The following program has been brought to you by Kane Vineyard and Winery. Kane Vineyard and Winery supports Heritage Radio and the growing movement to change how Americans eat and how we think about our planet. For more information, visit www.kane5.com. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. I am Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues here today in the studio.
Nastasha the Hammer Lopez coming to you live every Tuesday from roughly noon to twelve forty-five. Calling all of your questions, uh technical cooking or non-technical cooking, or not even cooking related, too. 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. So Nastasha, I'm excited because tomorrow our new 3D printer arrives.
I know. Right. Now, folks, uh, for those of you out there that uh know, we have a uh basically a Cornell Fab at home 3D printer, which is an extrusion technology that is used to print food directly. What we're getting now is a Z Corp printer. Z Corp printer is a commercial 3D printer, and you can print basically in in it prints in powder.
So we we're gonna be doing mainly uh plaster molds, I think. We're gonna be making plaster with it. It can do in color, did you know it could do in color, Nastasha? Yes, a color color plaster printer. Or in starch.
But uh we'll keep you posted on what we make with that. Nastash is currently stinking up the studio with a um with a some sort of space heater that's making the entire uh studio stink of electric heater with dust on it that just got turned on for the first time, which is amazing since it's almost summertime and it's actually quite warm and muggy in the studio, so there's no reason. Yeah, very good, very good. I have eight cavities. Uh that that's that's a very interesting fact.
Do you know how many cavities I've had in my whole life? Zero, I know. Zero. Uh for those of you that don't know, Nastasha, besides not really enjoying most of the foods that we all enjoy, even though she's in the food business, subsists almost entirely on candy. Not just any candy.
Nastasha craves any sort of sour candy, correct? Yeah. Yeah. I've seen her in under, under uh here another interesting fact. Here's how she can claim that she does not eat the entire package of candy because she has an aversion to certain colors of candy.
Uh uh, to be fair, based on whatever artificial flavor is in them. But I think it's also mainly a color thing. I mean, i it is true that I blindfolded her and she was able to distinguish which colors by taste. So it's not that she can't do that. It's just I think that she has matched the color with the taste in her mind, and it's the color that bothers her.
So tell everyone out there in case they're gonna send you some sour patch or or sour crybaby candy is what you like the most, right? Which are the colors that you hate, Nastasha? Cherry, red, and lemon yellow, and sometimes orange. Sometimes orange. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Okay. And but these are interestingly, even though the flavors are different, these are the same colors that you dislike in other sour candies, correct? Yes, that's true. That's true.
Uh okay. How many cavities? Eight. Eight? Yeah.
So uh yesterday I did uh the experimental cuisine collectives yearly uh yearly uh hoo ha shindig thing, right? I gave it I gave a talk. And Nastasha was notably absent because apparently she was at the dentist getting her face drilled out, and she called me and said, I'm coming to the event, but I'm high on Xanax and Vicadin. I was like, why don't you go home and sleep that off? Is this a true story or a false story?
Yeah. Okay. So uh the in the ongoing annals of uh cinnamon hydrocolloids, James McCulloch writes in from Australia. He says, uh, I remember you were discussing the gelling qualities of cinnamon a few weeks ago, and he has been doing some experimenting. So uh basically he did an experiment where he uh mixed cinnamon, he said pictures of it actually.
Oh my god, the pictures aren't coming up on my iPad, that's unfortunate. But uh okay. So he decided to leave the cinnamon out of his spice mix until after water was added. So he made a spice mix, added water, uh, and it was you know thin and and fluid, and then added cinnamon to it, and after a while it got kind of uh thick and snotty, I believe is what is what he said. Snotty, did he say snotty?
Gooey gel. Phlm-like texture, phlegm. Well, that's interesting. Phlm is the uh a phlegm-like texture is the characteristic texture of a hydrocolloid called Xanthan gum, which basically is used as thickening uh thickening agent, but in higher concentrations turns to I call it snot. You're very polite.
Uh I guess they're more polite in Australia than they are here, calling it phlegm. Maybe we should call it phlegm from now on instead of snot. Yeah. Yeah? Alright.
All right. Uh so that's interesting. I tried to find uh I and I've tried to find before, and I tried to find again this morning the um whether there was any known hydrocolloid in uh in cinnamon. There is a h there is a polysaccharide called s like cinnamon polysaccharide AX, which is supposed to have some sort of bioactive uh properties, but I wasn't able to find it anything. I mean, it it makes sense to me that ground up bark would have some thickening, which is what it is, would have some thickening uh power.
There is a actual hydrocolloid gum called Casia gum, but it's from an unrelated um cassia to the well not unrelated, but not the same cassia that we use for uh cinnamon substitute, and also it's from the seeds, not from the bark. Uh I I thought maybe that that maybe cellulose in the ground up uh bark would also act as a hydrocolloid, but cellulose itself doesn't really uh act uh isn't soluble at all until it's been treated uh either with acid or with with other things to make things like microcrystinal cellulose MCC gum or cellulose gum so I I don't know that it's a cellulose but there's got to be something in there I mean you can see in the picture that that it does do something. I hope I can find if there's any hydrocolloid expert out there can you please call and tell us what is in cinnamon that causes gelling properties. Anyway uh Brian in New Zealand so we're doing the Australian and New Zealand show today which I enjoy you know I've never been to I've never been over there. We should go you want to you know Dave Chang just opened uh a new place in uh Australia and he he loves it down there he says it's fantastic New Zealand well I want to go to New Zealand because I want to go to the home of the New Zealand uh the New Zealand grapefruit aka the Purman Orange which is one of my favorite citruses on the planet that we had at Gene Lester's ranch out in Watsonville, California.
Was that one of your favorites there? Yeah that was really delicious. But they don't ship it here and they don't grow it here because because we're dumb. Okay Brian has a comment on the uh thermal mix and for those of you who uh don't live in Europe which is most of us I guess right uh the thermal mix is and I guess they have them in Australia New Zealand as well. Uh thermal mix is basically is made for a home but all of the fancy European chefs use them.
Uh they they're basically a blender slash heater slash not really a food processor more a blender heater scale and they have like a stainless steel trough that you do things in. And um you know in the US we don't really have them very all uh very much because they're not very uh widely distributed and we use our vita prep blenders. And so here's a comment from Brian uh the question about thermal mixes the other weeks maybe write this email. I absolutely love my thermal mix. I got it almost exclusively to hydrate hydrocolloids, cuts down on dishes, saves me time in not needing to stir.
I love it. I also happen to use it as a blender because it is there and it beats most other blenders out there, which is true, but I still want a vita prep, Brian. I'm gonna have to go ahead and say entirely fair. That's an entirely fair set of comments right there. And yes, you do still want a vita prep because they kick some serious butt.
I like myself a vitaprep. But I think you're right. Um, you know, when we teach hydrocolloids, it can be a pain in the butt sitting there stirring, and you can turn a thermomix on low and just have it stir in agar from cold and heat without even watching it, and it's not gonna scorch. So I think I think you're right. I'm gonna take back anything I've ever said.
And if you do a lot of hydrocolloid work, I'm gonna say that the thermal mix is an awesome thing to have uh sitting around, especially for heated hydrocolloids, which would be agar, carrageenin, um I don't know, big, you know, uh j uh gel an uh, you know, even anything like that. So that's a good call, Brian. Thank you. Thank you for the thank you for the comment. Uh Derek Baching writes in on Gummy Bears.
He's a blogger, uh, and uh he was a contestant on Top Chef Canada. Oh. I don't know, I don't know how he did. I hope you did well, Derek. Uh he called in a few weeks ago about making heat resistant Burblanc.
And uh we were talking then about gum arabic and Xanthan gum mix, the one we get from TIC gums. You know, the one that we use for for almost anything for for alcoholic drinks. Uh he hasn't gotten it yet, but he did try some of the pointers about making gummy bears, and he asked a pastry chef friend about making gummies, and she said the same same thing that we said, which is that you have to make starches out of uh uh molds out of cornstarch, and he wants some ideas on these molds. Well, here's the thing. You don't buy, you don't buy a cornstarch mold.
What you do is you you take cornstarch and you dry it out for a long time in a in a dry room, usually, you know, a couple of days, in like, oh, you you could use a dehydrator, I would guess, or like a low oven, really, really dehydrate it. And if you really want to do a bang up job, see in the days what they would do back in the days, uh you know, in the you know 1800, late 1800s, early 1900s, they would uh, and to to this day, I mean they still do it, but in other words, just old technology, is you would take the uh starch and you would use it, and after a while it would absorb crap out of your candies and it would become uh old or dead. I think they called it dead starch, dead, I think is what they used. Uh and so but it when you got a new batch of starch in, the starch didn't hold impressions very well. So what they would do is they would take a certain portion of their dead starch and then sift it back in with their brand new starch and do their molds, right?
Uh if you don't want to have to do that, I would go to the National Starch Corporation, National Starch uh, you know, food innovations uh brand, they make something called new mold, N-U-M-O-U-L-D, new mold, which is cornstarch with a small amount of mineral oil that's been mixed in so it holds an impression right from the beginning without having to already have starch that has uh stuff in it to have it really take a mold well. After you get your new starch, put it in your dehydrator uh at like 60 Celsius or something for uh you know, like tw 24 to six, you know, 48 hours, something like that to really dry it out. Then what you have to do is you build a box almost like a frame uh with a bottom in it. Uh so you know, like you can use you know uh one by twos or whatever uh and a like masonite on the bottom, get it nice and flat, put your starch in it, then take uh a ruler and strike it flat across. So now you have a bed of cornstarch that is, you know, perfectly even and flat, right?
Now you take another piece of uh you know, stiff like masonite or board, and you make this is how you do the mold. You take the shape that you want it. So you have to have like little little like like wooden waxed or like really smooth, that has to be really smooth or like plaster or whatever, gummy bears or whatever, and they're all on this board, and you press it into your cornstarch mixture, and then you lift it up very carefully, right? And that is how you mold it. So now you have a bed of cornstarch with a bunch of shapes of uh gummy bears or stars or hearts or chickens or whatever in it, and then you deposit your gelatin and or whatever, whatever you're gonna do, and then it depending on the product, something like uh like gelatin with gummy bears, you would then put it back in your dehydrator um for uh you know uh up to a couple of days at a at a slow dehydration rate.
If you dehydrate too quickly, you case harden the outside and they never they never set properly. So it's the there's a couple articles you can read on it if you're interested. Uh one that I would suggest that's pretty interesting is modeling diffusion of moisture during stoving of starch molded confections by MB Um Sud Harsan and G.R. Ziegler coming out of uh Switzerland and the university uh Penn State University here in in Pennsylvania. So take a look at that article and uh see whether you get any good information.
And with that, I will go to our first commercial break, but please call in your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues. You don't know how many times I pushed that I told you. You don't know how many times I pushed that I could hold you. You don't know how many times I wish that I could hold you into someone who could cherish me as much as I Cherish you should work with more than a blog to the whole in my heart each time I re hold But I am not gonna be the one to share your dreams that I am not gonna be the one to share your schemes, but I am not gonna be the one to share what seems to be the life that you could cherish as much as I do.
That man has never found the words that could make you what we have the right amount of letters, just the right sound that could make you hear. My goodness, Nastasha, my goodness, cherish this game sings that every single day. Every single day I always sing like I always think some like a horrible variant of it. I never actually sing cherish. I I'm always do it it's always something horrible and not cherishing.
For hearing all of my all of my uh ver different different unsavory versions of cherish. Alright. Call in your questions to seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight. Seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight. 7184972128.
Alright. So I had a question in from uh oh, another question from Derek from Derek Backing about Tarte. He's been making a tomato tartatan at work and it's been falling apart when he demolds it. So it's another molding question. That's interesting.
So uh tartatan, you know, for those of you tan, tartan. Anyway, so for those of you out there who aren't hip to it, it's uh, you know, it's the famous uh French, you know, upside down apple doodad, which you know, yeah, apples cook them. Uh after the apples have been cooked down, have lost a lot of their moisture, you can then also add some then reduced juice as long as it's really reduced. You put a layer of uh of uh pastry on the top, throw it in your oven, you cook it, and uh when the pastry is done, you pull it out, and then you flip it and unmold it, and there you have it, right? Um so the the he's making one with tomatoes, right?
And so the I uh my guess is the reason it's he he's tried a bunch of things to try and keep it holding together. He's been uh making a tomato water gel to pour into the molds with uh guar and pectin and agar, um, but they've been they've been not really working as well as he wants. So I I need to figure out exactly why it is that it's not working. I wouldn't use uh guar, pectin, and agar to hold it together. If you really want that sucker to hold together, um, what you're gonna have to do is use something like gel-an, which is once it sets, is never going to unset.
In which case you would then cook it, uh, then let the thing come down to temperature, right? Uh it come down so that the gel ansets, then heat it slightly again, in case there's some like sugars there, and then unmold it. But the problem is that the the real way tartatan is supposed to unmold is that the sugars stay uh liquid, whereas the fruit holds together enough with its own sort of like gelling power and pectin and the fact that it's been caramelized, and then it unmolds. I think your main problem is that you have just too much water in there. And if you're going to add uh a gelee, I it's I think it's still gonna have your your pastry come out kind of soggy.
I think your main goal here is gonna be to get rid of water. So what what I would do, and actually Melissa Clark from uh you know who writes for the New York Times, or at least used to, I think she still does, right? I don't have no idea. Anyway, uh she did an article in 2008 on tomato tartatin where she had a very similar problem. So she switched from larger tomatoes to smaller tomatoes and and uh made sure that they were just cooked down a lot before before she added uh the pastry on on top.
So I would consider using the smaller uh tomatoes, squeezing the seeds out after you peel them, but don't throw that away because that's all the flavor, reducing that first before you while you're cooking the tomatoes, and then add that reduction back and then put the lid on top of it. Just make sure you have enough sugar in there to uh hold it to form like a thick caramel that's gonna hold everything together, and make sure that your water content's not too high. And if you do that, you should be okay. If you're gonna then bolster it with a gel, I would do it with a gel that doesn't melt. And the only ones that don't melt that taste good would be something like gel-an.
And I would use a low A sol gel-an, um, which is the the firm one, the brittle one, because that one is uh clear and it's not gonna give a cloudy appearance to your to your tartatin. So um I these sound like good suggestions or no, all right. So hopefully that works out for you, let us know. Let us know, let us know how that goes. Okay.
Uh so I have uh another series of questions from our good buddy Kang Ken Ingber, uh, and says that we we neglected to make the joke about uh terroir when McGee was on and we were talking about roto vap being dirt. But it's funny you should say that um because that is exactly what so we're talking about it uh a couple weeks ago, someone called in and they had a roto vap, and Harold McGee was online and um asked what he should be making with a roto vap, which is a vacuum still. And McGee mentioned that one of the famous early cooking applications of uh rotary evaporation was the one you know roca, the roca brothers at uh El Calar Can Roca, one of the great restaurants in Spain, uh they put dirt water into a roto vap and then uh distilled off the essence of dirt, oh de dirt, oh de terror, and then although I don't know how to say that in Spanish. Do you know? Do you remember?
I don't remember. You know what Nastasha is? Nastasha is is anyone have you ever seen have you ever seen Born in East LA? No. You never never seen Born in the East LA?
You remember the song uh uh Born in the USA? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So Cheech Marin did a cover of it called Born in East LA and it had some success as a video. And then um he is he's an American and he lives in of Mexican descent, who lives in East LA and uh doesn't have an ID on him and gets deported to Mexico, and his whole joke is that he doesn't speak Spanish, right?
That is Nastasha. So Nastasha could be in East LA, uh, you know, close to where she's from, not have ID, get deported to Mexico and not speak any Spanish. That's conceivable, right? That's right. So you could be living that movie.
I lost it. You could be living that movie. Yeah, okay. Anyway, uh it's not that it's a good movie. I enjoy it because I enjoy anything with Cheech Cheech Marin in it.
But uh anyway, so uh how do we get on that? What were we talking about? Rotovaps. So um El Calar Can Roca, uh famous dish, just dirt water with oysters, and then uh uh, but the actual reason that they did that was because they wanted you to experience no joke, the terroir of like in a literal sense, the terroir of their region. So they would get dirt from this particular you know forest that they used to go and play in as kids, and it would have that moist, uh that moist here comes the space eater again, Nastasha turns on.
You pretend that I can't smell it. It's cold. It is not at all. Folks, folks, uh if if I ever wore shorts in my life, which I don't because I hate them, I would be wearing shorts right now. Anyway, um geez.
Okay, so they so they so they they wanted you to experience, and in the in Juan Roka's uh like his words, and because I asked him about it uh years ago, he wants you to experience the feeling he had as a child right after the rain in the morning when you go out in the forest and you get that smell, mixed with uh, you know, like the local oysters that they can also get by. So literal terroir was the reason behind that that dish. Okay. Uh so here's uh Ken's question on uh onions and other things and mirapoi and sauces. I was making a veggie-intensive tomato sauce for a weeknight meal, uh, mushrooms, onion, carrots, uh carrots, green peppers, and garlic.
Uh, but several questions came to mind. Uh and I and he hopes that they are of general interest. Well, we'll see. Uh uh he said, maybe I need a primer on onions. Some recipes talk about sauteing onions for five to eight minutes.
My onions hardly change at all in such a short period of time. Um, and uh, if he jacks up the heat, uh he singes the edges of the onions, but don't really accomplish much else. If his goal is to soften the onions, wouldn't an hour and a half and tomato sauce do that. And if my goal is to caramelize uh caramelize the onions, what aren't we talking about a much longer period of time than any home cook spends on onions for tomato sauce? And so the question is what is a softened onion?
Okay, uh, it's an interesting question. So there are a bunch of things that are going on. Um, and he's gonna ask about because I pre-read the questions. I don't want anyone out there to pretend that I'm haven't read the questions before they come on, and I'm I just know all this crap off the top of my head. Although I really do.
Anyway, uh the the book to get on this whole subject of onions, and I know we've uh and garlic, but uh onions as well, and I know that I've mentioned this book on the on the show before, but it's really kind of a one-of-a-kind thing is Garlic and Other Alliums, The Lore and the Science. That's a good title, right? By Eric Block. And it's one of the only uh kind of books on food that I own that has a uh a preface written by a Nobel laureate. And this book was brought to my attention, as most other good things are by uh Harold McGee.
And while this book is very highly technical, and huge chunks of it are only going to be of use to trained uh organic chemists. Um it also has a bunch of sections on cooking that uh that that talk about interesting things, and also about things like uh here chapter two is all things allium, alliums, which you know, anything onions, garlic leaks, alliums in literature, the arts and culture. So it's really an all-around book, and it's one of those books that you kind of need to have in your uh in your in your house just so you can say that you have like it's not even that I mean it's expensive. I'm not gonna say it's cheap. Uh I I don't have the price here.
I would guess it's like 50 bucks or some crap like that. But for 50 bucks, you have like the world's repository of knowledge on onions. For instance, the chapter six dot four on page 320 is use of onion as an insect repellent by cappuccine monkeys. How ballsy is that? I have this in my house, and you don't.
Don't you feel less less good that you don't have a book that you can flip open and learn about the use of onion as an insect repellent by cappureon monkeys? Anyway, um, so get this book and it describes in detail uh what's going on in onions and garlic and leeks uh and so forth when they are being cut, when they are sitting around, when they are being cooked uh at different rates, and describes all the different reactions that are taking place and therefore gives you an insight in into what's going on. The one unfortunate thing that they don't cover in here is, and I'm maybe I'll I don't know this guy, uh Eric Block, but maybe I'll call him because they don't go into what happens specifically with pressure cooking, which is one of the reasons I bought the book, because I'm very interested in pressure cooking alliums, uh, garlic and onion and things like that. Uh it's one of our main uh it's one of our main things that we do is pressure cook things like garlic and onions. Anyway, uh so buy that book.
But here's the thing uh the flavor of onions is changed by heat uh and the and the and the arresting of further um production of flavor in the onions is arrested by heat well before the onions themselves start to soften because you're breaking down the tissue, okay? So there's there's the the flavor development uh and the flavor changing that the heat i i is providing. Um that is going on at the same time that you're heating, and then once you get above 85 C for an extended period of time where you break down uh the the pectins uh and the hemicellulose and actually soften the onion. So if you're making a sauce and your goal is to uh basically uh, you know, provide a certain type of onion flavor that happens relatively quickly in cooking, then it's not necessarily not necessary to get them all the way soft as long as you get them up to a heat where you've deactivated the enzymes and you've kind of I guess stabilized the flavor somewhat, then the cooking in the sauce will take you the rest of the way in terms of making the onions soft, right? Assuming you cook it long enough.
It actually takes a long time uh in a thick tomato sauce to have onions go soft because the water's not as available as it would be uh if you were cooking it in water, or and and that's also frankly another thing you could do. If you're not getting high heat flavors, you could just put the onions in with wine or whatever, flash them off so that they're almost boiled, and that'll get what you want if you're not providing any any color. Okay. But uh if and if you want that deep caramelized uh flavor where you're actually altering the onion uh the uh the sugars in the onions are uh you then you need to cook at a lower heat so that it doesn't scorch because the when you scorch the sugars, the flavor turns different, and most of us say worse, unless you're burning the onion to make that so the to darken up like a stock. Most of us don't want that acrid burnt flavor, so then you need a lower heat for uh a longer period of time to get those kind of uh caramelized notes.
And you can do anything in between, but you're obtaining different flavors. So uh everything depends. Uh as for the other uh ingredients, so so you then uh after that he he says um he says uh uh admittedly I always cook onions in bulk, so I acknowledge that the volume of onions I cook will increase the time for any kind of sauteing, but he thinks his point stands. That's true. Uh especially if you cook in bulk, you're gonna basically be steaming the onions, breaking down the tissue, and then only after they've been steamed and broken down are you really going to get those kind of flavors and and but you know, honestly, it's difficult to do a good onion.
If you're gonna make like an uh an onion uh tart, let's say, it's very difficult to do it in under under half hour, I'd say, wouldn't you say, Nastasha? Something like that. Um I guess he has he has the same question for mirapoi, which would be like, you know, the classic like uh onions or onions or leeks, carrots, and celery. So frito, which I assume he means the Spanish version, which would be uh um garlic, onions and and uh tomatoes, or the the holy trinity of creole cooking, which I guess is onions, bell peppers, and celery. I think it depends, like celery, I don't think you're getting that much out of celery in the saute, except for um you're densifying it by sauteing it and have the structure break down before it's been in a liquid, right?
Um same thing goes, I mean, bell peppers, I don't think you're getting that much out of, except for you you're getting some brown flavors off of the off of the uh m the meat of it, but I don't think you're winning that much. Carrots have a lot of sugar in them, so you could be getting some caramelizing effect out of the carrots, and uh depending on how you treat them. But I don't cook a miracle long enough to get those kind of flavors in my carrots, so I don't really think that's gonna that's gonna happen. Um he then says more generally, which of the veggies really ought to be sauteed before adding to a sauce. For example, mushrooms, uh they're better sauteed for the texture, but will they retain the intensified flavor after they've been in tomato sauce a long time?
I'd say yes, especially on something like a uh uh uh a mushroom. If you're cooking it in a sauce, I think the liquid's gonna diffuse into the mushroom because a mushroom is basically a porous sponge. So if you cook the mushroom by itself and then let it shrink down, then it becomes a denser item that's not gonna absorb as much liquid. And so I think you'll get a fundamentally different, denser, more intense result if you saute your mushrooms beforehand. Uh anyway, um, and then as regards garlic, uh, I think it's a good idea to add your garlic uh much later uh when you're sauteing onions because uh garlic does have a tendency to scorch very readily and turn extremely acrid.
The flip side of that is if you're cooking garlic in water in a pressure cooker, in which case it doesn't matter when you add it because you're you're pressure cooking the whole whole dang thing. Uh all right, let's go to one more break. Call in all of your questions if you have any questions, you people out there to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128 cooking issues. Umbrando.
The following is a public service announcement from Heritage Radio Network. Really? Tune into Greenhorn Radio, hosted by Severin von Scharner Fleming every Thursday at 2 p.m. Greenhorn Radio is radio for young farmers by young farmers. Helmed by acclaimed activist, farmer, and documentarian Severin Fleming, Greenhorn Radio is a weekly phone interview session surveying America's cutting edge under 40 farmers.
Again, that's every Thursday at 2 p.m. on the Heritage Radio Network. That is a weird Bowie song you chose. I feel like Marlon Brando when I look at my little China girl. What a weird song.
You know which one I forgot that we should have played. Was it? Was the Abracadabra? That's next week. Oh, yeah.
Uh okay, so in case so next week for one of our break music, we're going to play uh Steve Miller's Abricadabra. Yeah. Steve Miller's song Yeah, unless someone out there in internet land can come up with a worse Steve Miller song to play a more horrid, abysmal, like depth of hell. Give him the story, Dave, of how they asked him to create a song. Well, well, so our theory our theory is, but our theory is that you know they needed to come out with it with a new album to go on tour so that they can go on tour and play all of their older really good songs.
And they come into the exec and like he's like, hey, it's it's abracadabra, I'm gonna reach out and grab you. That's the song. And they're like, Yeah, that's funny, Steve. Yeah, what's the real song? He's like, no.
That's it. Anyway. Uh so next week, unless one of you can come up with a worse Steve Miller song, that's going on the list, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one's gonna come up with a worse song.
No. I mean, you could look at any B side. Anything. Yeah. And yet they still play it at every crazy dance.
It's on the radio consistently, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Avricadabra. Jack, can you think of a worse Steve Miller song? He's shaking his head and down.
Yeah, no. Anyway. Okay. Got a question on vodka sauce. Uh, what do you say about vodka sauce?
In your view, is the purpose of vodka purely because the alcohol A releases certain flavor compounds and then B boils off? Or is there some residual alcohol in the sauce that is itself a benefit? Am I correct in that the flavors will be released by wine as well, but unlike vodka, the wine will impart a beneficial flavor of its own even after the alcohol boils off. Okay, well, a couple of things. One, alcohol never truly boils off.
I mean, you lose a bunch of it, that's true, but it never truly uh boils off. And in fact, uh, I think it's uh I I it's been a while since I've researched this. Uh and I myself have never done uh side-by-side taste test of the same exact sauce prepared the same exact way, except for in one you add uh a bit of uh water and in one you add uh vodka and then correct them for the same level of uh of final reduction at the end of the sauce, right? Um it's possible to do it and then doing a side-by-side blind tasting. I've never done it.
Do you know anyone that's done that? No. I don't either. I mean, it'd be an interesting test. I don't really have the time to run it right now, but it would be a very interesting test to run.
I like pasta. If someone else is yeah, Nastasha loves pasta. If anyone in the in the greater New York area wants to run that side-by-side test and invite us, we'll come, right? Yeah. Yeah, we'll come.
Uh anyway, uh, but I think that uh you the the the effect of vodka sauce is supposed to be from residual alcohol that's left there that has relatively little flavor in it that will vodka. Uh and so it would be the volatilization of the uh of the aroma compounds in the residual alcohol that I think is providing some of the effect, although the residual alcohol content is still quite low. So even if you don't drink alcohol, I don't really think it's a problem. But it really is true that not all not all alcohol boils off. We we did have to run a test on that a number of years ago because Nils got called for I forget who it was, some TV show uh made him do it, and we had to do a bunch of research on it.
But there's still uh quite a bit I I know what we did. We flambed uh alcohol straight and then did alcohol and water tests without a lot of complicating effects like uh sugar and tomato sauce, and then did uh um then did refractometer readings of the result to see what the residual crap was left in it. And in fact, there was residual alcohol content. I don't remember what the numbers were though, do you? No.
You were there for that, were they? It was before you were there? Maybe. And speaking of alcohol, we have a question in uh non-alcoholic cocktails from Christian Swanpole. You think I'm pronouncing that right?
Mm-hmm. Swanpole? Hmm. Swan pole. Also from New Zealand.
This is a new you know what? We need to get our butts on to New Zealand. First of all, do you do you like lamb? You better like lamb. I just Julie's there.
I want to go there for that. Yeah, but do you enjoy eating lamb? Alright, so you don't hate lamb. No, I don't hate lamb. Alright, good.
Lamb is some delicious stuff. Gotta go to you know, we we in New here in New York we get a whole bunch of New Zealand lamb, but I wonder whether they keep the best product for themselves. What do you think? I think so. You think so?
Yeah, wouldn't you? Well, but the thing is, like, I'll eat lamb when I'm there, of course, but I'm gonna I'm gonna basically like eat New Zealand uh grapefruits till I plots. I'm just gonna eat Purman oranges until my body explodes. You know, you can't eat grapefruit when you're on Xanax. That was another thing.
I did. Uh there's a so the in grapefruit there is uh and and the perceived uh the the literature says that the the stuff that's in grapefruit that means that you can't have it when you're on any form of statin or anything like that. There's a bunch of drugs that it interacts with, is uh a chemical called bergamotin. This is what I've been led to believe. Uh and uh so I talked uh for with uh Ken Kirshenbaum at NYU a number of years ago seeing whether we could maybe get rid of the bergamotin.
I think since then someone has uh postulated a way to do it. I I think I saw some patent literature recently on someone basically getting the bergamotin out of uh grapefruit juice. But my question, and no one's as far as I can tell, do the research on it, is bergamotin is one of the and hey, think about the name bergamotin, bergamot, right? And bergamot is the classic flavoring in uh earl gray tea. And so my qu and my question is is earl gray tea not okay to have.
Are there significant levels of bergamotin in earl gray tea such that you shouldn't have it when you're uh on statins or other medications that are affected by it? Now, the the truth of the matter is is that um what happens is is when you when you take grapefruit when you're on these medications, it changes the uh your response to dose, right? So I think some medications it can uh increase the response, and some medications it can decrease the response. But theoretically, if you have the same amount in your system all the time, they can correct for the fact that you uh are are are ingesting grapefruit, but grapefruit isn't something that you typically ingest at at a constant rate every day. So maybe like earl gray tea drinkers, maybe they drink it at a constant enough rate that it's not a problem.
Maybe it's not a problem at all. I'd love if anyone out there has any information on bergamotin levels and statins and bergamotin levels in earl gray tea, because it's something I've never seen discussed. No doctors ever tell you, they tell you, hey, stay away from the grapefruit, but they never say, Hey, stay away from the old gray tea. And a lot of people like Earl Gray tea, right? Do you like Earl Grey tea?
Mm-hmm. I like Roll Grey Tea. I don't drink it, but I like it. Anyway, how the hell would we get on that? Oh, New Zealand.
Yeah. Man, we man, we go on tangents, right? Yes. You know, I got some serious issues. Like uh, like yesterday I was I was at this talk for the uh for the experimental cuisine collective and um someone asked a question in the audience because uh Maxime uh Maxime Billet from the um from the uh exp the modernist cuisine book, you know, along with Chris Young and Nathan Mirval, he was uh there along with Grant, and they were giving uh uh they were basically talking about the book and actually giving us some food, some really delicious food from the book they served out.
Yeah, they served out the the rare beef jus, which is one of the famous dishes in the book now, or becoming famous dishes in the book, where they make a uh they make a beef jus um at a very low temperature, like 52 Celsius, which is as low as you can go and be bacterially safe, basically. Or 53, I forget, somewhere in there, in that range. And uh, and they serve it red. And I had it at at um you know at the kitchen lab uh when right before the book was released when I flew out to Seattle. But um I had it this time cold.
They served it cold for the summertime, and I think it was actually even better cold, and it's this bright red color. Uh anyway, and they served you know some other stuff, very interesting stuff, great, you know, great stuff. And um someone asked a question, so you know, is there anything else to know? Or is have we figured everything out? And I was like, What?
That's weird. That's really weird, right? I was like, you know, I was like, we haven't even asked all the right questions yet. And I was thinking back to uh Roy Fong, the tea guy that we met from the Imperial Tea Garden in uh in um San Francisco, and you know, I was like, you know, look, you know, you could spend your whole life studying, you know, like a single type of tea and uh and not not really not really know everything. Uh anyway, again, and so but then I was like, then I when I when I when I said that, as soon as I said that, I didn't add this.
I was like, but me personally, I'm way too scattered to spend my life like which is why, like, you know, in a way, like I I love all this like kind of generalist work that we do, because like I don't I I'm too scattered and I go off on too many tangents to study uh just one thing forever. What do you think? Yeah, no, that's true. I actually was talking about that late last night with someone, yeah. Yeah, and how you can't, yeah.
Even though you weren't at the d discussion hearing me say that because you were high on Xanax? Well, I was just talking. Yeah. To yourself. Was there someone there?
Or were you hallucinating them? Yeah, it was a hallucination. Okay. So uh Christian asks, uh, I'd like to start by saying he loves the show. Thank you.
Uh keep up the good work. We will we will try to. Uh I heard last week that you were doing a non-alcoholic drinks for a party. I have to do the same thing for a party of my own. Unfortunately, I don't have awesome things like rotovaps, but was wondering if you have any pointers or ideas.
I don't really have any experience with any form of cocktail, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, and he knows that I'm somewhat of an expert in this uh respect. Well, uh, we hope. We hope anyway, right? Uh so he thought he might have something interesting for him. Thanks for your time.
Christian Swanpole from New Zealand. Okay, so uh here's the thing. Here's my feelings on non-alcoholic cocktails. If you serve something uh non-alcoholic, I would go for something that is carbonated because uh it's just more festive. If you serve uh uh something that's not carbonated, it just seems to me to be more like juice.
What do you think, Nastasha? I mean, do you think about a bloody Mary? Virgin Mary. A Virgin Mary? No, Virgin Mary is a good cocktail.
Uh yeah, yes, a Virgin Mary is good. So, I mean, a traditional Virgin Mary, but depends on what time of day. I mean, you don't want that in the evening. No, right. I'll tell you what we did.
We took uh coriander seed, we lightly ground coriander seed, then we cooked it in um in sh in simple syrup, so one-to-one sugar and water. Uh then we let it cool. We kept on tasting it while it was going. If you cook coriander seed too long, it becomes too much like uh a heavy spice note and you lose some of the citrusy notes. We used untoasted coriander seed.
Uh then keep ta we used quite a bit actually. Keep tasting it, and then when when you feel it's where you want, strain it out. Okay. Then take something with uh a lot of spice in it that has a lot of heat but not very vegetable. We used the Thai Thai chilies, they're very hot, so we didn't have that much.
Make a separate simple syrup with the Thai chilies, right? Then uh take your coriander syrup, put a pinch of salt in it, then um then add the Thai chili, because the coriander syrup is very nice, but it lacks something in the back end in the middle of the palate. You want to add a little bit of that Thai chili syrup to it, not enough to make it spicy, just enough to uh to fill up the back of your throat a little bit like a like a ginger ale. Uh and and then you want to add uh malic acid and citric acid if you don't have that stuff. Two part citric to one part mallock, if you don't, and that's gonna add some limey flavor to it.
If you don't have that, you could just bite the bullet and use real limes. But the problem is with real limes, unless you follow our clarification directions on the blog, www.cooking issues.com, uh, you're gonna have issues with foaming uh that are gonna cause problems, uh, even if you strain it. And that's a really good syrup to have at a party, and you can just pour seltzer water on top of that, and it's delicious, right? You like that one, right? Um, or you could clarify any number of juices and make nice light cocktails uh with clarified juices.
But I I just I tend to think that that if you really want people to think you're doing something for them that's non-alcoholic, get some sort of a carbonation rig. And carbonation rigs are fairly cheap uh nowadays. Um I don't think we ever posted on getting one, but they're fairly easy to get. And carbonation in general, you can do in an ISI rig or something like that. So the the ones we did, we did a coriander soda, like the one I told you that we then did we made clarified raspberry juice and clarified strawberry juice.
Which you know, we used a centrifuge, but you don't need it. You can use uh a lot of different techniques. Hell, you can even buy the juice and then uh carbonate it. Um just remember when you're working with cocktails that you're gonna want to balance uh uh w when you're tasting them, especially because there's no alcohol there, they they're gonna tend to lack something in the kind of the mid palate and in the back of your throat. So you're gonna want to add uh l like spice is very good to add, like in the form of that Thai chili syrup that I'm talking about, just to round it out, not allowed to make it spicy.
Don't forget to add a pinch of salt, which is gonna round out all the flavors, especially fruit flavors, not enough to make it salty, but just a little bit, and it's gonna be uh uh you know uh balancing kind of fruity acid and aromatics, I think is where you're gonna want to go to. So we is that good advice or not? That's good, yeah. Yeah. And then and then, of course, if it's sometime in the morning, virgin marries are great.
There's tomato juice and you know, uh like whatever forms of spicy stuff that you want in it. If you want to make tomato water, that's a little more intensive, and I recommend buying a centrifuge. Just kidding. Anyway, uh this has been Cooking Issues. Come back and see us next week, every Tuesday, 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 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.
This is Katie Kiefer with behind the scenes food news for the week of May 11th. One of the most exciting things that I found in my trolling of trade blogs this week was uh the announcement of a new initiative called Ag RE. That's Capital A G, small R E E. So it's sort of agriculture and green, I suppose is the uh the idea behind that. And the co-chairs include Dan Glickman, who is a former Secretary of the USDA under Clinton, Gary Hirschberg, who is the president and CEO of Stonyfield Farm, Jim Mosley, who is a former Deputy Secretary at the USDA under George Bush, and Emmy Simmons, a former assistant administrator for economic growth, agriculture, and trade at the U.S.
Agency for International Development. So this is kind of a mixed bag of political viewpoints here, which is what made me really uh sit up and take notice. It's funded by all the usual suspects like the Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, etc. But um leading off in their uh first meeting, Glickman stressed the importance of involving all stakeholders and seeking common ground in addressing the need to feed a growing global population and doing so in ways that are environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable. And the eight foundations that are backing Ag Agri, he notes, agreed to set aside their political differences, as did the individual co-chairs to develop research based long-term solutions and strategies.
I think this is a gigantic step in the right direction. I'm hoping that these guys will have a huge impact on the farm bill, which will be uh coming up again in 2012. Um, so let's uh keep an eye on Agri. If you want to read more about them and what they're doing and their news. They do have a website.
It's www.food and agpolicy.org. This has been Katie Kiefer with behind the scene food news. The following is a message from Heritage Foods USA. In the next few weeks, Heritage Foods USA will be offering an interesting variety of amazing products, ranging from top quality seafood to their famous pork cuts. At the end of May, the Heritage team will go up to Maine to harvest fresh lobster with sustainable lobster meat.
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