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67. Flat Tire Holiday Show

[0:03]

Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.com. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live every Tuesday from 12 to 1245. Today I'm actually not in Robertas uh in Brooklyn and Bushwick uh as I normally am because for the first time in my life, my bike failed me in a time of need.

[0:44]

And my tire uh went completely flat in an unreparable way, right as I was off uh off to the studio. So I'm joining you live from my living room on a phone. Uh also not with me today, strangely, is Nastasha the Hammer Lopez, because even though this is our holiday edition, uh she decided to hightail it out to her actual holiday. She's in California with her family right now. So the only person, I don't know if Carlo is there, uh Carlos is there rather, but Jack, our intrepid engineer, is chilling live in Bushwick and on the radio show.

[1:18]

Howdy, Jack. Hey, we're both here. Yeah. Oh, hey, howdy. So listen, who's our sponsor today?

[1:24]

Uh it's it's Modernist Cuisine, but uh I'll I'll have to read that copy, I think. Yeah, and you want to do it after the first break? Yeah, I'll do it after the first break. Modernist Pantry, sorry. All right, all right.

[1:34]

Well, you know, Modernist Cuisine, the great book, and we'll talk about that later. Modernist Pantry, the place where you can buy the ingredients you read about in the book. You know what I'm saying? Anyway. Okay, so uh calling all your questions to 7184972128.

[1:47]

That's 718497 2128. We'll see whether we can juggle me being on the phone and you calling in on the phone. That'll be fun. Okay. Uh Matthew writes in with a granita question.

[1:58]

Hey, David Nastash, I was wondering if you had any advice on making a granita at home without any special equipment, i.e. an ice cream or sobe ice cream machine or sorbet maker. I've read a few recipes online which call for putting the fruit and syrup mix in a pan and stirring it periodically as it freezes. Is there any way to improve on this technique without forking out $4,000 for a paco jet? The specific granita I'm trying to make is blood orange.

[2:19]

Thanks, Matthew. Alright, well look. The deal with uh a granita, right, is that it's supposed to have a grainy kind of a texture. Granita, right? So uh it's not so much of an issue that uh its texture kind of kind of is is not good.

[2:37]

I mean, I look I'm not a giant huge fan of I have to admit, of the granita. Uh I much prefer like a smoother thing like uh uh a sorbet. Um so let's pretend like you want to make a sorbet for a minute. Then I would get uh something, if you don't want to spend a lot of money, I would get something like a champion juicer, freeze everything rock, rock, rock, rock hard, and then put it through a champion juicer with a brine plate attached to it, and uh and you can even do that with um, you know, like frozen fruits and whatnot, and you can get out, put sugar in, and you can get out uh passable sorbet. And I guess if you if you if you decrease the sugar content, it's gonna be icier, and it's gonna have an icier texture and it'll taste more like a granita.

[3:15]

The the periodic freezing technique that they uh you're using is basically the idea is you're trying to break up and fluff the crystals as they're forming. Harold McGee is uh very popular of sorry, Harold McGee is uh very interested in this uh thing called um uh needle ice cream, pin needle ice cream, which is an old, old, old French thing. It's an actual ice cream, uh with you know with milk and and whatnot in it, uh cream, fat and all that, but it is supposed to have very long uh crystals in it. And so you stir it very, very periodically and try to maintain these kind of large crystals. So slow uh slow freezing with periodic stirring is going to give large granito like crystals uh and you know basically making with an ice cream machine or blending a solid thing like a Paco jet you're never gonna get a Paco jet texture but you don't want it you want a granita texture.

[4:03]

So try uh yeah try either a champion juicer or hell even try take uh the cubes blend them and then put them back in the fridge and harden them up a little bit and uh see how that works. Let me know let me know what what goes on. I should study granitas more but it's just not my uh it's not my cup of tea although Paco jets are amazing. I love them. Anyway, okay.

[4:22]

Um Rolf writes in uh dear Miss Hammer fortunately she's not here she can't even listen she's on a plane right now from uh I think she's she transferred so check this out. She's decided, right, that um she's the cheapest holiday person in the in the world. So she's flying out now with like eight eighteen connections, right? So she it's basically it's taking her like three days and four nights to get from New York to LA because of the number of connections she chose to get because she's so cheap. But even worse than that, she's flying back on and she's Christian and she's flying back on Christmas day.

[4:56]

On Christmas Day. She's yeah right? Wow. And it's because did I already mention this last thing it's because she's so cheap. Right she says it's because w it's what I pay her.

[5:05]

But really it's because she's so cheap, right, that uh that she w wouldn't do it any other role. And I was like, but you're gonna make your dad drive you after Christmas dinner to the airport. It's kinda crazy, right? Anyway, whatever. I I won't talk too much about it because she's not here to defend herself.

[5:22]

Not that she ever does, but there you go. Okay. So uh Dave recently asked for ideas for cooking related holiday gifts. Perhaps he has recommended favorites for a good value thermocouple thermometer. Actually Ralph, I uh I don't.

[5:37]

I'm not super I've never had a thermometer where I said, wow, I love that. You know what I mean? It's it's uh I've had plenty of them break. Um I've used uh multimeter based uh thermometers which are very cheap. Uh I've used you know all those things.

[5:56]

I've never been I've never been super super happy. I mean thermocouple if you buy a a dedicated thermocouple thermometer they're typically they used to be expensive. They're getting cheaper and cheaper. I mean the X Tech stuff it seems pretty cheap uh and it's okay. A lot of the stuff I've had uh you know break it really depends on on what you need and what kind of a a cost uh you're looking for I mean the good thing about thermocouple thermometers as opposed to the other types they're not actually extraordinarily accurate you have to calibrate them out of the box but what's nice about them is that you can get loads of different probes.

[6:27]

You know the ones that that we use uh to penetrate the bag for sous v stuff the hypodermic probes can get pricey you know they're they start at about uh eighty sixty to eighty dollars and usually run up over over about a hundred but the good news with one of with a thermocouple is that you can go on McMaster McBaster dot com and just order thermocouple wire and make your own thermocouples. In fact I have a post on the blog from like three years ago on uh making your own thermocouples. It's really cheap and I I do that a lot when I have to test a lot of a lot of different things. If you need a computer uh data acquisition. That stuff has gotten really cheap.

[7:03]

I have a uh uh you know, a DAQ digital, whatever it is, acquisition, blah, blah, blah, uh, from um measurement computing. It costs 150 bucks and puts eight channels of thermocouples into my computer. Pretty cool. Anyway, uh, another one, a good quality immersion blender. I'm not really happy with any immersion blender, to be honest.

[7:22]

I don't have uh I don't own one of the the band mixes, although people seem to think they're nice. You know, as many of you who have ever met me known, uh one of the things I'm going to be building with the new company that I'm starting uh with Dave Chang, which is Bub, by the way, official now. All the documents have been signed. It's an official company now, it exists. Yay.

[7:41]

Uh that uh is one of the things I'm gonna be tackling because there's a lot to be done out there in the uh immersion blender world. Pressure cooker, I go with Coon Recon. They also buy pressure cooker. I know they're expensive, uh, but I've used in many different kinds in many different price ranges, and I just like the Coon Recons. And uh they've linked to the blog a couple times, but they've never given me a damn thing.

[8:05]

Can you believe that, Jack? Can you believe that? Never give me a damn thing. The number of times I pumped out for them. Anyway, uh I would use them, and the reason is is because they're non-venting.

[8:13]

Uh the pans themselves are fairly high quality. I've owned mine and it's been through continuous uh abuse for uh you know years and years and years. I broke off the handle, but it still works like a like a champ. Um, I don't like the ones that vent because I think that they reduce the quality of uh flavors of things like stocks, although they're fine for some applications. I've used the giant American pressure canners and I just put one, uh gave it to the guys at Sandbar to use to make a large, large, large quantities of pressure cooked eggs.

[8:45]

Um, but not so good for home use because it's just so dang big. Uh I like the electric of the electric one. I mean, I like the Queznot one that I have. The exception is that you can't use it out of the box because you have to modify it because the temperature is not high enough. For some reason, they decided to set the temperature below the standard 15 PSI for a pressure cooker and so I had to go in and modify it.

[8:59]

Again, notes on the blob. Don't I can't really recommend that you do it because of course it's not safe and all that. But anyway, you can see how I did it on the blob. For a cream whipper infusion thing, I mean ISI, look, I know they're expensive and I have actually done work for them so you know ev you know everything uh above board here but I've also used crappy the last time I was in Columbia, the country I uh I did a demo and they got me some off brand like whipper to use and this thing just wouldn't seal right. It was a complete nightmare.

[9:39]

So I think it's probably worth the extra money for uh the ISI on that just because I wouldn't think it would be worth the extra money and then when I've used crappy ones, they've leaked on me. Um vacuum sealer, I mean I like the mini pack, the small one. If you have the $1500 to spend, I go ahead and get the mini pack because it's got the nicest chamber size of any vacuum uh machine in its class. But still that's like you're forking out between $1500 and two two grand for it. Um but you know mm there you have it.

[10:08]

Um and digital scale is the last one. It's a tough one on a digital scale because everything depends on what you want or need. Uh you know so the question is if you're going to do hydrocholoride work, you should be able to measure something down to the tenth gram because occasionally that's going to come up. Right? But then on the other hand if you do a lot of work with meats you're gonna want something that can weigh many kilos.

[10:30]

Now, I have an old scale uh from you know that I brought off of eBay that was you know kind of like a it's a weird scale. It does 12 kilograms by the tenth gram, and plus it's a county scale. I think it's sick, but the problem with a similar capabilities today, you'd have to spend thousands of dollars on something that had multiple balance ranges so you could do small amounts and large amounts. Um so what I would do instead is just get a good quality wash down scale. There's some waterproof scales uh from A and D.

[11:00]

I haven't used them, so I don't know whether they're any good, but that's a really nice feature. You can throw it in the dishwasher, they claim, and then get a uh get a large one for things like meats and a small one. Uh things that bother me about scales is when they turn off. I like a scale that plugs in and stays on forever. This way, if you're measuring stuff uh into uh container and you walk away uh and you come back, uh you still have your measurement, which is great if you forgot something, or if you're called away for a minute, or if something catches on fire on the stove and you have to walk away and look at it, you come back, you don't want to have to re-weigh the thing that was partially weighed in there.

[11:34]

So I hate a scale that turns off. Anyway, uh just my not specific brand recommendation, but just what I would look for. All right. So uh a couple of weeks ago, you know, there's an ongoing uh tech, is it high school project? It's high school, right?

[11:50]

The high school project on uh temperatures? I think I think it was a high school project, yeah. Yeah, high school, anyway. So uh I uh mentioned this uh program, the Sue Vosh, which is basically an iPhone iPad application that allows you to uh uh check what temperature um you know something's gonna be, depending on its on what it is, on the temperature of your water bath, etc. etc.

[12:10]

Anyway, the guys wrote back uh they heard that I mentioned it, and so they said this. Uh thanks for your mention on the show a couple of weeks ago. We're always looking for suggestions on how to make our application even better, and I think your suggestion about not changing temperature settings when the food is changed is a good one. It's actually something we've gone back and forth on. So basically the the problem is that there's all these parameters, and if you change one, like, hey, instead of changing it, like maybe I didn't want to cook chicken, but I want to keep the water bath the same.

[12:36]

I want to cook fish or something like that. Not that you'd ever change from chicken to fish, me, whatever, but it just changes all the things. Anyway, uh some users like you want to do a lot of exploring and toggle all kinds of settings one by one. Others want to pick uh chicken, fish or whatever, and have the app giving them a reasonable starting point for temperature, blah, blah, blah. Like you, I personally tend to be the tinkering type, but a lot of our users have told us that they they wanted to start with uh normal settings.

[12:58]

But that doesn't stop us from trying to figure out how to please everyone. Uh I think we may do an up uh upcoming update that has auto temperature selection on food disabled if you've gone into the advanced and allow any temperature mode. Anyway, they thank us for spending the five dollars, which you really should, because I am a cheap, cheap bastard. To get me to spend five dollars is a very difficult thing to do. Uh and they give a PS, uh I put together a blog post and a video on the fast cook method for eggs in a circulator.

[13:22]

And uh if you go to CV.com and look at it, they want to know what I think about it. Well, I'll tell you what I think. So what we're talking about here, for those of you that don't know what the hell I'm talking about, is uh an immersion circulator, which most of you know, is a is a device that keeps water at a very accurate temperature. And the reason you want to do there's a couple of reasons you want to do that. But one reason is you can achieve um textures uh or temperatures all the way through uh a piece of food, and uh and uh that allows you to achieve textures that you couldn't otherwise achieve.

[13:50]

For instance, on eggs, right? The difference between a 62 degrees Celsius egg, right, which is runny, that's a poached egg, right, with a very kind of custardy soft white and a runny uh yolk. The difference uh between that and a fully set egg yolk, but it's still very creamy, is only two degrees, sixty-four degrees Celsius. So the window is very, very small, right? And in a large uh chicken egg, right, uh I tend to cook them for one hour, right?

[14:18]

So at one hour, I know that the inside of the very inside of the yolk has gotten up to the basically up to the temperature of the bath, and I can pull the egg out and I'm done, right? And that's a typical thing. But a lot of people, there's two things that are going on. One, some people don't want to wait around for uh the eggs to cook for an hour because they're impatient weasels. I don't know why.

[14:39]

Anyway, uh and the other thing is perhaps you want a firmer egg white than given with those uh 62 degree eggs, for instance, or 63 degree eggs, which is where most people are cooking. Well, I did a bunch of charts like six, six, seven years ago, something like that, uh, that showed what happened if you used a small temperature delta. So for instance, um take uh set your bath at 65 degrees Celsius, right? And then put your egg in, and put like we put like 10 eggs in. And we pulled them every couple of minutes and looked at them and found that you could in fact get a uh uh an egg white that was like a 65 degree egg, which was our favorite at the time, right, and a yolk that was very similar to a 63 by timing things very exactly.

[15:30]

These guys have uh gone ramp that up even further and use like a 70 Celsius or 77 Celsius, I forget, uh water bath, and they're cooking the egg for only 18 minutes, and the the idea is to get a kind of runny textured yolk. All right, here are my issues with it with the technique. One timing now is very, very important. So if you have a particular water bath and you're only putting in like four eggs for you and your spouse, let's say, then uh it's gonna work fine because you're gonna do it the same way every time, right? So even though there's carryover heat and the temperature of the egg yolk is gonna go up a little bit, and the outside of the egg yolk is cooked a little bit more than you'd want, uh, and the inner side, you know, a little under whatever, right?

[16:13]

That's all gonna be fine because you can do it the same way every time. The problem from a restaurant point of view is if you're doing a hundred eggs, it's very, very hard to make sure that all the variables are the same every single time. Because a circulator, right, going at a thousand watts is never going to be powerful enough to come back up to temperature right away if you drop a huge uh batch of eggs into it, right? So this is a technique that's mainly meant for smaller batch cooking. Now, on the super flip side, it's become very popular in high-end restaurant circles to go with uh uh boiling water, right?

[16:49]

Because they want a traditional overcooked rubbery white on the outside and uh creamy center. And so what these guys are doing is they're basically saying, hey, look, there's one temperature that I know I can maintain hardcore. Screaming boil. And they can put it in and they time it very exactly, and then you can do more batches because it's fairly easy to maintain a super high consistent temperature because you're just slamming the heat into the water and boiling it as hard as you can. Uh so anyway, these are two different ideas, but uh, those are my thoughts.

[17:24]

So with that, Jack, why don't we go to the first commercial break? Calling your questions to 718497, 2128, that's 7184972128 cooking your shoes. Santa Claus. Go straight to the ghetto. Hit job your randy.

[17:42]

Go straight to the ghetto. Santa Claus. Go straight to the ghetto. Feel every stock in you find. The kids are going to love you so.

[18:04]

Leave a tour for Johnny. Leave a dog for Mary. Leave something for the baton it. And don't forget about Garry. Go straight to the ghetto.

[18:25]

Santa Claus. Go straight to the ghetto. Tell him James Brown sent you. Wow. Wow, Jack.

[18:37]

Good call on the James Brown. I have a James Brown Christmas album. Yeah, it's awesome. Have you have you heard the entire James Brown Christmas album? I think there might be several.

[18:46]

I have one. And at the end of the song, he starts screaming, it's called something like, you know, Merry Christmas, Christmas time. At the end of it, he's screaming about how he he loves all the sands because they brought his record and they saw a show. And saw his show. Wow.

[19:10]

So remember sitting, like I have it in the Christmas rotation, and you know, uh, and we're sitting around, and yeah, it's like, you know, Bing Flo being all this stuff, and all of a sudden James Brown just comes on and starts screaming about Merry Christmas, Christmas time. You know, it's awesome. Good good business. Oh, yeah. I didn't think anyone else listened to the James Brown Christmas.

[19:28]

Cheers to the James Brown Christmas. Uh oh, sorry, you gotta read the uh promo, yeah. Oh, I actually keep going. Alright, I'll keep going. Anytime you want, just browse in and get the promo.

[19:38]

Okay, make it up. What are they giving away this week? Not sure. Not sure. Alright, we'll we'll handle it later.

[19:44]

Okay. So Aaron writes in with more suggestions on uh vacuum machines cheap because everybody look everybody knows. Everybody wants a inexpensive vacuum machine. Everybody wonders why. Like chamber vacuum machines cost eight zillion dollars.

[20:00]

I'll tell you why. One, they don't make that that many of them. That's one. Two, there's a lot of stainless steel in them because they're stainless steel uh restaurant grade. And three, all the good ones have very expensive vacuum pumps in them, right?

[20:14]

And the company that makes uh the majority of vacuum pumps for commercial vacuum machines, a company called Busch out of Germany, and the pumps are just really, really, really solid. And a good chunk of the money you're spending is actually for the pump. And you know, if you buy a crap you're they're they're very good in that they can withstand a lot of contamination in the uh in the oil because of the uh vapor that you're boiling, the uh liquid that you're boiling off of your uh product as you're vacuuming it, etcetera, etc. without breaking, and they're just really like, you know, they're the tanka trucks of assuming Tonka's still good, I have no idea, maybe Tonka's crap now. But they're the tanka trucks of uh, you know, vacuum pumps for that kind of a uh an application, and they just cost a lot of money.

[20:59]

Right? And so everyone's going around looking for for cheaper alternatives. I've used refrigeration vacuum pumps, and they're okay, they eventually fail. Um, but uh you know, everyone wants super cheap. Well, we all know, much as I actually have met them, they seem like nice people, people that make the food saver.

[21:14]

We all know that the vacuum is kind of weak. Well, there's uh another contender out there, uh Ziploc, you know, from uh SC Johnson SC Johnson Wax, I believe is the corporation. They make a little vacuum sealer, and Aaron writes in and says, Is the dang thing any good? I went on the Amazon and it's it's available now for like six bucks. You can buy it for like six bucks.

[21:37]

Uh I don't know. I don't know whether it's any good. I've never tried it. It's never going to be a good enough vacuum to uh to to use for uh you know, doing uh vacuum infusion, things like that, which is what I mainly am wine the vacuum for. I mean I'm sure it's really, really good for bagging a muffin without crushing it, so you can throw it in a freezer in an individual Ziploc uh and not get uh weird freezer burn around.

[22:02]

I mean, right now I do that with a straw. For anything else, I just use Ziploc bags and uh dip them in water as I back and I get uh very good results with no leaking. So I mean, tell me how it works, Aaron, when you get it, or if anyone else has extensive experience with the Ziploc vacuum, uh write in and and tell us. Hey Dave. What did you say?

[22:23]

Did you know today's show is sponsored by Modernist Pantry, supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies when only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist Pantry has the solution. They offer a wide range of modern ingredients and packages that make sense for the home cook and enthusiast, and most cost only around five bucks, saving you time, money, and storage space. Whether you're looking for hydrocolloids, pH buffers, or even meat glue, you'll find it at Modernist Pantry.

[22:53]

And if you need something that they don't carry, just ask. Chris Anderson and his team will be happy to source it for you. With inexpensive shipping to any country in the world, Modernist Pantry is your one-stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients. Modernist Pantry values your feedback, and to encourage it, they've now added product reviews to their website. Any customer who visits the site to post a review before next week's show will get a free ten dollar gift certificate.

[23:15]

Good toward the purchase of anything in the store. Let Chris and company know what you love or what you'd improve about their products or service and help other customers by sharing your experiences. Visit modernist pantry.com today for all your modernist cooking needs. Do they ever come by the station ever? No.

[23:33]

Anyone ever meet them? We should hang out with them sometime. Where where the hell are they located anyway? That's a great question. Alrighty.

[23:43]

So it's still time to call in your holiday related questions too. 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Pedro writes in about fish. Hey Dave and Nastasha, first.

[23:53]

I'm a big fan of the show and the show's soundtrack. That that's all Jack nowadays, by the way, Pedro. I rarely make any requests. Nastash can't be bothered. She's texting on the phone the whole time, so it's pretty much all Jack.

[24:02]

Am I right? That's true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. If any of you uh ever want the pleasure, you should really come on a t any Tuesday and watch Nastasha's vegan face while she is uh texting away and uh giving me dirty looks, and you can be served pizza by Indie Jesus, who's actually changed his garb.

[24:20]

He's more wild west, Jesus the last time I saw him. Have you seen him today, Jack? You're not there anymore. Uh okay. So, uh Pedro has a quick fish.

[24:31]

Sometimes when I buy it, we have a caller. That's extremely free. What happened? We have a caller. Oh, we have a caller?

[24:37]

Alright, we'll cut back to Pedro. I'll get back to you one minute. Caller, you're on the air. Hey, how's it going, Dave? It's Brian.

[24:43]

Hey, Brian. Hey, um, wanted to let you know I got back from my trip and I got through customs um just fine. I got my spices, I got some uh some dried meats from from my trip. Um so thanks for the thanks for uh the the tips or or you didn't really have any seat characters. You said just go for it and see what happens.

[25:05]

And nothing happened to you at all? No, there was a little there was I I I I went through Newark and there was a little dog, one little dog that was sniffing sniffing around, but uh but the dog didn't didn't sniff my stuff, or at least I didn't see the dog sniff my my my stuff and I just went right through. No problem. Are you uh was the meat vacuum packed? It was vacuum packed.

[25:28]

I think that I think that's the key. Yeah, I have bad luck with little dogs. I'm more of a big dog guy. Me yeah, well, me me too, but in this case I I I got I got lucky. So uh little dogs.

[25:40]

So what what do you what do you speak back if you don't mind telling me? Um I got I got some of those um omani or looming what they're called. The uh the some of those dried limes. Um I got some um some some dried hissop, uh you know, wild hitsop and uh some some wild sage. And um I got got some uh what what looks like the um the besturma and um uh also some uh some other dried sausages.

[26:08]

Nice. Well I'm glad I'm glad you made that. Did you write it on your declaration form? I I didn't. So that's all of my smuggling friends, I believe so I forget who was on the show when we were talking about it, but uh they all basically write it on the form.

[26:26]

This way if they're caught, they can say, Well, I wrote it on the forum, I just didn't, you know, blah blah blah. So you d really did luck out on that one. Yeah, I I I did. So maybe maybe you know, next time I'll I'll write on the declaration for him. I I did bring some cheeses back from Quebec that were were vacuum sealed uh the last time, but um you know, coming from Canada, they don't they don't they don't care in check quite as much as I I think from some other countries.

[26:50]

No, apparently going to Canada the customs can be brutal. This is very weird. I I don't know, look, my son who's uh nine, I apologize for bringing this up, but no, the actually not the nine year old, the uh six year old. He uh he's gotten into comic books. And did you know that there was a guy arrested for uh having a Japanese uh manga uh cartoon comic book and he's uh from America and he's facing a year in prison because they deemed the comic book to be uh child pornography.

[27:19]

Strange, huh? Wow. Yeah, there's an American dude chilling in a Canadian jail right now because of a comic book. Because of a Japanese comic book. Yeah, because of a Japanese comic book.

[27:30]

Yeah, right. So he got he got dinged with child pornography possession. Apparently Canadians hate look, it's not my style either, but apparently the Canadians hate write uh uh that style of comic book. At least the customs officials do. I mean the Canadians themselves, maybe they love it.

[27:46]

I don't know. Anyway, thought I'd mention that. Weird weird fact. All right. Wow.

[27:51]

But yeah, no comics for me. Um but while I'm here, two I got I got two questions. One is why don't you guys give a little little West Coast Love and uh play some Tower of Power occasionally. Jack, can you do that for us? Oh sorry, yes.

[28:07]

Definitely. Love Tower of Power. I saw them with uh Ray Charles like fifteen years ago. Really? Wow.

[28:15]

What a what a what an opportunity. Yeah. Good business. That sounds cool. Um but I got a I got a cooking question here for you.

[28:22]

Um so it's um it's citrus season and I want to make some of my own marmalades with um the great uh great fruits we we have out here. Um you got any tips? Marmalade, yeah. We got great citrus at the time of year right now. Well, I mean the real question is how much of the bitterness of the peel do you want in, right?

[28:46]

I mean that's the main thing. I mean, so what I would I would do is I would separate the flesh out from the from the uh rind, right? And then treat them separately. And then um, you know, you could do the you could do the hey, if you were real if you look, it depends. Some people they actually like the the albedo, the light part to be in there a little bit, uh and some people like uh more of that bitterness or less of that bitterness.

[29:07]

But if you want it to be if you wanted to make the world's most baller marmalade, like seriously straight up baller marmalade, what I would do is uh peel the uh peel them, right, uh carefully, uh like score and peel them off, then soak the uh peels in a solution of pectin X SPL and water, which you get can you can buy that apparently now at modernistpantry.com. I've never tried that, I have my own supply. But anyway, uh you soak them in like four grams per liter of that stuff, and um then you take a tooth a toothbrush or uh or a scrubby and you just wipe all the albedo off. Gone. Then you can sliver the peels and they're perfect.

[29:45]

Right? But they can be long. So normally you can only get thin slicing of perfect peel that way. But you can get kind of like l like larger strips. You can make them whatever is gonna taste good in the marmalade.

[29:55]

Uh and then, you know, cook, you can then you can blanch them if you want, if they're too bitter for you, but they probably won't be uh bitter, that is, and then um you can um make your the marmalade uh base separately and then fold in the uh peel afterwards. That's kind of bubble, right? That sounds pretty good. But the question would be, you know, when you use the enzymes, doesn't it take away some of the pectin, which gives makes the marmalade thick. Right.

[30:20]

Yeah, well the question is So I'm gonna have to add pectin back in separately, you know, from the you know, like from the box. Yes, you could do that. Um I thought about how much pectin you'd be removing, but you're gonna boil the you're gonna boil the citrus down, and the question is, is there enough in just the regular pulp without the albedo to do it for you? I would bet there is, but if not, you can always build it with a little bit of pectin. I mean, that's where they get it from.

[30:50]

You know what I mean? Like they get it from the citrus peel. Either that or from apple. So like most of the commercially available pectin we get's either citrus or apple. I mean, but if you want it, I mean like it's worth getting the extra.

[31:00]

I mean, I wouldn't feel bad because no one's gonna know how you did it. You know what I mean? It's gonna be sweet. Okay. Sounds like uh I gotta get my hands on some some uh pectanex here.

[31:12]

Yeah, yeah. Uh it's a good start, and plus, you know, then you can use it for the French fry recipes, use it for clarification. I know that most of the clarification stuff that I have uh requires a centrifuge, but I'm working on a new technique. I read a paper on a technique called electroflotation and just flotation in general, where they basically make a little electrolysis setup and they throw it in the bottom of a uh of a a vat of of stuff that's not clarified, and then you turn on the electricity and it makes tiny hydrogen bubbles, and the tiny hydrogen bubbles float up, and as they float up they carry the stuff all of the uh impurities with it so you could uh dope it with SPL and then you can clarify liquids with uh with hydrogen bubbles but I haven't tested it yet. I've built a rig but it's I've been so damn busy I haven't tested it yet.

[31:59]

Wow that sounds cool. And that'll be a home setup I can do? Yeah so I'm thinking that I don't know whether I could commercialize that to the new business especially because the people who wrote the paper might already have a patent down on it. I don't know. But it's definitely the kind of thing where you could probably build it for pretty cheap.

[32:15]

If it works you could probably build it for pretty cheap. I mean the trick with electroflotation is tiny tiny tiny bubbles. So for instance um I was wondering could you just take an aquarium pump and do it? But the problem is the bubbles in an aquarium pump, even with those little centered stones is just too the bubbles are too large. So the question is how to make tiny tiny bubbles and that's why um electrolysis is good because they use very thin wires.

[32:40]

They basically they use a uh the the one that they used in the paper that I read was carbon like a graphite carbon not graphite carbon uh rods and uh a stainless steel top and the stainless steel I was just there it's producing the hydrogen and they use very very fine wires and those very very fine wires made a very fine bubble size and so it didn't really disturb. You don't want turbulence, you just want lots of little bubbles rising. But with the aquarium pump can't you just put on a uh a fit or filter well it's po it's possible. I mean the thing is, in the in one of those, what's happening is it's the bubble the bubble generation is happening from the holes, right? And in in the in the mesh, the bubble generation is happening from the wires itself.

[33:27]

So uh the the problem is is could you could you get holes in uh in a porous medium that uh aren't gonna cause bubbles that coalesce right away. Do you know what I'm saying? Whereas with wires, very fine wires can be spaced far enough apart to prevent immediate coalescence of the bubbles. I think that's the issue. Right.

[33:56]

I think you want like a constant just upflow of gentle tiny, tiny bubbles for this thing to work. And if you look up on the web, you can look up uh uh you know, if you have access to the the scientific stuff, elect electro flotation is the technique. Okay, electroflication. All right. And uh could I keep um I'm still looking for things that people can do if they don't have a setter fusion.

[34:21]

Yeah, that's an expensive item. Yeah, and it's I don't have space. What? I don't have the space. Yeah, exactly.

[34:30]

So so this one I'm trying to build one in one of those uh you know, you go to Solo Tab and you buy one of those things that's meant to to uh uh store pasta. I'm trying to build it in one of those, see whether it works. Very narrow kind of contain round container. Yeah, narrow, tall, right? And uh and just you drop it in the bottom and you spell you know, I like it's gonna take a bunch of tests.

[34:53]

Like that's that's the kind of thing that if I still had the intern program running at the FCI, I would just have someone do it. But since I'm you know not there every day, I don't have that program running anymore, so I don't have anyone that can do any testing when I'm not there. You know what I mean? So it's just I haven't had time. Oh, is is the school selling Pecan X anymore?

[35:11]

Is uh Yeah, I believe uh Erve Molivare, uh M A L I V E R T. Uh so it'll be H Mollyver at French Culinary dot com. And he he still has it, yeah. I just saw it there yesterday. Oh, great.

[35:25]

All right. Thanks, Dave. Happy hollow. Hey. Happy holidays, thanks for calling in.

[35:29]

Uh, Jack, should we go to our second commercial break? Uh yeah, let's do that. All right, call them all your questions too. 718497, 2128. That's 718497 2128.

[35:46]

Five long years, we have been together. Your love and understanding has brought us to stormy weather. I must admit, girl, I haven't always been good. But you stuck by me, just like you said you would. Hey, I know that enough is enough.

[36:11]

But you shouldn't be talking about turning loose might be right to see. The wrong decision will spawn hardly. Don't change horses in the middle of a stream. Get it up, get up. That would be an extremely bad call to change your horse in the middle of a stream.

[36:44]

Extremely bad call. At least, you know, if you're actually fording a stream. Of course, if the horse was sinking and drowning you, right? Like if the horse was literally dying and sucking you down to the bottom of the river instead of swimming, then maybe a good idea to change the horse in the middle of the stream. Maybe the only choice.

[37:01]

Yeah, so I mean I think like they like that phrase like, you know, don't change, Barbara Mint should be uh, unless uh that change is going to prevent you from dying. Of course. Yeah. If if the horse is actually worse than no horse at all, then changing horse is pretty good idea. You know?

[37:17]

It's one of those things. Anyway. Uh but you know, I mean, I understand. You don't get rid of an a marginally okay horse. Like if there's like a stellar horse next to you swimming, and you're like, Man, that horse is a badass, and mine is only, you know, kind of okay, then yeah, stay on the okay horse.

[37:31]

Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, absolutely. And whenever I think of this, I always I don't know, I uh I shouldn't I'm not gonna get into politics. Anyway, won't get into politics on the show. Not okay, do it.

[37:39]

Okay. So uh back to Pedro and his fish question. Uh by the by the way, uh so we're gonna have one more song going on, right? You're gonna get us one really awesome holiday song for the for the outro check. That was Tower of Power for the last caller.

[37:52]

Yeah, yeah, but you're gonna for the last on the way out, are we gonna play like some hardcore Christmas stuff or what? Oh yeah, definitely. Okay, cool. All right. Anyway, Pedro and his fish.

[38:03]

Okay. Sometimes when I buy fish, the flesh is extremely soft and the tissue looks like it's falling apart. I know it's not because the fish is old. I know how to judge freshness pretty well. And I'll buy my fish from a small fisherman's club that only sells that day's catch.

[38:17]

Also, this seems to happen much more frequently with Atlantic mackerel and bluefish. Do you know why this happens and how to avoid it? I know the fish are caught using nets and not blood out, so could this be related to rigor mortis? Well, Pedro, I bet it is, because I mean, uh we've had this discussion before, but everyone who grew up in the northeast and like hung around with people that fish know that back in the day, uh people didn't like bluefish so much because it didn't keep and it kind of went south fast and the fishes became musk mushy and whatnot. And it's because blues, I don't really know that much about mackerel, but blues are vicious, you know, fighting strong fish.

[38:53]

Like when blues are running, uh when blues are running right uh close to the shore, you know, bathers have gotten like bites taken out of their legs. Because blues are vicious. That's why when you're fishing for blues, you use like a steel, uh, you know, a steel leader on it, and it and and people like fishing for blues because they have such good fight. So for their size. So I would bet that they go into a really, really hard rigor, and that that hard rigor is ripping apart the uh, you know, some of the structure of the muscle muscle and it's getting uh mushy.

[39:25]

Uh and I know we had a um a listener, and for some reason his name just went straight out of my head, but we had a listener who ran some preliminary tests on bluefish by doing uh ikijime, where the uh we do the spinal cord destruction and you bleed them out properly, and so that the fish were in a side by side. Now he only did one or two samples, but the side by side, the bluefish was significantly better, uh i.e. firmer, uh, when it was killed using uh the Japanese techniques that, you know, uh uh fall under the under the heading of Ikijime, fish killing techniques. Um and that's because, as we said many times, on fish that swim extremely strongly, they go into a hard rigor. If you take a needle and shove it through their spinal cord, uh it stops the messages from going from the spinal cord to the muscles, and therefore it preserves ATP, which is the energy the muscles used to contract, and therefore it delays rigor, and then delayed rigor is a softer rigor.

[40:19]

Anyway, so I would bet that that is what's going on. Uh I don't know much about the mackerel, uh, other than I like to eat mackerel. I don't really know much about them from a fishing and swimming perspective. So I I do know that they suffer some of the same problems of uh that all oily fishes uh suffer in terms of uh enzymatic activity. They can be mushy if they're cooked at low temperature because the enzymes in them uh not only the muscles themselves get broken, but the enzymes in the fish keep working uh quite actively uh while it's being cooked at lower temperatures and so they can turn mushy.

[40:55]

And I know certain species of mackerel have that problem uh very much. So, anyway, so I don't know whether that's also playing into uh part of it. It's never really listed in the uh those enzymes aren't really listed in uh the bluefish because it's only been recently that people have appreciated the delicious, delicious bluefish. I love bluefish. Uh I think more people are liking blue fish.

[41:15]

Jack, do you feel more people are liking bluefish now? Uh yeah, I hear more about it lately. Yeah. It's good stuff. I mean, you either like it or you don't.

[41:23]

I like it. Uh anyway, okay. So our buddy Christoph from Polyscience, the people that brought you the immersion circulator, calls in about butternut squash or rodent. Uh hello, Nastasha. I hope all is well.

[41:33]

I'm glad you've caught up uh uh with the last few radio shows on iTunes. I have a question I can't find a good answer for. Maybe Dave knows more about it. I've observed that when I cut butternut squash, my skin feels like it is dried out. It's quite aggressive, and I'm not sure if it is actual dehydration or something else.

[41:48]

I'm also not clear about the liquid pearls that collect on the butternut squash surface uh after a few minutes. It says see attached picture, but I don't have it. Sorry, Christoph, I don't have the picture. Uh, how does it happen that it collects in pearls like that? Is that liquid responsible for this dehydration?

[42:02]

I wonder if this liquid is used in any products like cosmetics. Have a great holiday season. Okay. So I went on my scientific uh web search engines that I steal and uh typed uh butternut squash and then a host of other things. And I couldn't find anything specific, except uh there are certain people that get what's called a uh uh protein contact dermatitis uh from many things, uh one of them being butternut squash.

[42:29]

So it is known that there are certain people that have uh skin sensitivity to uh butternut squash. I was doing more research, and butternut squash are part of a larger group, including cucumbers and all other squash and melons and stuff called uh cucribits. And um, they have uh can have lots of crazy things, uh flowing saps and whatnot flowing through the phloem, which is in the stems, but also I think uh to some extent they can have stuff flowing through uh the the fruits themselves, and I believe they would concentrate somewhat towards the skin side of it. Now, uh I was able to find some strange sugar compound components that are in pumpkins and and other uh strange kind of defense stuff, but nothing definitive. I would guess that if your hand is drying out like that, like the same way it does, for instance, if you're shelling a lot of shrimp, that you're getting some sort of uh either protein or a hydrocoloid that is uh basically not dissolving away on your hand and drying fairly quickly into a foam.

[43:34]

That's what I'm guessing. But I would love to hear if anyone knows anything more about it. Uh I wasn't able to do it reading the first you know, 10 to 15 papers where I typed in, you know, uh sap and or latex and or uh hydrochyloid or dermatitis and butternut squash and or cucurbit. But it's an interesting thing. Fine, it's a known fact.

[43:56]

I mean, I found uh an e-gullet uh, you know, link with someone, and if someone on the e-gold thing said, well, it's just starch, not starch, starch isn't gonna do that to you. But um anyway, it's interesting question. It's gotta be some wacky hydrochyloid or hydrochaloid protein mixture uh that's coming out of there. So anyway. We'll look into it more.

[44:16]

Uh you know, that's one of those things where uh I'm gonna have an answer for you in a year and a half because I'm gonna meet someday I will meet the butternut squash scientist and I will ask them what the hell the deal is and they'll tell me. Anyway. Uh Gabriel writes in, I hope this is the correct email address. It is. Um this question relates to an absurd the absurd price of sauce funnels.

[44:36]

Uh it's actually not a thing I want. Uh well, because he says he doesn't cook at that level. But Gabriel, once you own one of these, and by the way, a soft funnel that we're talking about, sauce funnel sauce gun, is basically a funnel, preferably metal, that has a little stick in the center of it that you lift up and stuff comes out of it. And it's one of those things that, yeah, you don't need it, but man, are those things a joy. They're just a they're a complete joy.

[44:59]

But they're absurdly priced. Absurdly priced. Uh so anyway, so this relates to the absurd price of sauce funnels. Um, so I wondered whether there wasn't a less expensive place to get a sauce funnel than JB Prince. Now listen, before we go any further, I know the uh the funnels at JB Prints are expensive, but JB Prince is selling a an expensive brand of those funnels because they only carry kind of the top quality stuff.

[45:23]

Here's the deal with JB Prince. And yes, it's true, I know them all, I like them, and they've given me some stuff before. But uh their stuff isn't cheap, but I I don't think that they they're charging they're charg they're not getting rich off of it. They're just carrying high quality brands. Right?

[45:40]

Stuff that you can't normally get in bulk from places, and so the price the prices are uh a little bit higher. But it's not like they're it's not like they're uh you know making money hand over fist with huge margins. They're just not. Okay, anyway. Um, well there is an easier uh sorry, there is a uh uh one that he saw on what uh on uh QVC that was much cheaper, right?

[46:05]

Uh and I looked on Amazon and there was a sauce funnel on Amazon that was about half the price of the one that you get at JB Prince. However, the one review I saw on it uh was basically that this sucker doesn't work and then go get the expensive one, which is from uh Matfer. Uh and so, you know, he's wondering how hard could it possibly be to build one of these things with a metal funnel, uh a screen, it actually doesn't need a screen, and some sort of device to control the aperture. Uh I'll tell you what, I wouldn't want to build it for 150 bucks. Could I build it?

[46:36]

Yes. I could go the problem metal funnels themselves are expensive, especially when they go down to the thing. So yes, I own a welder and a plasma cutter and a drill press and all that stuff. So I could go make one, but I definitely wouldn't want to for a hundred hundred and fifty bucks. But uh something um uh he writes in Gabriel writes it's interesting is if you search for results like sauce gun DIY plans, you come upon DIY weapons of the Libyan rebels.

[47:02]

And if you looked it up on the Atlantic uh monthly website, they have a link to all of these pictures of these like literally like dudes in workshops building weaponry to uh to take back the country from Gaddafi. It's pretty interesting, pretty interesting website. Anyway, go check it off. Okay. Uh Monica writes in on milkshakes.

[47:24]

Uh first of all, I love cooking issues. Keep up the good work, thank you. Uh anyway, I've never written to you before, but I thought you might find this recipe interesting in quotation marks. I literally laughed out loud when I realized uh that these people are actually making a buffalo chicken milkshake. Although it sounds totally gross, I'm thinking the idea of savory milkshakes might be worth checking out, like a frozen bloody merry or something.

[47:42]

Uh I saw this recipe on BuzzFeed, but I can't find the link to the article now. But here's a link to the video of them making it. Um thought you and other readers might enjoy it. Uh thanks and take care, Monica. Okay.

[47:54]

So what this is is uh, and I haven't seen this episode, even though I love Thurry Rock, is that Liz Lemon from 30 Rock is uh passing some sort of a fast food establishment. And the sign says, ba you know, it's back, the Buffalo Chicken Milkshake. And so this guy, which he calls himself a super fan, is on this video on Vimeo, I think, or no, YouTube, and uh he's uh sitting with one of the writers from 30 Rock and he's making her a buffalo chicken milkshake. Now, if you haven't seen the video, here's what he does. He takes milk and cream, right, and then uh see milk cream, uh blue cheese, blends it, adds uh tomato sauce and buffalo uh sauce, buffalo chicken wing sauce, and Worcestershire sauce, right?

[48:40]

And then puts it in the pan, and much like the granito we were talking about earlier, puts it in the freezer and stirs it occasionally uh until it turns into an icy creamy thing, and then uh blends it in a blender uh and then uh serves it as a milkshake and it garnishes it with a uh chicken strip and celery. Okay, now let's just leave aside whether or not this thing's gonna like whether or not this is a good idea. Let's leave that aside. Jack, what's your call? Good idea or bad idea about it, yeah.

[49:07]

Yeah, agreed. Yeah. So anyway, so let's leave this aside. This is a here are the errors that are made from a cooking perspective in this video. Uh first of all, you can tell that the texture of this thing is not going to be right.

[49:21]

It's not an ice cream texture. And the reason why, and it's not gonna be a milkshake texture either, it looks greeny and gloppy. And the reason why is because there's no sugar in it, right? Now, if you want to go savory, right, you still need something to take the place of sugar. Otherwise, the texture is never going to be milkshake.

[49:39]

It's gonna be greeny and gloppy, like it is in the video, you can see it. So, what this person needs to do is get a hold of some glucose syrup, right? Which ha it has a lot of the properties of sugar in terms of texture modifying for ice creams, but does not have the sweetness, right? So this is the first straight-up error that uh is being made in this, is that there's no sugar to modify uh the textures. Now, if I wanted to do it and I didn't have a home uh ice cream machine, which I don't, right, I would uh whip it with a whipping agent, uh then set it in the free uh freezer, then blend it uh with the military stuff you can get it.

[50:15]

But you'd have to have something like glucose syrup. There's a second huge error that uh he makes, and this is the one that really is gonna uh um shows he's not paying attention to the labels on his ingredients, and that is he says that his uh thing, because it it had remembered it has Worcestershire sauce in it. He says that his milkshake is still vegetarian until he puts the chicken strip in. Now, I don't want to go like any of you guys who are vegetarians out there, uh Worcestershire sauce is not vegetarian because the p one of the prime ingredients in Worcestershire sauce is anyone, anyone, and chovies, right? In fact, I just did a clarified uh uh clean you know, centrif centrifically clarified uh Worcestershire sauce like two weeks ago, and all of the anchovy settles out at the bottom and it basically tastes like straight fish paste, the stuff at the bottom that settles out in the clarified Worcestershire sauce.

[51:08]

So Worcestershire sauce is definitely not vegetarian. Now, you can buy crappy fake Worcestershire sauce, right, which I do not recommend at all. And fake Worcestershire can be vegetarian because it doesn't have anchovies in it. But if you use honest to God Worcestershire sauce, which they were using on the video, it is no longer vegetarian. So take that for whatever it is, right?

[51:30]

Right. Anyway. Okay. Matthew writes in on cheese. Hey Nastasha, uh, as I've written in before, I'm working with melted cheese sauce, uses sodium citrate and aorta carrageenin along with cheese, water, and beer.

[51:41]

Sodium citrate is what's called a melting salt, by the way, and it helps uh maintain a smooth curve when something's melted so it doesn't get grainy. Okay. Uh I got the recipe from Nathan Miraville via the internet. Uh his recipe is for use on mac and cheese. I'm using the cheese sauce as a topping for a sandwich.

[51:57]

I melt the cheese and hold it in a steam table. It works quite well, though it does tend to thicken over time. I fix this by adding liquid and then adjusting the seasoning. My question is in reference to the aortic carrageenan in this recipe. Uh in the Miraval recipe, he melts the cheese with uh the chemicals, sets it in a block, and then partially freezes it to make it easier to grade, and subsequently melt it into the cooked macaroni and cooking water.

[52:17]

I'm unsure if the role of caragin is simply to make the cheese more stable for freezing uh and keeping the shape of the block, or if it is to do with the mouthfeel or texture of the melted sauce. Uh as I'm not very familiar with either either uh ingredient in this recipe, I was hoping you could shed some light on on the properties on why they're there and perhaps the purpose of using carrageenin. Well, uh thanks, Matthew. So rather than uh having my own speculation, which I have, uh I wrote Chris Young an email last night. Uh Chris Young is uh, you know, one of the authors of the book and worked on this recipe.

[52:46]

Uh and so uh here's you know what might as well get the answer from the guy, right? Anyway, so he wrote back and he said the short answer is that melting salts uh act to stabilize molten cheese emotions by uh cheating calcium uh so is cheating or does he mean qating? Uh calcium solubilizing and dispersing the proteins, hydrating, it's probably an iPhone problem. Uh solubilizing and dispersing the proteins, hydrating and swelling the proteins and emulsifying the fat. Uh you can use only melting sauce, but older cheeses tend to have brittle texture.

[53:16]

This is because aging breaks proteins down to shorter chains to have less interaction with each other and thus less elastic elasticity in the slice. Adding iota carrageening gives back some of the elasticity and moisture holding ability uh when restructuring a fairy mature cheese. If you want to skip the iota, just blend in younger, milder cheeses. Uh stirred uh curd cheese with three to month, three to six months of age is a good choice. So uh it's basically there so that you can use more intensely flavored, more mature cheeses, and still have some elasticity.

[53:46]

So if you're using a young cheese, uh Chris Young, our friend, who's done a show, uh says you can leave it out. Okay. Uh Chris writes in uh lactic acid uh with a lact another lactic acid and a cheese question. Uh beer, dave, and hammer. Um okay, are there any tips that you might throw at us for using malic, ascorbic citric, and lactic acid in the kitchen?

[54:09]

And I I don't know where he's uh uh you know he is it I wonder whether Chris is a man or a woman. What do you think? Chris with a K, Jack, man or woman. Ooh, with a K. That's a wild card.

[54:18]

I'm not sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough one. I'll say I'll say guy, though. Yeah?

[54:24]

You're going with Chris Christopherson? Yeah. Carlos is going with woman, though. Yeah? So we've got a 50-50 split.

[54:31]

Anyway. Okay. Um, we generally cook vegan uh kinds of food. So a nostalgia on an airplane somewhere is making her vegan face. Uh but not that raw uh I shouldn't say it on air, sugar honey iced tea.

[54:44]

Not that raw sugar honey iced tea. And I promise we stay away from sprouts. Good, because sprouts, as we all know, it tastes like poison. Uh but um Chris is interested in making cheese uh with with nut milks and convinced that lactic acid is the key flavor component that's missing. Yeah, sure she uh he or she knows it's just one go easy on me.

[55:02]

Uh mostly interested in doing this from the perspective of trying to figure out what makes some of the distinctive flavors other than spec uh specific bacteria, etc. Okay. So uh it's true that uh lactic acid is one of the characteristic uh flavors in many, many cheeses, um, and you and and cured meats for that matter, um, and pickles, uh, and sauerkraut uh and kimchi. And you can buy lactic acid and you can spike things with it to make it taste more like that. Uh and I've done this many times.

[55:31]

But as you note, it's only one of the many flavor components that's uh present. So a lot of it is protein breakdown, and uh and and a lot of the for instance, if you ever had a cheese that's so sharp that it like it pops the the taste buds, like I like I have this like harbor reaction to uh certain cheeses that I happen to love, so I eat it anyway, where my taste buds literally pop out, and you can see them, they look like little mushrooms that are exploding on my tongue. And um, and those are because of fat breakdown products. So you have uh, you know, lipid breakdown products, you have protein breakdown products, uh, and you have other like bacterially uh produced things like lactic acid. So it's just a total smorgasbord conglomeration of different uh flavors.

[56:16]

And you can buy, uh, for instance, if you put fats in, you can buy enzymes that will enhance uh the lipid breakdown in nuts uh and cause those certain things to those flavors to happen. I don't know whether they're gonna taste good or not, but that's definitely something you you can you can do. But if you experiment with this, uh, you know, please tell us. A scorbic, for the other one, that's lactic. For a scorbic, I mean I use that whenever I'm juicing.

[56:42]

Like whenever I'm juicing something, uh I got a score big sitting around because that's the one that stops things from turning, uh, you know, stops things from oxidizing, because that's like you know, uh vitamin C, it's an antioxidant. Uh malic, I use uh a mixture of malloc and citric, two parts citric to one part malloc, as my go-to uh acidity corrector because that mixture, two parts uh citric and one part malloc, is basically the main acids in lime juice, and since lime juice is what God put on the earth to correct acidity with, uh, if you don't want to use lime juice because it's not going to keep or it's going to be heated a lot, something like that, a slight pinch of those two acids in that ratio will uh will bring about uh the desired the desired acidity. So I always have those things on hand and and I I use them all the time. Okay. Alright, Dave, we've got to wrap it up.

[57:29]

Alright, I'm almost done with this in my last question. Okay. We good? Do you have five minutes or two minutes? Yep.

[57:34]

Okay. Uh also an unrelated question. Would you be willing, or have you ever posted pictures of your home kitchen somewhere? I know you must have a somewhat small kitchen, and I'm interested in your use of space. We are in uh Los Angeles in a smallish condo, and space is always an issue.

[57:48]

Uh the kitchen's taking over uh the living room. And I wonder if you how you saw some of these issues that we run into, and I'm sure you are more creative about this than we are. I don't know about that. Our solutions often just involve a lot of swearing, but perhaps yours do as well. Well, well, Chris, swearing always works.

[58:02]

I find that if you curse at something enough and sometimes punch and hit it, as long as it's an object, not a person, that you can usually get it to do what you want. But I, in fact, if you go on uh on the Google and you search uh New York magazine, uh Dave Arnold Kitchen, there is a picture of my kitchen. Um it's bigger than it's bigger than it should be. My apartment is 800 square feet, my kitchen is 200 of that, but it is pretty compact. I have a six-foot sink with like sliding boards and all that.

[58:31]

But there's a there's a rundown of it there. I'd be happy to talk about it in excruciating detail uh maybe the next time around when we have more time. But on the way out, I do want to say this. Uh happy holiday to uh everyone out there. We're gonna see you.

[58:46]

We'll be back uh next Tuesday, I think, as scheduled, right? Unless Harris Radio is not going to be working next week. Are they Jack? Are we on for next week? We're not, we're off next week.

[58:54]

So we'll see you guys. And the week after that is what? 2012, yeah. No, it'll be uh January 2nd or 3rd, I think. All right.

[59:04]

Well, listen, I'm gonna see all you guys in the new year, and before I go, I want to say that I can officially announce now that uh we're gonna be starting a bar concept in the back of Sombar, uh, and it's probably the official date is gonna be sometime in mid-January. It's gonna be called Booker and Dax at Sombar, and it's going to be using all of the techniques that we've been jabbering about for years. We're gonna use the red hot poker, I'm gonna use uh some new carbonation equipment I'm building. We're gonna center fuzz there. I'm gonna be doing legal rotary evaporation using liquid nitrogen so that we can do water-based distillations, it tastes good.

[59:43]

We're gonna pull out all of those stops and we're gonna get it going in the back. Uh in uh it's gonna be in night times in the back of Sarmbar. That's awesome. And look for it, Booker and Ducks at Sandbar. Happy holidays, cooking issues.

[1:00:11]

Merry Christmas baby. Now I'm living in paradise. Well, I'm feeling my fat. Got good music on my radio.

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