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That's 718-389-0985 to place your order with Andrea or Ashley. Don't forget to sign up for the email list and to check them on Facebook and Twitter to get in on their new products, deals, and offers from Heritage Foods USA. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues coming to you live every Tuesday on the Heritage Radio Network. I am Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues. Nastasha the Hammer Lopez is not here today because she is in Brimfield shopping for antiques.
Nastasha, word to the wise, Brimfield was cool before eBay. No insult to the Brimfield folks, right? No insult. We're also here in the studio with Chad Solomon and Christy Pope from the I guess newly renamed Cuffs and Buttons. It used to be singular and now it's plural or it was always plural and I've just always said it wrong.
No, it's it used to be singular. Now it's plural because we're plural people. Alright, cool. So uh call in all of your questions, cooking, and uh hopefully today uh a lot of drink related questions too. 718 497 2128.
That's 718 497 2128. We'll be here for about the next 45 minutes. So uh uh uh Chad and Christy are an interesting uh group because they are one of the only like hardcore, like world-class like bartender couples that I know. Is that true? Do you know any others?
I would say the only other two are would be uh Anastasia Miller and Jared Brown. Oh yes, yes. All right. They live somewhere else. Yeah, they they jumped in.
Yeah, yeah, that doesn't count. They don't count. And uh and also they're like are they actually were they like like working bartender types, or are they are they just like like intelligentsia of drinking? I think intelligentsia, right? At one time um before we knew them, both of them had bartended.
Yeah. In fact, Jared worked with Dale, our worked as a waiter at the Rainbow Room uh during lunch service while Dale was there, but bartended at an at another establishment at that time. And by the way, for those of you not hip to like the recent history of uh cocktails, we're talking about uh Dale de Groff, who um kind of uh was fair to say started bringing back uh good cocktails in the rainbow room in the when was it the 860s? Yeah, late 80s. So uh like the entire country and probably the world, a a cultural wasteland of crappy cocktails.
Uh Dale uh um teams up with uh why is his name? My name's popping out of my head. The guy who owned the rainbow room started at the end of the room. Joe Bowen. Yeah, there you go.
Like that, boom, they're right there with it. Uh basically says, uh, you know, along with Dale, hey, why don't we have real drinks here? And then uh and that's the start, and and everything has kind of stemmed from that. I mean that it's hard to find an like a real bartender here or abroad, really, that doesn't trace some sort of route back to that moment where uh Dale was like, let's make some good drinks again. I would say that Dale's important to us as well, simply because uh he's Chad, I'll let you tell the story, but that's how we got our name.
Um was through a story that Dale had told us what on one of the original meetings that we had with him. He he he re uh recounted the story, uh the etymology of the name Cuffs and Buttons and how it uh was an old uh New Orleans cocktail created in 1873. Um and that bartender over time well he'd he named the drink cuffs and buttons at the time because of a competing drink called White Ties and Tails. And um in the by the eighteen eighties, there was the international cotton exposition held in New Orleans, and with all the international visitors coming into town, he's like, nobody's gonna understand this white ties and tails, cuffs and buttons thing. So they changed the name of Southern Comfort.
Southern Comfort then went on to become a much bigger brand in the 20th century. Braun Foreman bought it and they really dropped, you know, the cuffs and buttons, and it was just kind of a historical footnote. We loved the name because of the kind of formality and the it's a very uh kind of uh visual connotation that comes, you know, cuffs and buttons, and it worked really well when we were looking to, you know, name a cocktail catering company as we started out. Right. What is now sold as Southern Comfort was one of the first things I ever got sick on.
Oh yeah. Not surprising. Yeah. Uh oh, actually, uh this might be interesting before we get into some hardcore questioning and tasting actually, is uh did you guys meet like after you were bartending? These guys have worked at like all the like a lot of the great bars here in in New York and all over the country.
So you you have milk and honey, you uh Pegu, right? Where where else? Uh like everywhere. It's like you can't even flat Iron Lounge. Yeah.
Flat Iron Lounge and Little Branch, yeah. Yeah, but it's not oh yeah, it's not like oh they they worked there for like a day and a half, like everywhere, like these are like they started these, they they were like on the opening teams on these places. So this is like not a this is a no joke, like this is a real deal homie uh situation. And did you guys meet while you were doing that or beforehand? Uh it was actually kind of a fortuitous uh circumstances, but um I was working at Milk and Honey.
I started there uh in its second year, um, which was in two thousand one, and it was I got hired the Thursday before 911. Ooh. So uh yeah nine eleven happened and obviously everything below 14th Street was just a stalemate for a period of time. You couldn't even get down there. Yeah exactly I lived in Chinatown so it's like I used to have to carry my electric bill with me to to get into my house because there was always armed guards and but um so I was working down there uh 9 11 happened business was slow I needed a supplementary job so I had a friend who knew the manager at a place called the cellar bar which is in the Bryant Park hotel.
So um I went to interview there and uh that's how I met Chad. He was interviewing on the same day that I was yeah so I walked in I I had previously had not bartended ever um and had been working in film and um when the obviously when 911 happened it kind of they shut down all filming indefinitely because you know the resources need to be diverted due to the the the incident. So I jumped behind a bar, met Christy there and ironically the person who got me the job at the cellar bar was uh he said oh there's this bar in the lower east side called Milk and Honey and he said something you'd really respond to and he kind of described it to me and I'd heard of it but really didn't necessarily understand what it was. But he's like you learn how to make really amazing drinks and it's got rules and you know you have to have a reservation to get in there. And it didn't really until you went in there and and saw it and did it at the time it didn't make sense entirely.
So the Sasha didn't need anybody at that time. So I went to the Bryant Park hotel made it a little bit Sasha being the person who started building. Yeah, Sasha Sasha Petrosky. And uh it worked out because Christy and I got hired the same day. We didn't actually know that, but we worked together, I think, for the first time a couple of weeks later, and uh she's like, you know, we're like, what else do you do?
She's like, Oh, I also work at the spar at this bar milk and Honey, yada yada. And was shortly after that I she took me in there for the first time, and you know, it was just kind of a Eureka moment. Oh, there's something going on here. These drinks are completely different than anything you I've tried. These bartenders are working in a way that I've never seen.
Why are they doing this? And it just the questions just such a juxtaposition having both experiences working at milk and honey and a place like Cellar Bar at the same time. Not that Cellar Bar was a bad bar, it was just a totally different style of bar experience, you know, much more common to what people think of, you know, completely not uh craft cocktail bar in the sense that milk and honey. Yeah, volume oriented, yeah, high fashion, very flashy crowd, you know. Yeah.
And there begins the journey. I think we actually have a caller. I wonder whether hopefully it's a drink question. Well, whatever the question is, we'll take it, right? Caller, you were on the air.
Hey Dave, it's not a drink question. I have a question about cellulose. Okay. I uh saw that there was a uh Washington or the Wall Street Journal about uh how they're adding cellulose could bulk up food and make it creamier. I was wondering what extent can we make food completely from cellulose?
Like, can we have cellulose pasta and cellulose bread? I mean, just something that basically gives us all that fiber but doesn't make us fat. They used to do that all the time, and I remember when I was a kid looking at the kind of low calorie bread, I always had a kind of a chub issue growing up. Yeah, my whole family, like we we YOY weight, that's how we work, the Arnolds. And um, I remember looking at the thing, and uh my dad was like, they grind up trees and put them into the bread.
Because the cellulose is not actually the case. They usually probably make it out of cotton, like waste cotton, really, you know, whatever, if they put it in. But you could basically bulk it up up to the point where uh where she don't taste good anymore. You know, I mean? Because you d you can't digest it 'cause you you know, if you were a cow and you had a whole bunch of stomachs with a bunch of bacteria in it, then you could digest it, right?
But you can't. So the limit is just a limit at which it no longer tastes good. They they chop up the cellulose very finely, like microcrystalline cellulose, so it can hold water pretty well, but it doesn't provide structure the same way that flour or or or protein uh you know uh protein and flour can or even the starch when they're linking together. So um the the limit is strictly one of like, you know, however much it's basically just a filler that they're adding. Does that make sense?
Yeah I I understand I'm just wondering how what's the max you could put in there before it won't hold together. You know the gluten wouldn't completely I've never tried it but I'm sure what they if I was gonna try to make uh like a a cellulose bread what I would do is I would I would dope it with a bunch of cellulose and then dope it with vital wheat gluten and then but I mean it would be some I don't think it would taste good now mind you. I think it would taste bad. But I don't know what the up limit is. I mean it's um because the cellulose I don't know probably doesn't have much taste.
I don't know what it's gonna do on a t I'm not saying it's gonna taste bad. My recollection because I did buy that bread was that it wasn't as good as the normal bread I was buying. But this is just a recollection now. Just a recollection. You know what I'm saying?
And I had a question uh I just saw that there was a book that came out called uh why we're fat, I believe and uh basically said that uh carbs regulate insulin and therefore regulate the uptake of fat. So I was wondering if uh you were to go on a low carb diet, what would you uh supplant most of your your diet with? Like what kind of meals, what kind of like you know ethnic dishes that are low carb and you know you could eat every day. Oh jeeze. Yeah.
Uh I mean I I tend uh I tend not to believe any sort of kind of uh um diet, um any sort of d diet thing, especially one that is like uh that gives up one nutrient for another because I think that you you're gonna a lot of times you're gonna end up not being satisfied. A lot of these diets do work in the short term. Uh, but I think um and and of course there are people who are huge advocates of low carbs, there's people who are advocates of low, low fat. Um I w I wouldn't recommend it. I would recommend a uh like a uh like a moderate uh consumption of a moderate amount of of widely varied diet.
Now that said, I have in the past I I used to do a diet, really unhealthy diet. Don't everyone out don't think worse of me here. I went on a diet called blunch. I this is my own diet, blunch. 'Cause because when you when you're when you combine breakfast and lunch and you mean to do it, that's brunch, right?
That's a good thing. Brunch is a good thing. You know, we have mimosas or whatever. You guys probably hate mimosas. I like them at brunch.
Brunch is brunch. Anyway, maybe bloody mary, whatever, brunch. Blunch, right, is when you don't do it because it's fun. You do it because you're just grinding through it. So what I would do is I would have one meal uh a day before dinner, and the first time I blunched, it was a bagel with nothing on it, and then I would eat nothing until dinner, and then I would eat a normal dinner with my family because that makes me a social human being.
So to me being social is the most important thing. So I would eat a normal dinner and eat one thing during the day. I lost a lot of muscle mass on on the on that, and it was really kind of bad, bad news for me, and I ended up actually having to go to the doctor and like have a bunch of awful procedures done to check to make sure that I didn't have cancer because I was bleeding from uh unspeakable places. But uh it did work. The the second time that I did bl and also you're a raging jerk when the dinner time comes around because you're and and you smell like like crap because you're you're s totally ketotic and you're you're breathing out like what smells like s like like fumes of death out of your mouth at the end of the day.
Uh the second time I did it, because it it it is effective, it's all about being regimented. I I ate only two eggs. Two hard boiled eggs. I was like, okay, two hard boiled eggs. I lost less muscle mass on that one, but I still was a huge jerk.
So I would recommend to be social if you if you know if so being social is important to you, which it is to me. Like I I'm not recommending going on the blunch diet, but I'm saying be very, very, very regimented. If you want to cut down your carbs, be extremely regimented during the day. It's very easy to plan out your weekly meals, especially your lunch and your breakfast. Be extremely regimented.
Give yourself no choices. If there's no choices, you won't stray. Then if you stray a little bit at dinner, at least you look like a human being with your family. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I was thinking about getting into I I think it's uh Middle Eastern breakfast they call it full.
Yeah, full, like full like uh be like uh beans, like uh like uh fava beans, full Medimas. Yeah. Right, right. That stuff is delicious. That'd be something good to supplant the whole day.
And even my kids used to eat the heck out of that stuff. Full Well, you know, beans in a can. Beans in a can are one of the few things in a can that are good. You know what I mean? Uh you supplement it with your own stuff that you know that you add it, but like, you know, I'm no I'm no uh I'm no hater on on canned beans.
I mean I know how to make my own beans. Are you guys haters on canned beans? We we eat 'em all the time. I'm no hater. No hater.
But yes, I mean I'm sure it's gonna be better if you make it from scratch. But if you make a batch at the beginning of the week, let's say, then you can have it. I mean it's it's it for me it wouldn't be reasonable to make myself uh uh a real breakfast every day. I can't. I can't.
You know what I mean? Does this make sense? Is this helpful at all? Alright, cool. Uh one last thing.
Where's the uh like a good online site to get uh used uh restaurant equipment? I'm not talking about like uh stoves and things like that, but I mean like hotel pans and used and stuff like that. Online it's tough for small items like that. I mean, eBay obviously is good, um, and I use it all the time for certain things. The best thing to do if you're in a major city, unfortunately, restaurants and bars go out of business all the time.
When they go out of business, they auction off. What happens is usually everyone at the end of the of the business is so pissed off and everyone owes everyone else money. So basically you steal whatever you want and then you walk out. And so what happens is is uh someone goes in, whoever has the lease, whoever's owed the most money, goes in, hires an auctioneer, and you go in there and you can buy everything at like pennies, pennies on a dollar. And so you'll you you can buy pans like hotel pants.
You have to buy like 20. You know what I mean? Because it's like, okay, we got a lot of 20 hotel pants, and you're like 50 cents. He's like 50 cents, you crazy 50 cents a dollar. You're like, okay, a dollar, and then you have to buy all 20 for 20 bucks.
That's how it works. Uh but those are usually in the back of the paper. They used to be in the back of the Health Wanted's in the New York Times on every Sunday, but I don't know where they are now because my wife has forbidden me from going to the street. There's a couple websites that announce those as well. Oh really?
Yeah, they're probably all based on the web now. They used to be in the newspaper back when people read newspapers. But do you guys buy it auction? I I used to all the time, but you know what? Uh my mom just started a business doing that.
So I've just recently started doing it. It's it's a lot of fun. No, yeah, it's cra it's crazy. It's really weird. It's it's like re fun because you're getting cheap stuff, but at the same time, it's depressing.
Usually like someone from the restaurant is there with their face in their hands, and like, you know, you know, someone like me is like, you know, I'll buy all the liquor from the bar, and they're like, Do you have your liquor license with you? And you're like, uh Yeah, it can be depressing. Like buying used bar stools can be a depressing thing. But oh man, but I've been there many times. Uh anyway, thank you so much for the call.
I think we're actually gonna go to our first break and we're gonna come back and taste some stuff that you guys brought, right? Yep. Cooking issues about the star, yeah. That may not be fun, yeah. What's the single master clear?
In the sky so very strong, yeah. Welcome back to Cooking Issues. Calling all your questions to 718 497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 coming to you today with Chad Solomon and Christy Poe from Cuffs and Buttons here tasting some of their fantabulous stuff. Tell me what we're tasting.
By the way, you guys feel like chumpsuckers for not being able to taste it with us, am I right? Yeah, totally. First up here is a mint chocolate lactart soda, which is a mouthful, I know. Uh it's a drink that we created for an event that we did a couple of weeks ago uh for Magnum bars uh from Europe, European chocolate ice cream bars. And uh they commissioned us to create three drinks for the event uh that ha you know happened uh coincided with the Tribeca Film Festival.
Carl Lagerfeld shot three short films uh inspired by Magnum uh with uh Starlight Rachel Bilson as kind of his muse. And they screened these uh shorts at this event, and we provided these cocktails. And this is uh a cocktail where we actually took your technique of the rapid uh nitrous infusion and infused cacao nibs into VSOP cognac and Highland Park 12 Scotch. So uh Louis Royer, uh VSOP Cognac, Highland Park 12 Scotch with cacao nibs, and then uh the streak features lactart, which is uh extinct acid of milk that's been reborn and uh acts as a fantastic acid in the especially with the chocolate. It works really nicely with the chocolate, I think.
Right. And uh and the wood. Yeah, and one of the reasons that we really wanted to use it is when people come to you with certain flavors they want to work with. For for us in this instance, it was like chocolate, vanilla, you know, um all those kind of things that are very cloying in a cocktail at times. And this this allowed us to make you know that rich chocolate feel, you know, kind of creamy feel too, but without getting like cloing and sweet.
Overly heavy. And what's interesting about it is it's it's carbonated for all you can't taste it. Uh but um it's one of the few um kind of wooded carbonated drinks that I really like. You know what I mean? That's really because a lot of times, you know, you you you get like these kind of uh these mixes and you carbonate it and it can throw the throw the balance off and like the woods can go all out of proportion.
It could be a problem. But here I think it really works. And I think these also because these are foreign woods. You know, you have the Highland Park 12 or aged in the cherry casks and uh the the French oak, obviously on the VSO P cognac, whereas the like bourbons and ries are much more aggressive American oak. Yeah, I don't like them at all, usually carbonated.
I mean like the the worst drink maybe I've ever made, with the exception of in college, the worst drink I think I've ever made is uh carbonated Manhattan. It's an above. Um, so that was that was super cool. It's one of the drinks we did for that event. Um next up here, we just did uh uh a pretty fun project with uh smell it.
What's that uh what's that fruit? This is uh creme de muir. Uh it's merlay, creme de mure. So our friend Tony Cnigliaro in London. Good man, good man.
Worked with uh Luke Merlay to uh develop and create cocktails with their line of liqueurs in Europe. I have some stories about him that I can't say on the air. Does it involve an alligator hat? Or involves some crazy, crazy business. Anyway.
Uh uh Luke Merlet came to us and we did the uh cocktail development here for the States. And so this in particular is the creme de mure, the blackberry liqueur that we've turned into a phosphate soda. So it's the it's as soon as you open it, it's something we carbonate it again. Obviously, all those volatiles just come explode into the room with the carbonation. This is gin, uh tangra gin, acid phosphate, creme de mure, dash of orange bitters, uh four ounces of water, and then we carbonate it at uh 50 psi.
Nice. So acid phosphate, for those of you out, there's another one of these kind of extinct things is being brought back to the fore by uh a guy named Darcy O'Neal. His website's The Art of the Drink. He has a uh a uh book called uh Fix the Pumps, which uh is uh old soda jerk slang for look at the lady with the uh with the with the large chest. Yes.
Um extremely interesting book. He's bringing some of these old ingredients back. Um acid phosphate, the main uh component of it is uh phosphoric acid, and it's the acid that's in Coca-Cola and colas, and its characteristic is it's an extremely dry acid. It's actually if you get it in pure form, which is the way I have it, I don't have the acid phosphate. It's really hard to work with because if you go a little bit too far, you're like, boo!
Ho, hey! But it's like it's very interesting stuff, and I think it really works well with this with this drink. Do you find the same thing that sometimes it's hard to work with? That's it. Well, there is a big difference when uh we carbonated it ourselves versus using like a club soda, like the way it comes off on the palate.
So I mean, yeah, absolutely. I know what you you're referring to it. I would say this, there's you know, uh quarter ounce of acid phosphate in this, and that's the high end. Generally, depending on the drink, you get by with as much as a half teaspoon. Right.
So and you can get this stuff from from the art of the drink, right? Right. If it's a mail order from uh Toronto. Right. And uh and the the characteristic of this acid, and it's one of the acids that should see uh uh hopefully a resurgence, is it's it's dry cola-like nature of the acidity.
Not the flavor of cola, but that dry cola-like acidity. No, the the beauty is uh uh and you know, as opposed to lemon or lime juice, which have a very imposing flavor uh on their own, this ha brings that uh acidity to the drink, but it's very um it does not impose itself. It allows other, you know, flavors to come through very clean. Right. And as the only kind of inorganic acid we use and non-fruit-based acid, it doesn't lend an extra fruit note to the to the drink, which is uh something that's really it's kind of it's kind of cool.
And very nice drink. What's the name of that again? This uh which is uh blackberry phosphate. All right. Very simple.
We actually did a line for for as Chad mentioned, we did this for Malay liqueurs and we did phosphates for for every uh flavor expression of the liqueur brands, and it they all turned out wonderful. Different base spirits, different balances. Uh because obviously with the with the fruit liqueurs, they're you know, being a natural product, they're depending on how acidic or sweet the fruit is, they adjust the sugar. Oh oh wait, we have a call. Before I go to the collar though, I have to say, like I think and I see whether you guys agree, like e even if okay, when you're mixing a drink, a lot of times you obviously you're gonna use the real fruit, right?
Sure. But I think having the acids on board on hand and tasting and playing with them gives you such a sense for what's going on with different fruits and different acids. Like like studying the acids that you use in a drink, because it's such an important component, I think, is don't you think it's key to kind of becoming a better mixer? Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
I mean, the more options you have, the more kind of the more your understanding is across the board. Right. And by the way, uh, I'm gonna take the call in one second. But um the the f phosph um uh phosphoric acid gets a bad rap because uh uh if you drink it in very large quantities, it's a it can take calcium. And so people say that women shouldn't have too much phosphoric acid because it can reduce bone density.
I haven't seen any studies that moderate amounts of phosphoric acid are de detrimental. Um otherwise everyone who drinks cola would be dead. Well the other thing about acid phosphate and what makes it um more approachable to work with is the fact that it's partially neutralized. Uh it's you start with 10% phosphoric acid in solution and it's neutralized down to two percent with through uh calcium, magnesium, and potassium mineral salts. Yeah, because the phosphate will grip onto the calcium.
Right. Jack, did we lose the call or we still have them? No. Well, hopefully they call back. Maybe they got cut off with their with their cell phones.
They got thirsty. They got their they were like, oh, all this talk about drinks. Oh hopefully they hopefully they call back. All right, so what's our what's our next beverage? Uh so this next one is uh cocktail we're presenting uh we'll be serving at the upcoming uh MCC Manhattan Cocktail Classic opening gala on Friday night.
Which I'm working at too, you know. Sweet, yeah. And there's tickets still available. Really? Yeah, they're tickets still available.
Go uh okay. Not to plug an event that we're all working here, but uh I didn't go to the party last year. Apparently it was a good thing. Neither did we really, but I heard it was like the most insane party of like all crazy the entire New York Public Library, run amok, craziness, things falling, dwarves. Well, it's a pretty it's a pretty huge event.
120 different bars, uh, you know, 120 different bars, different cocktails, bartenders serving individual drinks. Um, real glassware, black tie. We overtake the New York Public Library. But the scope of it is pretty big. You know what I'm doing for it?
I'm doing the non-alcoholic drinks. So I'm gonna I'm I'm taking five-gallon corny kegs, I'm strapping them onto a backpack, I'm filling them with soda water, and I have two uh soda valves, like the the squeeze valves and nice beckers. I'm gonna be running around like uh like uh like soda cowboy, like spraying soda. It's gonna be good. Good business.
I have a little uh 20-ounce CO2 um container that I'm filling with a nitrous soda mix, nitrous uh CO2 soda mix to keep myself pressurized as I walk around. Should be fun. Hydration man. I have hydration man. Hydration man.
Uh yeah, it's the first time I've ever done a non-alcoholic. Should be fun. So the soda stuff is so fun for non-alcoholic. It's good to visit Dave after, like, you know, you go to a booth, then you visit Dave. You go to a booth, then you visit Dave.
Exactly. Well, hopefully I can come I can come visit you. Well, uh yeah, it depends how many people I have working with me, whether or not I can uh how much uh you know I can walk around. Jack, do we ever get those guys back? No.
Um all right. I'm sorry, caller, that you got disconnected. Please call back. Uh what are we what are we drinking here? So this is a Byzantine julep.
It's uh Laird's Bonded Apple Jack. We are be going to be uh working at the Laird and Company bar. I wish you could smell this. So it's uh Laird's Bonded Apple Brandy, the 100 proof. Um an excellent product, an American product, one of the great American products.
The oldest native distilled spirit. They're coming up on 300 years. Um still family owned. Still family, ninth generation. Right.
I love their product, except for they also make some of the worst products in the world. They don't sell into their own name, but I've seen their little thing like uh don't they make Senators Club vodka? It's our personal favorite is uh five o'clock vodka. So we love five five o'clock. In Detroit, they mix it with uh with uh Fago uh orange soda and uh and if you have enough of them, they say uh you it's uh you're on your way to dance o'clock.
Oh man, man. Laird. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry. So uh bonded apple brandy, coriander tincture, uh mint, uh uh a little bit of malic acid, and um oh uh date date syrup, date, um date molasses and demerara syrup mixed together.
This will actually be serving this julep style over crushed ice, which so this will be a little bit better. That's a pain that's a pain in the buttons better diluted. Uh like crushed ice or they're gonna get it. Yeah, it's oh they're bringing it in, yeah. Oh yeah, all right.
Yeah. This is a really deep, deep tasting drink. It has a really kind of like a real big depth of flavor, and uh it's uh uh none of the components really kind of um pop out as being over over the top. You know what I mean? I think it's very well integrated.
And um I think maybe it's that maybe the depth is coming from the date. What do you think? Oh, definitely. Yeah. This drink was actually inspired by a trip that we took to Turkey.
Um so we're using some of those kind of you know, m more cool eastern flavors in there, and and it does have that total like unique depth to it. Yeah. The we also do a very slow roast on the Moroccan coriander seed and uh before we put it into or to make the tincture, and so that has a real depth and roundness to it itself. Coriander's weird. It's so interesting because you can get so many different flavors out of it depending on how you treat it, whether you toast it, whether you don't, whether you put it in a syrup, whether you do a tincture.
I've done some distillates for it for I did for Jimmy and I did a dissolute for him, and it was a totally different flavor. Like the distillate brought out uh a lot more of the kind of those kind of high citrusy notes, you know what I mean? And like uh the and not a lot of some of those base notes that you're gonna get out of a tincture. Yeah, coriander's a great, great, great thing. Yeah, it's incredibly versatile.
And good in a soda. Yeah, I'm gonna do a coriander soda. Uh one of uh one of the people I work with, Cliff was like, let's do a coriander soda. I was like, nah, I haven't heard of that before. Let's do it.
We'll do it. Do it. So it's coriander, and we're gonna round out the uh, you know, the mid-palette. If you just do straight coriander on a soda, the mid-pallate's lacking a little bit. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna hit it with um with some malic and citric to bring up the kind of citrusy notes of it, acid.
And then we're adding a touch of um Thai chili pepper because a little bit of spice brings it to that kind of gingery note. You know what I mean? And makes it more like uh a soda that you've had, but totally different. You know what I mean? Right.
What are we mixing up now? So this is uh my bike ride's gonna suck, by the way. Or be really fun. Uh so another event we've got we're doing uh during a Manhattan Cocktail Classic is we're doing the Kampari presents, a spirited fet for the senses, inspired by Padma Lakshmi at the box. The box.
It should be a really cool event. It's uh us. Uh we're doing uh uh this cocktail. It's uh our variation on the Negroni. It's uh we we're calling it the Marco Polo Negroni.
Inspired. Uh we were all asked to create variations on the Negroni based on Padma's cookbook, Tangy Tarte Hot and Sweet. When is this event? On Sunday evening at the box. Um and so this is basically a very uh classic uh peritif necroni, equal parts, uh beef eater, chinzano vermouth, um compari.
And then what we've done is we've added tincture of papali long pepper, tincture of mace, tincture of coriander, tincture of cardamom, and a very minute quantities, so it's recognizable as an agroni, but you there's definitely get the sense that it's exotic, and then with that piperine drawn out of the papali long pepper, your lips tingle, and it's a very that's a very floral, you know, pepper. So like an easy way to go on a Negroni variation is to add some form of citrus, but you go on the entire opposite direction of added kind of base notes and spicy notes to it. More aromatics, totally opposite direction from the way most people would because we still wanted to give it an a aromatic cocktail, but we've you'll as you taste it here, it's uh it is definitely a different animal. And by the way, for those of you out there who are just beginning your drinking careers, right? Uh there are a couple of drinks that you can order uh at a bar, and no matter who you are with, you are considered a badass or okay.
Negroni is one of those things. If you are with any sort of professional, I don't care who they are, how like fancy, how anything if you walk up and you're like, you know what I want now? A Negroni, then you're a badass. And and if anyone bothers you that you're ordering something that's vaguely pink, depending on how much whether they get it wrong with the vermouth, uh um just let them try it. Yeah, yeah, let them try it.
And plus everyone else who knows anything will laugh them out of the out of the universe. Negroni is one of like the all-time favorite drinks that people who like drinks like. Is this true? I I think so, yeah. It's I it's one of the quintessential aperitifs, and I think it's definitely an acquired flavor, but it's one that you're rewarded a lot of loyalty.
I always tell people when we do trainings, and you're working with bartenders who haven't been in the industry very long, they've not had the taste of compari, the ginchin, and and and the mix of the the gin and the sweet vermouth. If they taste it every time they make it, eventually one day they'll crave it. It's like yeah, right. The the the the the notes from the from the pepper coming out. You know what's interesting to me though, also, is that um they marry with the with the kampari flavor, and so the kampari is like it's like um the compari note is it's it's interesting because it doesn't dominate more than it normally does, but I can kind of pick it out more than it normally does.
It's kind of it's it's it's it's it it it it focuses it in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing is whoops, by the way, nah, geez. By the way, I'm spilling all over myself now. By the way, Campari, one of my favorite, one of my favorite products.
Although I do like Aperol, which they also own now. Yes, also delicious, different thing, but uh yeah. Uh I mean, you know, different similar. Oh, for sure. Yeah, but you know, Aperol, lower alcohol content, different flavor.
It's a bright, it's a brighter orange, it's a different orange. So the little bit of the little bit of spiciness and aromatic like makes you go back for that next sip. And the garnish is trying to figure it out. It's like just enough there to like really pique your imagination and curiosity with what flavors you're getting. So for the garnish, we actually uh curried uh some orange juice and um and then compressed that curried orange juice into the orange.
So as you taste that I'm gonna eat the orange. I ate the whole thing of creme of jerk, including the rind. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it I think it came out.
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've got some heat on it. But it's a really wonderful curry flavor. Oh, and I guess we should we should point out we were asked to specifically the four categories were tangy, uh tart, hot or tart tangy tart, hot and sweet, and we chose hot.
So that's why the papali, and that's why the curry. You guys are no strangers to freaking heat on a drink, though. You guys uh made a drink once, and this is before I knew you. Um you I don't know whether both of you or whether it just Chad did an event at the SCI with a um that was me, yeah. Yeah.
With a hot pepper drink. Put me on mine behind. I can drink I can drink anything. The La Patada, the kick, yes. Uh, with the with the Chipotle uh uh the Chipotle if you're mezcal.
Yeah, that was some hardcore business. Yeah. We were talking we were telling somebody about that drink last night, actually. And we're talking uh that event that was the art of uh art of the cocktail that um uh Yvonne Ivan Lemoyne held there. What are you what's he doing now?
I think he's got his uh his uh iFood Studios. Nice, nice. Yeah, I haven't seen him in a long time. Hey Jack, can we go to one more commercial break and take a little bit longer than we normally do? Cause I got some questions I gotta get to.
Yes, we can. All righty, we're going to commercial break. Call in your last chance to ask questions. 718 497 2128 cooking issues. Remember how the stones will be like, This is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network.
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Again, that's every Thursday at 4 30 p.m. on the Heritage Radio Network. They are a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. They are southerners who are I consider to be New Yorkers now, even though they live all over the country, but they they do have both both angles going, right? Do you uh you had something you guys are working on now?
A uh combination of cocktail culture and and music or well, we were just interviewed for uh webs or a new website called Rocktail Culture, which we just loved. It's great. It is the uh intersection of cocktails and rock music, which totally speaks to us. It's uh I think that the guy behind it is David Blutenthal, and he's uh he works in the the music business. We have yet to meet him face to face.
Uh had a great conversation with them over the phone. He uh is a cocktail geek uh and also really obviously very passionate about music and has kind of merged the two in a s in into a kind of an interesting site where he interviews bands about their drinking habits on the road and their interest in cocktails and then bartenders, you know, advice. Yeah. Nice. Uh all right.
So listen, I'm gonna tell you this. You have one last chance to call in to ask some cool drinks questions to our amazing drink panel here. 718 497 2128. 718 497 2128. I am now gonna go over in Blitzkrieg fashion the email questions that have come in.
You guys chime in if you have any any anything you you want to talk about. Okay. Uh Teddy DeVico, uh who is uh teen chef teddy.blogspot dot dot com or something like that. That's it. I I think blogspot's the funniest thing in the world, the word the word blog spot.
By the way, I'm getting lit up on their drinks there. Okay. Hey David Nastasha, first off, I want to thank you guys for doing the podcast. Hey, thank you for liking it. I listen to it every week and I learn a lot.
I have two random questions. One has anyone ever tried making chocolate from coffee beans or coffee from cocoa nibs? Both of them go through very similar processes, and I think it would be possible to make such products. Okay, here's the issue. Uh they have different kinds of uh fat levels, right?
So coffee has a certain amount of oil in it, and that's the delicious coffee oils that when you when you roast to a uh very dark stage come out. But uh, in order to make chocolate per se, you need a very high quantity of of uh of fat. And cocoa butter has a very specific uh kind of melting profile, and it's a much more saturated solid fat than uh coffee is. So uh you could make you could take coffee powder and reduce it to very, very, very, very fine powder and then grind it over a course of time with cocoa butter and produce something that had the texture of chocolate. If you then ate that product, it might be delicious.
I'm not gonna take away from the delicious aspect, but you are going to be running to the toilet and shaking like a chihuahua dog because the caffeine is gonna take you uh for a serious ride. A friend of mine used to be a manager at a coffee shop in uh in New Haven, Connecticut, and he used to take uh Turkish ground coffees, which is about the finest ground that anyone uses, and dump it on vanilla ice cream and eat it in between his uh cigarette breaks. And I've never seen a human being who shook faster than that guy. He's literally like a human blur. Um so I I wouldn't necessarily you could do it, but I wouldn't I wouldn't uh recommend it.
And and cocoa nibs, if you treated them like coffee, you roast them to a lower temperature than you do coffee because of the oils and whatnot, and and and it doesn't quite follow the same roasting profile. There's a lot of uh fat in there. You could brew a beverage, but there's also the extractables from cocoa are are a different kind of percentage than you would get out of the coffee. So you kind of, if you're doing espresso, which is all I really care about, you would get a different kind of uh extraction. So I don't know if it would work the same, but you could we you it's it's not impossible, but you have to uh account for the different fat levels and the different solubilities and things they're extracting out of it.
Make sense? Mm-hmm. Makes sense. All right. Uh two.
With dry aging beef, you have to trim off the molded exterior, but if you were to eat that, would it be harmful to you? I'm gonna be harmful per se, but it might be gross. Uh I know eating moldy exterior would not be pleasant by itself. Oh, there you go. But I think you would be able to make a super beefy funky sauce with the trimmings of dry aged beef.
Typically the trimmings have a super funky odor, and most people like a little bit of funk in their meat, but not like a hardcore amount of funk. So if you get a dry age piece of meat, hardcore, the the uh after they trim it for you when they're gonna cut it and sell it to you. If you want to know the super funk, smell that bone. Because the bone where the bone is, they don't trim off that little piece of skin on this on the bone. That's what that funk is.
And this is why certain chefs like Adam Perry Lang comes to mind, uh, don't like to cook dry aged beef in a bag, uh, low temper sous-vide because that funk then permeates the whole thing. I think a little bit of funk, a good thing. I think a lot of funk, and like you might like it, and like maybe like a couple other people might like it, but a good 50-60% of your guests aren't gonna groove on it. What do you think? I think that sounds about right.
All right. Uh keep coming with the uh with the excellent questions, Teddy. All right, we have a question from Alvin Schutz. Uh hello, he's a longtime listener, first time emailer. Thank you for emailing.
Please email more. Uh, he also enjoys the blog. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, okay.
We hope we can take some time to talk about barbecue. With barbecue, awesome subject, right? Uh, do you know the burn temps for lump charcoal versus brick briquettes versus propane? And also, Alton Brown says that burning propane produces water vapor that inhibits smoke penetration into meat. But many smokers employ a water pan to moisten the cooking environment.
How is this different? Alton Brown, much as I love Alton Brown, he is just straight up wrong on this, right? When you burn propane, it is true that water is produced. However, uh uh, if you stick your hand into a uh a big box full of a propane fire, it's not gonna get cold and clammy. It's gonna burn.
You know what I mean? Because although water vapor is produced, right, you're also producing a tremendous amount of heat. And in fact, the food itself already has water in it, and as you say, there's a water pan uh there, right? And it and specifically what he's talking about is smoking. If you're smoking, you're not using charcoal, you're using wood, because charcoal doesn't produce the smoked flavor unless you have fat dripping on it, and then we have uh the the flare-up from the fat that are creating those flavors on the meat.
Smoke flavor comes from burning wood. When you burn wood, which is an organic substance that is uh their hydrocarbons in it that are burning, you are also producing water. So when you are uh even if you don't soak your wood chips, you're producing water when you're combusting wood to produce smoke. There ain't there ain't two ways about it. That's all there is to it.
The only uh like way is if you were to 100% efficiently combust charcoal that was 100% well made, the you're basically just producing carbon dioxide because there's not uh a lot of hydrogen left in it. It's basically turned to carbon. But otherwise, you are producing water when you're burning it. So I don't think it's a huge freaking issue. What is an issue is that in order to get good smoke penetration on your meat, you need to get the the uh the surface moisture of your of your product down to below about 10% moisture, which is why you dry your product out first, you form a pellicle before you're gonna smoke it, and it's it's nice and dry.
Now it's gonna suck up a smoke like the like the end of the world is coming. But don't worry about uh uh propane, right? But uh the smoky flavors, right, aren't made from the propane. Smoky flavors are made from the crappy, incomplete combustion of a complicated product, which is wood. Uh and ch and gr charcoal grilling flavors are made by fat dripping off of your meat and hitting charcoal, flaring up and like and like you know charring your your meat that way.
That's where those those flavors come from. As for the different temperatures, um, the different temperatures depend on how much oxygen is uh is available to it, but the the temperatures aren't that radically different between propane, methane, and a well-fueled charcoal fire. Uh would fire maybe a little bit less because it's incompletely burning and there's a lot there m there's moisture in there, whatnot. But here's the here's the kicker, right? The reason why gas grills aren't usually as good as charcoal grills, right?
Propane has about 91,000 or 90,000 BTUs per hour of uh of of energy per sorry per pound, right? 91,000 BTU. So if you burned a pound an hour, you're doing about as well as my deep fryer, which is really, really good. Really good. But uh most gas grills don't burn that much propane.
They just don't have enough balls to really do what you want, right? Now, even though charcoal, right, even good hardwood charcoal um doesn't have um doesn't have uh that many BTUs per hour, I mean BTUs per pound compared to propane, much less, in fact, like on the order of like 10,000 versus like 90,000, right? What you can do with with charcoal is dump an entire bag into your Weber at once, fire that sucker up, burn it like within like an hour, you can you can release all of that energy at once, right? So you get to control this immense release of energy with the charcoal. So you can overwhelm it and produce more energy and get a huge amount of power out of your charcoal just because you can burn it in faster uh higher quantities than you do propane.
If you had a real propane burner, like like fed with oxygen, I can melt a you know, I can melt steel with it. You know what I mean? So it's not like I can't get the energy out of it. It's just your your gas grill is puny in comparison to what you can do with the average charcoal grill. Even though the theoretical temperatures, and by the way, like they they they quote temperatures like 1900 degrees Celsius and all that, that's like for the very hottest part of the flame.
That's nowhere near what the temperature is on your meat. What's really important is the heat you're producing on meat. And actually, charcoal is also very good for that too, because once it burns down, it produces a lot of radiant heat, and that radiant heat is really good at delivering heat uh to your meat. So uh if you had the world's ballsiest like propane burner, you could definitely outdo someone with who was underusing charcoal, but it's hard to beat dumping an entire bag of charcoal on your on your grill for just kind of straight balls. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah, I mean to your meat. Heat to your meat, it's all about heat to your meat. Um second question was uh is it gonna is it possible to achieve myard reactions in eggs cooked to temperatures between 62 and 67 Celsius, preferably in a wet cooking environment without increasing the PH to unpalatable levels? I don't think so.
Uh typically um the myard reactions I get are higher, closer to the boiling point of uh water, and so I don't think you're gonna be able to um to to get to get those things. This is a different question from from Daniel. He also says weeks ago we mentioned upcoming Mofad fundraiser, that's Museum of Food and Drink in the Bay Area. He's tried contacting Mofad and has not received a reply. Daniel, stay tuned.
We've just hired a full-time person to work on the Museum of Food and Drink. She's starting up on June 1st, and she's gonna be taking over that website and she's gonna answer your reply. One of her first things is to get this fundraiser ready in the Bay Area. Someone will reply to you. Please send another email.
We don't want to leave you hanging. Anyone that wants to either go or be involved, we want you there. It's very uh to me personally important that we um we try to get this this museum going. Now, before we leave, I was looking up charcoal, right? And a couple things I learned.
I learned I read a book on uh on uh I'm sorry, I read an article on charcoal uh that was interesting to me and bizarre. It's called The Influence of Aromatic Components from and I don't know what actually it's not about charcoal, but I found it. I searched these scientific documents, right? The influence of aromatic components from pig manure on odor and flavor of cooked chicken meat by L. L.
Hanson. So it turns out that these guys were like, hey, listen, because do you guys know this? If you if you grow your chickens over moldy bedding that's really moldy, like you can get a moldy flavor in your meat. Sure. So these guys were like, well, I wonder if the smell of crap also makes its way into the meat.
So they literally raised chicken. This said, like, this is how horrible like our food production has gotten. Rather than saying, why don't we not have our chicken coops smell so awful that um that that like we can't stand being anywhere near them. Instead, we're like, well, let's see whether we can really taste the meat after it's been stored in these horrible ways. We justify it.
Yeah, so they literally literally pumped pig crap stink into like these chicken growing coops for a period of time, uh, and then did side-by-side blind taste tests on the different kinds of meat, whether uh whether or not you could tell that they were raised in pig stink. And turns out you can't, but what a horrible new world horrible idea. All right, so listen. Uh we're we're on our way out, but I want I want you guys to get the final word. What do you what do you what do you got for us?
What do you got? Anything. What do we got? Um nothing. Visit our website.
Yes. Okay, given the website. We have a new website. It's uh W W. Cuffs and Buttons.com.
C-U-F-F-S-A-N-D-B-U-T-T-O-N-S.com. And my next band will be Pigstink Chicken Cooking Issues. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network. You can find all of our archived programs on Heritage Radio 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 Networks 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. And now here's some behind the scenes food news with Katie Kiefer. On MeetingPlace.com this week, uh Lisa M. Keefe, one of their principal writers, published the following article about the USDA's child nutrition program.
She reports that on Tuesday, the USDA began implementing new rules that are intended to put more locally grown agricultural products on school children's plates. Part of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010, which was signed by President Obama in December, the rules allow schools and other providers to quote, give preference to unprocessed, locally grown, and locally raised agricultural products. When buying food for the national school lunch, school breakfast, special milk, child and adult care, fresh fruit and vegetable, and summer food service programs. Quote, this rule is an important milestone that will help ensure that our children have access to fresh produce and other agricultural products, said Agriculture Under Secretary Kevin Cuncanon in a news release. It will also give a much needed boost to local farmers and agricultural producers.
This is Katie Kiefer for behind the scenes food news. Did you know we have a beer show? Check out a small clip from Beer Sessions Radio. All right, welcome back to Beer Sessions Radio on Heritage Radio Network. I'm Jimmy Carboni from Jimmy's number 43, and I'm here with Ray Dieter from the DBA boys.
Hey Jim. Ray, this is a fun show. We're drinking Belgian beer, we're drinking Ichttagum, hanging out with the guys from the 124 Rabbit Club. We got uh Don and Wendy from Van Berg the Wolf. Well, let's go back a little bit to kind of build your pedigree.
So the two of the two of your top brands that we love and that you have now, Scaldis and Caison DuPont. Tell us uh how you met those guys, how you started working with them. Well, Caisse on the Pont was really that was if you want to hear more, head over to Heritage Radio Network.com, where new episodes of beer sessions are posted every week in our archive. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast and iTunes.
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