You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.com, bringing you the freshest radio in Brooklyn since 2009. Here directly from chefs to farmers, artists to architects, authors to brewers, and everyone in between. Check out all of our shows on our website or by searching Heritage Radio Network in the iTunes Store. 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.cane5.com. Oh, you dead. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. I'm Dave Arnold. Your host of Cooking Issues coming to you from roughly 12 to 1245 every Tuesday here in the studio with Nastasha DeHammer Lopez.
We're coming to you from the Heritage Radio Network in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwig, Brooklyn. So listen, Nastasha, what's the telephone number to call in? 718 4972128. That's 718-497-2128. 2128?
Yes. Good. Um, just so you know, well, that's kind of a thing. I can't remember the dang telephone number of this place. When it comes to cyanic glycosides, I'm there for you, buddies, but with the telephone number, can't help.
Listen, we have a caller on the air, so let's go right to it. Hi Dave. Hey, how you doing? Good. Um, I've got a two-part question.
All right. First one, I'm in London. Where should I go for drinks? Well, that's easy. Before you even go any further, that is simple.
Anywhere that my friend Tony Cunnellaro is involved, you should go immediately for drinks. Uh, the one that I go to all the time is 69, excuse me. I bike here at about a thousand miles an hour, so my throat's a little scratchy. So 69 Colebrook Row. It's in Islington.
It's uh like a 10 minute walk from the Angel Tube Stop. I can't believe I said tube stop on the air. Uh and uh what else did you like when we were there, Nastasha? Where'd you go? Oh, I don't remember.
I wasn't with you most of the time. Well, that might work because I I work quite close to the angels tube stop. Um now we said it twice on the air. Right. I uh should I get wait uh anything.
Uh here's the thing about it. Like that, I nine times out of ten, I mean look, Tony's a friend of mine. So uh when I go, I typically don't pay, which means I don't go anywhere else. Uh uh so I I I've had most of my drinks there. That said, I mean if we've been to Hicks, um apologize, man.
I have to bike here earlier. It's just seriously, I was breaking my neck to make it here because I was researching stuff, so I have something caught in my throat, and I didn't have time to get it out, so I apologize again. Uh so Tony is uh is runs a very interesting bar there. He also has a new hotel bar, but I don't know what it is. I thought he has a uh lab, then the Pink Floyd Studios, the old Pink Floyd Studios.
Really? I think the drinks also might be interesting. There's a new restaurant restaurant uh um in excuse me. Remind me, never to do this again. Always give myself five minutes before we start to uh no matter how late I am to get whatever it's in my throat out of my throat.
So uh Quince, the new restaurant I think has some interesting drinks as well, uh, and Hicks. But Tony uses high-tech stuff like rotary evaporators, centrifuge, but you would never know it in his bar because the bar is like a little tiny, like neighborhood bar that just happens to serve some of the best drinks uh in the country. And it's not me saying that. He's rated like constantly like one of the best people, but like whatever they're making, my trick is I always walk in and say bartender's choice. What do you want to make?
And then typically, you know, if you if you if you tell them that you're game for whatever they're gonna make, typically they will make you something interesting. If the if uh you know, if you're like, I I really like tasteless vodka drinks, well then they'll size you up and they'll give you something. I mean, Tony will still give you something good, and all of his people are good, but you know what I'm saying. A bartender's choice is always the best choice. Right, but can I say bartender's choice, preferably with whiskey and well stuck?
Yeah, sure, yeah, sure. Yeah, that's perfectly respectable. I mean, look, it they're actually one of those great places where they're not going to make you feel bad there for whatever you drink. They're not they're not snobs that way, even though they're some of the best people in the business. Um but yeah, you mean it's you know, definitely typically what I'll do is I'll say, uh, you know, your choice.
I'm feeling kind of like a brown liquor today, or maybe I'll say whiskey or something like that. And they can they they they have all things there, but they do a lot of really interesting stuff. And they have a piano, and certain nights there's tranny bands playing. Even better. Yeah.
Um the second part of the question is uh what are your feelings on water chestnuts? Ah, interesting. Water chestnuts. Okay, so my wife detests water chestnuts. So do I.
Really? Uh I like them. For her, it's a textural thing, and uh uh, you know, at one point I said to her, Look, uh, maybe it's that you don't like canned water chestnuts and you grew up eating canned water chestnuts, so I made them fresh. And she's like, No, I hate these too. And I was like, Oh, is it similar for you?
Is it a textural issue? Yeah, I mean, it doesn't really add anything in taste. I don't like the crispiness of it. Um I pick them out of every food, and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone thinks it adds anything to a recipe. What do you what do you think, Nastashi?
I bet you hate them too, Nastasha. I used to like them as a kid. I hated them. Yeah, Nastasha hates most things though, so uh yeah, you know, you and my wife are in the same camp. I'd like to I kind of like they have a very uh unique um okay, so the texture is crispy in the way that a raw potato is crispy, but without that raw potato flavor.
So if you like the texture of a raw potato, but not not that not that raw starchy flavor, then a water chestnut seems like it's a good bet for you. If you don't like that texture, I think you're gonna be in trouble. Would you agree or no? No, I agree. It's the ta I mean, I'm not looking for a raw potato texture either, I guess.
Right. And uh water chestnuts and certain other things that grow in uh the water like that can have uh uh parasitic worms in them. I think it's worms. Maybe it's a bacteria, I forget. So you need to cook your water chestnuts before you uh before you eat them if you get them fresh.
So don't, you know, eat them raw. Uh well, you shouldn't eat them at all because you don't like them. But here's a here's a good um thing that uh Nils Norrin always used to get uh water chestnut flour, and he said that for dusting a fish and frying, uh he loves water chestnut flour. And I think that's a trick he picked up when he was working in China. Water chestnut flour is not so easy to come by here in the US.
I don't know about the UK, but it's definitely available, so maybe there is a uh a use for water chestnut for you yet. Well, I'll look into it. Um final thing, Dave, it's uh it's actually Brady. Brady! Oh, this is my cousin Brady.
I didn't know you hated that in the beginning. I didn't know you hated water chestnut uh water chestnuts. Brady and they keep showing up in the side dishes here. I'm like, why do people do that? It's ruining the dish for me.
And I thought I'd uh I'd ask you. Well, uh, this is interesting that I unrelated, you know, just we're family by you know, my by marriage, my wife and Brady, and and me, actually. But uh the uh two people in the family that hate water chestnuts, the only two people I know are people who regularly come to my house. When you're coming back to the stage. But that's good because Jeff Jen hates him, then that means he will not make them while I'm there, so correct.
Go to Tony's bar or I'll kill you, and you never invit her to my house again. No, I'm going there today after work, so I thought I'd call. Alright, cool. Thanks a lot. Alright, see ya.
Alright, listen. I I'm gonna recover my throat, and we can take the first commercial break, come back and I'll answer some email questions. Call in all your questions too! 7184972128. That's I want to ride my bicycle.
I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride it where I like. You say black, I say white, you say boss, I say bite, say sharks, say him and George Rose, never my scene, and I don't like Star Wars.
Say rolls, say Royce, say God, give me a choice. I don't believe in pizza band, Frankenstein or Superman. I want to ride my single I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike. I want to ride my bicycle.
Races are coming. So forget all your duties on here. And welcome back to Cooking Issues. I am almost fully recovered. Just give you an idea of what you're dealing with when you're biking from Manhattan to Brooklyn.
I pass by a concrete factory on my way over here. And a giant uh, you know, uh, what are those things called with the big thing in front, the scoops? Bulldozer. A bulldozer dumps an entire bulldozer, like, you know, shovel load of dirty concrete water basically on my bike as I'm biking past him. That's that's Brooklyn.
Anyway, call on your questions to 718497-2128. That's 7184972128. We're gonna be here for a little while because I got some email questions to answer. Alright, by the way, uh, we have this new kind of thing. People just call in with kind of information and shout outs.
Have you noticed that recently? We've gotten a lot of people just writing in with some info. Yeah. Alright. Well, so here's some info.
For those of you who are in the New York area and don't have a job, uh, or who have a nighttime job. Alright. Uh Tom Metcalf says uh there's a really good movie that you should look at at the MoMA today. That's Museum of Modern Art. Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
Uh is basically uh it's playing at um took today, I think, August 23rd of today, right? Uh yeah. Yeah, 4 p.m. at MoMA. And uh the film is about Jiro One, the best uh Jiro uh Jiro Ono, the best, the best.
I mean I hate that best, but like you know, one of the world world's most renowned sushi chefs in Japan in Tokyo and chronicle chronicles his lifelong uh complete devotion to becoming ever better at his craft. And uh Tom believes that uh I uh have made some comments that suggest I would admire his work ethic. Um I've seen it. You seen it? Was it good?
It was good. Yeah, good. Compare it to the Faron Adrian movie. Faron Adria was a bit better. Well it's relatable, I guess.
Right. Well, so we actually had the filmmakers on uh A Taste of the Past, episode 60, for those who want to hear. Please go, please go listen to that. Now, here's the thing. Uh view uh listeners uh to this show are kind of specialized, uh they have specialized interests, right?
So I went to go see the what's the name of the Fron Adrian movie that we we uh did the event for? What's it called? Um it's a movie about Faron Adria. Anyway, it's uh so some reviewers have criticized that it's basically just food porn, and how much can you how how how long can you sit and watch Ferron tasting different pieces of food? This is a valid criticism for someone who's not interested in the process of making food, right?
So uh I went to go see it and I thought it was extremely interesting because it gives you an insight into the way that uh L Boey and Faron, how they work, how they cook, how their process is. Uh and as uh as a cook, as someone who's interested in cooking, to me that's extremely valuable because Faron is clearly uh at the at the very top of uh his game, the top of the field in what he does. Um so it it would be extremely interesting, I think very, very worthwhile for anyone interested in Japanese cooking techniques, which I am extremely interested in. I wish I could go to it today because I would, but unfortunately I can't drop what I'm doing this afternoon to go. Um I'm sure I'll see it eventually.
Uh it's very difficult to get an insight into Japanese cooking techniques because uh the mode of learning in many high-end Japanese kitchens is one of years of careful observation without uh much explanation, let's put it that way. And so, really the only way to learn what they're doing. You're never you know, you're never gonna learn what you're doing, right? Because you have to sit there for you know two years uh you know washing the rice before they let you cook it or whatever, whatever the old, you know, the old things are. But um in a in a in a Japanese or really any cooking demonstration, don't who cares what they're saying?
Don't pay any attention because nine times out of ten, they're not telling you what's really going on anyway. Pay attention to their hands, pay attention to the ingredients they're using, pay attention to the the way their hands move, uh, and these kinds of things are going to give you a big clue as to what is uh what is actually going on in the food. So and this is why videos and live demonstrations from top-notch people are so valuable to watch. And so the ability to see in a movie uh someone like this working is invaluable. So I do I do hope to see it, and it could almost be I mean it can't be silent because I have to hear what the ingredients are, what's going on, but the explanation and any sort of plot or arc or narrative, I really could care less.
Uh and then and I shouldn't probably say that, that's a mean thing to say, but you know what, but you know what I'm saying. It's like for me, it's gonna be valuable out of the way. Do you think it did uh who do you see it with? Mark. Did Mark find Mark we're talking Mark Ladner from Del Posto.
Did he find it valuable? Yeah. He did. Yeah, I bet. You know, Mark likes fish, Mark likes to push a fish.
Mark used to get in those whole Kindai Tunis, butcher them up and uh and send them back. Anyway, so very valuable for anyone interested in learning something about Japanese cooking. Um, thank you, Tom, for writing in that information. Uh another uh interesting uh piece of uh little tidbit comes from Steve Crandall via the Wall Street Journal. Uh they have an article called Scooped, and here's something I'd never heard of.
Fracking. Have you heard of fracking before? No. I mean, other than the I'm gonna okay. Yes, I have heard of fracking from Battlestar Galactica.
Yes, I have seen the new Battlestar Galactica thing. But I hadn't heard of fracking the uh the term, and uh fracking is basically hydraulic fracturing. So what you do is you're drilling for uh oil or whatever, you drill a pipe way the hell down into whatever you're gonna do, and then you put a huge pressure on it to fracture the rock under there, and then you pump in uh junk like sand or whatever to allow whatever you're trying to get, oil, to filter through that, and you get it. It's a way of getting more oil or water or whatever out of it, but a lot of people are pissed off about it because it can, you know, pump poison into the aquifer, stuff like that. You know, anyway.
So, I will read the Wall Street Journal thing because it has to do with guargum, guargum. Fracking has a new victim, ice cream. Oh, oh, I was just handed by by j by Jack a no frack button. Jack, I didn't realize that we were uh we were uh an anti-fracking. Well, it doesn't represent my opinion.
Somebody left that here. Oh, so in other words, some of our hosts and our guests are anti-frack folk. Correct. Yeah. Hmm.
Okay. Well, apparently they're fra this is anti-frack button from the catskill citizens.org. Uh so presumably there's some fracking, whole lot of fracking going on up in the cat skills. Presumably for water and not for oil. Anyway, uh, fracking has a new victim, ice cream.
Hydraulic fracting, this uh fracturing, the sometimes controversial oil and gas drilling method, is causing tremors in a small but vital corner of the food industry. This is I'm reading verbatim for the Wall Street Journal. Glargum, produced mainly in India, helps thicken foods ranging from ketchup to ice cream. And the problem is it's also mighty useful in fracking fluid. Fracking fluid is the fluid that they pump pump pump into the uh into these places to actually cause the pressure to fracture them.
With the surge in fracking, demar uh demand for guar gum has rocketed. Having often languished under 50 cents per pound, guar gum has recently changed hands at over three dollars. Uh and so this is gonna cause problems because they use a lot of guar in ice cream. And the reason they use guar is because guar is cheap. Uh the guar is from a seed and it's very similar to another product called locust bean gum.
Locust bean gum is actually for a lot of applications better, but uh because locust bean gum doesn't have a kind of taste, and most guar is kind of crappy tasting, it tastes kind of crap. It has a beanie, it's called a beanie taste, kind of like eating uh black-eyed pea flour, if you've ever done that. I don't know, I don't know why you would. I have many times. But anyway, uh so uh they you know, TIC gums, the good people from TIC gums make a something called flavor free guar, which is awesome.
And guar and uh gel-an and other hydrocolloid is what we use to make the stretchy ice cream that I like so well. Uh but guar has been cheap, so if guar prices go up, good for the poor sons of guns that have to sit there and harvest guar. You know what I mean? Good for them. You know, if we have to pay like, you know, a nickel more for our ice cream.
First of all, three dollars a pound, let's put this in perspective, what three dollars a pound means for uh guar. So you're gonna have well under, well under a half, one half of one percent of uh guar in your ice cream, okay? So we're talking that uh, you know, a minuscule amount cost wise increase in uh your ice cream. So if all of a sudden a bunch of people uh in the oil industry, and I'm not saying I'm not pro frac, not pro-frat here, but uh it, you know, i if some poor sucker in India gets more for their guar seeds as a result of this, God bless them. I'll pay the extra five tenths of a penny for my ice cream.
Does this make any sense, Nastasha? Yes. Yeah, anyway. All right. GWAR!
All right. Uh guar, it yeah, I like war. I mean, it's it's interesting. Um our good friend Paul Adams from Popular Science. He uh writes mainly for their online, but I think he's gonna be doing something in the magazine as well.
Uh he did a nice write-up of the Glenn Livitt uh experiment I did in New Orleans where I was separate separating Glenn Livitt Scotch into uh oak and and spirits, and yeah, you can read about it on PopScience.com. Uh anyway, he writes in that popular science is doing some challenges, and uh maybe some of our readers are interested in it so the idea is is that uh some knucklehead, and the the website is uh innocentive.com, inocentive, C-E-N-T-A, like like innovation incentive, indocentive.com. So they basically offer an award, and the idea is that any knucklehead who wants to can write in and uh you know propose a solution to the problems, and if you win, you get either $10,000 or a chunk of that $10,000, and the guaranteed minimum uh the guaranteed minimum like maximum how am I gonna put this? So the the there will be someone who gets at least five thousand dollars. They might get the full ten thousand and they are gonna give ten thousand dollars away.
Make sense now? Yeah. Alright, so this one here is uh, and this one, by the way, is the one he sent us, already has three hundred and seventy-three people who have signed up with solutions. Most of them I'm sure suck. Oh, come on.
Oh, come on. Most things in the world are bad, so why wouldn't most of the solutions to this problem be bad? The problem is, over time, low fat batter for baked products sticks to the baking surface of aluminum baking pans. No duh. Right?
Uh I I didn't mean it that way. The stuck batter burns and must be removed from the baking surface. The seeker, that's the company here, is looking for creative ideas for reducing either the adhesion of batter to the baking service or for improving the speed and efficiency of the cleaning process, and more information is available from their challenge description. And so basically, they want you to come up with a new release agent or a nonstick baking service or a new way of cleaning, but you only have a couple more days to solve that problem. Presumably they're gonna have more of these.
I have a solution. But add some freaking fat to the batter. You know what I mean? Add some freaking fat. What is the problem with having a little fat?
Here's the thing, right? What? You're gonna help them out. No, they're not gonna add fat to it because they want to make a low fat product, and therein lies their problem. Therein lies the problem.
Look, why is a waffle batter different from a pancake batter? Hint. It has more fat in it so that you can get it off of the waffle iron, right? Uh when you have fat in these things, right? Typically, if you're a normal human being and you're not paying attention to what's going on, you eat slightly less of it and you're slightly more satisfied because there's more fat in it and you get more sated.
The idea that you I mean, like, you know what I'm saying? I'm not saying like have your baked goods swim swimming in grease like a Popeye's biscuit, which are also delicious, even though that you don't like Popeye's biscuits? I don't like biscuits. You don't like biscuits? Jack, help me out here.
You don't like biscuits? People. People! This is what I'm dealing with that. They don't like biscuits.
Yeah, you know what else, Jack? Like, this is interesting. She'll like later on, she won't say it on the air, but she'll be like, it's because I'm so discriminating. What? What?
Do you say things like I don't like peanuts because I have a more discriminating palate? No, it's not that I can't discriminate a peanut. It's that they're delicious. Biscuits are delicious. We need to talk about this for a minute.
Like, even if it even if I can't answer all the questions, what is it you don't like about a biscuit? I don't like how how dry and flaky they are. Well, why don't you put butter on the biscuit? No, I still I just I really don't like biscuits. I like bread.
I also like bread. I don't like biscuits. I see here's another thing. This is hard tack. It's nothing like hard tack.
Hard tack is a form of biscuit similar to a beaten biscuit, which is nowhere near like the standard biscuit that we eat. First of all, there are fluffy biscuits and there are flaky biscuits. And uh a huge range in between depending on uh on the hydration ratio and how how they're mixed and how they're formed. Okay. So let's just start there.
And uh and then like this is the kind of a classic thing that I don't understand. And and so, like, you know, if anyone ever, you know, uh tries to analyze uh like the relate the working relationship here, here's what I don't get. I don't like biscuits because I like bread. What she leaves off is like uh uh an implicit instead. Like I like bread instead of biscuits.
I can have in a single meal, I would consume several slices of bread, and then were I handed a biscuit, I would also consume several biscuits. Jack, back me up on this. I uh he doesn't want to get in. He doesn't want to get into it. Anyway, don't like biscuits.
Don't like biscuits. I love biscuits. Yeah, biscuits are good. I like a flaky biscuit. Especially the biscuits at Roberta's.
Uh, they are good. Seriously, that's not even promotion. They're just good biscuits. I can't remember. Do they do uh a flaky or a little bit?
We'll have to give you guys we'll get you two biscuits. Yeah, please. That'd be great. And we'll talk about them next time. Anyway, uh my saying is just add a little bit of fat to your baked goods and cook it a little bit less.
Whether it's uh a waffle or or some sort of you know, you're not gonna cook biscuit in an iron, obviously. Like maybe it's cornbread or something, and they're trying to re reduce the amount of fat in a cornbread. Absurd. Absurd. Absurd.
Okay. Uh not really. Look, I'm sure there's many people who think it's a good idea to reduce the fat in their baked goods. I just happen to think they're wrong. They are wrong.
Yeah. Just eat less. Just eat less. Right. Just eat less and be more satisfied with a better product.
Right? Right. Although apparently this is marketing that hasn't worked. People just eat, then they're like, oh, it's okay to eat high fat, so they just eat more of it. Stupid.
By the way, uh there we spoke to a person uh this last week named Pat Brown. And uh Pat Brown is a doctor and it is uh has a a company out in um in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he's interested in making uh basically not meat analogs, but things that someone would choose over meat. In other words, that they they they they are a viable main source of protein that are built not just as a protein that you know has crap sprayed on it that kind of resembles meat, but actually engineered from the ground up to be delicious, such that someone who is a meat eater would choose it based on its taste and its r inherent uh low cost over uh meat. What do you think? Okay.
Anyway, gonna next time I'm out in the San Francisco Bay area, I'm gonna I'm gonna visit him. But he's the only person I've spoken to who wants to do plant-based, and he has a kind of an interesting philosophy. He wants to put all uh meat and dairy farmers literally he'll say this, he wants to put them out of business. He's like, he's like, you know, to make an omelet, you gotta crack a few eggs. The world's gonna be around for a long time, and these guys are hurting the planet, so even if it hurts them right now, you know, you know, you can't you can't help out someone now at the expense of killing your grandkids, which is basically vegetarian?
Yes, he's a vegetarian. But he doesn't necessarily want he doesn't want to make he doesn't want to beat you over the head and have you become a vegetarian because he's a vegetarian. He wants you to buy this uh this plant-based food because it's so freaking delicious and so cheap that it's what you want to do. See what I'm saying? Yeah.
So it's an interesting reversal, and he seems like an interesting guy. I can't wait to go out there and meet him. Okay. Uh have a question in from Priscilla Andrews regarding transglutaminase noodles. And I'm gonna have to apologize in advance, Priscilla.
I don't have the answer for you right now. But the question is, what is the starting ratio in using meat glue and gelatin to glue fruits and vegetables together? Any help is appreciated. Okay, so what we're talking about here is um using transglutaminase, meat glue, which is an enzyme that uh bonds proteins together to make gelatin into something that won't melt when it's reheated. So this is a technique that uh was developed by my brother-in-law, Wiley Dufresne of WD-50 restaurant, where what you do is you take gelatin, not right now, normally gelatin, when you heat it, uh, it melts, and when uh it when it cools down again, it turns back into a gel.
If you take transglutaminase and mix it in with the gelatin, the gelatin cross-links, and now it no longer melts again. So it sets and never again will it melt. And so Wiley uses this technique to um basically uh make noodles out of anything. So quinoa, peas, uh peanut butter, things that you can't normally glue together, uh, or can't normally make a sheet or a noodle out of, he can make one out of that can be fried, uh, tossed like a pasta, uh, anything. So basically the trick with it is, and I would start with about one percent trans.
I'm just making this up because I don't have the recipe in front of me, and Hervé Malivere, who runs the who runs the tech stuff when I'm not at the s at the French culinary, he has the recipe because Wiley came and demoed it once, and I just keep on forgetting to write it down. But I would best it bet it's somewhere about one percent transglutaminase, not activa RM, which is meat glue plus uh casein, milk protein, but activa Ti, which is just the meat glue. And the reason is is because you want uh gelatin to link to other gelatin. If gelatin links to a casein molecule, that doesn't increase the gel strength. Okay.
And also, if you're gluing together a veg or something that has a lot of protein in it, right, like peanut butter or something, you don't want the gelatin bonding to the protein from your product either. So uh what you what you want to do, and uh John McGee, Harold's son, who's one of the TAs in the lecture series up at Harvard, the food lecture series, which I'm gonna be doing with Harold uh on September what? 6th and 8th. 6 and 8th, and there's a public lecture for those as well, right? Yeah, I think there's a public lecture in the evening uh after the students go there.
Uh so his son uh did like a couple days style with Wiley to figure out this problem of what's the best way to do it. Uh and of course I forgot. But basically, what you do is is you make a paste, you dehydrate it to get a lot of the water out. You don't want it to be too watery. Then you make a gel slurry and use however much gelatin you would normally use to set what you're doing.
I think that's a good starting point, or maybe a little more. Uh while it's warm but not hot, the gel, uh, the gelatin. Mix in transglutaminase, uh activa Ti, right? Let it sit for several minutes, start crosslinking, you know, while it's warm, and then uh whisk that together uh with your uh product, sheet it out, and let it sit overnight in the fridge, at which point it should be set. But I wish I had a better information for the starting ratios.
Alright, so we're gonna take one more commercial break and come back and answer some questions. Call in your questions to 718 4972128. That's 718-497-2128. Cooking issues! That's a pretty good Dave impression.
Thank you. I thought our little wild time had just become. I guess you kinda scared yourself. You turn wrong. But if you have a change of heart.
Ricky don't lose that number. You don't wanna call nobody else. Send it off in a letter to your cell. Ricky don't lose that number. It's the only one you want.
Uh Jack and Nastasha making fun of me for not being able to remember the dang number of the radio station and furthermore making fun of me for the earlier one, the Iron to ride my bicycle for my constant bike problems here in the city. Thanks, guys. Thanks. I appreciate the support. Yeah.
Alright. Caller, you're on the air. Hi Dave. Uh I have a question about gum Arabic and simple syrups. I'm in the New York area and I'm looking to pick some up.
And also I would like to just know how to add it to simple syrup. Like a just, you know, one cup water, one cup sugar, how much to put in. Okay. So um it's interesting. We're gonna pick it up in if you want if you're in the New York City, if you're New York City, I believe uh Calustian's uh on Lexington in the 20s has it.
Um if they don't have it, there's a place called Dual Specialty Shop down in uh where is it? First Avenue, Avenue A? Mm-hmm down near Death Co. The bar. Uh that's how I remember where it is.
Okay, it's close to Death and Co. Uh and it's downstairs. They might have it. If not, there's plenty of mail order supplies uh for gum arabic, but one of those two places would be the first places that I would go in the city to get them. Get it.
Now gum arabic is very interesting because uh as a hydrocolloid, and you know hydrocolloids for those of you that don't know what the heck I'm talking about are kind of these new group of thickeners. Uh the what's interesting about it is most hydrocolloids are uh long uh linear chain molecules with a small number of backbones on it, right? Uh small number of little side units rather. Um the gum arabic is the only normal one other than uh amylopectin, which is the big bald starch molecule, uh uh that is ball-shaped, right? And so what that means for gum arabic is that you can have very high percentage gum arabic solutions that aren't too thick.
Right? So you can put a fairly high uh uh uh percentage of gum arabic into your solutions and still have them be portable fluid, right? The other cool thing about gum arabic is gum arabic has in it a protein that is is basically it comes with the gum and and originally it was considered an impurity but when you remove the gum the protein from the gum arabic the gum arabic doesn't work anymore uh to do what you want it to do. Because gum arabic isn't just a thickener although it is a bodying agent, right? And when you add a lot of it it can add a lot of body and viscosity to your syrup.
It's also uh an emulsifier so you can get flavors into things using it and and it's pretty cool because unlike other emulsifiers when it's diluted it doesn't break and that's why it used to be made for it used to be used uh to as an emulsifier for soda syrups. Um now they have other things that are, you know, not necessarily uh dependent upon the sedan to f for their sourcing. Uh but the and are cheaper. But it would that was one of its original uses. It's so it could probably also uh stabilize a head in a shake and drink or stabilize bubbles uh in in a shake and drink.
So it's very interesting. I don't happen to have any of the ratios in my head, but what I would do is put the gum arabic into uh the water first. Um it should dissolve I believe at room temperature, but you can heat it to speed it. It's not going to hurt it at all, right? I would try to powder the gum arabic as much as you can beforehand uh to speed the dissolution of it.
And uh then after that uh you know you could heat it, add the sugar to it and make the I would definitely do it that way not the other way around. I would add the gum arabic first and then add the uh sugar afterwards. Um and you can add you can add a fairly large amount but I would look into like any one of you know all the old references have it. I think maybe the imbibe uh the old you know the Dave Wendrich the first you know the imbibe book I think maybe has a couple recipes for it. But that that one's easy to Google I just don't have it in my head.
Alright thanks Dave. No problem. Good luck with it. Alright thank you. Alright.
So let's see what we're gonna go into now. D uh okay we have a question from E Papineau just wrote in wants to know about smoking tomatoes. Well I've never smoked a tomato. Yeah. Have you ever had a smoked tomato?
I've had smoked tomato things. Yeah no I've never smoked a tomato. But in general when you're smoking something uh the rule is is that uh I mean I don't know you're gonna pick up color or not, but you're gonna want to get uh it's somewhat dry and tacky, not overly wet. You're obviously uh gonna want to peel the tomatoes uh uh or at very least kind of split them, but I would peel them and semi-desiccate them, like partially dry them first. Uh then after they're partially dry, then I would smoke them and then finish the drying out.
I mean, I wouldn't you know a tomato, when you're smoking something, uh smoking has certain kind of preservative effects and bacteriostatic effects and things like that. But really with a tomato, uh it's just it's got a huge water content. And so to preserve it, you're really gonna want to just reduce that water content. And so that's gonna be the main preservation technique. If you want the smoked flavor to pick up, you don't want it too heavy or to become acrid.
I would just make sure that they're mostly, you know, maybe uh two-thirds to three quarters dry, then smoke them until they pick up the flavor that you want, and then continue your dehydration uh at a low temperature uh so you don't alter the flavor too much from that point out. That seems like good advice, right? Yes. The rare piece of good advice. Okay.
Like that name. Botkin? Botkin, like that. Uh Derek Bodkin uh writes in uh about uh rice flour. You know, I have botkins in my family.
Really? Yes. Anyway. Uh Derek Bodkin writes in on uh rice flour. Hi everyone, another quick question.
I've got a bunch of rice flour. What sort of cool things can I do with it? Since it lacks gluten, right? I'd imagine baking with it would be tricky. How about a roux?
All right, well, interesting you should say. There's no such thing as just rice flour, right? I mean, there is, it's labeled that way. But basically, rice flour breaks down into two separate kinds of things. There's glutinous rice flour, aka sweet rice flour, aka waxy rice flour, aka sticky rice flour, right?
And that's rice flour that's made from what they call glutinous rice. And what glutinous rice is, it has no gluten, but it's very high, very low in amylose, the uh long-chain um starch molecules I told you before, and extremely high, like 100% amylopectin. And uh what those are what that kind of flour is great for is making mochi. And mochi, uh, you know, you don't have to make it into flour. I've made I can make mochi from just from sticky rice, which is kind of the cool way to do it, right?
And you you know the really cool way to do it is to get sumo wrestler dudes in loincloths beating it with mallets after you cook it. That's the real cool way to make mochi. But most of us are just gonna buy uh glutinous rice flour or mochi flour, they sell. If you really want the high grade stuff, buy stuff called mochi flour. And you mix it, and the cool thing is is it's got this dense flavor, but you can grill it or fry it, and it puffs up like a lunatic.
Amylipein is fantastic at puffing. Whether or not it's a uh, you know, semi-dried and then it puffs like a puff snack, or whether or not it's just like in a donut form. If you ever had a mochi donut, like Japanese mochi's donut, great. Anyway, so that's one form of uh rice flour. Uh and then the other one is you know, rice flour that has a certain amount of um uh amylose in it.
Now, uh, and that's what you use for most other kind of cooking applications. So, in terms of uh thickening for making a roux, right? So roux we typically think of uh with wheat flour. Now, uh wheat flour is kind of the weakest of the flours in terms of thickening. Rice is rice flour is gonna thicken a little bit more than wheat flour, corn a little bit more than rice, arrowroot a little bit more than corn, and potato the most uh starch.
The problem with something like potato starch, and the reason we don't use it more often is even though it makes things super thick, as you cook it, it breaks down very quickly, right? Cornstarch also has problems because it gets thick really real fast and it's gonna stay thick, but when it cools down, it sets up a lot harder than when it was hot. Whereas wheat starch is a little less finicky that way than corn. But rice is kind of in between the corn and the wheat and will work fine for a roux, especially if you want to do something uh that's gluten-free, if that's interested, uh interesting to you. Um it should work uh just fine.
Uh it's also used a lot in uh deep frying as either uh a portion of your battery or as uh uh the dusting beforehand. The reason it's used is because it doesn't have any gluten. It makes things very crispy without making them hard, right? Because it doesn't have the kind of the protein that forms together you get from a wheat flour. So adding a certain amount of white rice, you know, neutral white rice flour to a batter recipe is going to increase the crispy crunchiness, but not the hardness of the batter.
So Heston Blumenthal uses it in his um in his uh fish and chips recipe. Uh a lot of Thai recipes have it, and you can make actually uh almost like puffed uh crispy snacks just by making a rice batter and fr and frying it, and it's good as a garnish. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily eat it um on on its own. In bread baking, you can add a certain amount to bread to round out the wheat flour and reduce the amount of wheat in there slightly, although I don't really see the point in that. Uh, but it is used as a dusting for almost like an anti-stick along with flour, uh, in the same way that cornmeal is used for.
So it can be used that way. Uh another interesting thing you might want to look at is something that I used to make like a long time ago. When I was rating my mom's cookbooks, uh, one of the first cookbooks I rated, I started making bread uh in college in a uh they used uh General Electric or Westinghouse, I forget, used to sell turkey ovens, and they're basically like large crock pots that you cook turkeys in for Thanksgiving. And in the 50s and 60s, these were used because that you wanted to be able to use your oven for something else and cook your turkey uh on your countertop. And it kind of fell out of popularity, probably because they probably don't make a good turkey.
I don't know, I never cooked a turkey one. But I picked one up for about two bucks uh at a thrift shop when I was in college and used it to bake bread in my dorm room. And one of the first books I stole from my mom was her 1977 copy of the Sunset Bed Break uh bread baking uh book, and uh which at the time I thought was a pretty good book. And uh they had something in it called Dutch Crunch, which is a bread coating, uh bread treat trust treatment that I've never seen really around, but I'm sure people still make it, but it's really cool, and it's a rice flour trick. So here's what you do.
You take, and I'm sorry it's in tablespoons, but I just wrote it down this morning from the book. You one and a half tablespoon sugar. I still kept the book. I stole it, you know, 20 change years ago, more than 20 years ago, and I still have it. Anyway, uh 1.5 tablespoon sugar, four pac four packs of yeast, right?
Which is a lot. Pay attention to that, four packs, half teaspoon salt, three-quarters cup rice flour, two teaspoons of oil, and uh basically a half to two-thirds cup warm water. You let it stir it, let it rise for 30 minutes, and you paint it on your bread before you bake it, and it gets this like intensely thick, crunchy, like funny looking but delicious crust crust uh called Dutch Crunch. So try that out, Derek, and tell me how it works. Alright, so have an interesting, and this is one of the reasons I was late because this is what I was uh researching, and time just ran away from me.
Hastings from the Underground Bar, which is a portion of the Underground Food Collective, uh writes in about cherry pits. We're processing what's essentially a pallet's worth of cherries at our prep kitchen right now, and I'm sitting on an insane quantity of cherry pits. We've made delicious demonstration batches of cherry pit amaretto with brandy and a relatively high concentration of cherry pits. But I'm generally aware of the risks associated with the pits of stone fruit and haven't been able to find a concrete source uh that conclusively outlines how they can be manipulated or processed to eliminate that risk pot prior to infusion. Varying sources say roasting or blanching the pits takes care of the problem.
I assume if a method works for one variety of stone pits, it would be applicable to the others as well. Could I weigh in on this? Earlier this week, Hastings emailed Darcy O'Neill to ask the same question because Darcy had a recipe for infused maraschino liqueur that involved the pits of the beraschino cherry. They're not really whatever the cherries are called. Anyway, the uh cherry, cherry pits.
It's an aside uh uh in a larger post on preserving cocktail cherries. The problem is the amaretto that uh Hastings is making and some of the other applications they've been toying with involve pit concentrations that are twenty to one hundred times greater than the recipe Darcy referenced. Okay, Darcy O'Neill, for those of you not uh do don't know cocktail blogs, uh, is one of the great uh like scientific technical uh drink and cocktail writers, wrote a book called uh Fix the Pumps, which is extremely influential over the last year and a half uh or two years, I forget how long ago it came out, basically reviving uh old soda traditions, and is in fact is selling products uh that have been kind of extinct for a while, including lactart, which is uh, you know, uh uh lactic acid-based uh acidifier for use in sodas, and uh uh acid phosphates, which is uh phosphoric acid-based uh soda acidifiers. So he's selling these things, and that book uh extremely, extremely influential in the comeback of interesting sodas. I mean, people have been working on interesting sodas for a while, but kind of without a lot of basis.
And he's providing a lot of basis and contextualizing of the old recipes for uh kind of modern people. So uh underred by JQ public, but very influential among the kind of the cocktail and drink thinking crowd. Fix the pumps. Anyway, so uh Darcy wrote back to um, and by the way, in case you don't know what's going on, stone fruits contain um two different things, many different things, but two things that people are worried about amygdalin, uh, which basically breaks down into cyanide, which is why, and that's why you know cyanide smells like uh burnt almonds, you don't want too much. Anyway, amygdalene and a lesser quantity of something called prunicine, which is, you know, also breaks down into cyanide.
So uh Darcy wrote back to Hastings. The problem with amygdalene and the stone and pits uh is that the form in there, which is what's called a glycoside, which is a sugar bound to the uh cyanide, right? Uh is only released when it encounters specific digestive enzymes which are found in our digestive systems. Uh and Darcy's had some conversations with sugar syrup companies that make uh syrups from fruit stones and say that there aren't any cyan there isn't any cyanide in their product. And the problem with that method, Darcy says is Darcy says is that they're actually looking for cyanide and not for the amygdalene, which is what's going to get you when you when you do it.
Uh but he says that small amounts of pits aren't gonna hurt you, but Hastings is pointing out what the hell, I'm using 20 to 100 times what you use. Am I gonna die or not? Well, it's a very interesting question, Hastings. I don't know if you're going to die. Here's what happens.
When you eat a whole bunch of products with amygdalin in it, like uh apricot kernels or the classic one, or uh uh pits from cherries, etc. Uh the amygdalene in it breaks down and forms cyanide, uh, you know, uh cyanide, uh HCN, you know, hydrocyanic acid or whatever, and benzaldehyde. Benzaldehyde is what gives you the taste that you want, right? And it's done via an enzymatic reaction. Now, there is uh enzyme in the pit.
So, what you want to do, the way they get rid of this is you grind, you don't roast it. Roasting, I've you know, peace some people say roasting gets rid of uh gets rid of it. Roasting's gonna get rid of any free cyanide in the pit, but isn't gonna degrade the amygdalene at all. So as soon as you eat it, you're still gonna have it. What I would do, and what everyone does uh commercially is they break it, they grind up the seeds roughly, then they soak them in water for a period of one to three days.
What's happening there is cyanide, uh free the free cyanide things are very soluble in water, whereas the uh the benzaldehyde, which is the aroma and the flavor you want, is not. Furthermore, uh enzyme, it's it's soluble, but not that much. Um enzymes are in the pit, and when you break it up, those enzymes are gonna go to work on the amygdalene and break it down into the uh the cyan free cyanide stuff and the stuff with the flavor, the benzaldehyde. So what you then do is you soak it for a couple of days, then you drain it and you cook it. And when you cook it, any free cyanide is extremely volatile and will boil off because the cyanide, the stuff that's gonna kill you, boils off at like 78 Fahrenheit.
You know, obviously leave the lid off the pan and don't breathe in the vapors. Uh and then what's left over should be fairly uh amygdalin free and fairly cyanide free. That said, I can't give you any numbers that are gonna be 100% uh safe. Um it's kind of a tough thing. I can't I can't really give you a uh a number and say that you won't die, but that is the way things are, things are reduced.
You can further reduce the amount of uh amygdala stuff through uh fermentation, but you have to get a specific strain of yeast, the one that does tempeh works or specific bacteria, specific funguses, they work like t tempeh fermentation works and certain other things, but don't count on it. Um, so what do you what do you think, man? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Interesting.
I saw another uh article while I was researching this called Why Are So Many Plants cyanogenic? Interesting question, right? Uh and I didn't know so many were. But it turns out that a disproportionate number of our food plants uh have these glycosides, these sugar bound with uh cyanide uh and other stuff uh in them. And the theory of this paper, why are so many plants cyanogenic is that um these plants don't get eaten by uh animals as much, and but humans are good at figuring out how to not get poisoned by them, and so we tend to eat them, and that's why a disproportionate number of these products are eaten by people.
And um some large number uh percentage uh have certain stuff in them. So uh among them, wheat and maize have a small amount, I guess, in the sprouts to stop the sprouts from getting eaten. But sorghum, the sprouts, the seeds are fine, but the sprouts have huge amounts of it in it, and so sorghum sprouts are poisonous unless you cook the hell out of them. And I always knew sprouts were poisonous, right? It's just further confirmation that sprouts, she is a poison, right?
Anyway, so I hope this has been somewhat useful. And here's what we're gonna round out with today. John Larry writes in and says, uh, my name is John Larry. I would like to know if you have an old pressure cooker. My god, do I have old pressure cookers, right, Nastasha?
Yeah, you do. Yeah, we do. Uh available that I'm looking for less expensive ones than the ones that I have. Could you let me know the prices for old pressure cookers? And I'd be happy to pray by credit card.
Well, John, pay by credit card. Yeah. See, I thought that was spam. It's not spam. No one writes a letter asking for a used pressure cooker that's spam.
It was a dick it was the words you used that made me think. Pressure cooker or credit card. Which was anyways. Uh John. Uh fellow person with two last names like myself.
Uh two first names rather. Why? Because your mom couldn't afford. My mom couldn't afford a last name, so I've got two first ones. Boom.
Anyway, so uh while we are not in the business of selling used pressure cookers. I do agree that pressure cookers cost quite a bit of money. Uh you know, uh the pressure cooker that I use every day costs well over 200 bucks. You can get a decent pressure cooker or figure workarounds for pressure cookers. I'm not gonna tell you to modify a pressure cooker like I did on the blog last week.
Um, but uh, you know, you can get one for uh under a hundred dollars. I wouldn't recommend buying a used pressure cooker because the seals on it are probably about to go anyway, and you're gonna have to buy a new seal. Could be clogged up. It's just a world of headache. Go out there and research one of the cheaper uh pressure cookers.
I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna push any any brands online. But uh yeah. Imagine can you imagine if we were like if we ever had a rummage sale, it would be crazy, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Anyways, we have one to raise some money. A rummage sale? The rummage sale. You don't want to rummage through my stuff. Anyways, uh today, tomorrow I'm flying out to Columbia.
We're gonna be doing a uh demon a demo in uh in Columbia, the country, uh, and in Bogota, who who's I can't pronounce properly, but I'm gonna be doing a variation on milk soup, on on Colombian milk soup. Uh, which should be interesting. Fly back for one day just to do this radio show. That's a lie. But I'm here though, right?
Yeah, you are here. Yeah, I'm here. I'll do that, and then I fly out, and then the next Tuesday, I'll be in Harvard. So I'm gonna try two weeks from now to do it f live from Harvard with McGee. It's not during the class time, is it?
The show? I don't think so. I think I'm gonna be away too. So I might be able to do it. Anyway, so I will have been, uh, next time I speak to you people, I will have been to South America for the very first time.
Cooking issues. Oh, you dare. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. Supposed to meet my baby.
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