Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.com. Hello, hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Marland, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday from 12 to 1245, broadcasting live from the backyard of Roberta's Pizzeria inside of a cut-up old container can. Joined uh as usual in the studio today with Nastasha, the Hammer Lopez.
How you doing? Fine. Check this out, people. Call in all of your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
The first episode of Cooking Issues where I've memorized the telephone number. How do you like that? That's good. Nice. Uh I was thinking about it on my uh crazy bike right over here.
I managed, even though I'm a little late, you know, I managed to bike here from my house in 15 minutes flat. Which is why when I show up, sometimes you hear me at the beginning of the show and I'm coughing up a lung. It's because I'm an out-of-shape 40-year-old guy biking from Manhattan to Brooklyn in 15 minutes, right? No comment from the Nastasha. Today's show, episode 58, by the way, is brought to you again by the Modernist Pantry.
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They actually they source the pectanex like on one week's notice for us. It's true. Right? Anyway, uh, where was I? Um, because I'm reading this, folks.
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How's that? Good. Good. Okay. So uh remember though, call in your questions because we would appreciate calling questions.
We enjoy them. Two seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight. That's 718497-2128. All right. Now, uh, anything interesting happened this week, Nastasha?
Did we do anything? I felt like we did a lot. Into the forum. Oh, yeah. This weekend we went to uh Cesare Casella, one of our uh good friends' favorite uh favorite Italian and any any kind of chef, very good host, uh invited us up to a farm that he has uh uh what do we call it, like a partnership with?
So the farm uh specializes, it's part of this uh the Center for Discovery and the Discovery School, which is uh this great place in Sullivan County that um it's basically a residence school slash uh place, home really, for uh people who are either severely autistic or multiply disabled and and basically need a constant amount of support. And one of the initiatives they have uh from a therapeutic standpoint is a farm where they Cesare grows his Keonina cattle there, which are which are fantastic, but they also have sheep, goats, chickens, uh, pigs, uh they're starting a dairy, and they grow a lot of their own vegetables. And so the idea being that uh, and and Cesare got involved as a place for his cows, but also he's uh helping them uh ensure that the food that everyone there eats is of very, very high quality. The idea being that um the better the quality of food you eat, the better your life is. We certainly agree with that, right, Nastasha?
Yeah. So uh every year he has a fundraiser with a bunch of chefs. Mark Ladner from Del Posto, uh, you know, Kevin Garcia, who else was there? Our own Marco from Robert's was there. Marco, Jesus Christ, Carlo.
I call him that because someone there called him Marco, and it sounded oh Jesus Christ, Carlo. Uh Nastasha's giving me the squinky eye. All right, all right, come on. Anyway, uh who else? Who else was there?
Uh John Frazier. Oh, yeah, John Frazier was there. Uh I feel like I'm missing a whole slew of people. I am. Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Anyway, it was a great event. Uh raised uh a lot of money for uh a good cause. I made a cocktail. It was a caraway mint julep, which I think we've mentioned on this uh on the air before the idea that Spearmint and Caraway uh they was they're brothers. The chemical that makes them that makes them taste unique.
The two chemicals are mere images of each other. They're Isomers. Anyway, uh carvone is the chemical. So we call the drink uh Tony Carvone. And we do it in a bunch of different varieties.
This was a julep carvone. We've done uh other kinds of carvones. Uh uh, we we I like them. You like them? Yeah.
A lot of people are like caraway, me. You know, listen. If I if you come to an event that I'm uh working, or anyone's working, if someone's making a cocktail, like, first of all, nine times out of ten, the people who are running the event don't give water to the cocktail guy. So don't walk up to the cocktail guy and ask the cocktail guy for water because odds are they don't have it, right, Nastasha? Yes.
They don't have it, they just don't have it. Uh go to the the wine station usually has it, right? Or there's usually a water station or something, but usually the cocktail guy, they barely gave that guy ice. They didn't even give him bar towels. He's wiping his hands off on his pants, right?
Pretty much. Yeah. Anyway. Uh another thing, don't just ask for a pour of the straight liquor unless you order the cocktail too. If you say, hey, uh, can I have a pour of the straight liquor?
They really they don't like you anymore. They don't, right? That's true. Yeah. So just get the cocktail.
Look, it's a sunk cost, right? It's not like they're gonna charge you extra for the cocktail at the event. Just get the dang cocktail, and if you don't like it, put it down somewhere, and then say, This is what you say. I enjoyed the cocktail. Can I just have a shot of the straight liquor?
And then they won't dislike you, right? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so and it's like anything. When you choose a cocktail like caraway that is a polarizing thing, which I should never do. I should only choose kind of slam dunk ingredients.
The people who like caraway came back for like a bajillion of them, right? We had a bunch of many multiple takers on that. Uh Steepy Semi seemed to enjoy the cocktail, actually. He was at the event. Um but then you know, a bunch of people just won't even try it.
It's a real heartache when you do polarizing ingredients. Anyway, uh a good time was had by all, especially my kids, who got to milk a cow. Um Nastashi, did you go milk the cow? No. I was making the cocktail.
You're not making the cocktail, you were picking mint. Making the cocktail. You are picking mint. See, I demand accuracy from everyone I work with, right? True?
True? Accuracy? Anyway. Uh this is interesting, and this has never before happened. We have uh the identical question in from two different uh listeners.
One, Johnny Hunter, and uh the other, and I have to scroll down because they're not in the same one. Uh Sam Canson um banava. Ben not ba. How you feel that bananav. Bananov.
Banana. Okay. Uh I don't know whether they know each other, um, but uh I'll read them both. The first uh the second one from uh Sam is how would one go about making a bagel cocktail? Obviously, the major challenge is transferring the base wheat bagel flavor into alcohol form, after which one would season with sesame poppy onion salt or whatever their personal bagel bagel preferences might be.
Um and then uh on a very similar note from Johnny, I am trying to make a bagel flavored cocktail, and I was wondering if you have some tips on to uh how to achieve something of a bagel flavor in the cocktail. I was thinking of using a sesame bagel, toasting slices of it and infusing it into a malt-based liquor, and then adding in other flavors. Any ideas you have would be great. That's so freaking random. You think those guys know each other?
No. Really? Yeah. Is this just like the like the week of the bagel cocktail or the like the it's like the bagel cocktail revolution? Well, uh, I will say that I have uh never made a bagel cocktail before.
Uh we did do a uh burrito cocktail once, remember that? Yeah. It was disgusting. Yeah, it grew gross, incredibly bad. We we took a uh I took a Chipotle brand, uh this is as a joke, by the way.
I wasn't intending to serve this. A Chipotle brand, uh, I believe it was a bean burrito. Um blended it in a high-speed blender with uh beer, chang beer actually, uh, and then uh centrifuged it to get the solids out, and then uh chilled, got rid of the fat, and recarbonated it. And it tasted like a Subway Italian BMT sandwich, I believe is what we decided it tasted like. It was awful.
I didn't have it. You were you were you're busy off sulking somewhere? Sulking. Yeah, it was for a pilot we did for uh for uh some a stoner thing. Uh anyway, I think I might have mentioned in the year before.
But bagels I haven't done. However, there is a lot of experience uh in the bartending and in the food world with bread and cereal infused liquids. So uh Sam Mason and uh you know was famous for his cornbread ice cream where he would soak cornbread and milk, I think, and then uh and then use the milk for ice cream. Um Christina Tozi does uh a lot of cereal-based uh ice creams. She soaks cereal in the milk and then uses the milk to make ice cream, milk and cream.
Um uh the closest in a cocktail world that I remember is uh Evan Freeman uh had a well-known uh pumpernickel uh pumper nickel raisin scotch, where what he would do is he would slice the pumpernickel raisin bread very uh thinly, uh then he would toast it and he would put it into scotch in a basically a mason jar. Uh and then after several days, he would decant it and I assume squeeze out the bread to recover the excess. Otherwise he'd be a wasteful, wasteful bastard. Maybe maybe he was a wasteful bastard, I don't know. But um uh so that is exactly what I would do.
So you could uh as per Sam's thing, just do a plain bagel and then infuse in the other spices. Uh, but I think you'd be uh just as good choosing a bagel that you enjoyed, um, like an everything bagel, let's say, uh, and then uh, you know, slice it. If you want a toasted flavor, I think it's gonna transfer better with a toasted flavor, toast it, although then it'll taste like a toasted bagel, not like a raw bagel. You could do it with a regular raw, you know, not raw, but you know what I mean, untoasted. Uh slice it thinly and let it infuse.
I would squeeze the stuff out, expect some loss because of the absorption of the liquid in into the um into the uh bagel. I would assume you get less loss if you uh dehydr at least dehydrated it before you uh before you infused it. I mean, maybe if you don't want to toast it, if you don't want those brown flavors, I would at least dehydrate it to get some of that water out so that you get a better infusion of the stuff into it, uh quicker quicker transfer of the flavor to the alcohol. But that should definitely work. Now the question is what kind of a in other words, I I wouldn't necessarily as um I think it was Johnny's name, right?
Uh uh do a a malt-based liquor. Although you could, and when we say malt, I assume you mean something like malt like scotch. But I think something like scotch is gonna be a little too strong. I would go for a little lighter flavor uh to go with your bagel, like I think it's you know, it's i it's not gonna want a very heavy, heavy flavor. I mean, I mean look, I would first I mean I know a lot of my listeners probably aren't vodka fans, but I would try it first in a high proof vodka just to see what the kind of flavor transfer characteristics are, and then move on, 'cause it's only gonna be a couple of days it's gonna take.
It's not gonna take you a month to make this stuff, and then switch over to uh, you know, a flavor that you maybe like better with a bagel. Like, I don't think bagel and gin sounds good, do you. No. I mean, if you're gonna do bagel and vodka, then you could go bloody bloody merry-ish on it a little bit. You know what I mean?
Some of the flavors that I like with a bagel, like tomato and things like that, or tomato water and a bagel, uh, vodka might be nice. Uh I'm trying to think of what else. I mean, the problem, you know. I think the problem with uh a scotch is just the oak is just gonna be too intense, and I don't know that's gonna mix, it's gonna blow the bagel out, don't you think, Sus? Uh, you know, and and any regular malt stuff's gonna be like a regular malt malt liquor, let's say like cult 45, isn't gonna have enough of a uh uh an alcohol, I think, to really get a good infusion on it.
So I think you're kind of stuck there using a lighter flavored uh product. Maybe I mean I don't think you'd want to go into something like a grapple. I'm trying to think. What do you think? Any any other ideas of liquors that might taste good with a bagel?
I mean, I think vodka might work. I mean, I hate to recommend it necessarily. But look, just test it in vodka first. Yes? Yes.
Yeah. Uh make sure you seal the mason jar. I don't think you're gonna need to heat it. Uh the reason for a mason jar is just it's got a wider neck on it. And so, you know, you're not gonna have to try and shove it in and then get it out.
Um Wow, that's the first time that's ever happened. Two like very strange questions that have never come up before coming out. I bet you those guys know each other. Please write in and tell me whether you guys know each other, and you're having some sort of bagel cocktail off, and you just didn't want to tell the other one that you were writing in desk, right? I mean, I mean, seriously, seriously.
How's that possible? Okay, so starting with uh actually, you know what? You want to go to our first commercial break and come back? Let's go to our first commercial break. Calling on your questions to 7184972128.
That's 718497-2128. Stay tuned for a live broadcast. Heritage Radio Network.com. One, two, get down. I paid the call to be both.
Look at me. No what the bad mup. Look at me. No what the bad mup. Pand and cough beat above.
Look at me. No what the bad mug. Hello and welcome back to Cooking Issues. Calling all of your questions to 718497-2128. That's 718497-2128.
Going with Johnny Hunter's second question. Is it safe to make dry cured meats with beef if you don't have a heat step to kill E. coli at some point? I was wondering if there was another way to kill E. coli and still make good dry cured meats.
Thanks, Johnny Hunter. Now, uh, this is an excellent question. Um first of all, the question is, are you what kind of dry cured meat are you trying to make? Are you trying to make a uh uh like a sausage, like a dry-cured sausage product, or a whole cut uh dry cured meat like a person or something like that? Now, uh the the problem is there's a number of bacteria that uh can grow in uh dry cured meats, and that the place to go for what the U.S.
government considers to be kind of the uh information on this is the National Center for Home Food Preservation, and they have a guide in literature uh review series, and one is smoking and curing, literature review and critical preservation points. And they talk about all the different uh kind of nasty beasties that can grow in uh your meat, like botulism, uh listeria, uh staphylococcus, and E. coli. They go through all of them, but these are going to be the major ones uh they that you have to deal with. Now, the issue with um E.
coli is uh it's kind of the the the newer varieties of E. coli like O157H7 that are that are very kind of um they can be very virulent and uh difficult to uh you know they they can cause very bad infections if you get them. Um so here's the issue. Dry curing unheated meat products doesn't necessarily kill uh E. coli.
Even if there is uh quite a bit of salt present and you have a significant dehydration, you will kill some of them, but it's not considered an ultimate kill step. The bad news is is that uh it doesn't take that many living bacteria to necessarily cause uh an infection. There was an outbreak of uh E. coli in uh Washington State in 1994 that was linked to a dry fermented salami product that had been infected with E. coli.
And they didn't think in the at the end of the studies that it was caused uh necessarily post cure. In other words, it was probably caused uh by meat that had been highly infected at the beginning of the cure process. And there's another study that was done that of meat that was very highly infected, did show basically, you know, uh a factor of uh I believe it was either 100 or 1,000 reduction in the in the quantity of E. coli present, but still not a total eradication over the course of time of the uh of the um of the of the dehydration and the fermentation. So the the acidity uh and the salt and the dehydration aren't necessarily enough, present enough to obliterate E.
coli. Uh and the same holds true for uh meat jerky that's especially meat jerky made out of ground meat, like ground meat strips that you then dehydrate, even though it's dehydrated quite a bit. Apparently, it's not enough of a kill step to necessarily assure that you have eradicated E. coli. Have you killed a bunch of the E.
coli? Most probably. Now, on so those guys recommend uh a heat, basically, the the the US government on meat they recommend a 145 degree uh for I think like four or ten minutes or something like that um kill step for their beef containing sausage. So a lot of people to get around this have removed beep beef from a lot of their mixes like pepperoni and what, so it doesn't have to have that because strangely it unless it's got beef in it, they don't expect you to have E. coli in it.
So they they don't uh they don't ask for or require that. That said, 145 degrees for uh four minutes is a propo or whatever it is, eight minutes is preposterously high temperature to kill E. coli. Uh I mean uh ridiculously high. Uh you should be able to kill it at much, much lower temperatures.
But I think the reason they do it is I don't know whether they do that step after they dehydrate it or before. If they do it after, then uh it's a lot harder necessarily. There's not as much water, so it's probably not as easy to get the killing temperatures to the uh to the bacteria. Um so that's the unfortunate uh the unfortunate of it. But if you're doing a whole muscle cut like a Prasala, it's assumed that unless you've needled or jacarded the meat, that the inside is relatively sterile.
And so basically you just need to make sure that the stuff on the outside is killed. And the extreme high salt that's on the outside of a whole muscle cut like a brisala before as it's curing, I think is probably going to wipe out anything that's present. In fact, I've never, I wasn't able to find any cases from a dry cured like a brisala of a poisoning. There have been ham issues where you've had that, but I think they're mostly off of brine ready-to-cook hams, that they've had outbreaks of things like staph, um uh E. coli, uh, thing, things of that nature.
So those are things um that I would uh, you know, worry worry about. Um you could also go to the FSIS, a food safety inspection services processing procedures for dried meat on the web, and it has a lot of uh a lot of information on it. Um I'm gonna get back because my study of that and of adding nitrates, nitrates and nitrites obviously are added to control bacteria like botulism and to give kind of a cured color uh to meats and a cured flavor. But while I was researching this for this question, I came up with an interesting kind of slaughter and anesthesia idea. But before I get into that, I'm gonna read an update we had from um Andy in Chicago who asked us about bluefish.
Remember, he was going out and blue fishing. He actually texted us in uh during last week's show, but I didn't have time to to get to it because I didn't see it because we were on the show. So he says, not sure if you'll get this in time for uh today's show. We didn't, that's why we're doing it this week. But wanted to let you know how the bluefish testing went.
Now, for those of you that know uh that that listened a couple of weeks ago, whatever, uh Andy was gonna go out uh fishing for blues among other things, and I said, please do uh an e-cogime test on bluefish, ekigime being and sp specifically spinal cord destruction, where you stick a needle down the spinal cord of the fish, uh, kill the spinal cord, and therefore stop the messages, uh, you know, the the electrical signals from going to the spinal cords to the muscles. This preserves the ATP in the muscles, which means it goes into rigor uh a little bit later and a little bit softer than it would otherwise, which preserves firmness in flesh. And since bluefish gets nasty and mushy, um I would assume that it would be a prime can and it's a strong swimmer, and usually it's the very strong swimmers that uh uh benefit a lot from uh spinal cord destruction. I thought it'd be great, but I've never been able to run a test, and so Andy ran one for us. So I'm just gonna read what he wrote.
We caught three bluefish on our first night of fishing, uh, one of which you can see my friend holding in the attached pick. You can't see the attached pick, but I can. Uh, we did not destroy the brain, but cut through the spinal column and tail uh on all three spinal cord destruction, uh and on all of them. Okay, sorry. He cut through the spinal cord and the tail on all three fish.
They spinal cord uh destroyed two of them and left all of them in an ice bath in the cooler to bleed out. Um unfortunately he did not get to listen to the show until after everything happened, so he didn't remove the gills and guts immediately. We did fillet them, however, within about two to four hours of catching them. It's an interesting question of whether you should fillet a fish before or after it goes through rigor. The uh this is not what he's writing, I'm just telling you this as an aside.
Uh if you fillet a fish before it goes into rigor, uh it tends to be more contracted and firmer because it never relaxes as much as if it's left on the muscles uh when it's when it's going into rigor. The idea being that the bones and the structure of the fish uh b hold the meat in place and don't allow it to uh contract as much, so they end up being kind of larger fillets. That said, it might make a firmer fillet with less gaping in the flesh after it comes out of rigor if it's uh if it's filleted before uh it goes into rigor. It's interesting interesting question, and I don't know whether it's gone under rigor. Uh Nills and I years ago ran a couple of tests, but nothing um conclusive, so I never posted on it, but it's very interesting, and there is some research on it because people want to fillet fish as soon as they can after they uh catch them for economic reasons.
Anyway, uh we did fillet them within about two hours of catching them. The non-spinal cord destruction fish we ate the first night. Very light cornmeal breading, pan fried and a bit of canola oil. Tasted a bit mushy, but good overall. One of the spinal cord destruction fish we ate the second night after 24 hours of resting, also pan fried and light cornmeal breading.
Definitely firmer, flakier, and tastier. The last one we ate the third night, cooked in a little butter, salt, and pepper without any coating. All three of us noticed a market improvement over the previous night's fish, meaty, firm, flaky, and delicious. After 15 plus years of eating bluefish, that was probably the tastiest piece of bluefish I've ever eaten. Huh?
Huh? Uh we need to run some more control tests. I'd like very much to run this test again, but it'll probably be another 10 months or more before I'm back on the Gulf Coast. Nevertheless, I think this test can be considered a qualified success, qualified only to the extent that it was only three fish and they were not eaten side by side. The darker flesh near the skin was present, uh was still present on all three fish.
You know, that's like the bloodline near the thing, the kiai. Uh, I don't mind qi eye. I don't mind eating that part, but it looks a little funky. It is also pretty easy to cut out of the fillet before cooking. Do you have any thoughts on how to treat that?
Uh, thanks much and look forward to hearing your thoughts, Andy from Chicago. Well, I mean, look, the fact that you like the bluefish the third day, I think is freaking awesome. Especially if you're an experienced blue f uh uh bluefish eater, you know kind of uh the problems and tribulations of bluefish after it sits around. I think uh, you know, obviously I don't there's nothing you can do about the bloodline, by the way, except for cut it out. I mean, that's it.
There's nothing you can do with it. I mean, uh, the Japanese uh with big tuna, they'll cut out the bloodline and they'll grill it separately over very high heat. I don't particularly like that preparation because it still has that kind of bloody metallic taste. They they like it, you know, they really like a soy and stuff and they grill it and everything, and they like it, but you know, whatever. It's also kind of small.
I like the taste when it's mixed in with the other parts of the fish. Now, the fact that you like that, I think this is is a really a huge opportunity for further study for any uh fisher people who listen to this. I unfortunately don't have an opportunity to fish, and my stepfather refuses to do equijemia or spinal cord destruction on the fish he catches on Cape Cod, and he primarily gets uh striper anyway. I don't know when the last time he got a blue was. But uh bluefish, I think is fantastic fish.
It's a fish that um, you know, you know, I've always liked, but it's recently becoming more popular. It's our fish, it's there in abundance. If we can make this fish taste significantly better based on its post-slaughter treatment by doing spinal cord destruction, this is uh a huge opportunity for us to improve the quality of a fish that I already think is delicious. But I favor fatty fish anyway. Do you like a fatty fish, Nastasha?
She does, she does. She's not talking under the mic, so you might not be able to hear her, but she says that she does. For those of you that you know can't hear the whispered tones of Nastasha leaning into the background and playing with her purse. Anyway, what? Doing something very important.
Yeah, what? Can't say she can't say uh, yeah. Great, can't say. Super. Alright.
So uh Ryan Santos writes in. Hey Dave, what's up with snails? That's a good question. It's kind of I like an open ended question like that. What's up with snails?
I've had them both great and terrible. What's the best way to cook them? Is there a low temper uh cooking solution? At what temperatures are snails and then quote unquote cooked? And is this all pointless as I only have access to canned snails?
Thanks. Well, yes, if you only have access to canned snails, then all of this is pointless because those snails have been cooked at a very high temperature already. And um, you know, they're basically those snails are uh have been sterilized in water and salt uh and you know probably a court bouillon mixture uh in a can at least 120 C for I don't know like 30 40 minutes. They're they're they're cooked. I mean they are cooked.
Um but uh even if you don't have access to live snails, I know in Europe they're available because I was looking at my at my the might be the worst translated book I own called uh intensive snail farming, and it's from Italy. From uh I went to a farm called uh La Chocola, which is uh uh a slang word for snail in the north of Italy. Uh the other one's Lumaca, right? Lumaca is the real word, but La Choccul is the name of the farm, and it's uh uh uh you know it means snail in in like uh Etruscan or some crap. Anyway, so the uh by the way, my son says I say crap too much.
Daddy, you say crap too much. It is true. It's true. I say crap too much? It's better than the rest of the stuff I say anyway.
So uh I have this book, and apparently in Europe, and I've never seen it in the US, I'm sure it's available. You can get fresh pack frozen snails in like frozen block form the way that you would get shrimp. And I don't think those ones have been high temp processed, so you could um you could cook with those. Occasionally in fish markets in New York, you will get um crated live snails. And the the way that they're prepared is uh they take snails and that they've been eating, and traditionally, if you catch snails, right, that you haven't been feeding yourself, uh you don't know what they've been eating.
They could have been eating plants that are poisonous to you uh but not poisonous to them. So the typical thing is you starve them out for three days, you put them in a cage with mesh so that they don't get like done in their you know, all mired in their own muck, uh, and you just let them stay in that cage for seven days, uh, with no water, nothing, and they'll they'll basically uh they'll cover themselves, they'll go in to basically a hibernating mode, they'll they'll cover their whatever that thing is called, the what is that called? The it's not a operculum, is it? Whatever whatever the flap is that covers the uh the snail, they'll they'll cover that up, it'll seal themselves and they'll go into hibernation, and then they'll last for a long time alive. So that's what they do.
They prepare the snails like that and they ship them in a box, at which point they're ready to go. You wash them off, uh, you know, with whatever vinegar or whatever, if they have any stink them, be careful with them because the shells are often quite fragile. Uh then you b uh you boil them for like three minutes in salted water or whatever. This is basically just to kill them. After you kill them, you pick off the trapdoor, uh, take the snails out, then you prepare them using any one of the normal techniques.
And the normal technique is to cut off the black foot, although I've heard that that's not necessary, uh uh, you know, at the back, whatever that like the guts are in the very back of the snail. Although I like I say, here that's not necessary. And then they're simmered in a court bouillon, which is like a flavored bouillon, uh, for a long time until they're tenderized, and then repacked in the shells with your butter, with herbs, whatever. Although a lot of Italian preps actually, instead of using parsley and all that, use mint. That'd be kind of interesting, right?
Minted snails? Anyway. In the Northern, they use peppermint apparently in these recipes from uh Etruscan. Anyway, Etruscan recipes. Anywho, um now, uh if you can obtain uh live snails, right?
I think that's the way to go. I've done it, but I've only done it maybe four or five times, and I haven't done it in probably ten years because I I used to have a fish market that had live snails uh on a seasonal basis, and I would just buy them from them and make them, and they were delicious. We tried to cook some snails that hadn't been purged out properly um when uh when I was in Italy a couple years ago, and it wasn't a hundred percent success. So, I mean, if you can get ones that have been cleaned out and uh we also tried to feed them, which didn't work because you're supposed to fatten snails, and the Romans used to fatten them on milk, and they but you need to know what you're doing. I've had horrible luck.
About 15 years ago, I tried to fatten snails on rosemary uh because apparently paella, you know, they fed them herbs, the snails, they would feed them herbs, and then they would taste like the herbs. But I think that's horse hockey. And I talked to Steingarden, he thinks it's BS2, because these snails, not only did they not eat the rosemary, they died in my in my house in the in my apartment on 38th Street, and they stank up the entire apartment. I tried to take the few live snails that were left and cooked them, and my wife was like, Are you nuts? Are you freaking nuts?
Who the hell is gonna eat those snails after they've been smelling up our bathroom for the last you know week? Anyway, so I wouldn't recommend doing that. Uh but they are fairly easy to cook. Now, as for sous-vide or low temperature, I couldn't find any recipes on low temperature cooking of snails. That said, the issue with snails when you cook them is uh after you do your kill step with them, you take them out and you're supposed to uh boil them either a couple times or rinse them in something acidic to get rid of the mucus.
Snails produce a lot of mucus, and you want to rinse the mucus off before you uh before you uh work with them. Uh so if you're gonna do low temp, I would try to do the kill step initially, pull them out, rinse them off, uh, you know, with uh in water, salt, and vinegar, like get the prep, and then do a low temp prep. But I don't know what temperature you'd use. Like, would you do similar to an octopus? So Keller for that does like five hours at 77 C.
I do it usually like just a regular simmering water for like three hours in a bag. Uh or Keller has his cuttlefish recipe at 64 degrees Celsius for 10 hours, which he says it's good, but I have no experience with. The one I'd really like to try is uh whatever Nathan Mirville does for uh gooey duck, which is if you're looking it up and you don't know what it is, it's spelled geoduck, and it's the porn starves clam. It looks like well, it's it yeah, just look it up and you'll see what it looks like. It's crazy.
It's like, you know, uh, and he made, I think, the best tasting uh gooey duck that I've ever had at his uh modernist uh dinner that he did uh, you know, at his lab, and he did it at a very low temp and not that long, basically just warm through in a CVAP oven. But I don't have a copy of Modernist cuisine, so I couldn't look it up. Anyone that has it out there, uh, write in or call in right now at seven uh seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight and tell us what uh their cooking technique is because I'd like to give that. I think that would uh be useful. Anyway, let's go to our second commercial break and we'll come back with the last questions.
Open up the hook in the man. Two bumping two punk deck, head, two, two monk, head, turn it up, the man. The bears need a little walking down. Too funk in here. Open the window, let in some air.
Put a little air freshener under the drums, open up the window, let out some. I love some live James Brown. Thank you, Jack. Is that yours, Jack? That's not mine.
Who knows whose call was that? Oh, my call, yes. Yeah, nice. Uh any any live James Brown is good. You know, we used to play, was it was it always James Brown for the center, right?
For our middle track was always James Brown, and someone started complaining. Exactly. What the who the hell complains about James Brown? Look, look, if you don't like James Brown, there is something wrong with your funk motor. I think it's because they liked when Jack and I put on Phil Collins that one time.
That's right. That's it. Phil was it Susudio? It was a little bit of Genesis and a little bit of Phil. I can't remember what it is.
Phil style Genesis, like uh that's all, like really bad Genesis. And I'm not saying that's bad for all you Genesis lovers. By the way, you know who's a big Genesis lover? Famous violinist. Stop.
Let's not talk about that. No? Let me just say there's a guy who owns a three and a half million dollar violin whose only rock music that he likes is Genesis. Other than classical, he likes his Genesis. And I won't say that his last name is Bell because I I can't say that.
But when confronted by, you know, I don't know who, let's say, someone whose name is Nastasha. Really? She she literally said, Really? Phil Collins, that's all, which is, you know, one of their later and you know, what her weak songs. He's like, oh no, no, no, no, early Genesis.
Okay, getting in trouble. Alright. So the other question from San Canson Benavev uh Benanav. Sorry, Sam, that I can't get your name uh right. Someone call it.
If you pronounce it to me three times in a row, I should be able to get it. And by the way, he's at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Mad Town, which everyone who's from there loves it more than they love anything. You know, I've never I've never been. The closest I've been is to Oshkosh. Uh the International Agriculture and Natural Resources Community and Environmental Sociology.
That's the hugest name for a department I've ever heard in my entire life. Anyway, uh, he also asked about uh the uh bagel cocktail. Uh and his other question, though, was what is the secret to a crispy pickle? We do lots of pickling with a variety of vegetables. However, once the product is canned, they become mushy, albeit delicious.
Uh the most I have found is to salt, use ice baths, and even some recipes that claim grape or oak leaves will help keep the product crisp. Any thoughts? All right, okay. Uh so the grape leaf thing is really about um cucumbers. So in cucumbers, there is uh an there's there are enzymes in cucumbers, uh, and there's a huge long list of them that I got off of a uh uh a website.
Um a lot of like well, they're basically um they they're pectinase enzymes, like peck pectin um esterase and uh like lots of really random ones that I'm not gonna try to pronounce. Okay, exopolygalactorunase, uh endopolygalactoronase, which you know, endoxylinase, basically a bunch of aces that uh enzymes that break down um pectin and even cellulase that break down like a hemicellulose and cellulose that that destroy the structure over time unless the enzymes are destroyed. Uh so you can either destroy them or you can inhibit them, or you can remove them. So, in a cucumber, right, the grape leaves that are added apparently have something in them that can uh inhibit the activity of those enzymes. And I don't know what that something is.
I didn't have time to figure it out, but I've seen it done uh that listed not just in kind of like home nut job sites, but also in some university agricultural extension sites. So I'm assuming that there is some validity to that, although you know I don't know specifically what the ingredient is. The other thing is that um those enzymes are concentrated in the blossom end of the cucumber, which is why they say to cut off the sixteenth inch, uh a sixteenth inch or so slice at the blossom end of the cucumber. The blossom end is not the stem end. The blossom, so if you like, think about a zucchini flower, when you see it, you get those baby zucchinis with the flower coming off of them, right?
So the blossom end is actually the uh the other end, the end that sticks out of the plant. And uh from the research that I was able to do, that is where it's mostly concentrated. So taking a small slice off of that section will get rid of uh a lot of where those enzymes are. Also, if there's any flower material left that flakes off at that end, that can cause because the flowers maintain that enzymatic activity basically, even if they are dried. So uh, and there was a bunch of studies done in the 50s where they put flowers even into pickles that had already been done, and it softened those pickles.
So you really want to get rid of those enzymes. Okay? So that's one way is to cut that off. That's going to lower the enzyme. Use uh use pickles that are made for pickling because they have a lower concentration of those enzymes to begin with, are more uniform, usually thinner, and are usually kind of denser and don't have any airvoids, which are also going to lead to better pickles.
So choosing your right variety, uh pickling them right after you pick them so that they don't start softening up so that they're because they basically start getting worse the minute they're taken uh off the plant. So you want to pickle them soon after they've been harvested, choose the correct variety of pickle, uh cucumber rather. Uh this is cucumbers only, by the way, and then trim off that um that stem end. Hey, sorry. Trim off the blossom end.
Uh the other thing you can do, if you notice most recipes, they have you pouring hot liquid over uh the pickles. This is for quick pickling, that is, uh, you know, with vinegar, not like lactic acid pickles. Pour a hot mixture over it and then heat it uh to like 180 uh or just below for uh a certain period of time. The reason they start with hot is because they don't want those ends, they want to kill those enzymes right away before they can do any softening. So you hit them with that hot water and you keep them uh high enough to kill the enzyme, but below 185, where the pectins are gonna start breaking down due to heat, and you wipe out the enzymes, and this is uh gonna create a firmer pickle.
If you go over 180, really you're shafted because you're gonna soften the pickle, uh the cucumber. So those high temperatures can uh like high but not too high temperatures inactivate the enzymes and cutting off that blossom and reduces the load of enzymes in there anyway. Uh aside from that, high salt levels are gonna make it so that it stays crisper. It's gonna get more wilted due to osmosis, but it's gonna stop the uh those enzymes from from working. So those all work.
In a traditional lactic acid cucumber, uh, you know, like where it's like sour sauerkraut style, you know, lactic acid bacteria, the high salt level, I think, uh stops the enzymes from working and so leads to having a crisp pickle. Uh the the other thing you can add uh now, go to regular vegetables. I wasn't able to find much on um kind of pectin breakdown enzymes in other things like cauliflower and whatnot, which make delicious pickles. But uh that said, I'm assuming high salt will work, but if you really need want to keep it crisp and you're having problems, uh try certain things are just gonna get all wilti because of the salt, and there's nothing you can do about it. Um but uh try um lime, pickling lime.
They no one uses aluminum more. I don't know why, because they don't want to put aluminum in because people are freaked out about aluminum. But uh you can use pickling lime, and the calcium in that strengthens the pectin in the cell walls and makes it such that they uh stay firm basically uh no matter what, you know, even if you cook them. So what they'll do is they'll make a lime solution with salt. And lime is you can get pickling lime, you can get uh cow from a Mexican store, you can get Thai lime paste, you can get anything.
Make a uh solution of lime, it'll settle out salt, and then put the cucumber or whatever vegetable in, let it soak, I don't know, a couple hours overnight. Uh, there's a couple of recipes online, but I can't remember them off the top of my head. Then you have to uh get once it does its calcium thing, you have to soak it in a couple of uh regular clean water baths to get the excess calcium out. I once packed in heavy calcium water cucumbers, and over the course of a couple days, they were the most disgusting things in the world. They had the most bizarre texture.
So you don't want to over-lime them, right? But then they'll stay crunchy for a long, long time. That'll work with other with anything, basically. Your last resort, and you can't get this, I don't even know why I'm telling you this. You can buy pectin methylesterase, which is the an enzyme that actually strengthens uh the cell walls of uh plants uh enzymatically.
And you can buy that. The commercial brand, it's from Novozymes, it's called Novo Shape. And I can take a blueberry or a raspberry, soak it in Novo Shape for a couple of hours, uh Novo shape in water, and then boil it and it won't even break because it stays firm enough. So it's really it's cool stuff. So those are basically your your range of up of things.
Heat treat to kill any enzymes that are present, but not uh at a high enough temperature to soften. On a cucumber, cut off the blossom end, not the stem end, uh although we might as well cut them both level, it doesn't matter. Uh and then and discard. Um use fresh uh ingredients that haven't had a time to break down. And if you need to use pickling lime uh and alum really isn't uh even though it does the same thing as calcium, isn't necessarily recommended anymore.
Uh what is that? Does that sound like good advice or no? Yes. Yes. Oh, and higher salt levels.
If you do low salt pickle, it's gonna get softer, I think, uh no matter what. Even though the salt, like I say it osmotically is gonna make it uh shrivel up a little bit. Apparently, it stops any sort of enzymatic breakdown, and also stops bacteria from growing, which can otherwise make things soft. Yes? Yes?
Okay. Now, the last thing, as I was researching um uh nitrites for today's uh thingamajig when I was doing cured meats, uh I came across an interest interesting um an interesting thing. You familiar with the blue people of Kentucky? No? So there used to be uh uh famously a family, I believe their name was the fugates of Kentucky, the blue fugates of Kentucky, and they had a uh a congenital, or they have still a congenital uh disease uh called uh what's it called?
Uh I'll look I'll look it up. But basically the idea is that their hemoglobin isn't oxygenated enough because they don't have uh the proper enzymes to um take uh deoxygenated hemoglobin and reoxygenate it at the same rate uh that we do. Uh and so here we go. It's called uh methemoglobinemia. Uh and so they were blue because their their their blood didn't have as much oxygen and they were very pale people and they lived in Kentucky.
So they had this whole thing and they were known as the blue fugates of Kentucky or the blue people of Kentucky. They since figured out how to cure that so they're not they're not blue anymore. But where does it where is that where does that bring me because it turns out that uh there's in Australia they're researching a technique to induce uh methemoglobinemia in wild pigs by feeding them sodium nitrate which is the same thing that we cure meats with and pigs have a very low level of uh the enzyme that uh that basically convert it's called um methemoglobin reductase that uh converts methemoglobin back to oxygen carrying hemoglobin so they have a low much lower level of this enzyme than we do so uh basically they feed them uh sodium nitrite pills in hog baits and they've called the baits check this out are called hogon hog on hogon baits there are 20 grams of microencapsulated sodium nitrates uh spread throughout uh you know uh basically baits that they put in the forest and what's uh awesome about this hog bait is that they eat it and their blood no longer carries uh oxygen right because they they have uh too much uh met hemoglobin in but they don't feel distressed they go into basically they get woozy and they fall asleep they pass out and then they die. So uh we may and like I've said many times is that you I don't know whether I've said it here but many times I can't remember whether I say here or not. Your body doesn't sense in pigs' bodies.
They don't sense lack of oxygen, they sense excess carbon dioxide. So the pig is not going to feel stressed. They don't freak out uh when they're being killed with uh sodium nitrite. Um so I was thinking, because we've been thinking a lot about anesthetics for uh fish. I've done a lot of work with anesthetics for fish, anesthetics for crustaceans, um, and with proper slaughtering uh practices, but this is basically only being used for um killing wild hogs in a humane manner.
You know what they've feeding them before? Rat poison. How nasty is that? Feeding them rat poison, which is basically causes you to bleed out internally, which can't be pleasant. Um, and um I'm wondering whether or not like this can be used for a uh for humane slaughter practice, basically anesthesia for regular pigs that are going to market.
Um they pass out and die within one hour without any noticeable. There's a spike in certain biological mark markers like cortisol, which are normally can uh added with stress, but uh the other biological markers weren't changed, and it could just be due to the fact that of the increased um uh the the shift of oxygen in the blood. Anyway, so I'm gonna leave you guys this week with that idea of is there a possibility for more humane slaughtering of pigs by basically putting them to sleep with what amounts to a food grade uh anesthetic, sodium nitrite, and can this be feasible? I'd like any feedback from our readers, uh listeners rather, and this has been cooking issues fish. Oh, you didn't Heritage Radio Network.
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