heart, uh, I will just say you're probably using too much because uh MSG is not used in the same quantities that you would use salt or other other spices.
And with that I will I will hand it over to Jeffrey. Well, I'm afraid that I can't give you advice about about the best way to use it. One thing is don't use it in soup. Because you'll probably be able to taste or sense it too much. But you can certainly use it in uh in many other things, and and uh I just remember that glutamic acid MSG is is you know the same flavor enhancer that's been used in um in Asia, uh, you know, drained out of uh giant kelp for many, many, many years.
Yeah. And uh maybe you should try giant kelp. Yeah, and we uh yeah, um uh combo, for instance for me tongues uh but you know, you're you you're also and uh I don't mean, you know, I think most of our listeners are not anti MSG, but you know, Jeffrey wrote uh was very early uh writer in the food world on debunking the uh fact that uh you think you might have a reaction to MSG. Uh was that in your first book? Was that in the The Man Who Ate Everything?
Um I believe it was uh um in the first book and it was called to might have been the second book and it was called why doesn't everybody in China have a headache. Right. Uh and I actually did a survey in China after lunch um asking people do you have a headaches? And what did they say? No one had a headache.
Uh it's it's very that that is actually an interesting I mean the reading the literature on MSG is uh boring with the and I'll try and get it and put it up on the forum with the exception of one article written by a scientist uh who um just lambasses anyone I mean I I'll have to get it but you know the the the from a science standpoint it's it's somewhat ludicrous to think you have a reaction to it because um uh you your body makes more uh glutamic acid in your head than uh than you could ever normally reasonably consume because it's a neurotransmitter and you need it to live um but that's that's but don't you think that the original disc uh discovery of the uh Chinese restaurant syndrome which was a phrase um invented uh by the New England Journal of Medicine which uh uh uh captioned a letter from a a mass general or Beth Israel uh doctor in Boston who had this experience that he wrote a letter asking to the Newland Journal of Medicine asking whether anyone else had noticed it. Because he became flushed after a a a large number of bowls of wonton soup. And in those days Oh, so it was the Greenland Journal of Medicine that thought of the idea of a Chinese restaurant syndrome. Of course that isn't is uh no longer believed to be politically correct. Um even though it's the the first discovery of it there was in a Boston Chinese restaurant.
Most people don't remember those days, say 1964 or so I do. But there's no doubt that they would uh dump huge amounts of MSG in in Wonton soup and that if you drank it on an empty stomach, I think you probably could get a dose that that if you're s especially sensitive to it might affect you. Okay, well the the sci the scientific literature on uh blood levels of um uh of glutamic acid upon consumption are that if you consume uh MSG with any sort of food at all, your blood levels don't spike. So but how about soup? Right.
If you consume liquid only that doesn't have a lot of other stuff going on, it is true that you can get uh a spike in um in in glutaminate level in your blood that lasts uh up to a hundred and twenty minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Uh so the you know th there is that spike it's only when you're drinking uh kind of only fluids and it's only in really large doses. So I don't know how much they were adding in Boston.
But then furthermore recent research on this has been that even at those levels there doesn't appear to be that much of a um that much I mean or any really reaction. So that m most of the studies that have shown reactions were not uh properly blinded. They weren't uh you know, they they would put MSG into a a strongly flavored citrus beverage and assume that no one could taste the MSG. Uh when when studies are given of uh MSG in gelatin capsules consumed on an empty stomach, then there doesn't appear to be a statistical um effect. I mean I I've been meaning to do a post on this for a long time 'cause I had to read like six hundred pages of this crap because someone asked me a question once and I read like six hundred pages of crap on MSG.
So I can go back and kind of re redo it because it was, you know, like six months ago or something that I did the research, but I mean is this jibe with what you remember, Jeffrey or no. But let me ask you, David, before I ask you about why you're being so um blasé about the dangers of carragenin, um there's a whole literature on that you know I I I never I when was I blase about the dangers you advised someone before t to to to put kerogenin in in their food. Yeah well you advi mean like we all advise things that aren't necessarily a hundred percent uh you know it it's a traditional ingredient care you know it's a traditional ingredient. By the way the the research on on carragenin is only that certain types of carrageenin, I believe Kappa carragenin specifically, in very in low pH systems and very acidic systems might have uh some association with certain types of cancer. Um I don't happen to use carrageenin that often presumably souffles are not a super high acid system.
No. No. Um but we have a we have a we have a you know but I'm sure I'm sure I'm gonna get questions on that uh on that soon. Uh all right. Oh, we have a caller coming in.
Yeah. Hi, Dave. This is Kent Kirschenbaum. Hey, hey, Kent. Good to speak to you.
Yeah. Listen, I have my own notion on what's going on with MSG, and that's that there's these persistent anecdotal reports that there is a reaction. So what could be happening? Well, one of the ways that MSG is produced is by microbial fermentation. And if the purification from the fermentation is not done properly, I think there could be other compounds in that preparation that could give uh you know negative reaction.
And so you think presumably that would be something that was more prevalent in the past? Yeah, I think they've gotten a lot better at the fermentation and purification techniques, and that I'm not surprised that there might have been more of these anecdotal reports back in the nineteen sixties than there are now. That's interesting. I never I never thought about that, by the way. For our listeners, this is Kent Kirstenbaum, one of the founders of the experimental cuisine collective and professor of uh polymer chemistry at NYU.
Um that's correct, right, Kent? Pretty much? That's it. Yeah. Um as I was able as I was to find out if you write anything about MSG that is not negative, or at least if you're one of the first ones to have done that, there are hordes of people out there who are sure that their children were brain damaged.
Um as a result of the MSG in their food. Okay. So brain damage in MSG is a very interesting question. MSG is actually used as an agent to cause brain damage in neonatal uh rodents. Uh the blood brain barrier in a neonatal rodent is nowhere near as developed as the blood brain barrier in a human being.
They fed absurd doses to these uh rats and mice to cause brain damage on the equivalent of a full grown uh man eating uh something like two hundred and fifty grams of m straight MSG in a sitting on an empty stomach. Uh the uh similar doses were tried on neonatal monkeys, and unfortunately, and uh that were shown not to have that brain damage uh effect. So I know that those studies have been thoroughly debunked, but that has not but that doesn't address really Kent's question on whether it's possible that there was a uh second contaminant that would cause uh some sort of reaction back in the sixties and seventies. I don't know. Basically we're uh I um I believe we're talking about nineteen sixty-three, not necessarily the fifties.
But uh but let me ask you, Dave. Some people objected, um and I assume they were wrong when I was talking about how a a um there was an Australian study, although again the MSG was supplied by the Agenamoto companies, so people are always suspicious. Um they were the largest manufacturers of MSG. Uh anyway, there was an Australian study showing that there was more glutamic acid in an Italian meal, largely because of the uh about tomatoes in the parmesan. Uh uh than in a Chinese meal.
Also we know that in in Japanese meals there could be the more glutamic acid, and no one talks about the the um the Japanese restaurant syndrome. Uh but is it possible that uh natural glutamic acid is different? I don't see how that's possible. I mean, unless that you know what Kent was saying that it might be contaminated, but I mean it's it's the sodium salt basically of uh glutamic acid. It is providing by weight, I think roughly one third the sodium that table salt would, so there's extra salt, there's extra sodium involved.
But uh I don't see how it's I don't see how it's possible because it's also produced from a biological system. It's not it's not produ it's not it's not like you're dealing with like a a a different um you know uh isomer or something like that. I mean they're they're pr both produced biologically. Um I don't I don't see how it could possibly be different. Uh Ken, are you still there?
Do you see a way that could be different or is Ken already gone? I I don't see how it can be different, to be honest. And as far as the salt form of it, I mean once it hits your stomach, that that counter ion is going to be swapped out almost instantaneously. So I I agree with you, Dave, on this, that I I think it'd be hard to imagine how there could be differences in the monosodium glutamate itself. Now there could very well be differences in the, you know, one percent or point one percent of whatever additional material is there in the commercial MSG as opposed to what's in your your your natural food.
Right. I mean I I think a lot of the reaction has to do with when people eat something that's unfamiliar to them, they then have a reaction because they've eaten something unfamiliar, that I've been poisoned or I've eaten something terrible, and then they have some sort of a re reaction to it. And I think uh some of the studies have shown that uh that these effects that are linked with uh with the s with the the syndrome, we'll call it, uh, are basically just uh the effects of eating unfamiliar foods uh on people's psyche. Uh I don't I don't know what you guys think of that. Although the the the uh first report of the New England Journal of Medicine was um by a g uh a a doctor of uh Chinese ancestry.
I I remember this, yeah. Who ate a lot of of wonton soup in Boston all the time. So I don't think he was but did he have a headache all the time or just once? No, he got flushed. He didn't have a headache.
But all the time? Yeah, very flushed. He only reported once. Uh if I went back and read that and it also seems a little bit tongue in cheek and then was taken seriously by a lot of people. I mean that's why they named the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome in the in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Right. Dave Anken, let me ask you a question if I could. All right. When I was doing an Oracle a long time ago on whether it was bad to eat salt um I came across a number of papers showing that even those people who were salt sensitive and had a a blood pressure reaction to a high salt diet did not have the same reaction to other sodium compounds. For example baking soda and baked goods even though in the very old days doctors also warned you not to eat too many baked goods.
Because of the baking soda but when it was tested on people there was either no reaction or very little reaction from all the other sodium compounds. I mean in our but in our diets now we probably have 50 or 100 sodium compounds. Before I let Kent answer because he's actually probably knows what he's talking about, I will ask you this, Jeffrey, before before we can answer is uh did they measure for m like actual moles of sodium consumed or just weight of the compound sodium bicarbonate which is a lot heavier than salt per mole. Dave, I have to assume that because they were scientists that they measured the right thing. That I I would not assume that, actually, because I've read so I've just spent so much time reading crappy scientific papers that I can never assume that somebody has measured the proper proper thing.
Kent, what what are your thoughts? I'll I'll hand it over to you. Yeah, I I agree with your John Dis assessment of the scientific literature, and because of it, I I'd hesitate to uh to answer what exactly was going on in those studies unless I'd read them and and poured over those kinds of details. Well it's certainly true that in the the popular literature and in the uh press releases of of people like Mayor Bloomberg, salt and sodium are used interchangeably and there's no attempt to get sodium out of our fast food, out of our diets. There's only an attempt to reduce the amount of salt.
Right. You know well that the question is how are they going to measure it? Like am I allowed to then add some sodium salt uh some sodium compound and then add a chloride compound and end up with sodium chloride in my in my product? Is that legal? Is that gonna be okay now?
I mean, the whole thing about reducing salt seems to be I guess it's the next crazy thing that's gonna happen to us, huh? Um I think it's it is time for all good people and reading more of the research and publishing it in in letters to the New York Times and the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. I mean, it seems and you know, Kent and I have talked about this a lot. Kent, you should come on the show sometime actually. We would talked about this a lot, which is no one uh even scientists who who are researching things outside of their normal field, like like doctors, tend not to do the tend not to do the level of research into the quality of the of the science that they're quoting when they talk about nutrition.
Uh and so much of it is just crap. Um and and crap based on other crap. If you read the uh the uh you know the the citations that some of these studies uh cite, which is why whenever I research something I end up having to read five, six hundred pages because you have to burrow back and find the source of crap. And you know, I know Jeffrey, you do this. Uh whenever you research something, you'll research something and then the sites of the sites and the sites of the sites, and but who has the time?
I mean, Jeffrey's made a a career on being thorough, you know what I mean? But you know, most people don't. But you know, one thing that I took a back in, say I don't know, nineteen ninety two, when I read all uh uh all the literature as of that time, there was no doubt there's not been shown that there was a a uh connection uh uh between eating salt and then having a blood high blood pressure, except among say six percent of the popul to the population and the head of the um of the New York hospital uh uh comprehensive hypertension study but certainly agreed with me. He thought it wasn't as high as six percent. He's a but he thought it was uh you know as low as as uh five percent.
Then all of a sudden I noticed five years ago that there was a uh uh uh but but by the way, there were a lot of doctors um and scientists at that time who found it but very threatening because their whole lives have been based on a career of advising uh people not to eat salt. Um and uh but the backlash back in those days was not very strong. And then I noticed starting five years ago, there was a uh a huge and sudden campaign by all these people against salt. Right. And I thought we had defeated that.
That's what I thought. I uh I I thought it was all gone, and then someone, some medical students sent me uh uh, you know, sent me a letter or an email, you know, you know, saying Mr. Strongjordan, don't you realize you're totally wrong about and then we had many exchanges. And they uh there was a big worldwide study called the Intrasol Study, and uh I can't remember exactly when it was, it was 1988 or 89. Um all over the world the people took urine samples in order to determine how much uh salt had been eaten by that person.
Um and um I don't know I don't know, took their uh their blood pressure. They took several urine samples from each person and they sent it to to different laboratories uh in Europe after freezing it. I mean, it was a massive and it that seems to me to have been uh an extremely meticulous study. Um and there was a correlation. But after you eliminated certain, if I may call them, uh primitive peoples who ate no salt at all because they didn't have any salt, like the the Yanamamo Indians, who were always used as kind of poster Indians for for this proposition, but even ignoring the fact that between one third and a half of all the males in the Yanamong society uh died from the homicide.
They have other issues, they do. Many other issues that I think probably came from not having enough salt. So they packed those strange uh narcotics into their noses because of the lack of salt. Okay, so if you eliminated four extremely low salt societies, if you only had kind of normal people, there was no correlation. All right.
Well, they're gonna make us leave soon. Uh br Brandon Cummins had a question on ice, which I'll address on the blog in a post coming up soon. So, Brandon, sorry to keep you waiting. But I have one question that came in from I believe Ben at Littlewing, and he wants to hear Jeffrey Steingarden's opinion on what makes the perfect French fry. So what are we gonna do is I'm gonna sign off now, and then I'm gonna have Jeffrey just talk about the perfect French fry until they cut us off.
This is cooking issues with Jeffrey Steingarten and Nastasha Lopez coming to you live every Tuesday to this this week, an hour uh from uh 12 to 1. And Jeffrey, the perfect French fry, if you would. Thank you very much, David. Very enjoyable. Oh, thank you.
Very enjoyable. Well, uh, except we're not on the air anymore. No, we're on the air. I'm gonna they're gonna let you talk about French fries for a minute, and then at certain points, like the Oscars, the musical coming on. I'm sorry.
Yeah. Well, I think the characteristics of of of the perfect French fry have been um, I think laid out, although it is it didn't take brain surgery to uh by Dave on his pre on the blog. Thank you. Um crisp but very friable outside, not too thick. Um almost like mashed potatoes inside.
Then there's another kind of perfect French fry, which is hollow Inside. You don't like that. No, no. But but it can be also delicious because it is like a a long, a long, rectangular, baton-shaped uh potato ship. And as we know, potato chips are as good as French fries.
They're delicious, they are. Oh, uh, I must also say he wanted to know about uh horse fat because he hasn't tasted. He wants to know your opinion on horse fat and fries. Oh, there's no doubt to me that horse fat gives you the best fries. Um after I wrote my article, I was kind of sad about this because I had a hard, hard time getting horse fat, and then someone I knew in in uh in uh Paris, actually it was um it was Alex uh Alex Garanas Shelley, who's now a chef, who was working as a research assistant for Patricia Wells, and she found in a supermarket these sticks of horse fat that were packaged like butter.
In where? Paris, France. We should go, we should go. Um I wonder whether they'll still do still doing that. I wonder whether it's constitutional that Congress has passed laws against the eating uh of horses in America.
Well, the French have always been great horse eaters. I've I've just been reminded by Nastasha the Hammer Lopez that I've forgotten to mention our sponsor. Today's excellent show was brought to you by the good folks at TechServe. TechService New York's premier authorized Apple reseller and service provider serving individual customers, creative professionals, and Fortune 100 companies. TechService built a solid reputation on expertise in technology sales and service as a company that believes in honest and forthright business practices, tech service, proud to sponsor Heritage Radio Network and the promotion of sustainable lifestyles, but they're for Mac only people.
Cooking issues, and thank you to Jeffrey Steingarten. Ficious, vicious but crap. Oh, you did that. Got me on this corner, and I don't know where I'm at.
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