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 from Roberta's Pizzeria every Tuesday at an undetermined time. Supposed to be 12.
Happy Valentine's Day, people. This is the Valentine's Day uh issue of uh Cooking Issues. Call in all your questions live too. 7184972128. That's 718497-2128 here again with uh Nastasha the Hammer Lopez and uh the engineering crew near the room.
How are you doing, Stas? Good. So the reason I'm late today, today literally most of the time my fault. Most of the time, my fault. Check this one out.
I'm on I'm on the uh subway because I still haven't fixed my bike yet, mainly because I'm lazy. And uh I run, run, because I see see the train coming, right? The uh the uh J train, M train, whatever it is. I run like a lunatic, run, so I'm like I have a huge headache now, like almost like I'm gonna like get an aneurysm or something like that. Jump into the car, door shuts, and then promptly sits on the platform for 20 minutes.
They finally come on, open the door, and they say, Hey, uh, yeah, there's some lunatic. This is Valentine's Day in New York for you people. There's some lunatic walking across the tracks on the Williamsburg Bridge, like stumbling back and forth, apparently, I don't know, some star-crossed idiot. Like walking back and forth across the tracks on the Williamsburg Bridge. So there's no train traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge.
And they don't open the doors to let us out. They trap us like sardines in a box. Thank God my son wasn't there because that's his worst nightmare on earth. So I had to run out and get a taxi so that I could talk to you fine folks today. Anyhow, happy Valentine's Day.
Stas, what are you gonna do for Valentine's Day? I'm babysitting your kids. Yeah, because I have to go work at Booker and Dax, the bar. And first of all, it's only till 10, and Nastasha's night doesn't even begin until 11. I should be getting the pity party because my wife is away on Thanksgiving.
I won't even I mean it's Thanksgiving. On Valentine's Day, I won't even see my wife on Valentine's Day. I don't get a pity party for that. And check this out, people. Today, Valentine's Day is the 20th anniversary of me starting to go out with my wife.
Twenty I started my first day with my wife was on Valentine's Day 20 years ago today. And uh and I'm not even gonna see her today. All right. There you go. See, I believe I deserved a pity party for that one.
But uh yeah, I used to hate Valentine's Day. I hated Valentine's Day so much. Like my the first 20 years of my life, Valentine's Day, worst day in the world. But uh, you know, ever since then, ever since I started going out with my wife, it's been good day. Except today when she's not here.
Rah. Anyway. Okay. Oh, by the way, I realized I don't remember whether it was last week or the week before uh someone asked a question on uh Japanese Western style knives. Uh, because they they had a I forget which which brand it was, um uh I don't know, I forget.
But uh Japanese Western knives which are sharpened uh differentially on the two sides, like 3070 and whatnot. And the question they actually asked me, I realized this morning as I was showering, I was like, they actually asked me how do you use a steel with with a knife like that? And I realized I didn't actually answer that question. I didn't I talked a million for a million years about sharpening and different knife styles and everything, but never about how to actually uh use a steel. You can't.
Don't use a steel on a knife like that because it's almost impossible for you to accurately steal it uh with the two different uh edge angles. What I would recommend though is something that back when I used to have sharp knives in my house, and that means before I had a babysitter who would use my knives, uh, I don't know, I don't know what the hell she does with them, juggle. I don't know what the hell she does. But they're I can't keep them sharp anymore, so I stopped trying. So my knives are now.
I went from having like very, very sharp knives to having very, very dull knives. Um there's a cute kid, by the way, looking in the window of our radio station, pulling her hat on, staring at Nastasha. I think in horror. I think she's staring at Nastash Nastasha in horror. Anyway, um so what I recommend uh to keep knives like that super sharp is it is the same thing that barbers use for uh you know generations for razors, which is get yourself a leather belt, like a leather strop, wide one, hang it up uh somewhere in your kitchen, and uh strop your knife, and that really helps to bring uh like a light bit of an edge back.
You can either strop just with an oiled leather uh band, which is what I did, or use a super, super, super mild abrasive. But the reason it's okay is because you're going in the opposite direction than you would do when you're stealing, and so you're not gonna dull down uh your knife. And it helps to knock a little bit of the like minor burrs that happen as you're cutting. So I would go invest in a strop. I love it.
And plus, strops look badass when you're stropping a knife, it looks kind of badass. You ever stropped a knife, Ted? No. No? You don't like strops?
I wasn't really listening. Good, good. Well, it's good to see you're doing your job here as always. Okay. Uh hi, hi Dave and Nastasha.
A quick sausage question. I found some information on the cooking issues blog about cooking sausages directly in a liquid uh in a liquid with a circulator. One thing the blog didn't mention is how long it takes to get an average size sausage to temperature in a 60 degrees Celsius bath. Additionally, what is the maximum amount of time the sausages should be held at this temperature before the quality goes south? Thanks, Matthew.
Okay. Well, that's an interesting question. Uh, I should think that the that the interior of the sausage, I mean, any reasonable size sausage, it's going to be done probably in 40, 45 minutes, something like that. If you think about it relative to an egg. If you actually want to measure it, you can use uh one of the programs like Sous V dashboard that you can is available on uh on your iTunes or whatnot.
Uh and and you could check exactly, but within 45 minutes or so, uh the average size thick you know sausage should be done. Uh now I would hold it for longer than that because the the deal is is typically you have some tougher cuts of meat in a sausage and you're tenderizing it via um via grinding. That's one of the reasons why you grind it, right? Well, if you hold it longer and longer, the meat gets more and more tender. So depending on what cuts of meat are in it, uh, you could hold it for quite a long time at those temperatures, quite a long time.
Now, I've never held a sausage longer than oh six hours or so. But uh they were good at the end of uh six hours. The trick, remember, when you're when you're cooking sausage in a liquid like that, is to uh have the liquid be so flavorful that you're not leaching uh flavor out constantly over time. I would not cook them for any longer than necessary in an excess of flavorless liquid. Or you could put them in a Ziploc bag with a small amount of oil and cook them forever or bait not forever, but you know, for a long time, hours.
Uh, and they're just gonna probably get better, probably not get worse, depending on what kind of kind of cut of meat uh that you put into it. Um anyway, does that help? Mm-hmm. Anyway, it's a good technique. I do that technique all the time.
Everyone's like, I I think I told us on I said this on the show before, but I bought some really cruddy, not cruddy, but like you know, cheap, cheap sausage and peep and cooked it that way, 60 degrees, 60 or 62, depends. It's gonna be a little pink at the center at 60, which some people freak out about, so you might want to do 62, depending on what kind of meat is in the sausage. And depending on whether the sausage is already cured. If the sausage is cure a cured kind of sausage, if there's any sort of nitrites in it, it's gonna be pink anyway, and then you can cook it to whatever temperature you want, in which case I would do 60. If not, uh, you might want to do 62.
Depends on on uh how people feel. Uh, but uh anyway, I bought this cheap chorizo, and there were people like this is the most delicious sausage in the whole world. I was like, it's a circulator, it's not me. Anyway, uh I had something else with that, but I forget what it is. Oh, yeah.
Anyway, uh my my brain's a little fried because uh I'm saying, like, we we here at Cooking Issues haven't been burning uh the candle at both ends recently. We've just been taking the candle, throwing it in the oven and melting that sucker down. You know what I mean? It's like years ago, it's hilarious. Like uh, you know, I heard Drew Drew Neprunt, you know, the famous restaurant tour, he was giving a talk somewhere, I forget where I was, I was attending the talk, and he said this.
He said, uh, people always ask me, how do you balance, you know, like a family life and a restaurant life? And he said, you don't. Ha. And you were like, I can do it. Well, you know, yeah, whatever.
Anyway, funny. Okay. So uh here's the thing. Like, uh working at the bar until all hours of night, right? And then putting your kids on the bus in the morning, is not comp not like that, no, no work.
No work, right? So my brain therefore, it's not working. So if I'm a little frazzled today, folks, it's just because I'm stupid. Okay. Uh, dear Dave and Nastasha.
Uh a friend of mine recently found out she has celiac disease and therefore cannot have any more gluten. Uh I was attempting to create for her some of the homemade goodness that the rest of us get to enjoy, uh i.e. uh gluten, delicious, delicious gluten. But when looking on the internet, I found many conflicting suggestions for the use of Xanthan and Gwar gum, as well as suggested non-wheat flour blends tapioca, potato, millet, etc., without rhyme or reason as to the ratios used. Do you have any experience or advice for working with gluten free breads, pizzas, or pastas?
What changes in properties can I expect from different brands of flour? Uh what is uh working in xanthan gum that is intended to replace the gluten structure? Thanks for any help. Alex from Florida. All right, well, first of all, uh I don't have any actual experience uh cooking gluten free because I haven't had any uh I haven't had any need really to do it, you know, for my own family, and uh I cook occasionally, I'll cook some gluten free stuff if I have someone specifically coming over to my house, but I've never done a thorough, thorough researching of it.
Um, but I do have some advice. The the reason look, the the here's the reason it it it it's tough to, and that there's so many recipes out there is that wheat flour, right, is fantastic stuff. And uh there's and all of the recipes that you know we've been developing since time immemorial are based on the properties of wheat flour. Uh so you know, one of the flow pop properties of wheat flour is its flavor, right? Which we have all come to appreciate.
Uh, and the other one, uh the other other ones are its gluten, which provides structure. Uh there's a bunch of properties. And the issue with making a uh a replacement for wheat flour is that no one grain flour or no one flour uh has all of the properties of uh of wheat. So if you're trying to actually mimic a wheat flour product in terms of its texture, right, you're gonna have to use it uh a blend of uh of flowers, right? So that said, and I'll get to the the guar and the xanth in a second.
That said, uh, you know, a lot of people base the initial uh part of their recipe on rice flour, right? Because it's fairly bland, fairly neutral, right? And you know, it's not that expensive, it's easy to obtain, right? But if you use it uh exclusively, then it tends to make kind of dense leaden uh gritty things. So they add other uh you know starches and flours to it, like tapioca, for instance, uh, which is going to add some stretch because it's really kind of weird, gluey stuff, uh add some lightness, or potato, which uh helps absorb uh which helps keep things moist and also make things lighter.
So it's a balancing act between choosing uh those different um those different things. Now, when you go to add things like bean flours, which some people do, uh, that's gonna also add its own kind of holding capabilities, ability to hold bubbles and trap bubbles, which is what one of the great things about wheat flour is its ability, and this is what the gluten helps here is the ability to hold bubbles and form a nice structure when things are baking. Um so each flour has its different thing, but if you're gonna add bean flour, the problem is if it's a very uh light flavored thing, you start tasting the bean flour in it and it's and it's kind of gross. So if you need something sturdier and the flavor can be covered up, then you can use things like that. And if they can't, you have to use something more neutral.
In addition, uh a way to hold bubbles is to make things thicker. So people add starches that help thickening. So they're adding things like arrowroot starch, even though it's quite expensive, right? Uh a good thing I saw on the uh on the interwebs about this is uh from uh and and this what I like about it is just her opinion on on what the different flowers do. You go to gluten free mommy, and she has a list of all the different base flours and kind of what her uh opinion on kind of what they what they contribute or don't attribu uh contribute to particular uh mixes, including sorghum flour, white flour, uh white rice flour, and etc.
etc. etc. I mean the one problem I have with all these websites actually is that they look if you have an issue, like you can't have gluten, then focus on that. But everyone also throws in a bunch of nutritional mumbo jumbo about what's good for you and what's not good for you. I hate that.
I hate thinking, and my kids even do this. I hate it so much. Is my kids are like, is this good for you? Is that good for you? I'm like, it's all either good or not good for you, depending on the balance of things you eat in your diet.
There's no there are very few things that are bad for you. And there are very few things that are good for you. You know what I mean? Like if you ate only carrots, you would turn orange. You know, I told my kid that, and then he won't eat carrots, freaked out about carrots.
He thinks he's gonna turn orange. I'm like, no, no, you have to eat like many, many sacks of carrots. But the point is, variety is the spice of life, my friends. And you want to eat a lot of different things. Do you know what I'm saying?
Anyway, all right. So uh another issue on that. Now, so that that's just the different ratios of flour and what the rhyme or reason is is you want to get a balance that mimics the texture of wheat flour without having an uh uh an overly assertive taste. Usually the tastes are beanie, they call them beanie or kind of like you know, weird kind of like dusty, like you know, like like chickpea flour or like uh what's the black eye pea flour, things like that. Okay.
Now, as for Xanthan gum and guar gum, uh Xanthan gum is used to replace the protein because like protein, Xanthan gum can form a gel and really hold a light gel, right? And really hold air bubbles well. So it's used directly as a gluten replacer. Guar gum is cheaper than Xanthan gum, right? And the guar gum that you typically buy in the store has an awful, awful kind of beanie taste.
So I hate using it in things like ice cream. There's really nice, nice guar gum called flavor-free guar from TIC gums that is very neutral in taste. Uh, but guar isn't really as good a replacer for gluten as Xanthan, because Xanthan has the ability to form a loose gel structure that holds bubbles during the baking process, whereas guar is simply a thickener. So I wouldn't replace uh like I wouldn't say that guar on its own is going to do your job for you. But guarantection with Xanthan, guar can be used to replace some of the Xanthan and make the Xanthan a little bit cheaper.
Uh now uh another thing you can use if you're not like multiply going to make your life difficult is eggs. The protein in eggs is fantastic uh and and easy easy to use. And so that the protein in egg, egg white, and you know, I guess also an egg yolk, can help replace some of the gluten because it holds structure as well. Uh so you know, eggs, xanthan, uh guar, I mean, whatever. The then I came across a website that's actually pretty interesting, and apparently it's won a bunch of awards.
Uh, gluten-free girl and the uh chef. And here's something that they said that's uh very interesting. Uh by the way, I have some issues with the site. For instance, the I don't know whether it's the uh gluten-free girl or the chef who's who's writing this, uh, because I don't know that much about the website, but you know, they stopped using Xanthan and Guar. They use a lot, they the recipe I soften and they use a lot of eggs because it's their opinion that they're that they're having a negative reaction to the Xanthan and to the guar.
It could be that they're having a negative reaction to the guar. Guar is uh, you know, you don't really digest guar. And so if you eat eight boatloads of guar, it's like you know, it's like eating uh uh a serving of coal and blow, you know what I mean? And you're gonna, you know, you're gonna have some fiber issues. You know, it's like eating a whole boatload of fiber.
It's gonna give you some swelling and some poop. Anyway, but you know what I mean? It's like so that that that can be uh an issue. The good thing about Xanthan is I doubt anyone's actually having a reaction to the Xanthan because you're using it in much smaller quantities than you would use the guar. So it has less stuff that can go in there and cause you to bloat and swell and poo and all that kind of stuff, all that good kind of stuff.
Anyway, gluten-free girl and the chef, they don't use uh gum replacements like that, they don't use guaranthan, but they do use eggs. But they brought up an interesting point which I hadn't uh thought about, which is uh, I mean, I always bake with grams. Always 100% of the time. I bake in grams. That's not true, sometimes ounces, but by weight.
Uh and by weight is obviously everyone knows it's the best way to bake. And everyone in the world thinks that we Americans are small children in the kitchen because we use these dumb cup measurements to measure things out. And in general, we can get away with it because we're measuring the same thing over and over and over again, and even though we're plus or minus about 10% with our measurements, our recipes still work. I say we should switch away from uh using cups, not because of the accuracy, although that's great, but because it's really messy to measure with cups, and it's much easier to measure and to change recipes when you're using a scale. I mean, a scale is just the best thing to have.
Anyways, uh, it turns out that these different flours that you're substituting in when you're making your uh your gluten-free flour mix have radically different densities from AP uh wheat flour. And so if you switch to going by weight, your substitutions are gonna be much much easier. And so that is what I think a good recommendation from the gluten-free girl and the chef. Anyway, let's go to our first commercial break and come back with cooking issues. I like this.
And welcome back to Cooking Issues. Jack, what was that? That was uh the Pixies from Carlos. That was some weird stuff, Carlos. Yeah, man, that's what I was saying.
That's some weird, weird business. I mean, I know we're some weird people, but that's some weird, weird business. Uh calling order questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Pixies.
That's that's what? That's Bjork? No, no. Bjork was the sugar cubes. Sugar cubes.
Man, you know what? And that was my era. Like, I should like this should be on the tip of my tongue, but that just wasn't my scene. You know what I mean? Yeah.
I was more fishbone chili peppers kind of a guy. Yeah, anywho. Uh, okay. The only reason I say that is because that's also weird. You know what I mean?
Bjork. All right. Uh, oh, uh, I forgot to mention the gluten-free girl and the chef. Those guys also use uh flax seed or chia seeds. You ever cook with that crap, Stas?
You blend it with a liquid and it turns to like a mucilaginous goop. So they also use that as a uh as a uh a structure replacer. But my point is this. If you're using a mucilaginous goop as a structure replacer, just use Xanthan. Xanthan's a great mucilaginous goop, and you don't have to go grind up flax seeds to do it.
My opinion. My opinion. Just me. Just me. Okay.
Uh oh, wait, I had something else. Oh, yeah. So when you're dealing with the gluten-free stuff, also, remember what you're using it for. A cookie doesn't need a lot of gluten. A cake doesn't need a lot of gluten.
So there you're just trying to mimic the texture of uh the texture of a wheat flour uh stuff, not necessarily the super. When you really need the hardcore gluten, is in a bread. In a cake, you want it to be fairly light. And this is another point that the gluten-free uh girl and the chef bring up, which is good, is that remember batters recipes a lot of times will tell you not to overmix, not to develop the gluten, and when you're dealing gluten-free, you don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. Uh so in a cookie or a cake, you can just focus on the taste and the texture of the kind of starch balance, the flour itself, uh, with just uh enough structure from the protein to give it some structure.
And you don't have to worry about it holding air in the way of a uh a bread would. So uh that's another reason why there's no one-to-one substitution because you're trying to do different wheat things with wheat flour depending on on what you're doing. Okay. Now, uh oh, by the way, we got uh something in from uh Elliot Papineau uh about uh stropping. Bob Kramer has a strop kit, uh so you can go online, look up Bob Kramer and purchase a strop kit.
Strops are really badass, I have to say. You look like you look like you're gonna like a like uh like Sweeney Todd Demon Barber of Fleet Street, like you're gonna go slit someone's throat as soon as you start stropping. Like if you were dropping a knife behind your kitchen counter, somebody like, yeah, I'm not gonna mess with that dude. That dude's dropping a knife behind the counter. Equally, it doesn't have to be a a guy, woman.
You know, when I say dude, it's kind of a gender-neutral dude. Is there any sort of gender-neutral? All of your appliances are women. What are you talking about? Not all my appliances are women.
Take her, make sure she's when you're talking about the centrifuge, the rotovap. You're crazy, you're a crazy lady. Okay. Uh Elliot also has a second point, which is that if you need to find uh the edge of your 70-30 knife, you just lay it flat on a stone and raise it until you feel the edge, that's good. Or I don't know if I mentioned this using a sharpie on the edge, you can feel you can look and see whether you're being accurate to do it when you want to test your edge.
Anyway, okay. He also writes in with a question, uh, Elliot does, and says, Whenever you get on the air, can you talk about the different sources of glutamate? I've been experimenting with uh various uh uh free glutamate uh containing products such as tomatoes, mushrooms, kambu, katsuabushi. And what's the best way to pair foods containing free glutamates? Well, uh that's good point and interesting.
I always uh find it hilarious when someone eats something that contains eight boatloads of uh of uh you know free uh you know glutamate there, and then they say that they have a reaction to uh MSG. Nastasha. Yeah. I'm talking about you. I know.
Anyway, uh so I mean the best thing to do is like so the classic think about it this way the classic pairing, classic, classic, classic pairing, obviously, is kambu, which is uh has a high source of uh free glutamates and katsu bushi, which has uh high high IMP. Those two things go together uh and basically synergistically react to make like megammy, mega umami, which is why kambu uh, which is why the c like combu and katsuobushi are so good together. And Nastasha hates, by the way, kambu broth. I do. But you like it once you add katsuabushi and turn it into miso sauce.
Yes. You just don't like the CV broth on its own. Yes. Anyway, so it's good to have cavity fillings. What?
It tastes like cavity fillings. Uh well, I wouldn't know. My teeth are fine. I don't have any cavities. I've never had a cavity, and I've never heard anyone describe it like that, so I'm sure you're being crazy like usual.
Cavity fillings. Why would kambu to stock taste like cavity filling? What do they make cavity fillings out of? I don't know. Aluminum?
No. You tell me if you aluminum? Aluminum. I think so. No, they used to be made out of a mercury amalgam, but they're not anymore.
It's aluminum, no. No! Why would you put aluminum in your mouth? Crazy, crazy person. It's nuts.
You know, people, seriously. People, people. Seriously. Okay. Uh so how do we get on there anyway?
Oh, yeah. So uh when you're when you're pairing things together, I mean, obviously, uh, you know, it's good to add uh I mean, I just throw a bunch of those things. I have to cook a lot of vegetarian stuff uh because uh a couple members of my family are vegetarian and they come over. So a lot of my sauces that I used to umami up by throwing in anchovies, uh, because anchovies are delicious in everything. You could throw anchovies into just about anything.
And I'm not talking about the white ones that you know everyone like, you know, they they love like the bookarones and stuff like that, which are great, they're great, fine, whatever. But like, you know, good old-fashioned salt cured anchovies uh in the can uh are like you know, one of God's great ingredients, and they make almost anything taste better. Everyone says they don't like them, and no one has ever said they don't like them when it's mixed into a pizza sauce, pizza sauce good with anchovy, yeah. Stash is nodding her head, but now salad dressing, good with an anchovy in it. Any of that stuff.
You want to you want to umelate something, bang, hit it in, you're done. Anyway, umamelate you heard it here first, cooking issues, umamalite. Uh but the uh uh the point is so like you know, you have to you have to add other high umami stuff. Now, you can go and work on things like tomatoes, and yes, I use boatloads of uh tomato paste when I'm when I'm because it's like super concentrated tomato. Obviously, you use lots of mushrooms to get that meaty stuff up, parmesan, these are you know, all obvious, and you end up, you know, you end up doping stuff back with a whole boatload of soy, right?
The problem with me is is that trying to get meaty and uh high umami flavors by uh just adding high umami ingredients like that, specifically soy and whatnot, really let lend lets makes everything kind of taste the same. It it kind of it makes all of the food have a similarity to it that you don't get uh from just, for instance, adding salt. So like uh I think I talked about this like you know, I don't know, a year ago or something like that. You know, a lot of companies are trying to lower the sodium content of their foods, and the only way they can this is the world's worst term and it shows how people think, but uh increase the palatability of the things that they make uh when they reduce the sodium. Isn't that gross there?
We're trying to reduce the sodium but increase but keep the palatability, just gross, right? It's like not like we're gonna make some delicious stuff. It's like you know, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna make it more palatable. Anyway, so they they dope it with um with a non-sodium form of uh glutamate so that they can keep the quote unquote sodium level low. Uh and they do it using that like also quote unquote natural sources, which means that they'll take like eight eight tons of seaweed and turn it into a powder.
Might as well just use MSG. Anyway, uh problem is when you dope foods with specifically with like lots of free glutamates like that, they tend to then all taste like dashi to me, right? Mm-hmm. You've had that also happen too, right? I was tasting somebody's pasta.
I think I mentioned this. I was tasting someone's pasta and it was it was a fettuccine alfredo, right? And which is what I strangely what I call my wife sometimes, because it's like Jennifer, Jennifer, Fred, Freddie, Freddie, any whatever. Anyway, like all almost everything I say in in private when I'm not on the air is some stupid, stupid combination of crazy, dumb, random inferences. You know what I mean?
Anyway, uh so Fettuccine Alfredo, I was like, this tastes good, but Federcini Alfredo is not supposed to taste like Dashi. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? Right? Anyway.
Anyways. Uh so that's my feeling, Elliot, uh uh on that. Should we do one more commercial? Before I go on the more commercial break, I'll have to say this. My favorite Valentine's quote of all time.
Last year I was in the Rite Aid outside of my house, which is a pharmacy for all you people that don't know what a right aid is. Nastasha hates them because she only shops at TVS. She literally went better music. Okay, okay. She literally last last week Nastasha had a root canal, right?
So I hope she was high on Vikodin when she made this choice. She went to a she went out of her way to go to a CVS, even though they had a two hour wait for the medicine. If she could have got it in the 10 minutes at the right age, she would two hours like out of her way, two hours wait for his medicine because she likes to hold music better. No. Yes.
The store music. The store music. Whatever. Yes. Whatever.
That's hold. You're on hold. Really? I know. I know.
Crazy, right? You know, put on your iPod, listen to whatever music you want, and don't wait two hours for your Vicodin, your antibiotics. That's my point. Anyways, I'm in the right A like a year ago, and they had the Easter decorations out right around now. And someone let a lady walks in, she goes, Easter, it ain't even Valentine's Over yet.
Anyway, commercial break. My name is Cupid Valentino. The Martin Bay Cupid. I just want to say one thing. Happy Valentine's Day.
I don't think that hurt, man. I just want to say happy Valentine's Day. Can y'all do that? Now, when arrows don't penetrate. Let's see.
Huh? Yeah. Yeah. Now look at here. He straight for your heart.
Now you won't miss you. Well, that's alright. Y'all won't believe in me anyway, but all this talk about Santa Claus will rule supreme. Every day in the Ford game. You got it.
When a cute hit knocks at your door. You can't ignore me. There's no need to rhyme. So happy Valentine's Day. Hey.
You can't, you cannot ignore the cube. And by the way, I just looked out the window, and Indy Jesus looks like he's having a fine Valentine's Day. Oh yeah. Yeah, he's a smile on Indy Jesus' face. You know what it takes to get Jesus to smile?
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Uh, fans of cooking issues that place an order of $25 or more before next week's show, we'll get a free pack uh free package of sodium hexametaphosphate to play with. Simply use the promo code CI72 and placing your order online at modernistpantry.com. Visit modernistpantry.com today for all of your modernist cooking needs. Hey and Chris Anderson, good for you for doing the sodium hexametaphosphate and not the sodium citrate. Sodium hexametaphosphate is the baller sequestering.
Sodium citrate is more of a buffer. Sodium hexametaphosphate or shimp as they call it. That stuff's the balls. It's good stuff. Oh, also, Colin, longtime writer in Colin, writes, because you know I always gripe about what's the difference between a home cook and an enthusiast.
What are we talking about? So Colin writes in regarding enthusiasts. You don't need to cook anything to play with hydrocolloids. Science nerds love that stuff, but some can't actually feed themselves. Thus I believe the distinction, Colin.
Other topics, uh, my wedding anniversary, which I'm not my wedding anniversary. No, no, no, no. That was my note to you. I thought Colin knew my anniversary something. I was crazy.
It's like, how's Colin gonna know that? It's not my wedding anniversary. I got married in June. It's my anniversary of going out. Nastasha, you know what?
Like, listen, Nastacha, when you put this stuff on there, put it our comments in a different color. Just so you know how this show runs. Like your comments when you write them are in black, and my comments that I make to jog my memory when I'm yapping on the radio, I write in blue, so I can tell what's us and what's you. And the headline of your question I write in red. Not that anyone gives a rat's patoot.
Okay. Uh now. What? I can't say patoot. You thought Colin knew.
I thought Colin was like other topics. It's random. Okay. Okay. So we have a question in from uh Marvin uh Woodhouse saying, uh, loves the show and been listening from Ireland and now Germany since day one.
From Ireland to Germany. It's pretty cool. I wonder what I wonder what uh I wonder what the they do. Yeah, what do they do that they're moving from Ireland to Germany? I wonder, curious.
Anyway. Question one. I'm in the process of moving to Germany, and most apartments here do not come with kitchens. Just a bare room with tiles and connections. So I'll be starting from square one.
What's the must-have list of stuff in it uh if you were starting from a bare room? Nothing, not even extraction. That's a hood for you and I in America. Uh the kitchen will be about 20 square meters. So Nastasha, look up what 20 square meters is in square feet so my brain can wrap my head around it.
Okay. First of all, I know there's plenty of people here in New York City that wish their apartment came with no kitchen because it's just wasted space. How many people do you know that use their oven as a bookcase? I do, which is crazy. First of all, uh just a separate note.
Anyone out there, never store crap in your oven, right? It just means that you have a mental imbalance or a problem. Yeah. Don't ever store stuff in your oven. It's just it's just not right because it implies you're not going to use it.
If you're gonna cook, don't store anything in your oven. My two cents. So what's 20 square meters? Coming. Oh, thanks, Google.
Thanks, ATT with the slow Google. All right. First thing is first, as you mentioned, extraction. It's my feeling that a hunt light like the the biggest it's eventually gonna be seen as a health issue, right? For people who cook a lot.
215.2 square. Oh, that's good. 215, that's about the size of my kitchen. That's a good space. It's a good size space.
Uh I mean it's small by suburban standards, but you know, my kitchen's pretty comfortable at 200 square feet, right? Yeah. I can have eight people cooking in my kitchen. But it's very well designed. Anyway, if I do say so myself.
Uh, but uh extraction a hood is the most important thing. Everyone here is underdesigned in terms of uh their hoods. Home hoods suck. Uh they're the worst. They're useless.
Not useless, but they're they're of limited usefulness. I would invest in a really good fan uh vent that this is illegal in the US. I don't know whether it is in Germany. Vent it straight out the window with a straight pipe, straight out the window. Uh I purchased a large blower and it the hood itself doesn't need to be expensive.
It's just a piece of metal. It's the fan that you need uh uh good fan. And bigger fans rotate at slower speeds and therefore are not as annoying as little fans that rotate at high speeds. So I would say if you're gonna spend uh you know your nickels, first of all, go with good uh a good hood. Secondly, if you're in Germany, I haven't checked it recently, but I assume it's similar to France in that the gas prices are relatively high relative to electric compared to the US.
Get an induction uh get induction. If you're gonna be in this apartment a long time, then go ahead and get something that's built in. Otherwise, you can get really nice induction hobs that you can take with you when you go. In particular, some manufacturers now make front back uh induction units so that you can uh mimic an actual traditional uh range by stacking induction units next to each other and having front back on induction. So I would uh you know I would definitely go that way.
If you want to go more permanent, you can get uh an induction uh, you know, a regular induction over range, but the over range the over things don't necessarily work that well. But I'll go separate. Uh get a good convection oven with uh with um a good convection oven would be nice. Uh electric there as well. Uh I'm assuming that you're again I'm assuming that electricity is gonna be the best for you there in terms of uh cost.
So uh again, I really don't have any idea what you're gonna. I'll tell you what I have in mind, which is about the same spot. I have I have a large uh oven that could take a full sheet pan. If you're gonna cook, you wanted that. It's not necessary, but full sheet pan is again baller I have six burners you're probably not gonna have that if you don't have extraction especially if you're gonna go induction I also have a salamander which you're probably not gonna put in your place but I love it uh and a deep fry next to it I find that that combination which I don't expect you to emulate is I can cook I can bang out uh like a small restaurant's worth of food in my kitchen without breaking a sweat because it is the setup that you would have in a small restaurant kitchen basically I have a fryer a salamander six burners and a and a full sheet pan uh oven obviously for me it's important to have an espresso machine uh but you know whatever since you're building this yourself you can do some cool stuff the coolest thing that you could possibly do is uh put foot pedals on your sink every every sink uh in the in the world in a kitchen or bathroom should have foot pedals installed so that when your hands are disgusting you don't have to touch the faucet so I have uh I have hot and cold foot pedals uh on my on my floor and my wife who didn't think it was uh so important or such a good idea she was like really really now is like yes really you need that everyone who's used them loves it and since you're installing from scratch uh get get the foot pedals don't skimp on your sink size sink size you're never gonna need too you know sink size is important right don't you hate a tiny sink what do you think yeah I hate tiny sinks tiny sinks tiny sinks is there anything else for you that's good good recognition oh no my patch that's the hey Patrick Martins founder of Heritage Foods coming into the studio hey everybody yeah there he is oh he's got some really nice orange corduroys that I now covet you covet I covet Patrick Martin's orange corduroy pants.
Okay. 18 miles, baby. What? What happened eighteen miles. Of what?
In two days I ran. Oh, Patrick ran 18 miles in in two days. I don't know that it's not good for your knees. That's you know, that's bad for your knees. You know.
Anyway. Okay, question two from Marvin. Uh I have a badass poly science lab circular uh circulator, model uh eight eight one two. By the way, I couldn't find eight eight one two. But the unit is so big that it's difficult to fit food round in the small bath that's designed to fit.
I've removed it from the lab bath, but there's no mounting bracket. Do you have any experience of mounting these things to or over a sink? I haven't actually mounted one of those to a sink, but uh you might want to look at this as an alternative. Uh though uh some of those units, the a the uh and I couldn't find your exact one, but I have one that looks similar to it, have two screws in the back of it uh on the bath itself that allow you to circulate in and out of that same bath. So you could literally just put uh hoses and circulate into a sink and put the whole circulator into a cabinet next to it.
And I've done that many times. That's how I chilled my rota vap, for instance. Uh you just have to make sure you get the water levels uh relatively the same so that you don't overflow your circulator bath. But uh I would do that, or else you could just uh make a second uh I mean if you could weld, obviously you could do it, but you could easily mount one by just having someone cut out a stainless steel bracket with the same hole mounting pattern as the one that was in the bath and then cantilever it over your sink. I would make it with wing nuts so that you could take it off uh very quickly without taking up too much space.
But yes, it's definitely possible. But look into just using the bath as uh as a holding bin so that you can circulate stuff in and out. Question three. I'm throwing a cocktail party next month. Uh to Marcus leaving Ireland.
Can you have a caller? Oh wait, I have a caller, caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave. Uh, uh this is Todd Bryant. Got a quick question for you.
Go ahead. Um on following up on your knife uh discussion a couple weeks ago. Uh how often do you use a steel on your knives? Uh well, back in the day on my German uh on my German knives, I would use them pretty much uh, you know, before and after, pretty much all the time. Or when my strop was hanging, I would I would strop them before and after.
I mean, it all depends on what kind of uh what kind of knife. So my German ones, I I used to sharpen uh I you know, just not a quick one, you know, I wouldn't like go through the whole sharpening process, but I'd touch up the blades on the stone probably once a week. And uh and then you know, I would strop and or steal every use. My Japanese knives, you touch them up every time you use them, basically, afterwards, you know. Uh and you know, the the the real traditional Japanese ones.
And the Japanese Western ones, I never had much of a knack sharpening them. I got I so I ended up I ended up not using them as much because I was not so good at sharpening them. Okay. All right. So just touch my before and after then.
Uh yeah, I would know. Well, then how do you know when it's time to do a full sharpening? Or you just do that automatically once a week? Yeah, I would just do it automatically, or if they start dulling out or someone picks up your knife and uses it for something inappropriate, you know, it's like you you know, you know when your knife is getting dull. You know when you can't bring it back, and the tomato you start having to push into it and you split the tomato, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's just, you know, you could do it by that. I find it easier if you just choose a time to do it. It depends on how much you cook.
You know what I mean? But uh if you just choose a time to do it, uh then your knives are always gonna be in fantastic shape, and you're not gonna get creep and start using uh uh a dull knife when it could be sharp. So back when I could have sharp knives in my house, I would just have a routine, and you know, every Sunday before I started cooking family dinner, I would just go through my knives and sharpen it. I used an edge pro, which was easy to set up because I could just keep most of my knives at a similar edge angle and I can rip through them pretty quickly. An edge pro is not a good uh sharpening system to sharpen one knife.
It's good to sharpen your whole set of knives. You know what I mean? Because you have to set it up and all that stuff. Yeah. Okay, great.
Well, that's what you answered my question. Thank you very much. Thank you. Uh all right, so uh question three, and I gotta answer this one. Uh again from Marvin.
I'm throwing cocktail party next month to Marcus leaving Ireland. Can you suggest some interesting cocktails and canope combos? Or as I call them canaps. I have an uh ISI but no proper carbonation rig. I also have agar gelatin.
I also need some non-alcoholic cocktails that are not lame as there will be some pregnant ladies in attendance. Okay, well I hit the non-alcoholic stuff. I say make coriander the coriander syrup. Mm-hmm. Right.
So if you make coriander syrup, just take make a simple syrup, crush up coriander, put it in there, add a little bit of uh like a hot pepper, preferably red, like Thai, red, or serrano or something like that. Um that syrup makes a fantastic soda, and you can carbonate in an ISI, it's just gonna cost you more. And the way you carbonate in an ISI is by uh sh shaking, adding some water, shaking the syrup with uh with water, and then putting one CO2 cartridge in, shaking a little bit, venting that entire one off. You've cleared out all of the uh air in there in that now. Now put a second charger on, shake it, and you'll get a good uh second CO2 charger in your ISI.
Uh vent very very let sit for a couple of minutes after you shake it, let it vent very slowly, and you can get a decent soda, and that's good. That syrup is also really good as a cocktail for uh old fashions, it makes a great old fashioned uh makes a good tequila old fashioned, good mezcal old fashioned. Uh, we've been using that uh in everything. That if you do make an old fashioned using coriander syrup, it's called a cliff old fashioned because uh you know, Cliff or you know, uh ex-intern Cliff uh came up with the idea of making a uh what's it called an old fashioned with that syrup uh you have any Nastasha's gonna think of good uh canaps while I answer your last question and not you have uh next month I have a week to think we have a week to think of your Knaps can I pay so I'll come back to it and also I will next week suggest some things that you might be able to use with your one kilogram of NZORBIT that's in your kitchen listen Marvin if you have one kilogram of NZOBI in your kitchen that's almost going to take up your entire 200 square foot space because one kilogram of end zorbit is a giant giant amount of NZOBIT and Zorbit for all that you don't know is the is the stuff that you make power uh oils into powders with but I'll come back with you on that Marvin next week and we'll do it and that has been this week for cooking issues thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network. You can find all of our archived programs on HeritageRadio Network dot com as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows.
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