Hello, you're listening to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, the host of Cooking Issues, coming to you today with Nastasha Lopez, the Cooking Issues Hammer. We are not live today. We are pre-recording this because Tuesday, when we're normally uh broadcasting, I will be teaching Sous vide and low temperature cooking class at the French Culinary Institute. A fine class.
This one's full, unfortunately, so you can't uh sign up for it anymore. But uh you can sign up for the next one. Um so you can't call in live, but I'm still gonna give you the number so you can write it down for your records. The number to call in to the studio here is 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
The number to call in to Cooking Issues, the show where we answer all of your cooking issues. Um, a couple of you know notes here. You might hear some music in the background, and that's because today, Sunday is the Bushwick block party, right? Uh Bushwick, Brooklyn, for those of you that don't, you know, know is kind of like what Hipster's Paradise? What do you say?
History Paradise? Yeah. So the whole block was shut down and Robert's Pizza, which hosts the Heritage Radio Network, is uh hosting this block party, and so it's kind of pandemonium outside of the studio right now. Uh by the way, the studio, for those of you that don't know, the studio here is actually, I think uh like a a container or some sort of something. I swear to God, that's been dropped into the middle of Brooklyn and they put a garden on top of it and there's kind of a window where we can, you know, view view Brooklyn out of this window.
Is that pretty much accurate? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Uh okay.
Uh couple uh right? Yeah, anyway. A couple other announcements before we get to the email questions that uh have come in. There's a lot of events coming up uh with us in the next uh month or so. So I'm just gonna list some of them.
Uh some of them are gonna require us to pre-record again, some aren't. Uh I think the the next thing that's gonna come up is uh Starchefs. Uh Starchefs uh you go to Starchefs.com. Nils and I are doing uh a bunch of events there. We have a uh a mixology demonstration and we're doing some couple of cocktails.
That's coming up the week of uh September 20th, so you want it might want to stop by and see us there. Um then uh Heritage Uh Radio is having uh a big fundraising barbecue. It's called the uh Heritage Radio Party, the Heritage Party, and it's on set uh Saturday, September 25th. It's here at Roberta's in Brooklyn. It's uh $100 a crack to uh attend, $100 per person.
Uh we will be making some drinks, probably with liquid nitrogen. What else? We decided what we're gonna do. It's gonna be Maker's Mark. Yeah.
Right? Have we decided what kind of fruit we're gonna use? I thought it was peaches. Well it depends on what well, okay, here's what's gonna happen. We're gonna get makersmark, we're gonna find whatever the most delicious fruit to add to Maker's Mark at that particular moment is.
We're gonna clarify it in a centrifuge, and then we're gonna we're gonna add liquid nitrogen to it, hopefully, on site here, hopefully liquid nitrogen if we can get it delivered here, and uh serve you some delicious cocktails. So uh you're gonna want to call in to 718-389-8985. That's 718-389-0985 to uh RSVP for that, or uh email info at heritage radio.com. Uh then uh right. Then uh on October 4th, uh we're gonna No, wait, there's the New York Culinary Experience.
Oh, but that's something that's sold out already. Well, anyway, assuming it's not sold out, you can come see Nills and I do uh cocktail demonstration. Uh what when is that one, Nastashi? October 2nd. October 2nd at the French Culinary Institute.
Uh seating is extremely limited. I don't know how much uh that guy costs. Then uh we have the um Berlin Bar Show on October 4th, where I'm gonna be doing uh a recap with Evan Clem of the science of shaking, science of stirring in Berlin. It's actually the first time I've ever gone to Berlin. Uh luckily for me, uh I I was supposed to go for four days and have kind of a mellow time, fly in, have a day to recompress, but uh, you know, it's something came up, and so I had to switch my flight, and I'm literally flying in on the red eye, landing at six and giving a talk at twelve.
So I don't sleep on airplanes, so I'm if you come if you live in Berlin and you come see us in Berlin, expect to see someone, you know, that may or may not have their hair slicked back with their own feces. We're not sure. We'll see. We'll see what we can do there. Uh I'm just kidding.
Um you know, anyway. Uh then uh on October 16th, you can come see us at the London Bar Show where we're going to be doing a presentation on uh roto vapping uh liquors. It's being sponsored by Oxley Gen, correct? Yes. Whoo.
All right. So uh that with our bookkeeping out of the way, uh, I guess right, we can get to some questions? Yes. Okay, let's get to some questions. Uh Jacob Hartleieb said, uh, thank you for the show, love listening to it.
Thank you, Jacob. Uh, although he writes his name once as Jacob, and another one as uh my friend of mine has the same name, Yacoubs. I'm not sure which one. I don't know. Anyway, I'm not sure.
He lives in Cooks in Oklahoma. Uh and a trend he's noticed among chefs is using wild ingredients, right? Uh not farm to table, he says, more like wild, find it yourself ingredients, uh such as like the dunoma or like Michelle Bra does, or Moogaritz. And he's fascinated with this style of cooking and is pretty sure it's been around for a long time. So he wants to know the following.
Is there a book, blog, or guide on wild herbs, plants, trees, berries, etc. that are edible, and uh, you know, what can guide you to do that? All right. Um so uh this is uh a question that is close to my heart. I unfortunately don't know any blogs to do it, but you know, uh I the only reason I like to travel uh to places that are near the wilderness uh is so that I can gather wild food when I'm there.
For instance, uh when I go to the Grand Canyon, uh I'm I'm I don't really care that much about the the actual Grand Canyon, it's like what kind of you know what can grow around there. I mean the this is this is a little piece of me. You'll know me a little better uh if you understand this. Like once you see the Grand Canyon, I'm like, yeah, that's beautiful. It is, it's beautiful, right?
But I mean, come on. Right? I've seen one hole, you've seen the other one. Right. Now, food is a different matter altogether.
Food you can keep eating all the time, right? No? Right? When I go to the beach, all I care about is the stuff that grows along the seashore and the stuff that I can get in the water at the seashore. That's basically it, because I detest sand and sun, right?
Right. When I go to forests, I want to know what grows there. Anyway, so this is a subject that I like a lot. Um, and whenever I'm going to travel someplace new and gonna be, you know, outside in nature, I try to get a guidebook that helps me. The the problem is is that what you're gonna particularly look for in an area really depends on where you live.
Uh so uh I think a good first starting point, even though they're dated, right? The the best writing on wild food that I have ever read is by a guy named Yule Gibbons. Uh I don't forget how to spell Yule. I I can't spell out loud, I don't have a piece of paper on me. But uh Yule Yule Gibbons, uh his two most famous books are Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Stalking the Wild Scallop.
And they're written probably late 60s, somewhere in that, late 60s, early 70s, somewhere in that range. And uh they are fantastic books. Now, again, they're a little bit dated, but he was a guy, and all he really liked to do was go out and uh forage for wild foods, talking, you know, animals, uh, you know, like sea creatures. He never wrote any books on hunting. Uh there is a book on how to illegally poach animals if you're interested in that, but you can't really serve those things in a restaurant.
Uh but you know, he has in-depth uh books on on searching certain things. Now he uh spent a lot of it, he spent time all over the country, which is why his books are good. So he has a little bit of something for everyone, no matter where you live in the US. Uh, but he a lot of his knowledge centers around uh Pennsylvania where he lived. He did a lot of work up in Maine, uh, he did a lot of work in on the West Coast in California.
And so he has a lot of uh, you know, he has a lot of really interesting um interesting things, and he's got a really good perspective. So if you haven't ever read any book on foraging, I would go immediately buy those books on Bookfinder. They're basically free. No one cares about them. Uh I would get Stalking the Wild asparagus and stalking the wild scallop.
Now, if you're interested in something specific like mushrooms, right? Uh I you know, I have a bunch of guidebooks on uh mushrooms, and you know, I guess uh I don't remember off the top of my head which the best ones are, but uh if you go to Paul Stamitz's website, he's uh out on the West Coast, I think in um I forget whether he's in Washington or or in uh Oregon, but he's uh you know one of the worldwide authorities on fungus. I would not go collecting mushrooms for the first time by yourself. I would find any one of the local mycological societies in your area, they usually sponsor tours where you can go learn how to properly gather mushrooms in your area without getting poisoned, right? It's important not to get poisoned.
Uh the same thing goes true with plants. So when you get beginners' books on wild on wild food collecting, the the important thing is to realize what is easy to recognize and what is uh easy to confuse with something poisonous, right? Because there are a couple of mistakes you can make that if you make that mistake, you can die, right? Yeah, yeah. But but actually that's the main problem that happens when someone's used to gathering something wild in one area, right, where it's totally safe, and then they go to another area where there's something similar that looks similar but is poisonous, right?
That's that can happen sometimes. So it's best to know what grows in your in your uh area. And also if you go with someone who's ever done it, who's experienced, right, they can point to you, and once you see a plant live and you touch it live, you smell it live, and you gather it live, odds are you're never gonna make a mistake with it, right? Uh and so in general, I I would read all those books, and I wish I had more of the modern books available, but I would uh um you know go with someone who's done it before as just a foolproof thing. Now, that aside, there are some things that are extremely easy to uh you know, easy to figure out.
Um even in New York City where I live, there's enough uh there's a a wild green called um uh auric, uh sorry, uh Lamb's Quarters related to orc. And Lamb's Quarters is a great uh you know green and it grows wild in New York City. Any place there's a vacant lot in New York City, I could in the Lower East Side today, if I wasn't worried about uh back to feces again, feces and urine sprayed all over it, and who know God knows how much gas exhaust and all that, I could create a delicious salad out of stuff growing out of the vacant lots within two blocks of my house on the lower east side. I've never done it because ew. Your wife would kill you.
Yeah, yeah, but you know, you you could. So uh, you know, just because you live in a high density area, if there's vacant lots, there's still the opportunity to uh search for greens. Another mistake people make with wild foods is they try and have their entire they you know look, you know it's very difficult unless you live in the middle of some vast wilderness where there's known supplies of wild crap to be able to go and get all of your food or substantial portion of your food from uh wild uh wild items. But there is almost always something you can gather wild locally at any given time in the year to add an accent note or to or to you know round things out or to bring out a lot of flavors. So it's a subject I'm very interested in.
Uh and you know, thanks. I think this is the first question we've had on that. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I mean my favorite things to collect is uh there's a in Maine where I go every year, there's a wild sea rocket that is just I mean it's really, really spicy and a little bit bitter. You know, rock it like arugula, but uh I love gathering that stuff.
And I mix it with auric, which is the seaside version of Lamb's Quarters, uh, and it makes just a fantastic salad, and they also have wild sea beans there, which are salty, so you don't need the extra salt from it. That's a like the best seaside salad uh ever, you know. And then uh of course from the water there you get mussels and you know, sea urchins and you know, just fantastic things. But I don't know I've never been to Oklahoma, unfortunately, so I don't know what grows around there, but I guarantee you that there is something good to be had. Uh so thank you for calling that in.
The second part of his question was uh do you uh how do you extract pine needle flavor or tree bark flavor flavor? I don't have access to a rotov app, but I do have uh a vacuum packer and a whipped cream maker. Um so the I'm not sure how he he wants to know whether you can do it in oil. I presumably he doesn't want to do it in uh alcohol because he suggests oil and water. Uh pine needle flavor um you can extract extremely well into alcohol in a vacuum machine.
I'm assuming you can do it in an ISI whipper. I haven't done it. I don't know what the results will be into oil. I can just say to try it out. But there are some varieties of things that look like pines that are poisonous.
For instance, um the yew, uh it looks kind of like pine is poisonous. Uh but most pine trees, now listen, please look this up. Like, don't go out and say Dave Arnold said pine trees are. But you know, that's the old joke actually they used to make about Yule Gibbons, is you'd go around saying many parts of a pine tree are edible. Because they are, right?
You got your pine nuts, and and uh, but uh you know, I make a habit, and Nils makes a habit actually of walking around in the springtime pulling the new shoot, uh the new new growth pine needles off of pine trees and chewing on them because they're fantastic. So, you know, it's classically you can make a tea out of pine needles and you can uh I'm sure you can make a flavored oil out of it or water using a vacuum or an ISI. The trick with pine is that uh most people have um most people have an association with pine uh of uh yeah like lysol, uh not lysol, what's that stuff called? Pine salt, pine salt. So you know that they're really worried that it's gonna go pine sally and it's gonna taste, and so I like pine drinks and Nils likes pine drinks, and we do them, but you have to be super super careful.
So you also want to make sure that you're you know that you that the type of pine you use, like you know, whether it's kind of like a sprucey kind of flavor or a fur kind of flavor, like a dug fur or whatever, it is it doesn't taste too bathroom uh cleanser-y because if it does, even if it's delicious, people won't like it. For instance, la lavender does the same thing. So a lot of people they'll like to mix with lavender. There's a good 50 to 60 percent of the population that if they detect lavender at all, they're gonna say it tastes like uh like perfume or a bathroom. And so and it should just have to do with association, not because it's not delicious.
And so I've had a lot of problems, a lot of heartache trying to make pine things that I think are delicious, and some people don't like them just because of their associations with them. And you know what? That's that's the breaks. You just gotta be careful of it. So if you're making it for yourself, it's one thing, but if you're making it for someone else, it's just something to be um aware of.
Um anyway, so I hope that uh answers. Oh, and bark, you want to know about bark. Uh I've never done any work with bark. I bet you can extract it, but the mean I've the closest I've had to bark is basically wood extracts, and they're pretty weird, they're kind of sour, and uh, you know, if you if you've ever had a rotovap and you've rotovapped uh, you know, alcohol out, you're left with basically oak water, and it's some pretty potent kind of barky wood taste. I bet you could do it.
I don't know how potent it's gonna be though when it's done uh via vacuum machine. But please give it a shot and tell us, right? Okay. Uh okay, now let's go to the next question from Chip Stadnik. Chip Stadnik asks us, uh, first of all, he says hello, he hopes all's well, Nastasha.
Is it? Yeah. It's well, it's doing well. Okay. He wants to know about the uh poly science smoking gun versus an herbal vaporizer with a whip.
And uh there's something called the pocket travel portable butane handheld herbal vaporizer that he found on eBay. Uh and so let me just he wants to know about the difference between them, which you know, is it worthwhile getting one versus the other? Uh and I think most people aren't gonna know uh what uh we're talking about. So I will tell you. So in the I don't know, eighties or something, people started making little vacuum cleaners, uh handheld vacuum cleaners for um for computer keyboards, basically, to vacuum crap out of computer keyboards.
And someone who is apparently enterprising when they're not stoned, but when they're stoned as extremely lazy, decided to reverse the battery in one of these things and drive them backwards. So instead of becoming vacuum cleaners, they're actually little blowers. And then they unscrewed the top and they screwed in a pipe bowl into the top of it, and then they would pack marrow what tobacco, right? They'd pack marijuana into the top, light it, turn it on, and it would automatically, you know, create pot smoke without, you know, without you having to exert the extra energy to inhale, right? I mean basically like extremely lazy pot smoker thing, right?
And this became kind of a popular item in uh head shops. Head shop here, I don't know if you're from abroad, that means a place where you go to buy pot stuff, uh, you know, and listen to Grateful Dead and whatnot. The um uh about you know, in the early 2000s, mid-2000s, these things started to be used in Europe primarily at the beginning to do smoking. So they would put wood chips and other flavored herbs into them, light them, and blow out smoke. And so famously, uh, you know, the Roca brothers uh at El Calar Canroca would blow smoke underneath a big cloche, and then they would lift the cloche up when they when it came to your table.
You wouldn't see the food, they would lift it up and the smoke would rise up uh, you know, and just you know envelop you, or they had a thing where they had a slipper-shaped glass and they would have a plastic over it and they would inject smoke into it, and every time you ate off of this tightly stretched plastic on the top, a smoke ring would puff up and you would get the aroma of the smoke. Okay. So that and the poly science, the people, the good people that make uh circulators, now available Williams Doma, uh they um they made basically a more robust version of this that they sell called the smoking gun. So most people use this to inject smoke into things, or you know, some people have rigged it to inject smoke into their vacuum machines right after it's vacuumed. Um smoking with them is kind of interesting.
It's not the same thing as regular smoking. You'll notice if you inject smoke into into uh a container and let it sit, that all of a sudden it'll become clear the particles will settle out. Uh so I don't think that's continuous smoking gives it I don't think that this smoking gun gives the same flavor as continuous smoking, but I think it's useful for for a lot of things. Now a vaporizer is entirely different. In a smoking uh in the smoking gun, and anything like the smoking gun, you're actually lighting the product on fire, combusting it, and that's how you're making smoke.
Okay? Now, in a vaporizer, and the most famous one of these is the volcano vaporizer, and it's uh most famously used in in cooking by Grant Aikitz at Linnea restaurant in Chicago. Uh and and the way a vaporizer works is fundamentally different. Instead of com lighting the material on fire and then uh having you know having it burn, instead you heat a chamber uh to, you know, to a temperature that basically literally vaporizes the the material uh without actually lighting it on fire. And then uh usually the you know, some sort of air is forced through it, and then you get uh like a in the volcano you get a bag full of flavor.
So then, you know, Grant would do things like you know, vaporize sage, things like that, and get those kind of aromas. Uh and this this thing that apparently now, and I didn't even know this, so thanks Chip for bringing this to my attention, they have vaporizers that are are built on butane lighter technology that fit into your hand that are a whole hell of a lot cheaper than the volcano. Uh but they're fundamentally different technologies for making uh uh flavored, you know, aroma airs. One is combusting the material and the other one is held at a temperature below outright combustion. The theory of vaporization is that it it's going to provide cleaner flavors.
The theory when you're smoking it, right? Because they're both meant for pot. You're both supposed to smoke pot with them. Uh and the theory is is that you can get all the THC when you vaporize it without all kind of nasty tar and crap like that, because it's happening at a lower temperature, so you're not forming a lot of the nasty chemicals. May or may not be true.
I haven't read the science behind it, but they do, I know from experience uh um doing uh using using them for for cooking that they do produce different results because one's a lower temperature than the other. So they're not uh they're not identical. So uh you know, I I haven't done a lot of a super side by side, but I know that they're not equivalent items. One's more of smoker and the other one's more of kind of like a uh an aroma that slightly kind of combusted, smoky smelling, but not the same thing as outright smoke. Um so I'm interested in this.
I have a volcano. I haven't really used it because um I haven't thought of a culinary application that wouldn't make me feel like I was ripping uh grant off, but if I ever did, I would use it. I mean, it's a fine piece of equipment, and this portable thing also seems interesting. So I hope that has answered your question, Chip. And this brings us to our first break.
Cooking issues radio on the Heritage Radio Network. One, two, three, four! I don't care. I don't care. I just want the satisfying balls.
I got one. What your kiss me. When you mess me. Hold my head. Make me a decay.
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Welcome back to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, Cooking Issues here with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez, coming to you not live from the Bushwick block party on Sunday on Heritage Radio Network. Uh today's show, I don't know if I mentioned this before. Today's show is brought to you by the fine folks at uh Fairway, like no other market. So Fairway has, I think, three locations here uh in the New York area, as best of my knowledge.
They have the original one in the Upper West Side, which uh is you know a mob house because so many people want to go shop there. And then they have uh one that's uh up in Harlem that opened actually, I guess in the late 90s, mid-late 90s, back when I used to have my studio up there in uh art school, and man do we love shopping in that because they have a giant uh refrigerated uh ware you know warehouse where the the meat is stored, like the meat and the fish. And uh and I used to love that because I could just, you know, it I all of a sudden I didn't have to go walk the shop to get really good, you know, cheese and things like that. At the time it was really inexpensive. I haven't been back.
And then of course, they have the one near IKEA in Red Hook. So Fairway like no other market. Um okay. Now we have a question from uh Aaron Hart. So Aaron Hart uh uh was is particularly thinking about a couple of uh a couple of radio programs ago.
Uh I told someone who was just going back to college that what she should do is uh is use her microwave to achieve extraordinarily high temperatures uh so that she could uh sear things, right? And so uh, you know, for those of you that you know didn't hear it before, basically the the issue is is that uh you can get uh certain materials uh absorb microwaves, right? Water absorbs microwaves very well, which is why uh microwaves are uh you know they're you used, right? So they they choose a frequency that that absorbs uh water absorbs very well and things get hot. Now water can't get above boiling, right?
Unless it's under pressure, okay, get above boiling. So it kind of self-regulates. But there are other things that also absorb microwaves quite well. They can get way above the temperature of boiling water. And this is used by certain people to do things like uh s you know, melt low temperature metals using uh microwave absorbing crucibles in their in their micro rays, and this is entirely feasible.
Now, the uh uh a really easy to get material that absorbs microwaves fairly well is silicon carbide because that's what they make cut a lot of cutting stones out of, right? So you can just go buy uh uh one of these carbide uh silicon carbide uh cutting stones and throw it in your microwave. Please don't put it directly on the floor of your microwave because it will ruin your microwave. Put it on something that is insulating that can take the heat. And you nuke it.
Now, how long you have to nuke it depends on how how thick it is, but it can get really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really hot. Uh, you know, I I mentioned, I think, you know, another couple, you know, week or two ago that we, you know, cracked an egg onto one that we did, and it just, you know, instantly huge bubbles came up. It was a little too hot for the egg, so it overcooked the egg. Nastasha thought it was gross because it was a used cutting stone. You know how Nastasha gets about things once once she has a mental problem with it, it's all over, she actually can't do with it.
But Aaron wonders uh is it somehow possible to use this interaction to rig up a better than conventional oven for doing things like tandoori chicken or pizza? Well, that's an excellent question. Uh I would say yes and no. So the the pizza, the problem with you could clearly um get a uh a small stone for small pizza up to temperatures easily, easily up to temperatures required to do uh the floor of a pizza oven, right? So you're talking you're talking up in the 800 uh Fahrenheit range in that area easily.
Uh now the problem is that uh you have to also get the ceiling up to that, or you're just gonna light the bottom of the pizza on fire without cooking the top. And if you put two stones in there, it's gonna be almost impossible for you to determine uh, you know, to to kind of get the ratio right between heat from the top and heat from the bottom. I'm told, although I am not sure, right? Uh most things that are called combination microwave toaster ovens aren't really a combination microwave toaster oven. They're like a microwave and then a toaster oven.
But I believe there is one that has the heating elements uh the toaster heating elements in the same box as the microwave. If you had one of those suckers, you could put the thing in the bottom, heat the hell out of that rock till it got up to like 600 degrees, crank that toaster element up and you know to as high as that sucker will go, put your pizza into that thing and then rip the hell out of it and get it get it to you know uh get the bottom done and the top done at the at the same time. Another alternative would be if you had a broiler in a regular oven you could get your pizza stone in your microwave up to a zillion degrees put the thing on, cook the bottom of it, pull it out, flash it underneath the broiler for a while to get it done. This is the way Otto Otto is the restaurant here in New York City that makes pizzas part of the Batali Empire. And their style of pizza is to actually uh griddle uh griddle or grill uh I can't remember whether they use a griddle or a grill something like that.
Anyway, but they cook the bottom of the pizza first basically and you know cook the bread a little bit first then after they're done flash under a broiler with the with the toppings. I do this at home uh in the summertime when I make pizza because uh it doesn't heat up my kitchen as much when I crank my oven up to 800 degrees my kitchen gets extremely hot if I just have my uh crepe maker which is basically like a griddle and I flash cooked a pizza on both sides and then stick it under my salamander to finish out in a broil I don't think the results are as good as an oven that is you know really cranked out for pizza but it's uh it's pretty damn good. You know what I mean and and it doesn't heat up your your kitchen as much, so it's so it's definitely viable. Uh I hadn't thought about a Tandor, but that's kind of an interesting, interesting idea. Uh I bet you could.
The real problem is going to be, like I said, regulating heat from the top and heat from the bottom at the same time. And um, like I said, I don't think it's exactly the same to break it into two parts to first do the bottom on a hot rock, and then to do uh you know the top from uh from a broiler standpoint. But you know, maybe you could get it to work. What do you think? What do you think?
Um you know what I think. I don't know, I don't know. Maybe. I think I think you're thinking maybe. I don't know.
I think she's thinking she's not paying attention even at what's happening. No, I am, I am. Yeah. Uh so uh anyway. So I definitely think there's a lot to be a lot to be learned, uh a lot to be discovered um with uh with microwaves.
The trick is to get um a uh a cart silicon carbide piece that's the right size so you could cook something reasonable on it without uh having it be so thick that the majority of microwaves get absorbed into something that's not useful underneath the bottom, but at the same time that has enough retained energy such that when you stick a pizza or something onto it, that it gets it that real wallop that you want to get out of the stone uh stone oven. Uh you know, you also you can maybe do a thicker pizza than you could normally this way because if you kept the microwaves going while you're doing it, you'd also internally cook the uh the the bread a little bit while it was going. It might actually be really good technique. Nastasha, you can't see her, but she looks extremely uh unconvinced. I don't know.
I'm thinking about I have a fireplace at home behind my kitchen. Nastasha Nastasha's favorite thing is to rent apartments from people that have their fireplaces plugged up because the chimneys are unsafe because they haven't been cleaned in 8,000 years, to and then to make them functional again merely by ripping out the bricks that have been bricked over. She literally will invite any anyone, like any neighbor, anyone she meets within five blocks of her house, she'll buy a sledgehammer. Actually, she'll make them bring the sledgehammer, make them go buy the sledgehammer and bring it, and then for the pleasure of having her company, right, and and a beer or two, they will slay slay slavishly break open the old fireplace, and then she will uh use it again, like come hell or high water. True or false.
Yeah, but someday I want to cook in a fireplace. Yeah, me too. There's a couple of excellent books on fireplaces. I I don't even have a uh an old fireplace in my building because my building was built in the 50s. Um but yeah, you know, if I ever get a place out in the country, which I hope to do, if you know if if we can ever scrape two nickels together long enough to for my wife and I to go and get a place in the country, I will have a giant indoor outdoor kitchen with an outdoor outdoor on one side and fireplace on the other.
Huge freaking hearth. I mean, I can't wait. Someday it's gonna, you know, cooking with fire is great. You know, that's another thing. People think that because you cook uh with uh high tech all the time that you don't enjoy like all those other forms of cooking.
Those people are wrong. Right. They're dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Yeah, fire is delicious. Anyway, uh, and and by the way, going back to Tandor, I almost bought and put in my house a gas fire tandor.
Uh I didn't have the money at the time uh to put it in. It would have cost me probably a grand or something like that. I didn't have the money. But I was thinking of building one just by hand anyway, and then I realized that my wife already puts up with enough crap. And I would have had to get rid of something.
And you know, it would probably have been the fryer, and since frying is God's cooking technique, and fryer is the last thing on earth I would give up. Like the the fryer and a bathroom are the last two things I would give up in uh in my in my house, probably. And um, and so yeah, I just couldn't, I couldn't do it. But I I'm gonna bury I I'm gonna dig a hole in the ground. If I ever get a piece of ground for myself, I'm gonna dig a hole in the ground, put a tandoor in.
It's gonna be one of the very first things I do as part of the indoor outdoor kitchen. Because I think if everyone had a tandoor, everyone would just be a little happier, right? Right. Right. Let's go to break.
Okay, we'll go to break and we'll come back with the last segment of cooking issues. On the way you do it. On the way you do it. If I keep loving you, my life will be ruined. I've done got him.
I'll be running around. Got him. Look at him. Do you run and run? But do you know my thing?
I'm going up to town. Ow! Get it together. Get it together. Come here.
Get it together. Get it together. Oh! You decided you wanted. A brand new bag.
You said you wanted. Look at you. A brand new bag. But you, you were just diving. You want it to be a drag.
Welcome back to Cooking Issues on the Heritage Radio Network. Dave Arnold and Nastasha Lopez coming to you not live today, uh, answering your cooking questions. So let me get right into the last question we had emailed. It's actually a question and an answer. So we've had an ongoing uh kind of question with uh a friend of mine, Julio, who's actually a well-known fashion designer here in the city, and by the way, was uh uh is a good friend to Priscilla Morgan, who is amused to Isama Noguchi, and one of the people's part of the Batterberry friends, people I know through Michael Batterberry, uh and through Jonathan Marvel, an architect friend of mine.
Anyway, so uh long way in introduction. Anyway, he's interested. He is for some reason wants to uh reduce his caloric intake, even though the man uh looks uh looks great. He does not look at all uh fat, but he's worried about his caloric intake. And so he has a sweet tooth, and so he's been asking how to reduce uh um sugar content, especially in things like meringues.
And uh I should have thought of this kind of stuff right away, but because I'm uh dunce, I didn't. And um uh George uh uh Davidson called in and he said, or wrote in and said, I have an answer. Uh why not use maltodextrin to stabilize it? And uh that is excellent. I don't know what the hell I I was thinking uh to not say it.
That's an excellent uh suggestion. Uh George uh came up with this because uh his wife had gestational diabetes. You know, you know, for those of you that don't know a lot of women, uh not a lot, but you know, a certain percentage of women when they get uh pregnant get uh diabetes during the pregnancy and they and then they have issues with sugar. So maltodextrin, right? Uh what maltodextrin is is it you take starch, uh which is a bunch of repeating glucose units, and you break it up into smaller uh units.
And so the maltodextrins are uh, you know, they're like you know, several glucose glucoses long. They're like uh, I don't know, like eight, ten, six, eight, ten glucoses long, right? So the the more glucoses are in a row in uh maltodextrin, the bigger they are, the less taste they have. So uh the shorter they get, like like three glucoses for they start tasting sweet, right? So uh and two glucoses together is called maltose, right?
So, and then one glucose is called glucose. Anyway, so uh basically maltodextrins are these things that are kind of like, you know, they're not long chain things, like starch is like, you know, hundreds, thousands of of uh glucose long, and um uh maltodextrins are much shorter and they're usually very bland. Sometimes they're sweet, depends on which one you get, and uh they can be derived from any kind of starch, tapioca starch, corn starch, rice, blah, blah, blah, blah, it doesn't matter, right? But they all have extremely different uh physical properties, which is why you have to be uh careful. So, for instance, one of the one of the applications, people will always say, Hey, uh, Dave, I want to use tapioca maltodextrin to uh make uh oils into powders, right?
And we hear this a lot. Yes, yes, I hear this a lot. Yes. Don't ever say that, right? Tapy saying like tapioca maltodextrin is like saying, Hey, I need to do something.
I need some sort of vehicle on wheels that rolls. Do you need uh like a flexible flyer wagon? Or do you need like a Hummer? You know what I mean? Like because like like they're very different in properties, right?
So for instance, the tapioca maltodextrin that you use to turn powders into oils is something called uh and sorbet and I think from the National Starch Corporation, and it's a very specific uh uh maltodextrin made from tapioca that uh is extremely not dense, right? It's extremely uh has a very, very high volume, uh very low density. And so they use it as a bulking agent. But the reason they can turn oils into powders is because um when you put uh a starch, right, is basically a big helix, right? Just like DNA is a double helix, it's a heel is a single helix, it's a helix.
And the inside of that helix hates water, hates it, hydrophobic, right? Uh but likes oil. So oil can go on the inside of that uh starch helix, right? Uh but on the the outside of that uh loves water, right? And that's why these this maltodextrin can uh that is heli helical like a starch, that's why the maltodextrin dissolves in water so well and why it you know dissolves in your palate, uh on your mouth so well.
So uh what happens if what happens is that you uh put the oil in, the oil goes into the inside of the uh helix, but because the maltodextrin has such a high uh you know, so so not dense, it's so fluffy, that then it can basically fluff out and stay separate, and you have this kind of powdery oil. But as soon as you put this stuff in your mouth, right, it goes instantly, dissolves back, and there's very little actual material there. So, like a bag of, you know, a bag of of a pound of maltodextrin, uh, tapioca maltodextrin or a kilo of it, it's like you know, like the size of a beanbag chair. It's crazy, you know what I mean? It's so not dense, and that's basically what it does.
Now, um the reason this helps you uh it be it it's you can digest it, so it has calories, like a starch, the same number of calories per gram, but typically for usage you use far fewer grams because it bulks up very well, and so you won't use as much. So you can actually get a reduced caloric intake by uh by using it. Now, if you're diabetic, this is a great thing to use because um it doesn't have any sort of insulin problems. So what he was doing for his wife was uh using uh a tapioca maltodextrin presumably not ensorbit he doesn't specify which one and saccharin as a sweetener but you could use anything uh that you know is uh safe for diabetics as a sweetener and he uses um he uses uh what does he use he he doesn't say how much yeah he uses sweetened low but he doesn't say how much maltodextrin he uses um but the the whole advantage is that you can use a lot less maltodextrin. Maltodextrin is also good uh anytime you want to add bulk to something so another kind of meringue that we make at the school actually quite a lot is made uh with something called um uh my brain's on on on fried today because I'm listening to this music from the Bushwick Block Party.
But uh it's uh it's called methylcellulose and methylcellulosis uh I always like to say that all the hydrocolides we use are all 100% natural this is the one that kind of isn't uh it's uh it's it's not natural. I mean it's not like I always say it's not a natural but I don't think it's ungodly right it's basically a modified cellulose product that's not found in nature. But it has the very interesting property that it gels when it's heated and also it it can act certain of them. The one we use is methylcel F like Frank 50 uh like Hawaii 5O F50 and uh basically it is a good whipping agent. So we use it when we're making meringues that we don't want to add uh egg white to right so they're basically you don't have to add the egg white is a is a protein so it it it's a whipping agent but it also forms the structure of the meringue uh of the of these mering like I'm making little quote marks I don't know how to say it, meringue, you know.
Uh and so what we can do is we can basically take f pure fruit um pureees and then we and that are bulked up by uh having a lot of uh pectin in them, having a lot of solids from the fruit, and then uh we usually add sugar for taste, but you could add anything to it, you wouldn't need to add sugar for taste, uh, because the sugar's not such a structural component in these meringues. Then we add uh methyl cellulose, which we use as a whipping uh agent, and then um uh we whip them up and they uh and then you dehydrate them and they're like a meringue. They're fantastic. The only problem is they don't really uh last outside too long because they suck up moisture, they're very hydro high hygroscopic. Anyway, but uh if there's not enough uh bulking agent uh in the product, like if you're doing let's say nori or something, it's something that doesn't have a lot of stuff to it, you can put maltodextrin in as the bulking agent.
So you have any sort of maltodextrin in there, uh usually along with xanthan to make it a little thicker, and then uh methyl cellulose, uh and you whip it like a meringue, you pipe it and you dehydrate it, and it's eats just like a meringue, but you can have extremely low sugar volumes. And and actually this is kind of something that I endorse. I normally like I say I don't endorse necessarily removing products just to reduce their caloric intake, um, but you know, we can do this and we can get really interesting flavor results. And that's why I think it's kind of an interesting an interesting um thing to do. Uh you know, so uh what do you think?
You think we finally answered this question or have we not? I think so. Well we'll we'll find out the week after. We'll find out the week after. Okay.
I think you know, but but okay, so the second part of the uh this was a a comment uh s thank you, and and a question. And the question was uh he's interested in making uh habanero vodka because we've been discussing um we've been discussing habanero vodka for a while. Uh and he said um, how long will it last? And do you think it would do well in a vodka cream sauce? And he then also, why do vodka cream sauce recipes tell you to reduce the vodka?
When I say reduce the vodka, not make less of it, but to put it in the pan, flash it off, right? This is pointless vodka's pure ethanol or ethanol and water, actually, and reducing it just removes some. Why not add it near the end and reduce the amount? And do you think this makes a difference flavor-wise? Well, that's an excellent question.
I will answer the first one because I know the answer. When you use a habanero uh to make a vodka, if you were using green habaneros, the flavor I think will be fairly stable. If you are, I don't use green habaneros. If you are using uh red habaneros, um the flavor, in my my experience, and my experience has not been with infused uh habanero, it's been with distilled habanero. My experience has been the stable the flavor is unstable.
Uh it that it's pretty good for a couple of months. And it's not that it goes bad, it goes green. So after you know, six months, a year, when you taste it, it's no longer gonna taste like that amazing floral fruity habanero that you're used to. It's gonna taste closer to um it's gonna definitely taste greener, right? And it's gonna, and I don't know why, and it's definitely going to taste it's some people say it tastes more like uh jalapeno at that point.
You've tasted it, right, Styas? Yeah. Yeah. And so um that's what happens. But you're you you've got a good couple of months if you keep it in the freezer, you got a good couple of months out of it before it starts to go on you.
We've also never stored it at extremely high proofs. We stored it basically at um 100 proof at about 50 percent, and that's been uh our experience. It does work well in sauces. I have used it in sauces, and the flavor really comes through in a sauce. It's really a great way to add habanero.
Well, with the way we do it, it's got the habanero aroma, but not the capsacean, not the spiciness. And so it's a great way to add habanero flavor to something like a sauce without um without adding a lot of spice. Uh, I don't know why the hell you would reduce uh the vodka when you put in. You're not getting rid of the alcohol, obviously, when you're boiling it, you're getting rid of some alcohol. Like, you know, some people think you boil all the alcohol away, and that's not the case.
You boil some away. I don't know why you would add more and then reduce it to get rid of some of the ethanol, because I would guess that the you know it's not like um it's not like in a uh in a situation with uh where you put alcohol in a batter to reduce the gluten formation or something like that. I mean, presumably it's there just to uh increase the volatile release of you know aroma wise, I would guess, although I haven't done a lot of research on it. So I would think that adding a smaller amount later would probably do the same thing. I'm guessing, but that's a guess.
Um and I'm sure I'll get some emails telling me why that is uh completely wrong. But anyway, I hope that answered that question. So let me see, to finish out some other interesting stuff. We just did a party. How many days ago is that?
Two uh two. Two days ago. We did a yeah, Vogue uh Vogue magazine, Jeffrey Steingarten, who was on this program, uh basically is uh friends with uh Dave Chang, convinced Dave Chang to do this party for Vogue for fashion's fashion week night out, some I don't know. Fashions night out. Some sort of yeah, some sort of show.
Anyway, and uh and so and then somehow we got roped into doing a cocktail for it. And Dave had on his clean black shirt. Yeah, I put on my I put on my special, my special Vogue fashion clean clean black t shirt uh to serve these drinks. But anyway, so uh we might do a we might do a version of this for the uh Heritage Radio. If the peaches aren't good, we might yeah, so it's Concord grape, uh clarified the way we clarified it.
The problem with Concord Grapes is uh Concorde grapes uh they're delicious, but if you are too aggressive when you're getting the juice out of them, you uh crush the seeds and they take on a uh uh a bitter note. So you have to kind of do a good job crushing, but then you also want to get really good extraction. So we um we first put it through an ice crusher and then we put them uh along with uh our uh uh SPL, which is our pectin breaking down enzyme, put that which you can contain from cooking issues dot com, uh, and then we put it into our chocolate grinder, but we set the chocolate grinder up high so that it wouldn't crush the seeds. So it was just smashing them and then we spun them in the centrifuge. Then we added uh the we added lemon juice and uh maple syrup and we chilled that sucker with liquid and some water, uh not a lot, but some.
Uh and uh, you know, that was delicious. Good. Yeah. That was a delicious product. We use rye whiskey in that one, but we we'd be using maker's mark in this next, so we'd probably have to change the recipe a bit.
But that was that was a a delicious, delicious product. And even though uh, you know, they it was like we we sold those drinks, what we pour, like four hundred drinks in like an hour or something like that. Yeah, and uh we sold out. So if you came to that event and you didn't get one of the drinks, I heartily apologize. Uh and let me see, talk about your new Macy machine, please.
Oh, all right. So Well, let me preface it by saying that everyone thinks Dave is very fun. Like really and you are really fun. But you're also the cheapest man alive. So uh well, about some things I could not possibly be cheaper.
For instance, um I will not take a cab unless what I'm carrying Well, not even. I was gonna say not even carry it. My legs are not broken. I'm not I don't see why I'm gonna take a cab. Like when I come out to here, I don't take the subway because that costs two dollars and fifty cents, so I t or whatever it is.
So I bike out here to Brooklyn because my legs are not broken. Why would I do that? Anyway, so the uh uh so Mark Ladner from Del Posto, who by the way is you know great guy, Mark Ladner, we all love Mark Ladner from Del Posto restaurant here in uh New York City, basically uh donated to Nastasha really. I had nothing to do with it. But right?
I mean, let's be honest here. You know what I mean? Uh donated to Nastasha, the this uh old vacuum machine from Del Posto that it's like no well, it's like you know, it's like halfway working. It's almost working. Yeah.
Right? Yeah. So anyway, she donated to the French Culinary Institute. And I'm like, a vacuum machine. How you know?
He's like, you know, you're gonna need to get a truck. I'm like, truck, what the fuck? Truck. Truck. This thing is about half the size of Dave and weighs like 500 pounds.
Yeah, anyways. So I show up and look at it, I'm like, oh geez. Because the problem is like it'd be hard to lift into a truck without a lift gate. So this is becoming, you know, and you know, Del Posto is on like what? 16th.
16th and like basically the river. It's about Hudson River. Three miles away from the school. No. Yes.
Come on. It was like two and a half. Anyways, so I'm like, to hell with it. I'm not gonna pay for a damn truck to come pick up this thing and move it when my legs are not broken. So that picture on the blog that Nastasha posted, in case anyone's wondering, was you know, I am that guy who's dumb enough to push the damn vacuum machine from Del Posto to the French Culinary Institute on the hottest day of the year.
Uh and uh, you know, here's the thing, right? It's like it i this is how I get things done. You know, that that you know, it's like uh, you know, when I was in school, I you know, I needed something, I dunno I jumped into a dumpster, I would get it. You know what I mean? When I when I need to do something, I I get on eBay and you know you find it for the cheapest possible price just because I've never had enough money to to do things, you know, in a non-ghetto way.
And um and I've always been willing to spend more time and energy than I probably should to do things. Uh I have since met some people who have not done it that way and are much more efficient. Uh so maybe, you know, in the future, look for us to be uh less stupid. But yeah, on the other hand, being stupid this way and cheap has you know, for whatever it's worth, gotten me know where I am. What?
It's endearing a little bit. My extreme cheapness? Yeah. Well, it's good that, you know, the the the Scottish blood in me brings my extreme cheapness and is is I'm glad it's at least somewhat endearing. It can be a pain in the butt, uh, especially for you know people like my wife who has to deal with uh my extraordinary cheapness.
Uh but you know, like I say, sometimes and I'm not cheap when it comes to I buy the best ingredients, all right? I buy the best ingredients. I'm not cheap about that. So it's weird. Like my wife is mad because I spend uh a ton of money on food because I'm not gonna buy food that I think is substandard.
Um which doesn't mean snobby. That's I think a big problem. Like people think that food in you know, the it's it's between like some effete bastard who only cares about spending a lot of money on their food, and between somebody who, you know, just buys crap and doesn't care. They don't you know, there's a lot of people out there, and I think this is the word everyone needs to spread about food, about what's going on with food now. It's just not about it's not about being a food snob, it's not about outspending the person next to you or getting the rarest ingredient or anything like that.
Even though I you know I deal professionally, I deal in the rarefied world of high-tech cooking. And it that a lot of that is really expensive, right? So people think that what we're doing is elitist, and well, okay, the stuff that I do for a living kind of necessity is because it's a very like very niche high-tech food, but that's not the way that doesn't mean that's the only thing that's that good food is, right? Or the only thing that I enjoy doing. Uh, you know, I think that we all need to step back and make sure that whatever we're doing, we're never being food snobs because I think you know that's not that way doesn't lie the the the best food for the for the most amount of people which is I think what we're shooting at.
And then I will leave you on this note. Heritage Foods and you know Pat Patrick Heritage Foods uh is uh interested and has been talking with us about reviving an idea uh you know had a while ago uh for a food museum in uh in New York and so look for he's starting to put people working on it right Stas yes and so look for look for in a couple of years look for that to finally actually happen uh and that uh that's gonna be you know I think the best because we're gonna be focused uh specifically on making sure that it's not about just uh elitist food or just snobby food we've got to show people that good food is for everyone fair way fair way like no other market that was cooking issues thanks for listening we'll be back live next time
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