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At Rogers Behavioral Health, one step can change everything. Visit Rogersbh.org or call 800-767-4411 for a free screening. Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues here on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, and we're here with Nastasha the Lopez Hammer. Just phoned back from Miami just this morning.
Call in all of your questions too. Nastasha, give them the number. 718 suppose. Aha. Brutal.
718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Hammer the Nastasha Lopez, huh? I know it, I know. She doesn't even have our number in her brain, huh?
Anyway, coming to you live for the next 45 minutes or so. Uh today's uh episode is brought to you by Hearst Ranch. Hearst Ranch is the nation's largest single source supplier of free-range, all-natural, grass-fed, and grass-finished beef. Since 1865, which is a long time ago, the Hearst family has raised cattle on the rich, sustainable native grasslands of the Central California coast. The result is beef with extraordinary flavor that's as memorable and natural as the surrounding landscape.
For more information, go to www.hurstranch.com. We've had their beef and it's uh it's quite good, right, Nastasha? Yes, Dave. All right. So, um, we actually I got back, what, yesterday?
Day before yesterday, Nastasha just got back. We were at the uh Miami South Beach Food and Wine Festival. I was doing a uh thing majig for the Liberty Science Center, which is having an exhibition on cooking, which is gonna open up in the fall, the science of cooking, which is gonna be very interesting. Chris Young from uh the new Modernist Cuisine Cookbook was uh doing it with me, and we were basically fluffing for the food network stars, you know, like uh Guy Fieri and uh Rachel Ray and uh Tyler Florence and you know the Ace of Cakes and uh Giada and all these people were were coming out to do a show for uh the kids and their parents, and we would sit there and uh do some some science questions, fluff them up a little bit. But it was fun.
We had uh a bunch of little kids ask us about uh liquid nitrogen. I had a kid ask me if uh agar agar was a chemical. I was so jacked, so when asked me that question, I got to go off on one of my favorite tangents about how uh you know a cow is a bag of chemicals, etc. etcetera. Uh so it was a it was a lot of fun.
But the most important part of the entire thing was that we got to visit some rare fruit fruit places, tropical fruit places in South Florida. So those of you that know me know I'm kind of a uh a temperate uh fruit nut. Uh Nastasha and I have gone sampled pears at the Kent at the Broedale, a couple hundred varieties. I've done uh a couple hundred varieties of apples at the uh Geneva station, the uh agricultural experiment station up in upstate New York. Uh anyway, I'll go anywhere to semper uh sample um a whole boatload of uh temperate fruits.
We've done s semi-tropical stuff. Nastasha and I did citrus uh you know almost a year ago at uh Gene Lester's ranch out in uh Watsonville, California, a couple hundred varieties there. Of we only tasted a hundred though, you know, so anyway. But uh we've never done full-on hardcore tropical fruit. So South of Miami, right at the very tip of uh Florida in South Dade.
There are two places we visited that uh are simply amazing and worth a visit. Um one of them is the Fairchild. Now Fairchild uh has been a garden for a long time that has many, many different varieties. They store many different varieties of tropical fruit, citrus and otherwise. Um we visited not their show garden but their kind of actual tree garden.
Unfortunately, most of the stuff we wanted to taste there, like mangoes and jackfruits aren't in season right now. So we're gonna have to go back and we are gonna go back. Uh Chris Young, uh Nastasha, Harold McGee, and I are going back to there in July to the Mango Festival, and we're gonna we're gonna eat mangoes until we die or they kick us out of the park, one of the two. And jackfruit, because they also have, I think like 75 varieties of jackfruit, which we're going to, you know, eat until we're all jacked up as they say. But the second place that you need to visit, less well known in South Dade, is the fruit and spice park, the Miami Dade County Fruit and Spice Park.
And we had a an amazing tour of that place. And they have you just pay, I don't know what the entrance fee is, not that much. You pay, you go in and you could take a tour if you want, and you just eat a preposterous amount of the most the craziest uh tropical fruit. So of the stuff that we had in season, I think there's one called uh Jipoticaba. Sounds like chupacabra, but it's not, it's Jipoticaba.
And it's they look like little grapes, but they taste musky and they grow on the actual bark of the tree. So the tree like the little tree shrub tree is growing there, and it and the little grapey things are growing right on the bark, and it tastes kind of like a grape with uh a little bit of a muskiness. Another really amazing one is uh canistel. Canistel they call like almost like a it's similar to uh the Lucama, which is the fruit that's uh famous in Peru that I've had shipped up kind of uh preserved, which I didn't like at all. Um because isn't that that stuff that we were given that we didn't like at all?
I don't think so. I think the preserved stuff from was it Peru or chili that we were given? Yeah, no, I think. Anyway, I think that was Lucama, no? No.
I just threw it out. All right. Uh but Canistelle uh has it almost a taste of a sweet potatoes and uh kind of an egg, custardy fruit, amazing stuff, and it makes it fantastic ice cream. If you're in uh Whole Foods in South Dade, by the way, you should go to uh get Gabby, Gabby's ice cream. She makes some amazing ice cream with both canistel and the next thing I'm about to tell you about, which is black sapote.
Black sapote they call like the chocolate pudding fruit. And you cut it in half and it's dark and it looks kind of like chocolate pudding, but it's super creamy and makes us like an it makes I think an amazing ice cream. You like the ice cream, right, Nastasha? It was good. Yeah, it was very good ice cream.
So, anyway, uh please, if you're ever in South Dade, uh go visit the fruit and spice park. And if you're from Miami and you've never been to the fruit and spice park, you should just jump out of your window right now. If you're spending all of your time like, you know, being all pumped and tan on South Beach like a moron, you should get out of there and go to the fruit and spice park because it's a lot more rewarding. I have to say the whole South Beach thing, not my style about you, Nastasha. Did you enjoy the actual South Beach?
No, I don't like South Beach very much. No. All right. Now, on to the questions. So from a couple of weeks.
Oh, by the way, the reason I missed uh last week's show, I was in Seattle, uh, actually Bellevue, Washington, at the lab of Nathan Mirvold, the Microsoft uh billionaire uh food nut who, along with Chris Young and you know, uh you know 13 other people, uh, have for the past four or five years been tolling uh toiling away at the modernist cuisine cookbook, which I believe is just released now, actually shipping now from Amazon.com. So you and about 450 of your closest friends, that means 450 dollars, can go on Amazon and purchase uh you know the modernist cuisine, which is I think six volumes or something like that. Uh it you know, I I know some of the stats from visiting them. It weighs like 40 pounds, 10, you know, four pounds of it of is ink. It's got like, you know, the greatest ink ever made.
There's only like two factories on earth, uh, two printing houses on earth that can do the printing that they that they can do. Anyway, amazing cookbook. So I flew out there to Seattle to have a dinner at uh Nathan's lab. Uh and uh it was it was it was really it was awesome, awesome experience. We uh I'll I'll probably we'll probably blog about it if I ever have time.
Remember uh for those of you that are are angry at me for not writing more blog posts, starting tomorrow I'm contractually obliged to have a post a week. So you know you have that to look forward to anyway. But so Dave we got an email question. You have an email question? All right well after the bre I'll read it during the break and then we'll well I'll see whether I know the answer to it.
So the um so anyway so I'm sitting there at the place and the taxi that's supposed to come take me to the airport uh I missed missed didn't come so came like 20 minutes late had problem insecurity missed my airplane back to New York by one minute and slept in the Seattle airport because I was too pissed off and tired to actually go back to anyone's uh anyone's house or anything like that. Uh I I later found out that all all of our friends you know uh had stayed on at the dinner and partied till 4 a.m while I was busy being pissed off in the airport but there you have it. Anyway, so um on to the questions. A couple weeks ago someone uh called in I believe and said what's going on in preserved lemons what is it that causes them uh to you know be preserved and you know what is it it's probably is it a bacteria is it whatever uh and I didn't know the answer I was you know wholehearted you know whole full on stumped and the answer uh I forget the name of the person who called in but the answer is yeasts so uh I looked online for it and it is uh a couple strains of yeast that are involved in the preserved lemons that can survive the saltiness of that environment and give the uh preserved lemons their characteristic flavor. I then conferred with uh Harold McGee when I saw him out at the um when I saw him out at the at the Nathan Miraville dinner, and he agreed that yes, he had heard uh it was a yeast and it makes sense to him, so that's the answer.
It is a yeast. Okay. Now, uh on to the first of this week's questions. Josh from Somerset England writes in, he says, I was very interested in the article on rapid infusion on the cooking issues site. What I'd like to know is can the what what are we supposed to say?
ISI or EC? E C D. EC. Well, uh uh well, what I'd like to know is can the EC soda siphon be used to do the technique instead of the whipper? Quite simply, I've wanted both for a long time, but can only really justify getting one or the other because of money and space, etc.
What are the advantages and disadvantages? Is it best to use a one liter or a half liter for home use? And he he uh pumps us up and says, the technique is genius. I wish I could tend the fundraiser to discover more things like this. Keep up the good work.
Well, thank you very much for the kind words. And uh if you can only buy one, in fact, if you can only buy two, just get the just get the whippers. I wouldn't bother getting the uh the soda siphons. The soda siphons are really specialized, and most of the time when we're doing first of all, soda siphons have a very thin neck, uh, so it's hard to get a lot of stuff uh into them. Uh second of all, soda siphons they draw from the bottom.
So really they're only good if you're like a big three stooges fan and you like to spray people in the face with seltzer, or if you're gonna keep the seltzer in the bottle for a long time and keep it in the fridge. Most of the techniques we do, I'm pouring all of the stuff out right away, and I find that you can actually lose quite a bit of the carbonation as you spray out uh through the spray head on a on one of those siphons. So for a number of reasons, even if I was going to carbonate with one of those things, I would never carbonate with the soda siphon. I actually carbonate with the um with the with the whip with the whipper. The only difference is um that you know you have to shake it more to get the CO2 in.
If you really wanted to, it wanted to make it act more like uh a soda siphon, as you put the cartridge in, you could hold it upside down, and then the CO2 would rocket through the drink as it goes up, which is basically all the only thing that the soda siphon's accomplishing for you. Soda siphon is also harder to clean. So I would I would only buy whippers. I would even carbonate, like I say, if you were going to carbonate in one of those, which I don't really recommend, but if you're gonna do that, I would carbonate in the whippers. So I would I would buy only whippers.
I think they're uh just a superior, superior product all around, the the cream whippers. Um, uh as to the one liter or the half liter uh for home use, it look if you're gonna do a lot of drinks, then I would get the and you're gonna carbonate them, I would get the liter. If you're gonna be doing a lot of rapid infusion, you're just gonna go through a couple more chargers, either that or you're gonna have to infuse into more product if you have if you have the liter one. So, you know, I we write all of our recipes for the half-liter ones because we're doing lots of tests and they don't scale exactly. So you can use either one, but just be aware that if you use a liter whipper with a smaller amount of product in it, you're gonna have to probably throw an extra charger into it.
So you're gonna have the expense of using extra chargers if you're using the liter as opposed to the half liter. But both will work. Uh what do you think? What do you think about that? Is that uh that's a good answer, dude.
All right. Josh also says, uh P. S. I love James Brown as much as the next guy, but surely you've got another C D you can play. Well, uh it's interesting you should uh say that, Josh, because someone else uh emailed uh just the same week and said that they uh enjoyed the James Brown because it's exactly uh um in sync with their treadmill as they're listening to the podcast.
So now I've got uh uh a for and an against on the James Brown. I could come up with a different James Brown song, perhaps. Uh or I could I could possibly move to something a little less funky, like a Merle Haggard or something like this. I'm not sure. What are your thoughts, Nastasha?
Should we stick with the James Brown? I didn't know we were allowed to change our our middle theme. Maybe we're not allowed to change our theme music, but we can change our middle music. I don't know. What do you think?
What are your thoughts? Any any thoughts? No thoughts. No thoughts. Nastash is too tired coming in off of the uh question.
Well, not answer my questions. What do you mean? I had a question. You're just sitting there staring into space. I don't know if you're about to have an answer or if you're in a a catatonic state over here.
She Nastasha literally had to get up at oh dark thirty this morning, and she's pounding coffee as we speak, trying to text all the people that were texting her when she's on the plane and like in in Super Spaceland. So I have to answer her questions for her because she looks to be frank, stunned. Anyway, uh okay. Uh Cho, and I don't know, I assume that's a last name, Cho, uh writes in this first name? Cho?
Okay, Cho writes in and uh in all caps, by the way, so Cho seriously wants an answer. What temperature should I poach an egg at? Okay. Cho. This is a uh I'm assuming you have an immersion circulator, which I'm sure most of our read you know listeners know.
An immersion circulator is something that keeps the temperature of water exactly accurate. Uh you can buy one at William Sonoma, uh, we love them, etc. etc. Um so what temperature you should cook the egg to really depends on what you're looking to do. The f the lowest temperature we ever cook an egg to is 62 degrees Celsius, which is 143 and a half in Fahrenheit land.
And that is a runny poached egg. Okay. Um so that's like, you know, you're gonna put on eggs benedict, whatever. You cook it in the shell uh for an hour. You can actually get away with 45 minutes, but you know, you cook it an hour, and then after that hour, you drop the temperature down to uh like 60 or 59 degrees, and then it can sit there for hours and hours and hours.
And then when the time comes, you just crack the egg out, and uh the thin white separates from the thick white, and you have a perfectly poached egg. If you're gonna serve it as is and you want it to look a little more the white to look a little brighter white and well done, you can put it through simmering water at on its way out to service. Now, uh that is gonna be 95% of all the eggs you do. If you want a little bit creamier in the inside, you don't want it runny, then you cook it to uh 63 degrees Celsius, which is 145.5 for an hour on the dot, and then you lower the uh these are for large eggs, large chicken eggs, then you lower the temperature down to 60 again, and that is a creamy egg yolk. It still will run, but it's very, very creamy, good for a consomme.
If you want it just set but still very soft and creamy, 64 Celsius, 147 uh Fahrenheit is what you should go. If you want uh also for an hour, if you want something that is kind of like a hard-boiled egg, but uh not, then I would uh put it in simmering water for uh like four minutes, uh five minutes, something like this, then put it into 70 degrees Celsius water, 158 Fahrenheit, for about an hour, and the yolk will be perfectly yellow and creamy, it won't smell like an overcooked egg, and you'll have a perfect uh hard boiled egg. Um if you want a uh interesting thing, Ervaties, who uh writes a lot of books on uh the science of cooking, all of them I think bad and wrong. He uh, he uh and by the way, Ts is spelled this. If you're looking for it, don't write T-E-E-S in the Google, write Erve this, because that's how he spells his name.
Erveteis has written and said that the 65 degrees Celsius, 149 degrees uh Fahrenheit is the perfect kind of poached egg because, and this just goes to show you how little he thinks about things, uh, he puts his eggs in the or I was told this by someone who saw him run the experiment. He puts his eggs in what he calls a very highly calibrated oven. Now, anyone who's ever cooked an egg in a circulator knows that 65 degrees Celsius is not a uh is not a runny egg. Um and it's because there's evaporative cooling out of the eggshell. Uh in fact, you can use this.
You can do MIARD uh reaction Hamine eggs in the oven by cooking them in the shell in the oven, and as they evaporate, the alkalinity of the egg goes up and they go uh they undergo browning reactions in the oven, even without a pressure cooker. So uh the evaporative cooling alone is enough to drop the temperature of the egg as it's cooking uh by about uh two or three degrees to get a runny egg yolk, and so Erva Tis chew on that one. In fact, he did a demo at the French Culinary Institute five years ago, um, and he he had us set up a bunch of circulators to cook us eggs, and he said all of these eggs are two degrees off. And the reason is is because he did all of his initial tests in an oven. Just because to show you what he knows.
Anyway, uh let's go to our first commercial break. Call in all your questions to uh 718. What is it? 4972128. That's 718-497-2128.
Cooking issues. So much bone brother. Call your name. I don't want to know if people know you're in, yeah. I feel fellow!
Head down! 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 bump good time. We're gonna have a bump good time. Don't take them up, Brand. We gotta take you high. Yeah, let's go on.
We gotta take the high brother. Now I won't have a body. Let's bread blow up by two cores. And then I wanna wave me and let's go into it. Now alright.
I'm gonna get that belly with a little horn over there. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Tune in to the Speakeasy every Wednesday at 3 p.m. where host Damon Bolti will discuss cocktails, spirits, wine, beer, tea, coffee, and all things in the liquid universe. With guests ranging from bartenders and brewers, alchemists and ambassadors, roasters and regulars, and every expert and enthusiast in between.
Learn from some of the world's leading experts in mixology, bar history, distillation, and brewing about how we enjoy imbibing today. Again, that's every Wednesday at 3 p.m. on the Heritage Radio Network. Hello and welcome back to Cooking Issues. Call in your questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718-497-2128. So uh the email question uh came in and said that when I when I was in Seattle, did I get a chance to visit Armandino Batale's um Salumi place and where do I rank him in kind of American ham producers? Now, this is an interesting question. So Armandino Batali is, in fact, uh Mario Batali's dad. He was a it's a real interesting case because uh he he used to be a chemical engineer, I believe at Boeing, but I'm I I can't remember.
I interviewed him a number of years ago for uh an article I was doing on uh House Cured Meats at uh for Food Arts magazine. And he as a scientist has very like uh you know, very keyed into safety and proper techniques and it and uh and a really interesting guy, but I've only ever had his products at um at some Batali restaurants. I didn't get a chance to go there when I went out. I wish I had had the time. I was basically I would have been in and out had I made my airplane.
Instead I was in and uh stayed, you know, stayed over, unfortunately, in the airport. So I didn't get a chance to try uh basically any of the really interesting places out there with the exception of Nathan Mirvol's, which was quite interesting. Um I don't really I I wish I had more to more to say on it. The one thing I will say is as far as I can tell, uh, and I've never had his famous uh lamp prosciutto either, uh, but as far as I can tell, uh he's not doing an American style of product. He's doing more of an Italian style of product, and so I wouldn't I wouldn't try to rank him alongside of uh of American producers uh, you know, like uh Sam Edwards or Alan Benton or uh Nancy Mahaffey, which Nancy Mahaffey is from uh Colonel Newsom's or you know, pe people of that of that nature or like uh Finchville Farms.
I mean, they the the these are what I consider a American products. They're making American country hams, which I consider to be fundamentally different from European style products. The you know, the the temperature that they're that they're done at is is different. American hams are typically aged at a much higher temperature uh after they go through their equalization process. So I just I I wouldn't rank them I wouldn't rank them together.
But uh the products of his that I've had I thought were very, very good. Um so next time I go out to Seattle, I will be sure to have uh I'll be sure to go to the site and have uh a whole boatload of uh Armandito Batales uh products. Okay, so uh I had a question come in that says, I'm interested in cooking steak sous vide, but I have a question on searing methods. Uh it is obviously possible to use a super hot skillet, grill, or broiler. Uh you forgot deep fryer, which is my favorite way to do it, um, to uh sear, but what about a blowtorch?
At focus points it can reach a much higher temperature than any of the other techniques, meaning more pink inside and crispier, more caramelized outside. When you say caramelized, I'm assuming you mean my yard because it's not actually caramel, but you know, we all say caramelized. I'm just saying in case anyone's a stickler. In case Jeffrey Steingarden ever listens to this, he'll call up and scream if I don't say that. So you know it's just the only reason I'm saying it.
Also, this might be a way to achieve an even uh Myard reaction on meats that are not of uniform thickness or dimensions. A third advantage is that sear if searing is taking place before the water bath, then a more shallow searing depth would cause the meat to contract less, opening the way for uh non-traditional cuts of meat. Uh, and this comes in from Justin. Okay. Uh now he also says that could you use uh some welding equipment, and if so, what kind of welding equipment would you use?
Now here are my thoughts on torches. Uh first of all, when we're searing, of course, we sear before and after, and the reason we sear both before and after is we sear before to kill some of the bacteria on the outside. We're talking about low temperature cooking, by the way. So you cook something to the to the temperature you want it. So if I'm cooking a steak to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, I have a water bath at 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and the steak is perfectly cooked all the way through.
I mean it's great technique. Um typically I would sear it beforehand to start crust development, start flavor development, kill bacteria on the outside. By the time it comes out of the water bath, the crust is gone, and so you sear it again to put a nice crust on it. The trick is when you're searing it, as uh Justin says, you need a very high temperature because you don't want to overcook the meat. So the way I usually do that is by dropping the temperature of the bath a bunch.
So if I'm cooking at 55, I'll drop the bath to 50 degrees Celsius for like 30 minutes before I sear it, so that I drop the whole temperature down and I can sear it really hard without overcooking the meat. And that's in general how I accomplish it. Here are my thoughts on torches in general. First of all, I wouldn't go and use if you mean by welding equipment, straight up acetylene. I wouldn't use acetylene because if your mix is not exactly first of all, acetylene is ridiculously hot, absurdly hot.
There's a famous guy when uh when um they were building the spirit of St. Louis, uh, you know, Lindbergh's airplane, uh, the guy at Ryanair, Ryan was the company that built the spirit of St. Louis, he used to cook fish on with uh acetylene torches on pieces of aluminum, but by all accounts they tasted god awful like fuel. I have never cooked with acetylene, although I have a torch somewhere. Uh yeah, I haven't fired up the acetine in a long time.
But my feeling is that acetylene probably wouldn't be uh a good call. Um, the commercially most people use uh propane and uh butane torches. Now, the problem with propane and butane torches is that if in unless you have a special source of the gas, they add uh odorants, things that smell to them, so that you can smell if there's a leak, right? And typically they're adding uh either methylmercaptain or ethylmorcaptain or some group of mercaptins, also known as like methana methanothiol. These are they're sulfur-containing compounds.
You can smell in very minute quantities. If they're not completely combusted, right, they tend to uh stink up your product and you have what we call torch taste. All right. Now, the more fat there is on a on a product, right, the more you can smell the torch taste. So things that aren't very fatty tend not to pick up a lot of torch taste, but things that are high in fat tend to pick up a lot of this torch taste.
Now there are two ways you can get rid of torch taste. You can either use a gas that doesn't have any of these odorants in them, but they're kind of hard to find. That's why a lot of pipe um pipe uh lighters and cigar lighting butane that are very clean butanes, those butane torches tend to smell less uh because they I think have little less of that product in them. The other thing you can do is make sure that your torch has complete combustion. So some torches are much better than others at completely combusting.
Most of the torches that we use in our in our houses, like the the propane torches, aren't very good at it, and so you get a lot of a lot of torch taste. You can take and fire that torch through a grid, heat up the grid, and then that will um basically um enhance the combustion of these things and cause you not to have a torch taste. But it tends we use the chinois, but it tends to ruin your chinois. So I had some nichrome wire, and that also works, but then you gotta go buy some nicrome wire. Chris Young of the Modernist Cuisine uh cookbook, I was asking him about it.
He uses map gas, MAPP gas. I don't know if they add an odorant to it or not, but map gas can be purchased at Home Depot. It's a lot hotter. Now, if you want to go really balls out on this, right, I have used a roofing torch with a propane tank as a searing uh device uh as a test. Uh the the problem with a roofing torch is a roofing torch will light your whole uh kitchen on fire if you're not if you're not careful.
But uh I was able to get a complete enough combustion with a roofing torch, so I said I had no torch taste at all. I scorched the entire work surface that the thing was on, and it was hard to get an even uh crust on it, but I did get it to work. So, first of all, that's the first problem. You have torch taste. The second problem is that I think certain Myard reactions, um, you you don't want it too too hot.
I haven't been able to run experiments yet to figure out what the maximum heat that you want is. But I don't think that the Myard products you get from a hyper-intense heat like a torch are the same as the ones you get from a more normal kind of uh heat. So I don't think that it's the same. And also, you don't really want a just a thin layer of black on the outside of a product. For a real crunchy, uh like really crunchy, crispy crust, you need a certain depth of crutch crust formation.
And if you did that with a torch, you'd have to either be very, very gentle or you'd you'd um basically incinerate the top while you were getting that that thickness of crust that you wanted. I also tend to find that torching is really uneven in terms of its distribution, so even though theoretically you can get all the pieces evenly, it's hard to get an even torch job. So if you look at a torch sear, often you'll see spots that are darker than others, which isn't as pleasant as as you could be. Now, maybe you could get around that by using something giant, but then it's easy to go overboard uh really quickly. So I tend to only use the torch as a touch-up in areas like if you have a bird like around the thigh area uh or around like where the wings are, sometimes you can lose a little there, and I'll do a little touch-up, but I tend not to use them as my primary uh searing um searing thing, right?
Um so anyway, that's my that's my feelings on it. Uh now maybe we should uh go to our second commercial break and I'll boot up the rest of the questions. So let's go to our second commercial break and we'll be back in a minute. Give up the lamb of all the bread. You know what?
When I hear a groove like this, ooh. Oh say I got baby. Yeah. Yeah. Black way of young man.
Look at you. So we got a groove like this. You know? No. I need to grit.
Need to grit. You know. I believe hey, hey, Brad Dumbled. Brother. I'm getting ready to wave y'all in.
You know what? I feel so down. I need to get down. In order for me to get down, I got to get in D. In order for me to get down, I gotta get in D.
Need to get in D. Dog the D. Down D. Here we go. Down D.
Get it D. Ready? Boom! Come on, do it. Oh, I love that.
I love it. Alright. Since this is the second time I've allowed to have my down D in the middle, uh, we'll maybe we'll change it. So now that you guys know how awesome the down D is, you know, you can just go listen to it on your own and we'll get it we'll get a different song for the uh for the thing. I think I can think about making a video.
The down D is good for this. I'm not gonna do hollow notes, Nastasha. What do you want to do? You want to do uh Meneater? What?
What which one do you want to do? Genesis. Oh, we will not do Genesis. This is one thing I know we will not do. Alright.
No offense. No offense to Genesis fans. I mean, uh, you know, Nastash is more of a Phil Collins invisible touch or Susudio kind of a kind of a girl, I think. That's my feeling on Nastasha. So call in your questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718-497-2128. Well, you know, if we're gonna do Genesis, you want to do like that's all. Remember that song, That's All? Sing it, no. I'm not gonna sing.
There's no way on earth I'm gonna sing it. No way. Anyway. Okay. Uh I have a question coming in from Hawaii, I think.
Uh Aaron Melvin calls in. I assume it's from Hawaii because Aaron grows Lilicoy. And uh what that is, is a Hawaiian passion fruit. And actually, we had some delicious passion fruit down at uh in Miami at uh Gabby's farm, right? Of course, I didn't really get to taste it because Nastasha pounded the whole thing.
Whatever. Okay, we have a rather extreme overabundance uh of Lilicoy in our garden and oh yeah, in Molokai's in uh Hawaii, which I wish I could go. Uh someday we will get to go. A nice problem to have. Uh I've recently made uh Lilikoi souffle and little coi creme brulee.
Both were delicious and intensely flavored, but the texture is not perfect as the dairy was just beginning to curdle. Since the dairy is already high fat, I'm not sure where to turn to try and prevent curdling without reducing the intensity of the lilicoy. I could try mixing some cornstarch into the dairy before combination with the liloquoy juice, but would you recommend another hydrocolloid technique? Um certainly in my somewhat off-the-cup cuffed attempts, uh, these could have used a bit more structure or solidity. Now, uh, you could use something like you could uh pre uh gel pre-gel the uh dairy or add it to add a little bit of carrageenin uh to it.
Carrageenan and locust bean gum. If you add carragaean and locust bean gum, these are the same stabilizers that are used in ice creams. Um I would use uh probably if you don't want it too firm, I would use uh iota uh carrageen, and that's gonna be more pudding-y, and if you want it a little firmer, you can use kappa, which is rigid. But I wouldn't use kappa actually in a high acid situation. First of all, you don't want it rigid, and second of all, uh in a high acid situation, it there's a possibility that there might be some carcinogenic uh action with carrageenin at very low pH.
Um, but it hasn't been proved yet. But I tend to stay away from kappa carrageenin at low pH. But you could use uh, I think some uh iota carrageenin and LBG, and and that should take you somewhat closer to stopping it from curdling. But if that's not working for you, cornstarch should also uh prevent it from breaking. But cornstarch will definitely stop.
I know cornstarch will definitely stop egg yolks from uh from curdling when they're overheated because uh why that's how Wiley uh makes his um that's how Wiley makes his um his mayonnaise his Hollandaise sauce. He adds uh enough starch to the egg yolk so that he can heat it up without uh curdling the egg yolks. So uh any of those techniques would work. So hopefully, you know, you could you could try one of those things, and hopefully someday we can go to Hawaii and try some of these things. Anyway, uh he also tried uh to make methylcel F50 meringues uh with his uh lilicoy, and we actually use regular passion fruit puree a lot.
F50 is a product that uh is a whipping agent. You can make mousses with it like uh almost like shaving cream, very dense mouses, um and they act like egg whites and they can be whipped. And so what you do is you make a meringue out of something like a puree, a passion fruit puree, let's say, or lilocoi puree, and then you uh you just put it on a dehydrator and you and you dehydrate them and they turn into into crunchy meringues. Uh in his oven, because it's so humid there, they got uh kind of dense uh and not super uh crunchy, but then he he hit it with uh he brûle lay the top of it to add it more crunch, and he says it makes uh an excellent pavlova base, and I'm glad that worked out for you. I think that's a genuinely delicious technique.
Uh he also says he was glad to hear our thoughts on chocolate tempering from two weeks ago. Have we ever experimented with sous vide tempering? So basically the idea is um by the way, yes, it works. There are people that do it. I haven't done it.
So what you can do is instead of if you have chocolates in to old school traditional tempering techniques, assume, like you know, where you where you um you know, where you have to go through a bunch of different steps, are for taking chocolate that's not in temper and bringing it into temper. If you have chocolate that is already in temper and you just want to melt it and keep it in temper, uh then you can just throw it in a in a sous vide bag, vac it down, throw it in water, uh, and set it exactly the melting point you want, and it's gonna work uh fine. You can also actually do the the temperature ramps uh in a bag by moving them around if you if you wanted to. The one issue with it, and people do this and they can keep it in temper a long time because the temperature is very accurate within a couple tenths of a degree. Uh the problem is you gotta make sure that when you take it out, that you take it out and you don't get any water and the chocolate off the bag because there's a lot of it's easy to mess things up that way.
So I would put it into something that's easy to get something out of. Like I would seal your chocolate into a pastry bag instead of into a regular bag when you're when you're working. But yes, it would be uh uh basically an attention free way of doing it. Okay. Uh Pepperoni Bill, which is an awesome name.
I haven't gotten a chance to check out Pepperoni Bill's website yet, but Pepperoni Bill is it's gotta be one of the better names, like the one of the better handles that people use on the internet. Do they still say handle or is that only from the C B era? I think that's from the CB era, because I don't know what it is. Hey, you know what? Speaking of CB era, what if we move to Convoy is our as our song?
No. No? Mm-hmm. No? I love Convoy.
Anyway, uh Pepperoni Bill, uh basically just a comment. He says, um, love the show. James Brown music is perfect sync with his uh uh with his treadmill walk. So he's the he's the James Brown lover. He'll be at the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas March 1st through 3rd.
Just wonder if you guys had any plans of attending. If not, we'll have to meet some other way. Maybe you can come to my pizza joint someday when I finally open one. Well, seeing as now it is March 1st right now, and we were not in the Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, no, but we hope that you were having an excellent time at the Pizza Expo. I wish I could be at the Pizza Expo because I love myself some pizza, but uh I've also never been to Vegas, you?
Yeah, it's bad. You wouldn't like it. I wouldn't like it. No, yeah. Yeah, I'm I don't know.
Yeah, I'm I'm weird that way. Anyway, so uh Pepperoni Bill, let us know how it is. Okay, Alan from DC writes in, been a fan of the podcast for a while, uh, as a fan of food science, and he's decided it's time to start playing with some of the fun techniques that we talk about. Uh he has the ability to build a basic immersion circulator, but wanted to know uh my thoughts on what is needed. His understanding is that uh he needs a heat source, a simple fan, and a control feedback loop.
Um he says control loops are fun, I can handle that. What I want to know is how exact the temperature needs to be and what kind of fluctuations might be allowed. Are there interesting recipes that require changing the temperature part way through the preparation, and how precisely rapidly do these changes need to be? Any other thoughts on what my circulator needs to do? Uh Alan from DC.
Now, uh okay. So it's not a fan you need. If you want to build an immersion circulator, I mean if you want to build your own t temperature loop, that's great. But everyone uses basically what's called PID control, PID control, which is proportional uh integrative and derivative control, right? And so the this control uh loop technology, basically this control algorithm is allows you to go directly up to the temperature and not overshoot it, not porpoise around like a bang bang does, right?
And uh very, very few people write their own control loops. If you're good with a microprocessor, you can look up um someone for the Arduino wrote code to do uh um a PID loop um for his coffee maker and you can look up on the web under Sylvia P I D Arduino and there's code out there that you can write to help you write code to do it. But that's the only really method that people use accurately because it needs to not fluctuate around. So you don't want to use an onoff temperature control. You want to use PID, PID.
The other thing is it's not a fan that they use uh most people when they're building their own you can buy a small uh pump um you can buy a small pump that you know like one that's actually used in a circulator, but the vast majority of people use aquarium pumps. And you can either bubble air in which moves just moves around by bubbling air or you can actually pump water. And if you look online there the the the pump that people use to do recirculated mash RIMS for brewing there's a lot of there's a couple cheap pumps in the like fifteen dollar range that can handle it and can handle the temperatures and can pump a good amount of liquid because you need it to move around a lot. The other thing is you're gonna need um ever all the commercial circulators are a thousand watts. They're a thousand watts.
So you're gonna want about a thousand watts of heating. More heating is not going to hurt you. The problem is if you go over a thousand watts, you're gonna have to make sure that you have a plug that can handle it, right? So all the circulators that are built are basically built to go into a standard 15 amp plug. And once you go well, you know, over a thousand, you're gonna have to start worrying about it.
But if you have your own plug, you can make it as powerful as you want, and then it's gonna go up and down a lot faster. It's gonna be a lot more uh responsive. And so like these are the kinds of things that you need to uh these are the kind of things you need to do. I would I would say that you want your temperature to be within a couple of tenths of a degree. Um in terms of okay, so there's two things.
There's accuracy, accuracy, and there's precision, right? So the question is how accurate do you need to be? You need to be within about uh three tenths, I'd say, uh, of a degree Celsius accurate and precise. Okay, so accuracy is like how close are you to what the temperature you really want, and precision is how often can you repeat it. And as long as your accuracy is within like three tenths, you'll be able to recreate other people's recipes.
Now your precision should be dead on, like a tenth of a degree or so, because there's no reason for it not to be. And that's why you know speak to Philip Preston, who is the you know the guy who builds the circulators that we use from poly science. Um, he says, yeah, like even the old uh analog ones are extremely precise. Like once you set the knob on the analog one, it's gonna hit the same temperature all the time and stay there with very, very, very high degree of precision. It's just not accurate.
So you have to use a second thermometer to uh to to judge exactly where you are because it doesn't have uh a readout on um it doesn't have a readout on exactly how uh you know how hot it is. So those are my thoughts on building your own uh thing now I've built many um many of these in my time um what what I used to do was I would get like an you know they were all bad let's put it this way I've built like three or four of them and I now use the poly science one just because the homebrew ones are always how to put this a little bit of a pain in the butt right now the Philip uh well let me see so there there's when I was doing it I whenever I do anything it's totally ghetto spit bubblegum ridiculous like so what used to happen with me is I would get shocked like I used I didn't build one once where I used a bunch of those coffee heaters that cost like two bucks that you get at the dollar store even though it's at the dollar store they cost two bucks anyway you throw them into the thing you throw a bunch of them in and then when you go in to get your uh your eggs out of the circulator you know what happens yeah you get shocked like really badly shocked you know what I mean so that one was out the window I built another one where you know I I bought like a heater for like uh twenty bucks off a McMaster car and but it's just like now I have like wires sitting everywhere and like you know uh now that I have kids in my house I didn't want them running around with like these wires out everywhere but this is because I'm a moron and all I care about is functionality. There are people out online if you search like the make community or the instructable community or any one of these DIY sites there are people that know exactly what like plastic box like you know they're like go buy the Rubik's Cube not you know it's got to be this Rubik's cube because it's got the exact size box for the parts that they want and they then they can womp together one for you know under a hundred bucks, I think is the current going rate for everything you need, including, by the way, a pre-made PID controller with digital readout. In case, you know, in case you value your time and don't want to write your own code, you can now get one of these controllers for I think like 35 bucks. And they work, they work like like gangbusters.
The only other thing I'd say is uh when you're buying one and you're gonna have to control the heater. And there's two ways you can go. You can go with a regular relay, but the regular relay is gonna sit there going click, click, click, click. I hate that. So I go for what's called a solid state relay, and solid state relay uh is completely dead silent, and you can run it at whatever rate you want, and it never ever wears out, but they are more expensive.
So instead of like four bucks, five bucks, you're gonna spend like twenty bucks, something like that. Twenty bucks. Twenty bucks. But anyway, I would say go get the one for twenty bucks, just because that extra twenty dollars for that little bit of silence in your kitchen instead of having to click click. Let me put it this way.
My stove, right, can't run off a solid state relay uh relay because I'm actually opening and closing a solenoid valve for my uh for my I'm actually closing a solenoid valve for my my gas and it's irritating because it's like click, click, click. But luckily, most of the time when I'm running my oven, I'm making pizza. Go to go back to Pepperoni Bill's pizza question. I'm making pizza, and so I have it on full bore uh blast out mode so that I can get it up to 850 degrees and you know light light everything on fire, basically. Uh okay, so uh on my way out, I will say that uh you should all I I I wish that everyone had the money to go buy uh Nathan Mirvald and Chris Young's new modernist cuisine book.
They've already sold well over half of the initial printing and they've ordered uh another printing on it. Uh it is a pretty cool book. I am extremely jealous. I visited their lab. They have uh a water jet cutter, a crazy water jet cutter.
Like they have a scanning electron microscope, and by the way, Nathan has one at his house too, in case he should want to do in case you know he doesn't want to have to go into the office to do a scanning electron microscopy. You know, he can do his scanning electron microscopy at home, you know. You know, you know, he he they have a cr they have a crappy, awesome, like, you know, regular light microscope at the office because he wanted to keep his good one at work. So I don't know. Anyway, I'm extraordinarily jealous of the equipment they have.
But we had a really good time uh out at the meal there, and um I'm sure you'll be seeing about it. Uh, you know, that it's on Wired magazine. I think a lot of the things you can see, the kinds of things they were doing in in the meal. Oh, and I had their ultrasonic French fries. So Josh Azerski, uh, who you know he writes things, right?
He writes things, Josh Azersky. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, anyway, so he writes things. So he came back and he says, Yeah, he said, he doesn't talk that. Well, actually, he does kind of talk that way.
Yeah. So he goes, you know, you gotta, you know, Nathan Mirvold and you know, Chris Young's ultrasonic french fry is the world's greatest French fry. So I had the ultrasonic french fry, and the ultrasonic french fry was quite good. And I spoke to Nathan, they've done the SPL, he likes them, but he likes the ultrasonic one better. But um I have not yet published.
I want you guys to know this. On the blog, I have published my three-eighths inch uh SPL, that's my enzyme that I use recipe. I will place up, I mean, his French fry was very good. But I will place my new half inch, because he was a half-inch French fry guy. I will place my half-inch French fry up against it.
Uh, and we should also try maybe his ultrasonic technique along with our SPL technique to see whether we can do the double ridiculous Wam Damula of like uh of monstrosity french fry madness, because that might be the French fry to kill all french fries. But remember, there's no such thing as the perfect French fry because French fry is something that can always be improved. Alright, and that's cooking Issues. We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network.
You can find all of our archived programs on HeritageRadio Network.com, as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage Radio Network in the iTunes Store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up-to-date news and information. Thanks for listening. The following is a public service announcement from Heritage Foods USA.
In late March, Dan Andrea Patrick and the Heritage team are traveling to the coldest reaches of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont to help the Cantor family tap sugar maple trees. Then the maple sap will flow down to the sugar house where it is boiled gently over a wood fire, just as it has been for generations. Just a few days later, this Great A Amber Syrup will be poured into the beautiful glass jugs and sent to you for pancakes, waffles, desserts, glazing hams, or just drinking by the spoonful. There's only a limited supply, so order today. Each one-liter bottle is $45, including delivery.
Delivery will be at the end of March, and we will notify you of the exact shipping date. Each shipment will include a CD explaining the whole process. You can also follow us on YouTube while we work and bottle. In the meantime, you can head over to the Heritage Radio Network Archives and listen to Linda Palaccio talk about maple syrup on her show A Taste of the Past, episode 12. For more information, visit www.heritagefoods USA.com.
The following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Join Wine and Presarios Aaron Fitzpatrick and Brian DeMarco as they dish out on the latest industry news with winemakers and tastemakers on Heritage Radio Network's revamped wine show, Unfiltered. Erin Fitzpatrick, one of the first hosts on HRN with her program at the root of it, amps up the volume and unfiltered content with co-host Brian DeMarco in this 2011 Redux. True to the original format, Aaron and Brian will keep you abreast of current happenings and break down the news and global events, distilling complex into anecdotal stories that inspire. From media and political events to hailstorms in Argentina, no topic is out of bounds.
Tune in every week to hear them chat up the industry's biggest personalities and host on-air tastings with visiting ventors and the country's hottest smoliers. Whether you're an expert or an enthusiast, Unfiltered demystifies wine and lets you know what it really takes to get a bottle from the vineyard to your neighborhood wine shop. Unfiltered broadcasts live every Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Heritage Radio Network. The following is a public service announcement from the Museum of Food and Drink.
Dave Arnold and Patrick Martins have gathered a team of New York's most innovative chefs and bartenders to create a nine-course fundraiser lunch at Del Posto, Sunday, March 27th. Their intent to kick start the greatest food museum in the world. The menu for this unprecedented event is derived from educational themes of the museum. Chefs will draw inspiration from sources outside their normal sphere. How will a cutting-edge chef handle the Paleolithic or a dish only using pre-Columbian ingredients?
What will a modern Italian chef do with ancient Rome? The chefs include David Chang of Momafuku, Wiley Dufrain of WD-50, Mark Ladner of Del Posto, Nils Norrin of the French Culinary Institute, Cesare Casella of Salumaria Rossi, Carlo Moraci of Robertas, Brooks Headley of Del Posto, and Christina Tozzi of Momofuku Milk Bar. Bartenders include Audrey Sanders of Pegu Club, Thomas Waugh of Death and Company, Simon Ford of Perno Ricard, Damon Bolti of Prime Meats, and Evan Clem of BR Guest Restaurants. Proceeds from the event will directly support the Museum of Food and Drink. Tickets are very limited and $250 per person.
To purchase tickets, please visit Mofad.eventbright.com. That's M-O-F-A-D.eventbright.com. Once again, M-O-F-A-D.E-V-E-N-T V-R-I-T-E.com. Sponsored by Perno Ricard, Heritage Foods USA, Pat LaFreda Meats, Barter House Wines, Del Posto Restaurant.
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