You're listening to the Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live to the cosmos from the backyard at Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Oh, you dead. Got me on this corner. And I don't know where I'm at. Supposed to meet my baby.
20 minutes late. You got my head all twisted. And the guest can't get it straight. Vicious, fishes, but 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 every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245.
Gonna be joined today in the studio with uh Maxime Belay, co-author of uh Modernist Cuisine uh Cookbook. Also, oh here he is, he's coming through right now. I see him. Uh so I'll wait to introduce him. We're also here with uh Dave Hey Dana, what's your last name?
Goodyear. Goodyear from the New Yorker. She's just hanging out, but she's welcome to chime in anytime she wants. Yeah, put on a pair of headphones. This one's for you.
Right? And as usual, we're joined with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez, who's sitting typing on her computer getting stuff done for the cooking issues machine. Am I right? That's true. Yeah.
Berlin. Berlin. Yeah. So uh hey Maxine. Here, uh pull up a seat.
Here's your microphone and uh your headphones. So uh Maxime. I'm doing well. Doing well. Uh Maxine, you were a graduate of what?
Of ICE? Originally, our Arch Nemesis, the FCI is at the same time. Is that true or indeed ISA? Yeah. Very brief since it's ice.
Yeah, that's our Arch Nemesis. But then move to uh what anyone who was hanging around uh in New York in I guess the late nineties, early two thousands, Jack's Oyster Bar, right? Fantastic place. Didn't you work there? I did, I did.
I I actually went to uh Jack's Luxurious Bar as a stagiaire fr directly from ICE. The chef left uh about two weeks later. And Jack Lamb, crazy as he is, gave me the head chef job. So it was it was quite a transition for a young chef. But a great I mean uh uh you know w I went I think once, but it moved across the street, right?
I went when it I went when it was on its original side of the street, and I think once when it was across the street. Yeah, I was I was there when it was still the um the little carriage house and then it moved to uh the old Makimona space. What was that on fifth fifth street? It's on fifth street. Yeah.
Anyway, fabulous place, great pedigree. Went moved from there to the fat duck, you know, the uh Heston Blumenthal's famous joint, right? Indeed. Uh and you were on the restaurant side or the development side and the development side. I began uh on the restaurant side and then they quickly moved me to the development side.
That was my you know my my calling all the the research and the and the you know great dishes that that Heston would would uh push us to create. So and then we're ta was tapped by uh Nathan Miravold to to uh you know you know be a part of the modernist cuisine dream team. And so, you know, the three authors on the book, of course, Nathan, who's been on the show before, Nathan Miravold, Chris Young, good friend of ours, been on the show before, and Maxime for the first time on the show. Well, welcome. It's so nice to be here.
Thanks for having me. And uh Dana, who again may or may not chime in, I don't know. Welcome to, is writing an article on strange meats. True or false. True.
True. All right, very good. Nice. So listen, call all of your questions in to uh seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight. That's seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight.
So how are you doing? Maxine was at our bar the other day. I loved it. Oh my god, you you were right. The the basil cocktail that you it's delicious.
It's so fragrant. Thanks. I appreciate it. It's a technique we do at the Booker Index, uh, which basically we just lost by the way, best new bar timeout in New York to a maison premiere, but it's good to lose to such a great bar. Maison premiere.
Anyway, uh technique where we smash the Thai basil with uh liquid nitrogen. And what what what happens is when it's frozen that that that deeply in liquid nitrogen, there's no sort of uh enzymatic degradation of the uh herb at all. And we can shatter it into super super fine particles even just using a hand muddler, then add uh liquor directly that prevents uh the enzymes because the enzymes can't really work and pack with liquor. You get that beautiful extraction. Yeah, it's like the liquor sucks it straight out, and then uh lime juice, the ascorbic acid further prevents breakdown by enzymes, and then shake it like a normal daiquiri from there on out.
But I like it. And the color is beautiful, but the but the the just the aroma is just yeah spectacular. So before I get into questions, it's uh and I hate to do this to you because everyone always asks every you know, this is the question I have to ask you, and if I don't ask you, someone will get upset at me. By all means. Well, uh so uh what's what's next on your plate?
Well, uh right now we're really it's been the book tour. It's been an incredible journey, you know, just sharing, teaching um, you know, every different technique and and and all the aesthetics that we that we went into creating modernist cuisine, uh, we're able to share on so many levels. It's just so much information. And we're uh by having this book tour, we're able to sort of unravel it and and and look at the different uh aspects that went into to its making. Uh but going forward, we've had many propositions and we're not totally clear exactly what what the the next phase is.
We m we we have a a little project in the in the works that uh will come out soon that's good the kind of exciting uh but that's just that's I'm gonna give you a teaser on that one then maybe you know at AV they make you send giant NDAs and where uh I uh intellectual ventures so I I I I am bound by all right all right well just you know dropping it there that there is something coming we just don't know what it is thanks for making me curious now and not giving me anything maybe maybe maybe off air my full intention. Yeah well you know uh by the way in case you have randomly tuned to this podcast and don't know what modernist cuisine is uh it is probably uh the single kind of greatest cookbook publishing phenomenon mmm of all times probably I would have to say of all times well that's very flattering. Yeah next to me like a pe look like for instance right Apicius is the only book on Roman cookery. It's not that it's a great book but it's the only book. Right now we have a huge uh a huge output of cookbooks and food related books and yet nothing that has ever been kinda uh attempted much less successfully produced on this scale.
It's amazing. I mean uh uh anyway the astounding book uh thank you uh you know the and the thing is is that even though I guess the go the going Amazon price is what about four fifty now five yeah it's it's you know it's yeah yeah yeah about four hundred yeah so it's not not an inexpensive book but uh as Nathan uh is fond of pointing out a lot of paper in that book. A lot of paper and very good investment per you know the amount of information you're getting. I mean if you if you if you think about it in its five volumes, you break it down, it's uh and the amount of work that went into it. I think it's you know, a as a sh as a young chef, as a as a as a passionate foodie, whatever you want to call you know yourself, it's I think it's a very good investment for your your your future creative uh culinary adventures.
But it's less than half the price per book of the of the El Bully books, for instance. Yes, if you're gonna compare exactly if you want to compare something. Yeah, and uh what's uh what's funny about to speak on such venal terms about it, but uh you know, everyone's wondering, well, you know, Nate Nathan, who has an unbelievable amount of money, an absurd amount of money, really, when you think about it. He's a ri rich man. He's very well he's done very well for himself and he's worked hard for it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a lot of meaning, you know, multi-billionaire. But absolutely uh everyone was like, well, you know, this is kind of uh this is kind of uh one of the criticisms you hear is that it it's just because he has a lot of money, he's never gonna make the money back. But in fact, the book is good enough it's making the money back. It's actually become becoming on the edge of profitable.
And that that was never the intention. But you know, the f I mean we thought we would sell two thousand copies, maybe, and now we're almost at thirty thousand copies. And at that price point, yeah, we're we're we're recuperating the you know the investment that was made, and that's that's amazing. I mean the fact that it's actually going to be a profitable book, I think is the greatest sign of I mean look, success I mean, success in terms of kind of the impact that it's gonna make in the world. The fact that something can be at that cost can have that much money dumped into its production, yeah, right?
Yeah, which Nathan will never divulge what the actual number is, but we know it's a lot because I mean at minimum, you ha at mi bare minimum, you had at least fifteen, you know, very, very qualified people working full time for how many years plus then a lot more. Three and a half, you had a full team. And and then and then a lot more than the fifteen for a big chunk of that time. For for the f the final year push when we really had to get everything together, it was almost forty, you know, including all the ghostwriters and the the copy editors, and it was it was a pretty you know, massive team of of uh experts in you know in what they did. Yeah.
And so the yeah, and so f for for something of that magnitude to be able to break even just I think goes to show uh kind of how ripe the time was for this information, the need for the book, and also uh, you know, it's just I think it's an interesting measure. So one that's often not talked about actually in the when people talk about the book, they don't talk about that aspect of it. Absolutely. No, and I'm glad you bring that up, because it it was it was the i in terms of timing and and people being you know open to what this means, you know, that that that that merging of of of art and science, which is a beautiful thing. Um and it's something that that you know a lot of of uh classic traditionalists, you know, want wanting to reject and at the same time uh when you embrace it you realize that that each each really enhances the other and it's it's it's such a clean, beautiful relationship that it's yeah, it it was prime for that and people are responding that way.
And so that's that's a testament to the progress we've made with with with looking at the different roles of food. And and something else I think I I th I might have commented on this show about it uh before. I'm not sure. I can't remember. Uh if you haven't seen the book at all, one of the interesting things about it is um and this is something I hadn't expected before I was able to see it, is kind of how personal it is.
It's not uh in other words, it's not uh it's not the encyclopedia Britannica. It's not it's not a cold textbook. No, no, but by by no means. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of personal feelings, personal uh I mean it's it's some humor. There's the I mean there's there's a yeah, a lot of personal aspects.
Yeah, I mean it's uh great book. Anyway, so we have a we have a question on the book. Someone who uh read actually from uh Zymergy, the uh blog, I guess. Yeah, uh had a question regarding uh the Spetzel recipe in the book. And I'll read it uh even though it's addressed to me.
Yes. I'll read it to you since you're gonna know a lot more about it than I do. Uh I've attempted uh the modern squeezing sour cream spitzel uh recipe twice now with less than desirable results. So you're gonna troubleshoot this for the trouble. Let's fix this one.
All right. The issues are that they will not uh form into a shape. The first time I attempted them, they basically dissolved into the ice water. The second time I received a new batch of uh Activa YG, uh by the way, that's meat meat glue, but it's actually like a protein bonder. YG is the one that's made for dairy and protein stuff.
Uh made the recipe and split the batch in two. I then used a qu uh before we go on, why don't you describe the recipe first so that people know what we're talking about? Yeah, so this is actually a recipe inspired by uh by Alexanaki from uh Ideas and Food. And uh we really uh as part of our um uh beef uh uh cheek uh goulash, we wanted to have a a modernist uh special component. And uh and so that that was the basis for creating the recipe.
And it's it's a combination of I think it's cream cheese. I have to I have to look at the recipe in front of me to t to be fully aware of the information. But basically it's it's a dairy-based sp uh spetzel where uh we've we're using the the the bo binding properties of Activa YG. We also use uh an additional um uh element of protein. Uh the uh we use alb uh there's albumin in there.
And uh what you create is these very fluffy little dumplings that uh um uh after being set with that enzymatic process, then are uh nicely toasted in brown butter and uh served as a garnish for this for this you know very uncuous uh 72 hour beef cheeky all right and so the the proteins in it uh egg egg proteins I guess egg white proteins and also uh the the the dairy proteins the dairy proteins are being bound together with an enzyme transcontamination meat glue set and then uh poached and then toasted or yeah well well they're actually they're never actually poached they what you do we what we do is we uh sieve them after they've uh once once the enzymatic process is begun we sieve them into um through the a spetzla maker into uh ice water and you get these nice little dumpling shapes uh okay and then you and then you give them a final fry to to really make given that that textual contrast so the first time that red made them it dissolved into the ice water the second time uh received a new batch of the activa yg made them and split the batch in two used one quarter of the batch as directed with the same results let the other half set in the fridge for 24 hours thinking that it needed time to set up that was also not the answer. By the way uh protein gel made with activa once set if it's broken it's broken it's not a lot of it's a good one. You're breaking a gel. Absolutely because that won't work. No.
Uh the last uh quarter of the batch went into the freezer another failure. I can attest that I'm following the recipe to the letter but cannot seem to get this one down. I'm not sure if you know the formulation or not but anything that you could add would be helpful. Uh gelatin water, sour cream ricotta, whey protein isolate why there's gelatin too there is gelatin yeah yeah we went to give a give a maximum amounts of of protein capacity. How come you don't do a you know um how come you oh the the cold water then sets the gelatin and then the gelatin's cross linked by the YG so I would bet that they're not I would bet that you're not they're not waiting long enough for the gelatin to to get syrupy.
That's right. That's a good that's a very good point. I mean doing that over an ice water bath until it gets that that syrupy consistency uh and then and then setting it directly into the ice water is is one of the tricks. Yeah I mean I know a lot of people like w for me like uh one of the great meat glue applications involving gelatin is my brother-in-law Wiley Dufrein's uh veg noodles and like quinoa chips absolutely and a lot of people have trouble duplicating that recipe and I think ninety nine percent of the time it's because they're not getting the the gelatin uh the hydration and the and the yeah yeah I mean one of the sad one not sad well one of the interesting things about a lot of these uh a lot of these techniques is they really do require as sometimes it is helpful to see people do it. Absolutely because there's a lot of like uh the hand in it.
I know that you know like um Wiley also used to do very kind of a well known in in WD50 a well known recipe where he would uh take uh c carrot and cardamom uh I think it was carrot no I did carry carrot whatever carrot and then he would freeze it uh and dip it in a mixture of uh uh capricarakeen and locust bean gum to make his egg yolk. Do they make the yolk with the with the egg uh with the the egg white yeah the egg white was a coconut coconut like a fluid yeah yeah very famous uh WD fifty dish uh which we have in the book really yeah oh cool yeah uh but the the truth is it's actually a very difficult recipe. If you've never done it before, it takes a lot of practice to get those egg yolks to work properly. And when you're first doing it, uh, you'll get like one in eight will work. You know what I mean?
Absolutely. And then by the time you know you've been doing service every day for uh a month, you lose one in twenty. Do you know what I mean? But but there was always like the one cook in the kitchen who their job was to do all sixty of those every day, get them plated, get them away, and you know, they had the magic touch, but it really comes from practice. So a lot of these things take some practice.
Exactly. It's a huge amount of practice. Yeah. And and feel and you know, y exactly. So listen, call in your questions to 7184972128.
That's 7184972128. We're gonna go to commercial break, be right back with Maxime Belay. Cooking issues. All right, so MG's nice. Coming back with cooking issues, Maxime Belet, caller, you are on the air.
Uh yeah, hi Dave, thanks. Um I don't know how relevant my question is to your um modernist show today, but um I'm charged with making some dairy-free mashed potatoes for this weekend. Ooh. And um I've seen some recipes online that basically call up for like chicken broth or some milk substitute like soy milk or almond milk to uh stimulate the creaminess like that that dairy would to mash potatoes. And I was wondering if you had any um alternative suggestions.
How how long do you have from now? How I'm sorry, how long do I have? Yeah, how long do you have to get the recipe together from today? Um I mean I'm making them Friday night. What do you think, Maxima?
I would go for like an emulsion. I would do like uh with veg vegetable, I mean, if you really want the creaminess, you have to have some veg like yeah, vegetable oil base and uh I don't I'm not sure what starch you would use. I mean, uh you know if you were gonna do I mean you can almost get like uh a mixture of gum arabic and xanthan, like the tickled oil that we use. And you could do uh like an like an oil like a very heavy oil water emulsion. That'll hold as it dilutes and or as it's mixed with a solid, and you could get some of that you'll get some of that creaminess.
Then you could just choose a delicious oil. I wonder if you could do a slurry of the um like uh the the potato flakes, uh hydrate them just a little bit so and then blend in the uh the like a vegetable oil and make that your your your fat base. So I'm just I'm a little worried that if you don't pre emulsify it that it might break. It could, but this but the with the amount uh it depends on the ratio. If you're doing like the robuchon or like the very like very high percent, yeah.
But if you want the the uncuousness, I mean, you know, even fifteen, twenty percent fat, I think the amount of starch that you already have in the potato uh will act as uh as a pretty good emulsifier for for a vegetable oil base. Have you tried just a vegetable oil base yet? I I really haven't even played around with it that much. I've just kind of started looking into it right now. Alright, well, first I would go bonehead simple, like we said, and just you know, make mashed potatoes and beat uh some uh you know, put o oil into it.
I mean gently. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, obviously. Put it through like a I mean like yeah, yeah, don't turn it to glue. No, please, no true, no chewing mashed potatoes.
Yeah, yeah. And then after that, uh my next step would be to move into uh uh my next step would be to move into something like um like a tickle or like a xanthan gum arabic mix. That's a great thing. See, what about like uh does it have to be dairy free and uh completely like what about eggs? Combined with like an egg yolk and then when the egg is.
No, eggs are eggs are fine. Basically for Passover and the last second, you like a snowball not a style where you just get that richness. Um, just no dairy basically. I think you know, yeah, you could go like old school, like you almost using the egg yolk like super thick, but like egg yolk instead of the gum arabic and Xanthan, just to uh multifier, yeah. So you're basically making a mayonnaise and folding it in.
I mean it's uh it's it's exactly that. Yeah, I think if you're allowed to use egg, but just make sure you don't get the temperature too high. Exactly. You know, do you have access to a circulator? Wait, yeah, wait till the um potatoes cool off a little bit.
A little bit. Yeah, but do you do you have a circulator or no? No, no. I'm pretty much working. I live in Brooklyn and this time, I don't even have a kitchen.
I just kinda like it. But but if you're if you just get a seven seven, eight dollar digital thermometer, you check the the temperature of your potatoes right when you when you know before you want to serve them, and you fold that in to give it that, you know, just that that with that uh folding um you know technique. Uh I think that would be great. Yeah, but just do it at the last minute. Exactly.
If you have a circulator, you can cheat and spread it out in the ziploc and go, but yeah, but just wait till the last minute. Yeah. Last minute. And if you just do potatoes, season them up, you know, keep them you know, starchy, whatever they are, and warm fold that in at the very end. Yeah, and use a ricers or or or or potato mills to have your your your potato base, and then at the last second you you you fold it in with the right ratio.
And that's something where you just keep on adding in just to get the right mouthfeel, and you you just have to keep on tasting for that. Um another cool thing that we love to do for to increase the potato flavor as well. If you're using oil, that's a great medium for that. You can take the skins from the potatoes, uh the potato peels, obviously that you you you've uh uh taken away from the phone. Exactly.
And fry them in the oil uh beforehand that you're going to use for your mayonnaise. So they have it, they have a beautiful deep nutty flavor. And then strain that, cool that down, make your mayonnaise like that, and then you'd have a really intensely flavored uh and creamy mashed potato. Cool. That sounds that sounds great.
What what kind of frying on that? Like like deep frying or just kind of like a few. Just in a pan, you know, and you do you have your skins in there and you you wait until they get sort of you know crisped and and and golden. You don't want to burn them, you don't want to get any bitter flavors, but just until you extract them. Exactly.
You're just extracting the the some of those really beautiful flavors. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Good good luck. Let us know how it works out.
Absolutely. Do we still yeah, I will. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey, do we still have another caller?
All right, caller, you are on the air. Yeah, hello. Hi. Oh, you got an echo. Yeah.
Okay, sorry. Hold on one second. Uh is that any better? No, we'll deal with it. Um, uh so uh I'm a current student at FCI actually.
And I had a question kind of related to something I'm trying to do for my menu project. Okay. Uh and so um two two questions. I need both to create food and uh large sheets, and also I'm I'm asking about uh edible threads, if you know of anything. Uh large sheets of what?
And yeah, what was the Yeah, okay. So um, for example, I mean one of the things I'm trying to use is uh yuba which is easy enough to get into a large sheet but I was also thinking about using transglutamase uh to bind thin sheets thin slices of meat into large sheets. Yes, sure. I guess are you familiar with uh shibori? No shibori is a Japanese uh resist dyeing technique like a a very badass form of tie-dye basically oh yeah yeah yeah okay uh and so the idea is to is it silk screening or is it is it sil silk screening or is it so cleaning I'm not sure uh no no oh I guess so my idea is um taking uh foods and binding them using these resist techniques we actually weave thread into the fabric and then pull it tight and bunch it in different designs and then you dye it and where the fabric is pulled tight it resists the dyeing.
Right. So the idea is to bind food and then it would then resist different cooking methods through the different courses. Either by taking like a sheet of sashimi, uh binding it very carefully and bunching it and then soaking it in a like ceviche bait so that it the bound portions resist the acid they aren't exposed to the acid and so some of it comes out as sort of a ceviche uh cure and then some of it comes out so is the sashimi for example. Okay. I mean looking for an edible thread that is fine enough to do that sort of work uh with something as delicate as fish but that is still edible.
How strong? How strong? Like scallion scallion comes to mind as the classic thread. Sure, sure sure sure. You know what I mean?
Like uh like long pieces that are then you know lightly blanched. I mean that's the classic you know thing like that that that works. I mean I'm sure there's others. Uh yeah. I mean I mean you can you could do starch based ones.
I mean that would be it consists of making uh a starch paper based on uh like maybe a a really good uh prehydrated tapioca starch uh you make a leather maybe a little a little bit of oil so that the the it breaks down in your mouth uh more easily and I think I think that might be but then it might hydrate a tough time when it's in in contact with the with the water yeah yeah it might you are okay so you need something waterproof, right? Which means that you're you're dealing with I mean th that right there is a problem. So now you're you're basically down to long long scale p plant fibers. Do you absolutely make that strong enough? Oh absolutely yeah we've done with with pasta we've done it where if you do v if you if you cut them just fine enough you could do a very uh uh a uh fresh pasta enriched with with about depending on the flour you're using five to seven percent uh vital weak gluten and bobs red is a really good brand and you could get uh you could get a very uh uh uh s sort of you know uh plat uh elastic um thread that would be you know very workable but also break down as you chew very easily.
Can you hit it with RM to make it even tougher or no that we we've done that for the for buckwheat because there was you had the protein content but we didn't have enough stu uh uh uh of uh um of the the the the starch uh right so yeah exactly yeah, the bottom would be very work very well with the meat course too. Have you guys heard of uh um uh collagen thread? Oh yeah. Yeah. It doesn't break down so nicely though.
In the mouth feels not so nice. Yeah. I mean, obviously, like well, think about it this way. I mean, collagen on the outsides doesn't break down as nicely as like intestine, for instance. Uh would be cool.
That'd be cool. That would work. Yeah. Yeah. You know?
Honeycomb tripe is an amazing, yeah. Yeah, or or like long, like carefully cut pieces of uh sausage casing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And as as for gluing sheets, it's no problem. That's no problem. Yeah, that's stuff's meant to do it. Here's my one recommend recommendation. The only time I've ever had uh meat glue provide an off flavor in a dish that I've done was when I glued a um I I glued many, many layers of different colored fish together and then vacuum them together.
Well no, but yeah, but so so I the first time I did it, I over meat glued it and I vacuumed it and I let it cure in the vacuum bag. And then I had I perceived a flavor that and and I but so the second time I did it I used a much sm less amount of meat glue, vacuumed it, and then before like right after I crushed it into shape, yeah, I cut the bag open, and then it could air out in the fridge while it was setting and then let that flavor come off. Yeah. But you especially with fish, um when I am butchering, before you put the sheets together, would you cut them across like you're doing for sashimi or along the grain to kind of provide stability? Uh uh any like thin, beautiful sheet of fish is gonna be absurdly uh delicate, no matter how you do it.
Uh unless you're literally cutting um unless you're literally cutting in a big piece and then preserving the sinew along the cut, which is possible. Like I've you know, we've done tuna sinew is delicious, you know uh but you're gonna be tough getting big pieces that stuff you could you could you could hit somebody in the face with it won't break but yeah I guess if you if you were to if you were to like partially cure the meat um then you might have yeah I mean if if you give it not cure I would actually do a brine but if you were to do like um three and a half salts percentage you know to to water uh two percent sugar brine uh you might be able to get a a little bit more uh uh elasticity and and um I think structure uh to the fish. Yeah I mean the best way to slice unless you're gonna do some sort of special slicing is to parf par freeze it don't freeze it all the way. Just get it par freeze throw it on uh like a very high quality meat slicer and go directly in between sheets of wax paper and then keep them almost frozen until you're about to use them because once those things stall out good night. It's yeah and was the transglutamase still work while it's frozen or would you apply frozen if it thaws and it activates no needs to thaw needs a thaw in order for the what you what what you do is is because so when we when we you know when I was doing it I would take the the you know fairly stiff but not fully frozen sheets I would layer them uh and then as soon as the salt and the sugar from the cure hits them they melt out and then you have a a block but then you don't lift them again.
That's it. You know what I mean? They're done. Yeah. You know excellent thank you very much and if you want to see a uh a video I have a video on cooking issues uh on the blog I think or link to from a Starchef's video I did where I did Mokumegane which is the Japanese metal working kind of uh you know technique and you can see the kind of in practice, like thin sheets of fish glued together.
It's not what you want to do, but it might give you some uh visual pointers on how to handle the products. Yeah. Yeah, excellent. Thank you very much. Um I'm really curious to see how your your uh you know this all comes together.
This is uh send us some photos. I will definitely uh send you guys some photos. I have a friend who does a lot of food photography who's very interested, also who wants to document it. So I will definitely send you guys something. Awesome.
Yeah, excellent. Thank you very much for talking with me today. Thank you. So do we we have any more callers or should we take some email stuff? Let's do some emails, I think.
All right, do some emails. Yeah, I heard there was someone, but I heard that which means we lost them. Uh okay. Uh let's see, we want I'm probably, you know, it's nice that we're getting some calls, which means I probably won't get to all of the email questions. Anything that I miss this week, I will try to get uh next week.
Uh Michael writes in about nutmeg. Here's a question. I recently ordered a set of food great essential oils from uh Aftelier, which is Mandy Aftel. Do you work with her over there? She's like, we haven't worked with any works with Daniel Patterson for a while, and then that's uh Yeah, and she's good buddies with uh Harold McGee.
Yeah, and so she has she's a basically a perfumer uh out of uh San Francisco or thereabouts Bay Area, and she does a lot of interesting uh stuff. And she actually has a line in William Snowman now that just launched, but I haven't seen it because I haven't been in William Snowman like how long. I still go. You know what I mean? I'm forbidden to buy kitchen equipment people, by the way.
Like literally, if I brought another anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I mean, anyway. Uh so recently ordered uh ordered a set of food great essential oils from uh Aftelier.
Uh fun stuff, especially for those of us that don't have a rotovap. Well, the rotor vap doesn't make essential oils, just be clear on this. Rotovap does distillation, but not the steam distillation that is what happens when you're making essential oils. It's kind of a different piece of equipment. I don't do the steam distillation because I don't have a rig for it.
Anyway, you guys have the ball or rotovap, the huge one. You know what? Come hang out. Let's play. You know what?
The thing is, is like I say like a any anything I ever negative I I would ever say about these guys is strictly due to jealousy. Just straight up jealousy. All right. Oh god. Uh okay so uh one of the items in my set is nutmeg essential oil.
I seem to remember from reading Soul on Ice, which is I guess Eldritch Cleaver's book, uh, that nutmeg was a popular prison hallucinogen with horrible side effects. So now I'm a little scared to use this stuff. Is there a chance that the hallucinogen is concentrated or conversely a reason to believe it was left behind uh left behind other other words not in the oil uh to make sure it's completely safe. Okay. Look uh the the compound there's a several possible psychoactive compounds in nutmeg uh one of them is uh moristocin is the kind of famous one uh parsley seed oil has a lot of it and if you go to Arrowid which is like the place where kind of uh mm thinking druggies go to put down their kind of mental thoughts on this is where I go.
Uh most of those people aren't using nutmeg uh they're using uh parsley seed oil which has a high concentration of this in various cap capsules. Listen, uh that compound uh maristosin is uh is aromatic and it's actually characteristic of nutmeg so uh there is no way that you uh making a dish that you enjoy the taste of uh are going to uh get poisoned. The levels would be ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah people who people who typically to get hallucinatory effect out of it uh people will do things like grate a whole nutmeg or two and then uh kind of like somehow choke it down and it's described as the most vile thing that they've ever done in their lives and then like three you know hours later they start feeling some sort of uh psychoactive effects.
This is not something that you would accidentally do. Uh you know, I mean, could you take that oil, uh pack it into gel caps, uh pound it and do yourself harm? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, one of the problems with uh nutmeg is that uh so it's you know, psychoactive uh substances are kind of the you know, the the thing with them is is there there are certain psychoactive substances that uh that the danger level is fairly close to the psychoactive level, and I think nutmeg is closer than many in that kind of spectrum, which is kind of where the bad kind of uh you know rep comes from, because you know, if you eat uh one graded nutmeg, you're you know, you won't die, but if you eat like three, like there might be renal failure or something like that. So it's like and and you know, an order of uh a three is not a safety level that most druggies would be happy with, you know, between activity and death. Like it's not a happy number, like an order of magnitude is a more friendly kind of a number. Um but anyways don't worry about it. Like what I'm saying is don't worry about it.
A little grading here and there. Delicious. Also, apparently, uh and again from Arrowid, uh the stuff degrades over time, similar to Thujone, which we're gonna talk about in a minute with Absinthe. And uh, in other words, so if you use nutmeg that's old, it's lost some of its principle. So, you know, even if you somehow are able to you know choke down, you know, that uh jar of McCormick ground nutmeg that's in your uh grocery uh store.
It's mostly gone. Yeah, it's mostly gone. And you probably not that I not that I recommend it. So uh don't uh don't worry. Don't worry, right?
Absolutely. Don't worry. No. Uh well, you might as well do this on a on a uh similar one. We have in from uh Tom Fisher and Lance Down PA, longtime uh listener.
Uh first of all, he has a centrifuge questions. Let's knock that out first, right? Okay, cool. Okay, before we get to the food zone. Uh got my centrifuge.
Good. I'm glad to hear it. That's one of all of our favorite pieces of equipment. Yeah, centrifuge. My baby.
Yeah, you're on the cutting edge, by the way. Like in 15 years, many more high quality restaurants are gonna have centrifuges, and people won't think that that you're a freak show when you suggest that they go get one. It's it's coming to homes too. This is the next uh cuisine arts uh, you know. Really?
They're gonna make one? I think so. I think they were very curious about it yesterday. So let's see. Really?
Oh, but by the way, before we get to this question, uh yesterday was the ISCP uh I didn't go because I had a bunch of events I had to do, but uh they the I thank you. The uh the award ceremony, and last year uh Modernist Cuisine was about to come out, and I co-hosted with Chris Young, you know, with the one of the other authors, and uh we were I was telling him joking that next year if you don't win every damned book award, uh you know, it's gonna be uh a travesty. And uh in fact you guys won three. We won three. Including one that they made up for you.
Right? Like profound what was it? Was it? It was uh oh god, it was like just inve invent like a future invention or you know, it's it was they were very gracious, and we were very very honored to receive these awards. Bad bad year to write a different book.
Uh anyway, okay. Uh in the cooking world that is, okay. So uh especially a professional book and or one that purports to have amazing photographs, because you're just gonna get swamped. Anyway, okay. So got a centrifuge and spun me some strawberries, uh, but I have an issue.
I tossed the strawberries in the blender, added two grams uh per le per no, two grams of uh pectonex ultra spl, which is a pectinx enzyme, uh for 500 grams of strawberry. That's you know, more dose than you need. You could probably do one in that amount, but two's not gonna hurt you. You just don't want to put so much pectanex in that it uh that you start it has a slightly fermented aroma, but that's fine. Don't worry about it.
Uh blended until slightly warm, good practice. Rested ten minutes, good practice, ten to twenty, good practice. Uh, if you do something that's going to break down like bananas, you don't want to rest it any longer than ten because it'll start to get kind of brown uh flavors. Uh and spun for ten minutes. I would you don't say what speed.
I'm assuming you have a centrifuge that'll do about four thousand times the force of gravity. Ten minutes is on the edge, ten to fifteen is better at those speeds, just because uh it will clarify almost instantly, but the puck solidity is gonna get a lot higher when you go faster. Okay, got a very solid puck and crystal clear juice. Glad to hear it. But on top was a layer of what appeared to be the same material as the puck, but floating on top like a vinegar mother, scooping it out, clouded the juice, but spinning for five minutes more, clear it up nicely.
Is this result of air bubbles trapped in the mix? Yes. Yeah. If you have a vacuum machine, vacuum that sucker out, break it before I get the air out, no problem. No problem.
Right? Absolutely. All right. I mean, this is something that you know Maxime and I do every day. And uh glad to hear glad it running all day.
Yeah. Ours actually is acting up. I have to get a new motor. Okay. Yeah, it's nice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh if you're using a centrifuge that only goes up to about 4,000 uh G's, the buckets really aren't it's not like a hazard to life and limb, but your motors will have to be replaced eventually. It's about a $900 problem in the one we have. Anyway. Uh now the second question, the different question.
Uh absinthe. Years ago when absinthe first be first became legal legal to sell in the US, I bought a bottle. Uh and the maker seemed very energetic about saying it was free of contaminants like Thujone from the wormwood. It's not a contaminant, it's an ingredient. Contaminant.
People are so crazy. All right. Uh it seemed all right. Yeah, right. Anyway, uh it seemed uh all right, but nothing to write home about.
More recently, a friend got a bottle and was telling me about it, saying it was made from the original illegal formula. I said I'd like to try uh I said I'd try the Thujone free version years ago and laughed and said thujone free absinthe is like alcohol free rum. Thujone is what makes it special. So what's the real deal? Uh thanks for doing the show every week.
Okay. So look, Thujone is uh another purported uh hallucinogenic uh uh you know psychoactive uh compound that is found in wormwood, which is one of the it's the characteristic herb from uh other than the anise taste. Right. Yeah, uh from um absinthe. Uh, you know, and all of the later ones like, you know, not later, but different ones like Preneau, not the regul the regular one, or or Ricard or Pastis or any one of these southern French, like I'm a I'm a small man in Marseille drinking stuff.
Not small, but old. I don't mean small physically, but it's delicious. Yeah, it's good. But it's especially good in the summer in Marseille when you're sitting out, you know what I mean? Marseille is a great town, by the way.
Yeah. Yeah. Marseille, fantastic town. I really like it. Anyway, uh point is that uh uh Thujon in uh there's a lot of research out there.
The one that you should go uh look at again, you can get to it via uh Arrowid vaults, but uh there's a bunch of papers out there um where they studied old pre ban uh absinthe bottles and found that modern absinthe has roughly similar levels to uh older absinthe, that the longer that uh and that's not really high enough to get you cranked up on Thujone by itself unless you drank so much that the ethanol is gonna have you stumbling and falling over. So is there some sort of synergism between like the smaller amount of Thujone that's actually in absinthe and you know, who knows? Who can tell? But like most of the studies that have been done, quantitative studies out there, point to the fact that uh really what's happening is you're getting drunk. Uh and uh I mean and horribly drunk, especially if you're trying to see uh how much absinthe it takes you to have a thhujone effect, you're going to be plastered.
Plus there's the placebo effect, right? Uh the other the other thing is is that wormwood, uh thujone quantity in wormwood, and this has also been checked, goes down radically as it's stored on drying. So if you have your own wormwood uh or other Artemis species sitting around and you um and you then uh like take it right away and make absinthe, you're gonna have much higher thujone levels than if you take a commercially prepared one that you get in an herb shop that's been dried and sitting around for a year uh and you're gonna get a much uh lower quality of thujone but e uh uh quantity, but even so uh the numbers seem to indicate that you're not gonna get crunked on the uh on the thujone, that you're gonna get shellacked by the ethanol. Now, uh uh uh uh thujone is uh it's is it oregano or sage oil? It's one of those two.
Go look it up on the internets uh and it's super high in thujone. I'm not telling you to go take this. Right. But if you need to know what thhujone uh uh goes like, go get a proper dose uh response related, you know, uh relationship off of the internet's uh any one of these uh you know herbal drug sites has many, many users who have uh put this stuff in. Make sure that you don't listen to anyone that doesn't tell you um like relative quantities in different oils and also uh body weight phenomena, things like this, because you want to get your doses uh right.
And I've never I've never tried it. But you know what? I've tried other things that uh people like supposed have supposed psychoactive effects, like for instance, you know, uh when I was in Columbia we were doing coca leaf infusions with coca leaf tea. And yeah, and uh I've never done cocaine, so I don't know what what that's like. I I didn't feel anything different, but I had people who had a lot more than I did report that uh it kept them up at night, for instance.
So there was but uh but a lot of this extra energy. Right, but a lot of this could just be mental. Do you know what I mean? Absolutely. If you tell someone you're having coca leaf infusion.
There's an excitement, there's a there's uh there's a psychological reaction, which is yeah. Yeah, yeah. Anyway. Uh okay, let's take one more commercial break. Did we have time to take one more commercial break?
All right, let's take one more commercial break. Call your questions to 718497-2128. 718497-2128 cooking issues. She's a good old pal. She looks like water fellow and I and deep river blue.
Ain't no one gonna cry from me and fish overlap. Deep river blue. And welcome back to cooking Issues. By the way, I'm not uh Angela Gabotz, one of my favorite interns of all time, uh, wrote in from Nebraska, but I'm not gonna have time to get your uh question this time. I'm gonna get you next time, Angela.
All right, on to the last question of the day. And I really want to talk w about this with Maxime because it's something I I think that he's probably interested in. Steve Crendell uh writes in, uh you know, have you seen the paper, this interesting paper on uh food pairing hypothesis uh and it's called uh Flavor Network and the Principles of Food Pairing by uh uh young uh young Yill on et al. Okay. And it was a paper uh last year by you know by a peop bunch of people in a in a um out of a bunch of different uh institutions.
Uh anyway, so what I I haven't had chance really to have uh Maxime look at the paper. So we're not gonna talk specifically about uh the paper, more about just the general uh the general concept of it. Um but the basic concept of food pairing uh has been uh popular over the last uh I don't know, what do you think? The decade or so? At least, yeah, ten, fifteen years.
I mean, really, and it's something that uh, you know, at the fat duck you're exposed to a lot. Yeah, but the basic premise is is that you can get uh and it's controversial and Maxime and I, we've never discussed it together, so we m we might violently disagree, which would be awesome way to end the show. Uh but the uh the the basic principle is that you can learn something about food pairing, so get interesting food pairing ideas by looking at the actual chemical similarities between different food items. Right. And so uh what what happens is is there's large databases of uh what flavor components are in various different ingredients, and then those are analyzed and uh the fat duck was famous for which ones?
The w the white chocolate and caviar both had uh a very similar uh uh volatile components and it was very interesting. Was it good? I actually never had it. I knew the idea. Then I had uh uh co uh uh uh uh cocoa and roasted cauliflower, also both shared uh a compound, and that was a it was a beautiful marriage and makes no sense in you know in in sort of a traditional context.
But when you taste it together, you realize that there is there is definitely value to uh approaching it that way. I don't think is as it's as consistent and as secure of uh an approach that that people will will will presume when they're when they're really getting into this approach. The study, which you should read, is actually quite interesting. What they've done is they've taken uh a bunch of recipe databases uh and then they've analyzed uh the recipe databases to see whether when you scan across many thousands of recipes, uh is there more often than not shared ingredient the shared ingredient flavor components or not. A pattern right.
And in the Western uh corpus, there was, and it was correlated that more than the statistically random amount of recipe shared flavor components. Right. And in their East Asian uh data analysis, uh fewer than the statistically uh number of shared ones with and and but what it boiled down to the really interesting thing is is that basically what it is is that 75% of the recipes they pulled in Western cuisine shared a very small number of flavor uh a small number of ingredients, and those ingredients shared a lot of things, like butter, milk, like like a lot of this is very simple uh yeah. Right, and the six most common uh you know, Asian ingredients didn't share a lot of characteristics, and so because those things basically weighted everything out, and all of the other recipes, if you remove the most common uh you know, six to ten ingredients out of uh out of our out of our tool kits, then it's basically statistically random in terms of that, which is interesting. Here's you know, my personal feeling about it is that anything that gives you an idea that's gonna make you uh that's gonna g give you a good flavor then fine do it whether it's like throwing dice uh using a uh you know a a dowsing rod whatever in the hell it is if it gives you a good idea it's good uh but that you know nothing in the world there's no no chemical analysis is going to replace your memory your taste palette you you what you've done before like you might get an idea and then try it and then know how to tweak it but there's just there is no there is no substitute for having tasted a lot and having cooked a lot.
Absolutely absolutely and to to sort of you know it's interesting the the the um I guess the the parallel between Western cuisine and and and eastern cuisine and and how we're we're noticing the the the these correlations um what I think is really interesting about Eastern cuisine in this sense is that you know taking away the the sort of uh chemical uh balance of of a few few uh ingredients um is is the balance of flavor and and what I love about Eastern cuisine is that you you know you now we're talking about uh flavor I mean uh uh the the the tastes uh uh salty bitter sweet acid um and uh and and and and and paying less attention to this you know this sort of you know sort of artificial combination of things that that may have uh uh a synergy or not uh right uh and so if if if when you build a sense uh uh when you build your palate uh the balance of of flavors is you know b through practice becomes a very inherent part of your of your you know culinary experience and a lot of these things may be more confusing or or misleading. Right, but I think I think what happened what happens is is is with anything else. Look, the people who are using these kinds of ideas uh right, or you know, in modern schisine using new pieces of new pieces of equipment, new techniques, whatever. These are usually in general a very highly creative set of people and they're looking for inspiration. Like, and I've said this many times, like the the the fundamental thing that Farran gave us was the desire to look outside of the normal uh kitchen for our inspiration.
You know what I mean? And yeah, and that that's the thing. It's not foams or whatever. It's this it's this it's this intense curiosity and this uh uh you know love of learning. And so as cooks do this, they you know they're looking for very you know di you know di different and disparate sources of uh of inspiration.
And is is this idea of uh different chemic different chemical uh shared things could that be a source of inspiration? Of course. Sure, of course. Sure. Of course.
But someone who doesn't have the palate to back it up, doesn't have the experience to back it up, it will be confusing, as you say. And it can be a disaster. A horrible disaster. Horrible. Yes.
So why don't we end this show on horrible disaster? Thank you, Maxim. Thank you, Donna. See you next week on cooking issues. All right.
Oh, you're dead. 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 and the iTunes Store. You can find us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for up-to-date news and information.
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