Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwood, 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 on the Heritage Radio Network in Bushwood, Brooklyn, every Tuesday from approximately 12 to 1245. Today, Jack, we are coming exactly 12.
12 on the dot. Which does not happen. No. Unfortunately, we are not joined in the studio today with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. She is taking my place at the Bukey Trade Show in Florida, Orlando.
Orlando, Orlando. Yeah. So she's uh she's down there uh roto vaping um scotch in uh in a rotary evaporator, and then taking the leftover oak and uh making ice cream with it. And I'm assuming taking the uh the you know the clear scotch, the uh we call it you know gray dog, the one that's been uh ta had the oak taken out of it in the road of app, I'm sure she's just drinking that to drown her sorrows. Right?
I mean she's not a hey, no offense to Florida. She's not an Orlando fan. Let me just put it that way. She's not happy to be taking my place in Orlando. But eventually today in the audience, uh in the uh studio rather, we're gonna have Tony Connigliaro.
And since nobody can pronounce his name, which I I think means rabbit keeper in Italian, uh, they just call him Tony C. But Tony C, it uh runs, you know, one of my absolute most favorite bars in the whole world, uh 69 Colebrook Row, uh, in London. Fantastic bar. He has uh a you know a laboratory as well where he does a lot of really high uh you know cutting edge work uh in cocktails and was uh one of the cocktail bars where I first experienced uh you know the fact that you could use very high end uh very high end stuff in a very comfortable wonderful atmosphere and so Tony should be here in a minute but he uh is as many guests have been uh trapped somewhere in Brooklyn and does not know how to get to Robertus that happens man it does it does he left like he was in Brooklyn in Williamsburg headed here started like half hour ago and has not yet made it amazing anyway uh calling all your questions to 7184972128 that's 718 497 2128. It's kind of sad not having Nastasha here right yeah yeah I can do my best I can you know make some faces and stuff.
I know but I can hardly even see your face yet somebody needs to sit across from you at that table and make faces. Right preferably someone like Nastasha who has like a a peculiar knack for getting me angry. Right. Yeah yeah all right anyway while we're waiting for questions to come in uh we have a question from oh this is last week's question that we didn't get to from uh Lee Calman and by the way my kids ran my battery dry on my iPad so I'm actually doing this uh this show via my iPhone and uh case you didn't know I'm getting a little old so it's hard for me to read these tiny tiny letters. Anyway, hey guys love the show got my hands on three fresh lamb hearts well since this question is from last week I doubt the lamb hearts are fresh anymore.
You know what I mean Jack? Uh I trimmed the first one in the medallions and simply grilled it with salt and pepper. It was delicious. The second I also trimmed in medallions and cooked at low temperature for 56 Celsius at 56 Celsius rather for three hours and also had uh it was delicious, but it had a very similar texture to the first attempt. Wondering how I might get it a bit more tender on the third heart, perhaps another hour or two of cooking.
Or since it's relatively lean cut, is there nothing really to break down? What would you do? Well, Lee, uh, I love heart. I haven't done a lot of work with uh low temperature cooking on heart, uh, but you know, the way that you did it first, which is you know, really grilled quickly with like a char on the outside where it remains chewy on the inside, is to me my favorite on almost any kind of heart, you know, like chicken hearts. There's nothing, there's nothing quite like a grilled uh chicken heart.
Like if I could grow chickens that just had hearts and skin, that I would do that. I mean, I love chicken meat, but chicken hearts and chicken skins are are incredible. But I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. It's relatively not only is it relatively lean, but uh I believe, and I did some research into it, I believe most of the uh that you know, muscle, heart muscle isn't necessarily connective tissue like it would be in something like a gizzard or something like that, which gets very soft with prolonged cooking. Uh heart is mainly just really strong muscle.
And so I don't know that it's going to break down the same way uh as um you know a cut with a lot of collagen and it would with prolonged cooking. I'm not saying it won't. I mean, you know, you could try a couple of days and see because it actually you you it would work if you cooked it for a long, long time it worked. You know, because you can tell even with very uh lean cuts, uh they get tender if they're cooked for a long time, but it's not really a pleasing tenderness, it's more of a mushiness. So I don't know if you're gonna be able to get um I don't know if you're gonna be able to get exactly what you're looking at uh with that, but I did find an article called uh Studies on Development of Tenderized Chicken Gizzard and Goat Heart Pickles.
Uh this is uh in 2009. It's uh A.K. Mighty is the uh is the author. It's an awesome name, Mighty. Uh anyway, uh they're studying uh traditional Indian uh heart uh and gizzard pickles, and uh they did something very smart.
They they sliced it relatively thin, they jacarded the meat somewhat to get penetration, and then they brined it in a meat tenderizer. They were using a variety of natural tenderizers. Um for instance, ginger uh apparently has some tenderizing agents and enzyme in it tenderizing. They're also using the late, not figs themselves, but the latex from a papaya uh from fig uh plant uh or tree, and uh uh a weird uh bitter gourd extract that you can't get here in uh in the US to try it out. And uh they had very good luck uh tenderizing it that way.
So you you could try you could try that. Uh and then I read some other uh articles online, although I haven't done it using uh baking soda actually as a tenderizer. Presumably the lye, the alkaline nature breaks down the protein structure somewhat and causes it to bind less strongly to each other and makes it uh more tender. Uh but that uh but now I want to try these pickled, these pickled goat hearts. Wouldn't you wouldn't you just chow down on a on a jar of pickled goat hearts, Jack?
I would, yeah. I mean, I'd never considered that before. Why don't you get uh get Patrick to order us up some goat hearts? I I mean I have the procedure right here. I mean it's it's pretty dang simple.
They they give you the whole thing. I think October was goat season for him, but I don't know if he's getting more. Yeah, but it's a goat heart season. I mean, these are right. Well, if he if he pickled them, we should be able to have them, you know, all year all year long.
That's right. Uh also uh another way to tenderize meat that you might not want to do is uh ionizing radiation at high sterilizing doses of uh uh high high high sterilizing and radiating doses caused changes in meat proteins, resulted in increased tenderness, and God knows what else. Uh actually I shouldn't say that's stupid. But like uh for many years, people um were against the irradiation of uh fruits, vegetables, and meats because they saw thought that somehow the the the food was gonna glow in the dark, and so there's a whole group of people that are anti-irradiated foods. To me, the only real argument against uh irradiating foods is if the if the actual uh irradiation source is unsafe to the workers, unsafe to the environment, which I don't know if they are or not.
Uh, and B, does the crap taste good or not? You know? And um So that's how they did that glow in the dark sushi. No, no, no. That's like that I I don't really know.
I researched that once for a very short amount of time. That's like a bioluminescent protein. I mean the one that like you see Farran eating the popsicle and his tongue is glowing. Yeah, that's a bioluminescent protein. When you when you irradiate food, I mean there's not I mean, all the studies that I've read, and they're all old because they were trying to use basically the byproducts of all sorts of awful tests and things that they were doing.
But um, you know, but basically there's no uh residual radiation uh left in the food. But one of the issues is you'll get uh textural degradation of the food uh uh over time as it's irradiated. It's the same problem that some people have with uh very, very high pressure, high hydrostatic pressure uh sterilization, things like oysters. Uh they say that there's textural changes, and it usually means that you've breaking broken the stuff down somewhat, so this can either be seen as a positive or a negative. I mean, one person's tenderness is another person's mushiness.
Me personally, uh I like meat, I like to taste the muscle, uh, the fiber structure. I like it to be tender, but I like the structure to be intact. When that structure starts getting broken down, such as something that is naturally kind of chewy becomes tender. To me, uh to me, that's mush. If all you're doing is breaking down collagen and the collagen breaks down, but the muscle fibers are still intact, that's tender to me.
Um so it to me it's uh it's a fine line. Anyway, we've got a caller. Oh, caller, you are on the air. Uh big fan of the show and what you guys are doing. I have uh a science question and a recipe question for you.
Go ahead. Uh his science question is uh so my father is diabetic and tries to treat exclusively with diet. Uh so it's foregone dessert, but uh was thinking of trying to do uh meringues for him, and uh you've talked a lot about how the importance of sugar, not just as a sweetener, but as a a structural uh component. And I was curious if you have thoughts on uh meringues with uh without sugar and just the sugar alcohols. I know erythritol has gotten a lot of press.
Um if you have thoughts on that dimension. Uh well, that's interesting. I haven't specifically done it. I mean, I uh the the one we always keep around is isomalt. And uh I'm trying to think if I've ever made a meringue with ice.
Oh, guarantee you a meringue with isomolt would work. It just won't be as sweet. Do you know what I mean? So you'd have to um uh I I I don't have a lot of experience uh doing one-to-one sugar replacements, i.e. trying to keep stuff sweet.
Do you know what I'm saying? Um I have much more experience trying to get the textural properties of sugar without the sweetness. So I'll use things like glucose um uh syrups and uh or if I want something harder that's gonna have a lot more of a gelling property, I'll use uh isomalt. So uh which is the one you mentioned, I forget. Uh erythritol.
And does it have similar sweetness properties to uh sugar? It's a sugar alcohol that uh the body doesn't break down and it doesn't have a lot of the nasty uh gut properties that a lot of other sugar alcohols have. Uh yeah, for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, sugar alcohols are generally undigestible, and so they add to what you would consider your bulk fiber content, so they can cause uh what's the nice word, flatulence and and runniness and whatnot. Uh is that is that a polite way of putting it, you think? I I think that was delicate, yes.
Yeah. So uh so if it has similar sweetness properties, I mean the great thing about isomol, aside from uh the fact that it's not sweet, which is I like, is that it's uh it doesn't pull a lot of moisture out of the air, and so it uh maintains its structure for a long time. Um and I don't know the properties of the other sugar alcohols, but it I mean look, I know isomalt works, so I'm sure the other sugar alcohols, assuming that they don't pull too much water out of the air and turn to a soupy mess, would work as well. Do you know what I mean? Oh, great.
Okay, I'll start experimenting. Can you do me a favor and send send us a note and tell us how it worked out for you? I I certainly will. So a a a recipe question, if if you don't mind. Uh so I'm among the Legion throngs that have decided to hack together our own immersion circulators, and it's been really fun to play with.
Uh I had fun trying to do head-to-head recipe comparisons where you start with very similar base ingredients just to show off the effects to skeptical friends. Uh chicken worked well, did a buttermilk marinated chicken and uh either a high heat roast or a slow cook with a flash fry. And it was a lot of fun to sort of compare and contrast the different effects, how the marinade took, etc. I was curious if you have uh other suggestions of uh you know recipes or ingredients where you can do uh a really nice comparison that's scientific. You start with the same ingredients uh and show off the power of uh slow cooking.
Strictly speaking, slow cook versus normal cook? Uh slow cook versus normal cook, or just the fun that you can do with uh low temp food. I mean, the cheapest and easiest thing to do, and it's not, I mean, it depends, it's impressive if you haven't done it before for someone, obviously is eggs. You know, showing showing someone an egg at 63 versus 62 versus 64, people are like, oh, I get it. That's pretty awesome.
Um steaks are uh are are a good one to show kind of equal done equal doneness uh all the way through. Obviously, here's one that's interesting. It's not better or worse, but like a very like a slow cook uh on a short rib, some people prefer most you know m like if you tell someone that it's um if you tell someone that it's the same thing as a braid short rib, then then generally they like the bray short rib better. If you just tell them here's like a really cool cut of meat, in general people really like the long cook things like short ribs because they have an intense meaty flavor and they cut they cut tender like a steak. So uh a short rib that's cooked for 24 hours at let's say fifty s uh at like fifty-seven to sixty C is gonna have the texture of a skirt steak, which is pretty amazing for people.
Do you know what I mean? Or cooked for 24 to 36 hours is going to have more of a tender steak texture. People kind of like that as a comparison. And it's interesting to compare that side by side with the traditional braise because they're totally different. Not better, not worse, different.
Um, but give give those uh give those uh a shot. All right. Thanks so much and keep it up. Thank you. Tony C, Tony the Rabbit Man, Tony Canoyaro is in the studio.
Hello. How you doing? Good. How are you? Had trouble getting here, huh?
Uh yeah. Yeah. Uh all right, so I described you uh a little bit uh to the audience as uh I don't know what I said. I said uh fantastic bartender, drinks factory lab, uh sixty nine Colebrook Row. What's the name of the hotel bar again?
Uh Zessa Townhouse. Yeah, yeah. Apparently also awesome. Bastard. Yeah, you've been saying it yet, have you?
Yeah. Yeah. So uh so anyway, so uh we actually had a question in uh for you know you and I to talk about cocktails, and then uh after that I think we'll go to a commercial break and bang out some stuff. Hold on a second. Nastasha, who's not here today because she's in Florida, uh, tweeted it out yesterday, so we got in a good question for you.
Uh okay. Uh this is from uh Kevin for us. Uh hope you and Dave are doing well. Uh I've really been enjoying the last few shows. I just saw you have Tony C on today, so I had some cocktail questions to send your way.
What are your thoughts on the binary interactions of taste combinations? I've read a few papers that essentially say that sodium in both uh sodium chloride and uh MSG suppress bitterness, sugar and acid uh and cancel and wait uh suppress bitterness and sugar and acid cancel each other out, etc. Do you have any methodical approaches to adding small amounts of flavors to find the perfect balance, or do you have a standard ratio you apply? How do you know how much salt to add to a cocktail? Huh?
That's the perfect question for you, Tony. Yeah. Let me just bounce that around in my head for a few seconds. Um I think at the end of the day, you can read papers and you can you can look at lots of sheep. It's how it works in your mouth.
And you've got to keep trying and trying. I mean, when we're kind of making cocktails and we're we're kind of working on stuff, you know, we it's almost like uh uh an artist has a blank canvas. Until you've kind of put something on that canvas, then you don't know what else is gonna happen on there. Uh so we kind of uh guesstimate sometimes off some of the you know kind of literature we read, and then kind of work it up and down until we get the perfect formula. That kind of can involve like making uh a drink or uh you know uh a mix um you know up to 30, 40 times until we've got that exact kind of resonance that we want in our mouths uh and that we think will work once we give it to a larger larger audience.
Um so I think a lot of these kind of papers just use them as vague guidelines. I don't think you can ever ever say that will work universally until you've actually kind of tried how it reacts with all the other ingredients. Right. I mean, I'm sure you have like a go-to starting point. For those of you that don't know Tony, like if you walk into his, I don't know if they he still does this, but if you walk in when they're actually doing testing, uh they'll have uh various and Tony is uh as I mean, I'm putting words in his mouth, he's right here, he can talk for himself, but uh big proponent of um subthreshold uh uh you know modifiers like salt and other other flavors like that that you wouldn't necessarily be able to pick out.
In fact, he doesn't want you to pick them out, but they're there to kind of round and punch flavors up and down. And I remember one time I visited his bar and they were working with I forget what the particular ingredient was, but they were uh the eventual cocktail is gonna have a fairly small amount, and so they were trying to figure out what their mix was gonna be, uh, you know, that was gonna I guess you I don't know whether you work out of bitter's bottles or what, but they were using a micropipetter to basically make a bunch of iterations with very small differences in particular components that would then and they're not gonna pull out a micropipeta at the bar, but that it's to help them figure out what their uh base is going to be to work with when they're actually behind the bar. So is that's something you still do at the end of the thing? Yeah, I mean, I think that that experiment there was um something that ended up in uh the dry martini that we did, which was to make a dry martini drier. Uh and rather than it kind of being a flavor, it was an effect which which was using kind of um uh condensed tannins that we got from grapes so we kind of macerated them then rotovated off so they were very very concentrated and you could have like you know ten uh microns per litre of vermouth sorry uh per litres of vermouth that would have an effect even when you put it in a drink uh and we use micropipetus for that uh and you know we kind of started fairly high but I mean we started around fifty and even adding fifty microns to uh a bottle of vermouth and then making a martini with it dried you know pucking your mouth up so much that it didn't work.
So we kind of, you know i i again it's it's trying and then seeing where these things would go. Because you know sometimes these papers are kind of you know uh uh use pre-made chemicals and whatever else that you buy from laboratories. Uh the difference with that and I suppose kind of what we do we're kind of a bit more fast and loose in as far as we're making these ingredients ourselves. So you know we can't test the amount of kind of tannins in something by ourselves so the register is basically in our mouths, which I think it always should be anyway. I mean that's the most important instrument.
Yeah it's it's the most accurate anyway. Yeah and it's it's what we're mixing for. We're mixing for the mouth not for the HPLC machine. Yeah exactly you know um well the mouth and the nose I guess and the eyes. But we're mixing for the human being.
For the human being. Yeah. Uh clever instrument that one clever instrument that one. Exactly. Yeah, pretty good.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes, yeah, exactly. Uh but uh, you know, I know at the bar, uh one thing we we tend to add, uh I mean, look, obviously we have uh go-to ratios of acids. We all have our own favorite uh basic sour ratio in our head that we can move up or down on depending on what the mood, you know, what mood strikes us or what the you know the additions we have to it are. And I also I personally have a basic uh salt.
You know, at the bar we we have a uh our standard salt solution is uh 20 grams of salt in a hundred milliliters of water, dissolve it, put it into standard kind of American, not you know, not Imperial drops, but uh standard American eyedroppers. And uh and you know, uh depending on the drink, uh, you know, most citrus drinks get a drop or two, depending on uh how much we want. Like for me, uh daiquiri is a one-drop drink usually, and uh most of our tequila drinks are two drop drinks, uh, because people like a little bit more of an edge on their tequila drinks. So I mean I think there's you know, once you start incorporating something like salt into your um into your the routine of bartending, um, you're going to find kind of go-to uh go-to ratios that you like. And then Tony takes it another step further because you know, every time I've worked with him, he really enjoys uh fine-tuning.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, that's definitely something we do, just because it's it's the you know, being able to replicate these things over and over again uh that I think is important because there's nothing worse, I suppose, than going to a cocktail bar and having you know uh the same drink that you really love, but it comes out in different variations each time. So we try and narrow that band down as much as possible by using some of the micropropettes and equipment like that. Uh just because it makes it you know super accurate and using kind of super accurate scales and and things like that.
Yeah. And it you know, Tony, by the way, for those of you that don't haven't had a chance to go to uh sixty nine Colbert Row, uh is he's the master of busting all this equipment out behind the scenes, but when you show up at the bar, it's like you know, a tranny band and a honky tonk piano. And so there's like there is no um at least the you know three times or what that I've been to London and hung out basically exclusively at 69 Colebook Row, uh is uh you know, you you wouldn't um know from being there that you're dealing with someone who is taking such precise care of their drinks until you taste the cocktails, which are fantastic. And so it was one of the first places where I really saw in practice that you can have uh you know a real palace of cot of to the cocktail, but in a completely friendly atmosphere, which is you know something that hasn't really been replicated too often. I think that was you know, it was always a consideration and always something that we wanted to do because I think um the minute you kind of have the bartenders talking about um you know the science of it, it can be pretty boring.
You know, it's you know the atmosphere needs to be conducive to you know, I want to talk to you, let's have a conversation, or you know, there's there's the distraction, you kind of go there to get distracted. You know, if there's yeah, there's obviously people that want to know more, and that's you know, that's open as well. But our focus is to run a bar that is enjoyable and is fun and has you know uh is about hosting, it's about bartending, it's not about kind of geeking out. Right. I mean, a booker and dax, which is, you know, the bar that you know I'm running now, um with Tristan.
Uh the you know, I think we really fell into that trap early on, even though I knew I didn't want to fall into that trap. A lot of the tech, you know, the techniques were so new to the crew that they were just excited about it. I think there was a little there was quite a bit at the beginning, too much talk maybe to the customers about it, and we really kind of I think uh trying to ratchet that back because it's really just about the drink. But what you do as well is a lot of fun. I mean kind of watching you last night in the excellent bar that you um was the you know it's fun to watch you kind of do the thing because that th that's a point of interest.
I think you know, some of the things we do aren't that interesting, like micropipettes aren't interesting to watch. But watching you watching you kind of carbonate stuff and and you know, use the liquid nitrogen and uh and all of those things is a visual exciting thing to actually to watch. I think that brings a whole heap of stuff to to you know uh the to the table. Yeah, I mean it it's it's an interesting question. I just want to make sure you know you want to make sure that that nothing that you're using is a gimmick and that it doesn't become which I thought I don't think we do.
Like so for instance, you know, at Booker and Dax we're very uh we're very low on garnish. You know what I mean? Kind of at this point specifically. It's not that I can't make a bunch of crazy garnishes. It's just you know Pringles last night, wasn't it?
Oh my god, that's great garnish. Uh I hope that makes it in the bodega week our Pringle our Pringle garnish. And of course, you know, Brits don't know what a Pringle is, so we had to go through a long explanation of what a Pringle is to Tony. Pringles. You know, Pringles are kind of a miracle.
Pringles uh was like one of the biggest R and D development budgets on a food product of all time. And it took like twenty years to pay back and Pringles finally started making money like twenty years after they did it because of the amazing like investment in potato chip molds that they made for the Pringles and the can development and all that. Crazy, crazy stuff. All right. Alright, so another cocktail question from Kevin.
Yeah, indoor. Let's take a quick break first. Oh, quick break. Oh, alright. We're going to quick workle break.
Call up with 7184972128. Cooking issues. Speak pimping, baby. Speak pimping spinach. G G you know why talk them from love em leave 'em.
Cause I don't need them. Take them on the hook. Keep them looking good, but I don't feed them. First time they bust, I'm breezing. Talk about what's the reasons.
I'm a pimp in every sense of the word. Till I need it till I need to be the gustin' is B beep and I'm picking them up, then I'll play with the truck. Many chicks wanna put chicken fists and come. Divorce them and split his bucks. Just because you got good.
I'ma break bread, so you can be living it up. Hit off. I'll be forever macking. I got no passion. I got no patience.
And I hate waiting. And then that's right. Check them out now. Check them out now. We do it.
We be Costco size pimping up in NYC, baby. I wonder what Jay-Z thinks of Dashi. I'm sure he doesn't want Dashi. Doesn't want Dashi or Bushy. That was like the best sound.
We might have to play that thing again. Love that stuff. Uh okay. Today's show is sponsored by Modernist Pantries, uh, 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 where only a few grams are needed per application?
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Visit modernistpantry.com today for all of your modernist cooking needs. I've never used cr um, I've used uh crisp coat, but I've never used pure coat. Crisp coat is like a batter uh coating. These things like these film formers they use for things when you're frying, they form a film so that grease theoretically can't penetrate, and they also help with batter adhesion. Uh and you, you know, things like this you usually use in like uh so like in flour, you use like a 10% by weight to fry things.
Uh but I haven't used it in a long time because my frat coating is good enough. I don't need any crisp coat or pew coating. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. It's all good stuff.
Uh especially if you're gonna do something like um oh like uh tenpura stuff. But this stuff sounds like it's not actually used for for that. It's used more to do uh to cast like like glasses and fruits and sheets of uh starch. I'm sure it's great stuff. I just don't have that much experience with it.
Okay. Second cocktail question is on gel-an ice cubes. Um I'm trying to find it. Okay. I know that you've made gel-in ice cubes before.
I'm intrigued by the concept of a non-melting ice cube, especially if it could be uh better heat retention than a standard ice. Plus, it'd be cool to have an edible cocktail within a cocktail. My question is have you had any success getting the gel and to stay clear when frozen? Maybe a different hydrocoloric combination would work. No, it won't it will not stay clear.
It just won't stay clear. I've not tried that actually. Yeah, it won't stay clear. I've worked with uh medicellularized before. Yeah.
We might like absinthe ice cubes and put them on the spoon and then lit them and then they melt melted. After they cool. Yeah. Yeah. But and they clear when they're when they melt, but they're when they're solid, they're white.
Yeah. Especially with Hapsinth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh I mean, gentlemen, here's the thing. When you use uh any sort of uh hydro for like to lock in water that's frozen for cooling, you're never gonna get quite the cooling power. I mean you'll get theoretically the cooling power, but what happens is when you're chilling with ice, the outside layer of the ice melts. That water instantly goes into your cocktail, chills and dilutes. When you've locked the water into a hydrocolloid, uh you have an uh uh believe it or not, water is a better insulator than ice.
So you inhibit the chilling effect of the ice that's on the inside of the cube as it goes. So it will keep a drink cool, but it's never going to be as effective as ice. Ice is a damn effective chilling agent. Uh what I did do uh recently, because they were quite small. I have to go on Ellen, the Ellen uh have to.
I'm going to Ell, I'm going to be on Ellen de Generous uh later this week for her St. Paddy's Day cocktail. And uh they didn't want any of the drinks that we actually had on our menu. I don't think. I guess I don't know, not a fan.
I don't know. But uh they uh so there's all these uh kind of uh I'm doing a bunch of wacky stuff. So if you watch it's not stuff that you would actually see at the bar. But one of the things I'm doing is uh breaking apart raspberries with liquid nitrogen and then using the raspberry beads the as basically uh ice cube BBs to shake a drink to chill a drink that's already been diluted and it chills it down, and then you know you get the raspberries and you drink it with a straw and you suck them up like you know, in the like you know, in your mouth, it's like that pretty much. So stuff like that.
So you can shake with uh frozen fruit. Um one of my favorite techniques is that what with limes as well? I don't know, probably little lime pips. Yeah, grapefruit works. Uh huh.
I haven't tried lime because the lime, the vesicles are so small. Uh I mean, you know, one of my favorite uh it is not gonna give you a cocktail within a cocktail, but one of my favorite things to do, especially at home if you don't have a lot of gear, is uh to f is when you're using non uh non concentrated mixers like grapefruit juice or apple juice, freeze them solid like ice cubes and then shake them uh instead of with ice because they break into a slush because you know, juice doesn't freeze as hard. Yeah. So they break into a slush in the tins and then uh and it gets really freaking cold and your dilution's always right because you just shake it till the whole son of a bitch turns to a slush. You know what I mean?
Numbing. Yep. Uh okay. So let me see. I'm I gotta now I gotta try and split between just like Tony and I having uh uh a conversation and uh and some of these questions because you guys have a uh a lot of questions in.
Uh let me go uh to uh let me see. Oh, here's a here's a here's a here's a good one. Okay. Uh Stephen Garrett from Wellington, New Zealand. You ever been to New Zealand?
I've not yet. I'd love to go. Yeah? Yeah. Because you're a Xena Warrior Princess fan?
Uh Lord of the Rings, I think. Lord of the Rings? See, I'm uh like Lord of the Rings, like I never really I saw like one or two of them, but you know, I like you know, Xena like hit me right at the right time, like you know, Xena. Uh there's a question that uh you missed last week about hearts and cooking. I'd love to hear a little about tartar of heart.
You ever had heart tartare? I've never actually had it. No, I've not either. But I'm sure it's good. I mean, one of the problems with Oregon meats is they have to be really fresh because the way that they're processed and cut out, they tend to spoil quickly because they're exposed to more bacteria than whole muscle cuts, right?
I mean, that's just a kind of a fact of life. Hearts probably are okay because they are a big whole muscle cut. You just wash off the outside or whatever, trim it. Uh I've never actually had uh um heart tartar, but I did look up uh basically most of the recipes I found online trace back to a friend of mine, Chris Constantino, who is known for his cooking of uh, you know, awful meaning uh awful, not awful, you know, awful. There you go.
Uh and he has a beef heart uh tartar Pudonesca style. That means uh torn-up hearts in the style of whores. Right? Yeah, that's kind of that translation. Yeah, yeah.
It's not far off. Yeah, horse style heart heart chop. Anyway, uh kind of see where you're getting with it. Yeah, yeah, anyway. So uh yeah, he has a recipe.
It's very easy uh to find and it looks interesting, but I've not had it. I'm sure it's good, kind of chewy. I mean, are you a meat tartar kind of a guy, Tony? Uh I can be. Although I've not had that, but I've kind of partial to tartar.
Yeah, right? A little acid, a little you know, he has some interesting stuff. And so I just look up uh, you know, look up his uh thing. Also, following up on the soda stream, the carbonate alcohol, soda stream. I don't know if they have that in UK soda stream.
Yeah, you do, yeah. It's the home carbonator. Uh I you know, I've recommended for a while adding an extra tube to it so that the tube can dip down low enough so that you can get it into alcohol and carbonate it without getting foam over, basically. Uh so following up on the soda stream to carbonate alcohol, it works. Uh extending the tube to the bottom of the bottle, but it uses a lot of gas.
Uh to make wine sparkle, you have to carbonate, vent, carbonate, vent, and carbonate and let it sit pressurize for a good few minutes, and it has to be almost ice cold. Everything you've said is true. But that's the only damned way to carbonate something properly. Yeah. Is uh you know, if you come to the bar and you see us carbonate, we're we'll carbonate four or five three you know, between three and five times on any of our drinks, um, just to get rid of all of the little nucleation sites that are in it so that we get a nice stable bubble and we have it more than ice cold.
In fact, one of the big things I have to beat out of uh the bartender's heads is to put uh the our carbonated drinks on ice, because ice is only at zero, right? And our carbonated drinks are at like minus eight. So, you know, when they when they're putting it uh when they're putting it on uh on ice, they're warming it. You know, so it's like I'm like, don't do don't do that. Do you add water to the uh mix pre carbonate it with with the alcohol?
Because a lot of the I've tasted alcohol that's been made sparkling and the flavor is very, very old. Yeah, so we like I I once did uh bottle bottle strength carbonation, and if you're gonna carbonate something at bottle strength, it has to be absurdly cold, like minus eighteen C. You know. Um otherwise the perception of alcohol is just crazy. If you get it down to a temperature where like let's say you're gonna do let's just use straight gin.
Yeah. Right. If you're gonna get it down to a temperature where it's like syrupy in the freezer, then and and you carbonate it, it's quite enjoyable. But as it starts to warm up even a little bit, it's to me kind of unpleasant. And then if you add anything like a sugar or an acid to it for flavor, it it just goes way out of balance.
And I think the main uh problem that people do when they uh when they're carbonating liquor is uh they serve it at two high proof. So, you know, if you're if you're um serving uh you know, a stirred cocktail is gonna be probably somewhere in the area of like 17, 18%, and a a shaking cocktail. I have to go do the math again, but a shaking cocktail is gonna be somewhere down closer to like fourteen, fifteen percent. But like a a carbonated cocktail should really be all the way down at like twelve. You know, it's a yeah.
Yeah, you know, so if you look at the proportions of uh classic cocktails, they're about that. We used uh uh if you see that machine, the alkalizer that measures all the kind of uh bricks, but also the kind of ABV. So we were shaking you have one? Well, we borrowed one. It was very expensive, but we borrowed one of a uh a company.
What's it called and Tom Pow alkalizer? Is it awesome? It's it really is awesome. Cause you you can check all the um uh you know the bricks percentage but also the ABVs. Uh and we were talking to Harold about the the the perfect parameters of where flavor will hit and where you taste the best.
Uh and it was between f uh uh I think between 14 and 19. So within those kind of you know parameters you've got like a uh you know the most enhanced um amount of flavor in a cutter. When you carbonate that punches stuff up, which is why you have to drop the I always drop the alcohol level in a carbonated drink. Yeah. But I mean with the Tom Collins, you'd add slightly more sugar, but that kind of floats the flavor a little bit more anyway, so I mean it it's it's interesting problem, but most of the time, and I also remember when I first started carbonating, I would basically I would just shake a drink and then carbonate it.
And those are too alcoholic and end up tasting too syrupy and they fatigue your palate quite quickly. Whereas uh and they just taste a little bit off like the acid balance goes off a little bit, and you just add some like lighten it a little bit with water, you know, not a boatload, but you lighten it a little bit with water and the whole thing just becomes more pleasant as long as you keep the bubble level at you know the same. Are you guessing with um with uh come dark side are you using other gases too? Uh I have the ability to do a nitrous CO2 mix. Yeah.
Uh and when I make uh water, I use nitrous CO2 because I want to soften the bubbles a little bit. I want to have the same liveliness, but I want to soften the bubbles and nitrous is gonna soften it. Adds a little bit of sweetness and some creaminess, but really it just softens up that bubble. Um the CO2 can actually make things more acidic. Uh and it kind of registers as that.
Yeah, it it well I mean you know that like the the studies show that eventually it is your sour uh taste receptors that are responding to what an enzyme is doing to the CO2 or w the way a CO2 affects a particular enzyme pathway on your tongue. So it is related to acidity and it does actually produce acid, mean you know, carbonic acid, you know what I mean? Um but I think the f what carbonating a drink does um is really complicated. You know, um I find that uh if you taste a drink flat that you want carbonated in, it should taste a little too weak and a little low in acid, and also I like it a little low in sugar because something that tastes balanced as a sipping drink, like it just it gets like syrupy and almost soda like for me. And I don't want like a soda-like flavor in my cocktail.
You know what I mean? I suppose people see um because there were loads of tests over this. I think it was Bernard Lahouse from Food Pairing did loads of tests for on the aroma on top of cocktails that have been carbonated, and the results are so so varied and all over the place just because you know what you're adding to um the um mixes a hell of a lot of aroma because that CO2 is carrying and almost stripping the flavor into aroma and then taking it to the top of the drink. So you you've got a whole other kind of spectrum to look at, uh, rather than just flavor. I mean, because if you taste it in Manhattan, there is some aroma, but there's not as much.
Um so that kind of whole aroma spectrum kind of makes that it's a drill outside, isn't it? Uh it's a jackhammer, I believe, yeah. Um welcome to Roberta's. Well, uh we'll we'll kind of change your perception of the drink as well, and that can vary quite a lot. Yeah, and yeah, Manhattan is one that you're doing your entire perception is changed, and I think for the worse, I detest carbonated Manhattans.
I don't like them at all. I think they're hideous. In fact, I use that as the demo of when carbonation goes bad. The other thing is I think it's it's you can make very excellent carbonated rum drinks, but I think it's also very easy to go wrong with a carbonated rum drink. You know, they can taste, uh, they go from being a delicious drink to almost fake tasting.
There are great carbonated rum drinks. I've had other people's good carbonated rum drinks. I've made carbonated rum drinks that I also like, but it's like it's a difficult thing, I think, to do. You have to be spot on with your mix, I think, to carbonate uh a rum drink properly. Gin carbonates like nobody's business.
Like almost any gin drink can be made carbonated and it tastes delicious. Uh or can be made to taste uh uh delicious. Um it's difficult. Like it's difficult to do a carbonated tea beverage because the tannins get blown out. You know what I mean?
Like they they are or amped up is what I mean. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so it can be it can be uh difficult. All right.
Jack, should we go to one more commercial break? 7184972128 cooking issues! But you heard about me. Don't be I am here to set you free. Don't let a stranger say your stories.
I got a place already for you. Don't be uh You can leave your beer behind. Can't you tell I'm in your corner? Don't you know I'm good for you, you'd be too much together. There is nothing we can do.
Oh no. Chicken. Welcome back to Cooking Issues here with Tony Camilliaro. Does everyone in England pronounce your name wrong? Is that why you always go by Tony C?
Yes. I'm sure I'm pronouncing it wrong, but I'm close enough, right? But you are close enough, yeah. I've had some horrendous uh versions. I mean it's quite funny whenever the post comes in.
I think we've collected about 400 different spellings so far of my name. Yeah. Just at the bar, yeah. So what's your f what's your favorite what's your favorite mispronunciation? Well, there was one with W's and Z in, which I you know is How the hell do you get that?
I have no idea. It's just one of those kind of mistakes. I mean the one you must most get all the time is Canigliaro. Mm-hmm. Cause that's like a baseball player that actually went by that here in the US.
Yeah, for the uh Boston Red Sox. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was Cunigliaro, not Corneliaro. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. Well anyway, so he goes by Tony C. Of course, you know, in England you are dealing with a country where they they, you know, they say spagball when they're talking about sp what is spagball anyway, that's spigar bolonese? Uh yeah, spigali bolognese. Yeah.
Spag. La bolognaise, yeah. Spag ball. Tony, by the way, uh true to his uh Italian name is uh what are you half Sicilian? Half Sicilian, yeah, my father's from Sicily.
You speak normal Italian or Sicilian or both? Uh I speak normal Italian. Uh Sicilian's like a complete different language that we didn't really learn. Uh it's kind of only spoken by Sicilian Sicilians. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean the the old word filters through, I think, but it's not as a as a whole. I don't know. Yeah. Were you were your uh family actually rabbit keepers back in the day?
I have no idea, but I do know that that name comes from one village. Uh and most kind of, you know, people that have that name, you know, have a line of heritage going back to a little village called Carini outside of Palermo in Sicily. Nice. Never been to Sicily. Someday.
Oh, it's lovely. Someday I'll get to go. And by the way, I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and apologize in advance to anyone whose questions I do not get to today. Uh, because uh, you know, Tony's not here every day. In fact, he's never been here before.
And so uh I'm gonna have a conversation with him somewhat. But if you have any questions for Tony, you still have a little bit of time to call in your questions to 718 497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. All right. Uh quick one.
Uh just a recommendation someone has in. Tom Fisher from Lansdown PA, long time uh listener. Uh I'm looking to get a chamber vacuum sealer in the next month, and I've narrowed things down to the Vacmaster VP112 or the VP 215. I favor the VP 215 for the faster vacuum times, oil-based pump in choir operation, but it's huge, heavy, and $300 more. Is there any benefit to the home cook in getting the more expensive unit?
But look, both of these units are kind of in the uh sub $1000 chamber vacuum machine range. Um I have had nothing but bad luck with um any vacuum machine that doesn't have an oil based pump, the vacuum pump is just not strong enough. Now, that said, is it gonna seal a stake? Yeah, you know what I mean? It will.
Uh if you're out there to do uh like, you know, some of the hardcore uh like flash infusions, um, you know, if you're looking to do that kind of work with it, um you need a damn good vacuum in here. Yeah, oil based. Yeah, and so uh the one that that advertised itself as an oil based pump, uh I mean, but the problem with that unit, I looked it up, is that it's like s just in the middle. I mean, you can get a real good one from Mini Pack for like fifteen hundred with a real Bush vacuum pump in it. And this one's in the eight hundred dollar range.
I know the one I just recommended is twice the price, but I have this problem. I have a uh strange genetic disorder that once I get over a certain price, I'm like, God damn it, I need the real one. You know what I mean? It's like if it was like two hundred bucks, then I would just go ahead and get the one that was almost as good. But as soon as it's like eight hundred bucks, I'm like, oh hell, I need the real one.
You know what I mean? You know what I mean, Tony, right? I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, yeah. And so um But then, you know, sometimes you do pay for for yeah, uh matter of fact machines we've got for over the years is is phenomenal, and it was only until we discovered multivac uh and we spent a bit of money on it that it's actually lost and we we put it through its paces and we you know we we we we don't just use it for the with the C V bags, we're sucking stuff out and uh and blah blah blah.
And some of the others just get cloaked up and just boo bruised battered and and destroyed because of that. But the multivac you clean out, then you can start all over again. Yeah, I mean uh you know, so the main commercial br uh brands that are available here in the US, like the multivac, the mini pack, the uh Koch, all of these, they all use uh this German vacuum pump called a Bush pump. And the vast majority of the price of the vacuum machine is determined by the cost of that pump. Bush pumps are just expensive, but they have some serious cojones on them.
And they, like Tony said, you know, you run those suckers and they go, and then they get uh gummed up because you're gonna vacuum water into them, not directly, but in the form of vapor, it's gonna contaminate it. And you just run those suckers and clean them out, and then they're good as new again. So you know, I don't know if the lesser vacuum pump, even if it's an oil-based pump, I mean, when it's brand new, it'll get down to the same vacuum levels as the bush, but the bush is like the time X of uh of uh you know vacuum pumps. That sucker just takes a lick and it keeps on ticking. There's a reason why all of the big companies use it.
And there's no way that a sub-1,000 chamber vacuum machine is gonna have a bush pump in it, right? And so what they're doing is and the rest of it, I mean, programming is great, nice seal bars, it's all fantastic, it's all great. Uh but uh what you're paying for with the more money is the awesome vacuum pump. Um, you know, the the rest of it, you know, isn't you know I'm sure it won't crush under its own vacuum. You know what I mean?
But uh so I would definitely go for it for occasional use. I would get the oil-based one. Uh you're gonna be, I think, less than satisfied with one that's not uh not oil-based. You could, if you're like me, rip the vacuum pump out of the other one and install a real oil-based pump as a separate thing, but now you're talking about spending extra money, time, and more space on your counter. Have you used a gastrovac?
Yeah. What do you think? Uh okay. I'm not a not a fan of the Gastrovac because theoretically it's meant to do kind of vacuum um vacuum frying, so it's built around a vacuum fryer, but uh its vacuum pump is weak. You know what I mean?
Compared now, you can hook the gastrovac up to the vacuum pump in a multi-vac, set the programming to be right, and you'd be damn good. The other thing is that um the Gastrovac, by the way, is uh is a modified pressure cooker with an acrylic lid and it goes to a vacuum pump and it lowers the pressure on the inside. So you could do infusions in oil or frying stuff like that. But the vacuum pump is just not that good. And that vacuum pump has no way to exhaust the water very well that you're sucking into it, so it gets bogged down very quickly.
Needs a cold trap. So, you know, I for Wiley once I did a test where I ran a coal I ran a uh a line, I I bypassed their vacuum, went directly into my vacuum pump, because I I use oil-based refrigerator vacuum pumps that's just like walk around vacuum pumps. Uh, you know, the ones that refrigeration technique technicians use uh because they're pretty cheap and you can fill the oil really quickly, they're easy to get to. Uh, and uh and used a liquid nitrogen coal trap, and then I got it to work, but as comes from the factory, I don't s I don't and and even when using it as infusion, I don't see why you wouldn't just use your vacuum machine. I mean, what do you do you have a good use for it?
Yeah, I mean we found that that we just just even with no heat, just kind of infusing the cook almost cold infusing the the the uh the cordials and stuff like that. But why not just use your chamber vac? Just because it's bigger, I think that's the only reason. Yeah. Because you can do like kind of two two to you know two to four liters in there rather than kind of having to keep putting things in and out and kind of closing it.
Well you know what, you know what I uh what what you should do I did once is just uh take and build a uh like a Lexan uh a Lexan lid for like a giant stock pot, and then you could just go ape ape shit, hook it up to a vacuum machine, and uh just go. Okay. Yeah. I did that once for for Wiley, like way back in the day before anyone had anything, and I've done it occasionally for myself when I'm like uh I use the Gastrovac pod action uh pot when I'm doing uh plaster casting. Because I'll I'll use it to de-aerate uh plaster, but you can probably go for that and buy like the large um basically de-aerators for model casting people because plaster shops use them and plastics shops use them to de-aerate resins and plaster before they pour them into molds, and they have some big pots.
And since your food's not gonna be directly in it, it's gonna be inside of another container in there. Yeah, who cares? You know, like what it's made out of. I think they're made out of probably like you know, plastic and aluminum or something like that. But I mean who who cares?
You know what I mean? The food's not gonna touch it, and then just make sure you got a good enough vacuum pump on it. Alright. Oh, our our pizza is showing up. Awesome.
So, uh, we got another we have you know, we have a we have uh some fans in Bergen, Norway, which I enjoy. Wow. Yeah, Norway. Out of Norway. Yeah.
I have uh have I Jack, have I already told my one Swedish joke on the air? Uh I don't think so. No? No, maybe I just want to hear it again though. Oh, you want to hear it again?
I only have one Swedish joke, and I use it to taunt Nils, my you know, longtime co-worker and and good friend, who's now back with Marcus Samuelson running all of his uh restaurant stuff. So uh, and only Swedes and Norwegians will get this one. Uh hey Tony, what's uh what's a Swede? It's uh a root vegetable. No, no, that's only in England.
What what's what's okay? What's a Swedish person? What's a Swedish person? You don't know? A Norwegian without the oil money.
Boom! Yeah. Studio audience like that one. Yeah, Norwegians love that one. Anyway, okay.
Hopefully, I haven't already told that one too many times on the radio. But you know, if if you have a if you have a like a Sweden Norway joke, you gotta pull it out every once in a while. I have no pony in that race, so it's like I can say whatever I want. Okay. Uh anyway, Arnie Skog from old uh from uh uh Arny Skog Olsen from Bergen Norway writes in and says, big fan of the radio show.
Uh highlight of his week and keep up the good work, you know. I hope you have a better week than having this be the highlight. Um I'm ac I'm actually your second listener from Bergen Norway. However, I'm writing you from Brooklyn as I'm here for a few days. I might even go to see you at Roberta's this Tuesday.
I don't know if he's in the audience, uh, because I don't know what he looks like. Uh audience. I I don't know if he's eating pizza out in the back, is what I mean. Is Indy Jesus on today, by the way? I don't think so.
He may He switched off Tuesdays. I saw him here the other day on a Sunday. Yeah. Anyway, okay. Uh anyway.
Uh New York City is great. I went with a colleague of mine. We're art critics to Booker and Dax, our bar. Uh I'm sorry I missed you. Uh we loved it, especially the gin and juice.
Gin and juice is a good drink. Uh really good drink. I like that drink. Uh, we went back a couple days later to have awesome whole pork button oysters at Momafuku Sam bar next door. Awesome.
A couple questions. We're gonna get calcium hydroxide like pickling lime in New York City. For some reason it's impossible to get uh in Norway. eBay works, but shipping is really expensive, and I'm here now. So by the way, I made rye tortillas, which is I have a recipe for on my blog, using sodium carbonate made by heating sodium bicarbonate, which worked, but the carbonate had no uh not such agreeable flavor to my palate.
Still awesome. Thanks for the Nyx Damal post on your blog from way back in the day. Yes, uh go to to get that stuff, go to Calustian's uh 123rd Street and Lex between 28th and 29th Street. Fantastic place for all your general weird spice news. Good place, right?
They have it, or at least they should have it. If they don't have it, it goes under a bunch of different names. Slaked lime, uh calcium hydroxide pickling lime. If you want to get the Thai version of lime paste in red or white, go to Bangkok Grocery on 104 Moscow. Moscow is in uh kind of Little Italy Chinatown area, uh over by where the five points district used to be, but call them ahead because sometimes they're out.
If you want actual cow from Mexico, go to El Tepeek Grocery on Lexington Avenue and like 103rd Street, and while you're there, stop by Kitchen Arts and Letter, the greatest cookbook store in the United States. Um anyway, yeah. Uh also uh an interesting question in same same same caller. On uh, you know, Lutfisk, have you ever had it? Lutfisk.
Lutfisk, it's the fish, it's the fish that it's like you take stockfish, uh, which is you know the one that's air-dried without the salt, and then you soak it in lye, and or you rehydrate it a little bit, then you soak it in lye, then you wash the lye out, and it turns all gelatinous and funky. No had that. It's kind of like a well-known thing that everyone who's not from there doesn't like. It's kind of like a slippery I haven't actually had it, but uh uh Harold McGee, uh our mutual friend Harold McGee, who's now in China, uh uh uh, you know, introduced me to a recipe for lye curing eggs really quickly. And so Nils and I did a uh a fake loot fisk where the egg was loot fisk flavored and the fish was just kind of cured regular fish.
It was good. Uh I liked it. Anyway, uh so this is for a weird uh dish, wondering whether you could do it. Long introduction to this, that he calls Lute, which means like lie, right? So Lütfisk is like lye fish.
And I can't pronounce the second part of it, but Lute Pinic jot. I don't know. Uh so this uh idea was proposed by a friend of mine. So uh he goes on to describe Lutfisk, a very old traditional Norwegian dish made from dry cod with lye. Uh but there's this other dish that is really famous there called Pin Pinic Yot, which I can't pronounce, which is the whole side of lamb, salted and dried, uh sometimes smoked, cut along the ribs to make sticks of meat, rehydrated for 24 hours to take the salt out, and then steamed until the salt uh till the meat falls off the bone.
This guy really likes it. So what he's wondering is, uh, and his Italian friend came up with this idea is can you make that stick meat with a lye solution, same way that you do loot fisk. Uh and basically he's wondering what happens to the fat. Will it turn to soap? Will it saponify with the calcium uh hydroxide or with lye or with other uh alkaline?
Uh and uh yes, I think it will. Yes. But the question is like how how long how long? I mean, I've tested it with chicken and like a little bit of chicken, and I've boiled chicken with uh calcium hydroxide and it tastes good in small amounts. But if you it look, apparently I did some research, and in Finland, uh if you if you overcure uh the Luthfisk uh there, they have a word for it called uh soap fish because you saponify the fats.
And if you think about it, the cod that you're using or whatever, ling or whatever you're using in Norway to make your Luthfisk is a very lean fish. And so there's very little fat to saponify in that fish. And so you typically don't do it on really kind of oily, oily fish. Uh so I would be wary. Uh I would use very lean cuts of uh meat, and uh I would not necessarily soak it in as high a solution or for as long, but you will get the tenderizing effect.
Look, alkaline tenderization is something that's used in China, for instance, with uh al alkaline solutions in meat to get really soft kind of meat textures in beef that's kind of cut thin, marinated uh in like a baking soda solution or lye solution, not lye, but uh alkaline solution, and then cooked. And they the you know, the the basic principle is that uh that the the uh the alkaline solution weakens the protein bonds and so therefore makes it um uh softer. Right. Uh and so it'd be interesting to try. A little bit of saponification is uh good and like lends some of the characteristic flavor to things like tortillas, but a lot of saponification equals soap.
And so uh it wouldn't necessarily be uh good. But anyway, uh Arnie, I I hope you try it. I hope you stop by Roberta's. Uh they wanted some recommendations, or someone else actually wanted some recommendations of places to eat. But uh Jack, do we have another show coming on the air?
We gotta wrap it up right now. Oh, all right. Listen, Tony, thanks for coming in. Pleasure. Uh anyone who's anyone who's in London, if you don't go to one of Tony C's bars, uh, you are a fool.
Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on the Heritage Radio Network. You can find all of our archived programs on Heritage Radio Network.com, as well as a schedule of upcoming live shows. You can also podcast all of our programs on iTunes by searching Heritage Radio Network in the iTunes Store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up-to-date news and information.
Thanks for listening. You got my head all twisted. And I just can't get it straight. Oh, you dare to do that.
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