You're listening to the Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live to the cosmos from the backyard at Roberta's in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from approximately 12 to 1245 every Tuesday on the Heritage Radio Network. In the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Nastasha the Hammer Lopez not here today, but we are currently joined in the studio with uh Brooks Headley, the master pastry chef of Del Posto Restaurant.
And uh some of you uh might not know, a uh longtime hardcore musician, true? Uh yeah. Yeah it's uh it's a very uh checkered past, so well I mean and present. You still play occasionally, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.
I mean you like you know, Austin the whole nine. What's your current band? Uh or bandzah. Uh it's it's it's called Crash. Crash?
Yeah. You've had names that were a little more less safe for work, haven't you in the past or no? No, I mean they're all pretty safe, so yeah. It's just words. Yeah, yeah.
And what do you what do you uh just words, I like that. And uh what do you uh what are you playing in the band? Uh I've always played drums. It's the only thing I know how to do. I did people that can play multiple instruments piss me off.
So I like that. I like you know what pisses me off is people who uh do like more than one thing at a time. It's like what the hell, you know. It's like uh I mean I I was never uh I was never much of a hardcore guy. Are you hardcore or just like what do you think?
Will you classify yourself as hardcore? Uh I don't know. I mean uh just hate classification like every band member ever? No, uh it's uh I I I don't know. I I don't even know anymore.
So uh people you play with, what are they categorized as? Um I don't think they know either. So uh yeah, so uh people who play multiple instruments, especially in in uh in any genre of music where kind of like how good you are depends on how much physical energy you throw into the performance, right? Which I don't know about your music. That's the way I was if you do more than one thing, it's like you're just not spending enough energy doing the one thing that you're doing.
You're just not you're not paying enough attention, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, to a certain yeah. I I I go with that. So Ariel Johnson, our favorite PhD candidate at University of California Davis. In what depart here, uh Ariel grav a mic over here.
Okay. Uh I don't really know what department she's in. Uh yeah, she's gonna climb over me, folks, so you're gonna hear a pause. Oh, she's going back at me. Strong, strong.
Uh I really don't know what department she's in, but uh she deals as we we deal with her mainly in the in the area of uh flavor and uh studies of flavor. And uh her speciality on her piece of equipment is a uh very nice uh uh gas chromatograph that can do uh small volumes for food. Describe this crap. Okay, so um my home department is viticulture and analogy, but I do all kinds of flavor chemistry. Um but the GC that we have lets us uh separate complex mixtures of aromas and combine any amount that we want and then analyze their smell.
That's a gas chromatograph for all you fools out there. Oh sorry. Uh and uh and so basically uh what uh correct me when I'm wrong, but this what this piece of equipment does, and it's something that we all want, none of us own, uh what this basically does you take a sample uh and uh it's a s slowly kind of uh I guess the word is eluded or drawn through a long column. Yeah. Uh and the uh rate at which things are are drawn through is uh characteristic for each uh compound.
So you you will you will separate it based on how fast it goes through this column. True or false? True. Definitely true. Right.
Yeah, so you start with a complex mixture and each component interacts differently with the column and then it loses it in nice order. Right. And then how do how does it how do you check then? This is for people out there. How do you then check how much of that compound uh is there as it goes through?
Well, we have a detector called a mass spectrometer. Yeah. That uh that shows the amount of each compound as a peak and the area under the peak is related to concentration. All right. So now all you folks who don't already know this, which most of our listeners probably do, but if you don't, when you're watching the CSI Miami and they say uh do they still have that show?
Uh I don't have a TV. I don't know. Anyway, uh so anyway, so uh uh when they do that, they're like, ah G C mass spec. That's what they're talking about. Gas chromatograph, and then through a mass spectrometer.
But uh the cool thing about Ariel's one is that you can uh true or false, you can bottle the crap and sniff it yourself when you're done, right? Yeah, we uh we use liquid CO2 to condense everything down and remix it and then smell it. Man, man, man, meh, man. Liquid CO2. CO2 for uh liquid CO2 for all of you guys out there is like one of the world's uh great solvents, and it's also uh relatively uh nice and uh clean, simple and friendly to use in a in a lab, assuming you have the equipment.
Yes? Yes. Yeah. Also does very little to uh degrade it's it's fairly neutral and that doesn't degrade most of the things you're working with, right? Mm-hmm.
Okay. I mean I don't know whether I mean I'm sure most of the solvents they use don't degrade things, otherwise they wouldn't use them. That's true. Yeah, okay. Uh all right, so call in all of your questions, either about uh uh flavor chemistry or about world's greatest pastries, or about any random uh bull crap you choose to 7184972128, that's 7184972128.
And uh while we're at it last week, we made the horrible mistake of not talking about our sponsors, Modernist pantry. Have any of you guys used the Modernist pantry before? I've seen the website. Seen the website? But you know, you've already you've had your suppliers for years, so you probably like you know, have you ever used it?
I never have. I have an order I keep meaning to buy from them. Yeah. No, maybe maybe now's the time. I I haven't either, uh I'm ashamed to say, but I have sent uh many people to them and uh have heard only good things.
Uh so here is this week's uh what do you call it? Plug? Plug? Plug? Sure.
Okay. Okay. Today's show is sponsored by Modernist Pantry, supplying innovative ingredients for the modern cook. Do you love to experiment with new cooking techniques and ingredients but hate to overspend for pounds of supplies when only a few grams are needed per application? Modernist Pantry has a solution.
They offer a wide range of modern ingredients and packages that make sense for the home cook and enthusiast. And most cost only around five bucks. Saving you time, money, and storage space. Presumably they just size whatever it is they're using to a five dollar size, right? I mean, you know, it's like you could say that crack only costs five bucks, but then they keep making the size of the crack vial smaller and smaller.
True. Uh I'll take that. Like with Coca-Cola moving to a 20-ounce bottle. What? Well, they used to only have small bottles and then they moved to 20 ounce, but charge the same price.
Wait. Wait, wait, so wait, sweet. So they but you're talking about like the liter went down to a 20, because I always bought 20s to pound like a 20 is a nice, I'm gonna pound this right now size. Yeah, in like a vending machine. Oh, in a vending machine.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay. I haven't purchased Coca-Cola from vending machine in a long time. My wife will not let me purchase uh soda for the children, even though uh I grew up I I only drank carbonated beverages growing up, except for a very short kind of crystal light phase that I went through where I only drank crystal light. And and for those of you out there Crystal Light is actually a huge influence on me, so really?
Yeah, yeah. For real? You also grew up drinking the crystal light or just later. I always hated it and I thought it tasted terrible, but hugely influential in how I look at food for sure. Really?
Yeah, yeah. And now is true true or false, you only use aspartame in all of your recipes. That's it. That's it, completely. Only aspartame.
Uh we're lying, by the way. That that was a joke for all of you who are very concrete thinkers out there. That is not the case. Uh wait with the the problem is is if you drink uh diet sodas and or diet lemonade mixes or whatever, they have horrible new fake mocktails, by the way, crystal. I haven't tried them, but the idea is horrible.
They have a powder that they label mojito, which is that's an impossibility to have a mojito powder. That sounds gross. Yeah, it's horrible. Especially, you know, I'm sure they don't use aspartame anymore. I detest stevia, by the way.
Anyone out there who tries to call me up and say that your stevia is better than anyone else's, the freaking plant tastes bad. I've tasted it like directly, like grown, I've walked up to the plant, ta pick the leaf off and be like, yes, that awful metallic, bitter, crappy aftertaste is inherent to the product. And not mean unless and what I freaking love about this is that there are companies who sit there working around how to mask the incredibly awful taste. Yeah. Anyway, it's it's it's pretty gross.
Yeah, so uh for those of you that are like, well, why don't you just drink the regular wind? It's because uh those of us uh uh who drink predominantly diet liquids don't like to drink flat water for our hydration. We don't enjoy the flat water. We are throwbacks, some sort of Lamarckian genetic throwback to the days when water was poisonous, and none of us like to drink that. And so uh the issue is is if you were to drink regular soda uh or regular lemonade as your sole source of uh hydration, that would be absurd.
Like who wants to drink a jug of maple syrup every day? Very few of us, right? So, where diet soda drinkers are coming from is we inure ourselves to the horrible aftertaste and eventually you learn to like it, right? If you haven't done it in a long time, you know it's hard sometimes to go back. But you you kind of get over that taste hump, and uh then all of a sudden uh it doesn't bother you anymore, and we pound we pound liter after liter of this crap every day.
Now, that is why when you are shopping for somebody's party uh and you are a regular soda drinker, you make the uh the horrible error of purchasing equal amounts of diet soda and regular soda. When anybody knows if even two diet soda drinkers show up to your party, they will pound every amount of diet soda that you have provided. You all know this to be true. Uh anyway, my recommendation to you is instead of getting on these crappy, like you know, mojito powder. First of all, there first if if you're gonna put alcohol into it, just make it a real drink.
Otherwise, you're a bad person. But uh I don't I didn't mean that strongly, maybe, but kind of close, right? Yeah, you should you should stand by that. Yeah, all right, okay. Uh but uh my my big suggestion is learn to like seltzer.
When I was a kid, uh I always drank soda, so I was bubbles all the way back, like all the way back, bubbles, bubbles, bubbles, my whole life, bubbles. I started on TAB in the 70s, all right? Bubbles. But uh, but uh I didn't like seltzer for a long time, and then when I was going to uh the college, I realized that um that it was gonna be cheaper for me to drink uh seltzer water. And I'm really I'm a cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap man.
And so at that time a cheap, cheap, cheap boy. And so what I did was I uh uh I trained myself over the course of a couple of weeks to uh like the seltzer, and then much like diet soda flavors in general, aspartame at the time, uh you learn to love it, and now uh I'll never go back. I'm uh I'm a seltzer man forever. Back to the Modernist pantry. Uh this all came from the the five bucks thing.
So I that's where I was. Okay, whether you are looking for hydrocolloids, pH buffers, or even meat glue, you'll find it at Modernist Pantry. And if you need something that they don't carry, just ask. Chris Anderson and his team will be happy to source it for you with inexpensive shipping to any country in the world. Modernist Pantry is your one-stop shop for innovative cooking ingredients.
Modernist Pantry carries three types of spray-dried vinegar powder white, malt, and balsamic. By the way, if you use vinegar powder, you gotta realize acetic acid is volatile, right? It's one of the few uh acids that we use in cooking that is extremely volatile. A lot of organic acids are volatile. But uh, and and this gives a lot of characteristic flavor uh, you know, aromas and flavors to uh certain uh alcoholic beverages, distilled beverages.
But the majority of acids that we deal with on a daily basis in the kitchen citric acid, malic acid, tartaric acid, uh non-volatile. Uh acetic acid is. So if you get sprayed dried vinegar powder, it has the flavor, like a taste of a vinegar, but they've almost no acidity. And so uh when you're adding a vinegar powder or something to make it acidic, you will have to cheat it with uh another acid. So uh typical cheetah acid would be citric acid because it's the most neutral of the dry powdered acids that uh that you can um buy.
Uh and people are used to associating uh the kind of lemony acid hit uh of citric acid with culinary acid in general. And so uh apparently there are cheetah acids out there that are specifically meant to give the acidic kick to things like potato chips. I don't have source I had a guy who slipped me his card once, he's like, I make them call me, but Nastasha, I don't know whether she ever called the guy. Uh so I don't have the source for them yet, and I can't tell you what they are. So if you buy it, I would also suggest buying from them um some citric acid uh powder.
The one gripe I have with the commercial citric acid powders is the granule size is relatively large. It's somewhere in between uh U.S. granulated sugar and and uh and a and a U.S. super fine sugar. So it's a little bit too granular for me for the c compared to the spray-dried powders, which are very, very powdery because of the method in which they're made.
So there's no ideal solution yet. Maybe buy some citric acid, pulse it in a spice grinder for a little while to try and get it a little more powdered so that it integrates better with the uh vinegar powder. Anyway, okay. We carry three types of spray-dried vinegar powders white, malt and balsamic. Fans of cooking issues, it place an order of $25 or more before next week's show.
We'll get a free package of malt vinegar powder. Good choice, malt vinegar powder, good stuff. Uh which is perfect for making modernist fish and chips. Do they use that in the fish and chips recipe in the modernist cuisine? Anyone?
Anyone? Not sure. Should have had that crap on last week when Maxine was here. Simply use the promo code CI80 when placing your order online at modernistpantry.com. Visit modernist pantry.com today for all of your modernist cooking needs.
Okay. So uh by the way, you know, I have no idea whether these guys are pissed off or not that I constantly like stop in the middle of their promos and like make comments and whatnot. I mean, I think that's why they keep coming back. I think they like it. Really?
Yeah, who knows? Uh all right. So uh hey Brooks, I I don't know you haven't uh because by the way, folks. If you don't know me, I'm a jerk, and I haven't uh given Brooks any of the information that we're gonna talk about before the show. So he has no idea what the hell's going on.
I I I plan to be completely sandbagged here. So that's how that's how it goes. So we're gonna start though, uh, with the reason Ariel, we I hadn't planned on uh uh having her on the show today, but she wrote in a comment based on the kind of flavor pairings uh question we had last week and the paper on flavor pairings. By the way, I'm gonna buy that book by that Somaye who's very interested in this. Oh, the taste buds and molecules.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I don't I have no judgment on it because I have not read it yet. I refuse to make uh comments on things I haven't read yet, either pro or negative. The reviews are mixed on Amazon, but mainly about the graphics presentation of it, which some people really like and some people really hate.
But uh I'm gonna check it. But so for those of you that don't know what uh what in the hell we're talking about, flavor pairing is this concept, I think largely bunk, uh, and by bunk I mean crap, that uh you should be able to pick out uh the different flavors that you use uh based on their underlying chemical composition. Uh in other words, if if uh parrot meat shares a specific uh flavor compound with uh donkey poo that you might want to put the parrot and the donkey poo together in a dish. I obviously I don't really mean but whatever. Don't kill parrots.
Uh but um But eat donkey poo. Well, that's up to you. I mean you're not hurting it. In other words, like no one's gonna get angry at you for it. True.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh and you know, my family's had parrots, please. I don't know no comments on how I'm anti-parent. I'm pro pared.
I want to get a parrot action. My wife doesn't like birds. But I want a bird because my kids want a pet, but we have no room for a dog. My we can't have cats because we're allergic to the cats, and that my sister-laws is allergic to the cats, but I want a pet that they that will give a crap about people, and parrots are like the other pet that cares about people, even though they're weird about it, like they're weird about it because they're birds, but anyway, whatever anyway. So we're talking about this concept.
There's this uh paper that came out recently that actually what they did is they did a mass database uh data mining study of recipes. Uh, and then uh those recipes, they looked to see whether or not they shared uh chemical The hammer just walked in. Nastasha. Uh they compared those recipes to see whether or not there was any actual uh w whether it's true that recipes that we tend to make over the course of decades, years, centuries, actually share more flavor components than would be if you just chose recipes at random, which is the horrible idea that Air Vetis actually espouses that we should make sauces on uh uh randomly based on a computer, have them generated, and then see whether or not they taste good, which seems to me to be uh the monkey typing Shakespeare way of making food, which is uh preposterous and horrible. Uh so uh Brooks, you familiar with this taste pairing hypothesis crap?
Um not not entirely not so far, I mean I know I presented it in a rather biased jaundice light. Does it sound like a good idea, or would you prefer to base flavor combinations on the years you've spent tasting and and cooking? Yeah, I mean I mean it's like uh it's all it's repetition, you know. Yeah. Like repetition of of making things or tasting things.
Um like you kind of like build your palate, I guess. Yeah, that's the way I think about it. So area that just seems just like normal. So yeah, and of course, like you know, now like it's very rare that I'm in the position of being like the old Kajer son of a bitch who's like modern stuff. You know what I mean?
But like it seems to me that uh look in the end, anything that helps you make better food, good idea. Like I don't care what your inspiration is. If your inspiration is, you know, looking at constellations and somehow looking at constellations and you have some sort of matrix that then like gets your creative juices flowing and your food ends up tasting good, bueno. But you know what I mean? The cr the crystal light logo.
Yeah, sure. Like sure, Brooks. Yeah, that that splash. Brooks, the splash on the crystal light logo, apparently Brooks is now telling me true or false, that's the inspiration for all of your cooking. Not all of it, but a lot a lot of the fruit based things for sure.
What about the celery sorbet? Your amazing celery sorbet? Um no, I don't think that had anything to do with the crystal crystal light logo. So please, please. For those of you that don't know, by the way, before I I'm gonna get Arielle on this in a second, uh uh about the um what she thinks about it.
And I want her to give me her unvarnished opinion, pro or pop pro or negative, because nothing I like better than a good a good uh argument. But uh Brooks, and we've said this a million times on the show, uh, you know, but whenever you try and say that he's doing innovative work, uh he'll say he's not. But the fact of the matter is makes uh delicious uh desserts that you aren't expecting. So for me, that's uh that's innovation right there. What do you think?
Nastache, what do you think? You have to s you have to speak up, you're not by a microphone. Yeah, okay. Uh so Ariel, what do you what are what are your thoughts on uh what are your thoughts on this flavor pairing stuff? On flavor pairing or on this paper?
Uh uh first give me flavor pairing, nutshell, and then this paper in you know another another separate nutshell. Well, I would imagine that um shared compounds and shared volatiles may play some role in a novel flavor pairing, whether or not someone eating it likes it or not, but it's not gonna be a deterministic uh guarantee that a pairing will work. And it might have to do more with the non shared compounds and how those go together when you make a a pairing out of out of things. So what you're saying is that it may or may not have any relevance at all. Yes.
Uh do you find it an interest like is it interesting to you that uh as a as a as a starting point or as a framework in which to work? Do you think have you seen any dishes that have come out of it that would otherwise not have uh come into the world that you think are gonna be here for a long time because they're so freaking awesome? Well, I don't know that I could comment on uh longevity, but I have had some interesting like uh orange and beetroot type things that Heston Blumenthal made and that makes sense to me. Well, it makes sense to you, but would it make sense to to anybody? In other words, orange and beets don't sound like they're so they're not so far off.
I mean, like they make they make sense to me from a cook's perspective, right? Yeah, no, that doesn't sound weird, though. Yeah. Like liver and jasmine sounds weird. So then well, yeah.
Like that sounds weird. I've never had that one. Yeah, but I mean that's one of the classics. Yeah, yeah. I have had the the white chocolate and caviar before.
Yeah, yeah. Maxine was talking about that lesson. How is that? Yeah, I just tasted it. It was um it depends on the proportion between white chocolate and caviar, but it can be kind of cool.
Also, caviar is such a wide-ranging flavor. That's true. And white chocolate is evil. Yeah, it's true. Also true.
Thank God we have Brooks here, man. That's awesome. Okay, so uh what? Wait a minute, we're not done talking about this paper yet. Then we'll take a break.
All right. So uh and by the way, while we're taking a break, you better call in your freaking questions to 7184972128, 7184972128. Okay. Now about the paper. Well by the way, can I?
Yeah, t describe the paper very quickly too. Okay, so what the the paper did, they took a gigantic set of recipes online, I think from all recipes and some Korean site. But oh yeah, they did a Korean site to see whether or not Western perception of Korean food was the same as Korean perception of Korean food, right? So they took this gigantic online recipe database and uh took each recipe and looked at the ingredients in each, and then from some handbook of essential oils and a couple of other things determined what compounds were in each ingredient. Which is a horseshit technique, right?
Well, considering that the uh aroma character of any given compound is dependent on concentration and they didn't look at concentration, I'm not sure how relatable to flavor their data set actually is. Wildly dependent, right? Oh, extremely. I'm told I'm what I meant to say was horse poop. Uh yeah, so in other words, uh you you'll know off the tip of your tongue, but like certain things can go from being like pleasantly grassy to vomit, like depending on concentration, right?
Yeah, ethyl butyrate is a good example of that. Uh that at a nice medium concentration smells like green apple. Um as you increase the concentration, it starts smelling like rotten apples and then finally like feet or really, really stinky cheese. Wasn't that the name of your last band? Ethel butyrate.
Come on, man. Like ethyl ethyl merman butyrate. That's your next band. Ethel mermin butyrate. Uh you know, Brooks sometimes will have like nano bands that like, you know, are only there.
Maybe one of them could be ethylum and butyrate. Like a pop-up. Yeah, it's a microband. Microband. A nano band.
Yeah, nanoband. Uh okay. Uh so uh was that the only gripe you had about the paper? I think the site was it all recipes? I think it was all recipes.
I think it was all recipes. And uh the take. Every recipe on that's is one of Brooks's by the way. Every single one. Okay, so I won't hate on it too much.
Um I don't know uh actually what recipes went into their data set and they didn't give a list, but if you look at the uh primary ingredients for what they call North American recipes, it's all butter, eggs, wheat, sugar, and cream, which suggests to me that uh the recipes they use to represent North American cuisine are desserts. And there's so much more to North American cuisine than just desserts. I mean desserts. Although it is what we are be it's just what we're best at as opposed to what other people are good at. But I don't think all of North American flavor pairing in a uh cultural context could be described just by cake recipes on all recipes.
Right. The other problem is is that uh the cook cooked aroma of those is vastly different from the I mean, no one thinks that if you were to gather the ingredients for a pie, they do not the smell of a cooked pie make. That is true. Um in fact th the the the compounds aren't even there yet. They're all in precursor form.
Um the s but what's interesting about it is that the the findings of the study are basically if you remove a certain subset of things like these very basic ingredients from either Asian cuisine or uh you know, West what they call Western whom who the hell knows because we don't have the recipes, um turns out that uh they don't share any more than would be statistically r randomly uh associated. You know, once you take out the top six ingredients or something. So, but you you say you you you would be loath to take these this study on to accept either a positive or negative finding because you think the methodology is poor. Yeah, I think large data-driven uh studies like this are valuable and interesting, but they're only as good as the data sets that they use, and I think that their data set and their approach are flawed to make the uh too flawed to make the broad conclusions that they do. Yeah, pretty pictures though.
Did I mention that? Oh, yeah, cool. Cool. And I think that's the problem because uh the study is getting a lot of traction. Yeah.
And so people are paying a lot of attention to it, but it's one of my many gripes in the world is that is that someone makes a study, puts a big splashy like uh, you know, statement in the abstract or conclusion, and then it gets a lot of traction because no one goes back and reads the damn study. Exactly. All right. And with that, calling your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128.
Take a break. Cooking issues. That had to have been Nastasha, the Downton Abbey cooking issues down Abbey edition. That's the most used break song of two thousand twelve on this stage. People love this.
Really? Yeah. Do they think that we're gonna come back with British accents and be kind of like lords and ladies? I always hope that. I want to be the servant.
I want to be your accent. I want to be I'm not gonna do the accent. We'll get Karen in here, the bartender to do it. I'm gonna come back as Mr. Bates.
Hi, this is Drilling. I I guess I just had a uh a question on whether you think of the uh the problems with this uh what's it called? The flavor uh flavor pairing. Whether that's uh whether it's flavor pairing. Or is it based on the fact that you you don't think that that's a an interesting way of finding new new flavor compounds at all?
Huh. I'll give you my perspective really quickly. Uh I'm not gonna talk about the study, I'll let Ariel do that. My feeling is that it's gonna be both I look here's here's my thing. I think um I uh fr I think it's scientifically flawed.
In other words, look, I don't think that there's any reason a priori to believe that because two ingredients share chemical compounds that they go well together, right? Uh but that said, if it is i it it's not an invalid source of inspiration for somebody if you find it interesting and inspirational and if you get good ideas from it. Any more than reading a book can give you ideas for a dish, or you know, being out in a in a field in the middle of spring and like thinking about things can give you inspiration. So I I don't there's no such thing as an invalid source of inspiration. It's just I I think that th there's no reason for me to believe that uh that that things should go together just because they share compounds.
That's my gripe. Now on the study, what do you think of it? Well, I think uh if we can go back to flavor pairing really quickly. The takeaway from that is that um there are a huge number of fascinating and interactive perceptual things that are going on between chemistry and flavor when we mix ingredients together, we just have no idea how they work yet. So so what are your what are your thoughts?
Do you think we're full of uh full of crap, or do you agree, disagree? What's your what's your take? Me? Yeah. Well, I mean, I I I think that a lot of the things you would get would be uh, you know, you've got you've got your base flavors in different cuisines, right?
And so if you were to look, if you were just take a bunch of, in this case, Korean recipes or you know, Thai recipes or anything like that, right? You're you're gonna get all these compounds that are most commonly coming up in those in those recipes, you know. So so whether that's that's the space spices or uh base urb, you know, or herbs and spices that are used a lot in those in those cuisines, they're gonna keep coming up. So I think what you would get then is just a repetitive kind of pairing that, oh you know, uh I I can't even think, you know, just you know, an Indian cuisine, you know, uh curries, you know, all the all the spices that go into there, right? Well that they're in practically everything.
So every every you know, you keep going through these uh dishes and that's what you're gonna get. So I don't I don't really see how you would get new things because I I I guess it would only come together when you're crossing cuisines and then it was like some random ingredient from one cuisine and another random ingredient in the other cuisine and they share flavor compounds, and so then you would just assume that they could be swapped out with each other. And then I think it would be I I just I I don't I don't know. I kinda see what you're saying. I mean but I I I kind of disagree that you can't get new flavors by going into look the the genius of kind of uh American cuisine, right?
We started with kind of the now much maligned kind of fusion stuff, right? Which everyone now is oh fusion, uh well, you know, that's an old gripe. Maybe people are pro-fusion again, but you know, back when I was a kid f like fusion was the passe thing, no one wanted to be labeled with the fusion label. But what we are at d at base here in the US and uh certainly uh abroad in the mo in the modernists kind of thinking if you take that as an actual movement, which you know, we can have a debate, is uh we steal things, right? So we steal things from uh industry, we steal things from uh we steal things from anything.
And so we steal things from other cultures. And so I think that the best way to steal something is to use their flavor components straight up for a while to kind of get a feel for it, and then you can take bits and pieces because you know how they work together. And so you can get r you know, really kind of new and different flavors without doing straight fusion, right? You know, flavor of India with French technique, or what would be more interesting uh the other way around, Indian technique with French ingredients. But uh the what do you what do you what do you what do you guys think about this as uh as a mode of innovation?
In other words, I don't I don't I don't I don't think it's a ness this flavor pairing thing isn't obviously is not necessary for innovation. I mean it could be interesting. It could be interesting to kind of trip your mind into new new things, but again, anything could do that. You know what I mean? I don't know.
What do you anyone, Brooks? I mean, as a as like a a base uh a form of inspiration or whatever, then sure, that's that's cool. But I mean, like, you know, when it comes down to it, it's just like tasting and and putting the things together and and doing it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until you have something that that that kind of works, you know. So I mean, I mean, I mean, I I mean, certainly uh chemistry is not as ripe a f uh a place for inspiration as the crystal light splash. But uh you want to talk about that for a second?
The splash again? Yeah. Okay. What do you like about it? I'm hoping that we can have a small commercial break and that we can get the I believe in crystal light song for our.
It just looks so refreshing that that you that that's what you want to uh sort of aspire to. I believe that you know that's the thing, is like uh not all food is meant to be refreshing, but I really like refreshing things. Like I really like I was you know, refreshing is always good. No one's like, oh my God. I went and I had a uh, you know, I had this dessert, I had this sorbet, and it was refreshing.
Oh you know what I mean? No one's ever no one's ever anti-refreshing. No one ever wants to, you know, I want the I want the heavy mental beatdown. Like for my that's what you know, I guess you know, ponderous. Who wants a ponderous meal?
Refreshing. I think I've got the ad if you want it. Yeah, all right. Let's go to a tiny micro commercial break where we're gonna do some crystal light. I believe it's be as fun as can be.
I believe in life in sugar free. I believe in crystal light goes on the linen. Crystal light drink mix is sweetened with 100% nutri-sweet, so there's no sugar, no saccharine, and no saccharine aftertaste. All these natural flavors taste so terrific. It's hard to believe there's only four calories a glass.
Oh yeah! Refreshing crystal light, only four calories per serving. No, yeah, I mean, like, what's not to love about that? It's it's not even it's everything about that is refreshing and exciting and the guitar line and the drums. It's it's it's just plain awesome.
Yeah, and and the word nutra-sweet's cool too. Yeah, yeah. Because it gives you nutrients without giving you calories, and it's sweet. That's awesome. Awesome.
No wonder I drank buckets of that stuff growing up. Man. Alright. I got a question that hopefully Brooks will enjoy from last week. Angela, our one of our favorite interns from Nebraska, land of endless possibilities, wants to make fluffy butterscotch.
Can she do it? She's using it to build a cake, uh, but she doesn't just want to do butterscotch buttercream. What's up? Why tap me? Oh, well, we're doing a show right now.
Uh, okay. So uh, okay, so Brooks, you're gonna be good at this. So the butterscotch, for those of you that don't know what the hell we're talking about, is butterscotch. And basically, you know, it's like brown sugar cooked with butter, uh, and then usually some cream is added in and it's uh turned into a sauce, right? Yes, right, salt, right?
Super important. Yes, thank you. So the question is without just using that as a basis for a buttercream, if you want to make it fluffy, what would you do? Would you make a mousse out of it? For a cake?
But you don't want to um yeah, I mean you could easily take take uh like say like make a butterscot sauce and and you know g whip egg whites into it uh to make it sort of light and moussey or whatever. Um but you need to add gelatin though so the egg whites don't break down after it sets, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's like I'm I'm not that's I I wouldn't do that. So um what would you do?
Um if I wanted like a butterscotch flavor. But fluff, yeah. But fluffy. But fluffy, but not like a butter, not like a buttercream. Um honestly, I would uh I think like really perfect butterscotch sauce made with the best possible butter and uh dark brown sugar and salt and um like I would just use that and use that as a garnishing agent rather than try to make it something different because perfect butterscotch sauce is just perfect and it doesn't need to be fluffy.
So all right, so ba basically, Brooks, you're avoiding the question. Let's say you wanted that son of a gun to be fluffy. I mean in other words, like could you take something like that and make a fondant and then beat it? Uh or would the fat interfere? Uh I I mean I think like yeah, there's there's ways that it could be done.
I just like my uh for something like that, my brain doesn't really work that way. So I mean i obviously you could make something with the texture of a chocolate mousse, just you know, treat it like a chocolate mousse, lower the liquid base a little bit because you already have the little bit more liquid in the butterscotch, but it should work. So that's egg whites, like you said, gel it and fold it together and set. Can you spread a moose and have it not break? Yeah, yeah, sure.
Yeah. But you wouldn't do it. I wouldn't know, not personally. I'm actually trying I'm actually trying to eliminate all of the use of gelatin, period, and any in all of my. Because of the vegetarian thing?
No, no, no. Just uh I think it's um it's a crutch that people use too much. Um just not for any real reason other than just to say I I did it. So right. So in other words, like here's another source of inspiration, kind of self-limitation.
A lot of really good dishes come out of self-limitation. Whole cuisines are based on self-limitation. And so when you've already achieved a certain level, the question is how do you branch out or get some new stuff, give yourself a limit, and then uh see what happens. Is this is this why you did or just for the hell of it? Um I yeah, I just I just I don't know.
I think gelatin's kind of creepy. And um like pig hooves? No, no, I I'm totally into pig hooves. It's just the like it's just the the gel I just think it's used a lot, overly so, and uh um yeah, that's all. Yeah, all right.
Uh Nastasha, well, do you remember the recipe for the inside of Getz caramel creams, which are like God's candy? Yeah, no, I don't remember it off the top of my head. That stuff's good. You like a caramel cream? Of course.
Absolutely. For those of you that don't live uh in the United States of America, or I think are they West Coast or are they only East Coast? I like I mean they're a Pennsylvania Dutch style of thing. Gets is a Pennsylvania company. It's pronounced it it's written like GERTS, G-O-E- Like T Z.
It's pronounced Getz. And uh what it is, it's caramel with the little bullseye of that kind of like whipped fat crap in the middle, which is delicious. Brooks, you're gonna yeah, it's kind of dry. Yeah. And like uh yeah, it's like it's like it's like somewhere between like Oreo filling and something else where it's just like dry, almost like it crumbles in your mouth.
Yeah, that would be good with a butterscotch flavor, right? Yeah, sure. I don't know how to make that stuff. I think it's powdered sugar and we tried. Well, you tried.
We were trying to make a coconut base one. We wanted like a coconut caramel cream. What we were trying to do something else with it. That is delicious. Carrot cream is delicious candy.
I saw someone at Economy Candy, which is like the one of the local big candy shops here in the in in uh New York. By the way, speaking of Oreos, Brooks makes a delicious freaking Oreo. Delicious Oreo. So much better than Nabisco's Oreo. Makes him wish that he had made the Oreo instead.
Anyway, uh guy was like, what candy should I take back? Uh, you know, to England, because he was English. He's like, uh you know that's it really says America. I was like, hey, take the caramel creams, they're delicious. Okay.
Uh so anyways, maybe we've milked this. Brooks is not gonna Angela Brooks will not tell you how to do it. Uh that's just that's all there is to it. He's not gonna tell you. Sorry.
Uh okay. So, oh my god, I had to put a password on my iPad, so when it when it goes down, it because my my kids were invading my iPad. So now it takes me an extra ten seconds to come up. Okay. I had a question in from and I I can't seem to to get to it.
Uh okay, Jack, someone's having problems with the Heritage Radio Live feed. We fix that crap. Is it right now? No, no, before. Oh, yeah, that's working.
Yeah, all right. Very good. Okay, dear Dave and Co., Josh in Somerset uh UK says, I have to keep buying new cooking probes. The one with the cable uh to a device so that I can put it in the oven, because either the probe and or the device keep breaking. Can you please suggest a reliable make?
Something with good reaction speed, good range, up to 200 C? That's 400 Fahrenheit for you, Fahrenheit folk. And if possible, but not essential, a probe that's mildly resistant to water, so cleaning is made easier. No. They all suck.
I've broken many of them. I've broken tailors, I've broken polders, I've broken every single one of them I've ever used. They've all crapped out. I've used them to try and do a roast inside of a pot. The steam gets inside of that crimp around the probe on the cable and they break and they die on me.
Has anyone in this room had a good experience with one of those Sunsa guns? No. They suck. Yeah. So do you so what do you recommend then?
Well, either just keep buying a crap uh ton of them, which is not a good solution, or uh I would suggest getting uh an industrial uh thermocouple. Uh they're they're ruggedized, the the the actual cases are ruggedized. You can get like basically they look like multimeters with like a rubberized outside, and they're pretty much impervious to whatever ails you. And then you get relatively cheap uh thermocouple probes that attach into them. You want to make sure thermocouple probes come in a wide variety of uh cable configurations, right?
And also head configurations. So you find um obviously the fatter the thinner they are, the better their response time, but the more fragile they are, and also the uh the more expensive they are typically. Uh you want to avoid for oven use anything that has a complicated head or the micro, like the ones that are used in C V, the hypodermics, because the heads of those things aren't rated for high temperatures and they'll burn out. Like they the epoxies they use to uh put everything together on the inside of those heads, not meant to withstand the oven. That said, you get a good fiberglass cable insulated thermocouple probe, and it's good to 900 Celsius sometimes.
So some of these like are uh 900 Fahrenheit or nine Celsius. I can't remember. Probably whatever. Uh but like but you can get cables that'll withstand basically uh kilns. And I've had thermocouple cables in my oven that have been in there for years, and my oven routinely gets up to 850 Fahrenheit.
Uh tops out. I've my oven tops out at like 875 at this point Fahrenheit or a little better. And I have embedded thermocouple probes that don't break, and I have uh air temperature probes that don't break, and and I use industrial thermocouple. And the good news is if you find a good source, the McMaster Car is a fast source, but an expensive source. Uh you can get them for uh, you know, like like 15, 20 bucks.
Uh, you can get uh waterproof ones, just pay attention to the cable. You can make your own thermocouples, which I do. They're typically not waterproof, but they usually last for the application that you're doing. If you make your own probes by twisting the wires together, it's on the order of a dollar per. You know what I mean?
For the because you just buy lengths of the cable and make it as long as you want uh and get the get the connectors. So that that's what I recommend. But I've never had it. The ones that they're using ovens are typically uh RTD, they're resistance, uh, you know, resistance temperature things. They break, they just they just don't they break.
They break all the god dang time. They just don't seem to last. Yeah, yeah. All right, very quickly. Uh Tony uh Tony Harrian from the mixing bar in Brazil writes in.
Uh this is last week it didn't make it in. Uh last December we started investing a little more in our uh cooking lab. We've been working with a conventional distillation uh of our own booze. I'm glad you can do that. I can't do that here in the US of A, they'll throw me in the jail.
Uh or they won't throw me in jail, they'll just take away the liquor license. It's not even my liquor license, it's Sam's liquor license, so then everyone will hate me anyway. Not that they don't already hate me. Uh okay. Uh but now we have a rotovap, uh, sockslit, socks that's an interesting extraction technique, which I don't have time to talk to you about right now.
Maybe some other time I like sockside extraction. It's kind of old. People, I think, don't do it in the labs so much anymore. Yeah, we're moving away from that generally. Sometimes for pesticides, but delicious pesticides, I think you mean.
The advantage of a soxide extraction is that it allows you to reuse your solvent a bunch of times so you get fresh solvent into the pro thing you're extracting from uh on a consistent basis, so you can get much higher uh extraction rates uh for a given amount of solvent. So you can make really punchy things in socksolids. Theoretically, that's the advantage of the socks. What do you use instead now? Oh, we use something called solid phase microextraction, me, me, me, me, me.
Uh okay. We'll stick with soxide in the kitchen. Uh okay. Uh one thing we don't have yet is a vac a chamber vacuum machine. So we adapted glass jars with fast connections to make syrups and speed up infusions.
You can see a few pictures on our Facebook page. Uh we tested our jars very well, but warned people about potential dangers. We mostly use it for the barns, but working okay, uh, plus it costs nothing. We use either valves or hot pliers to melt the tubing, which they have like fat they have fat basically those those push to connect fittings that you can get in the plumbing store, the push to connect to get the tubing in, which actually are vacuum rated. I mean, I've read the vacuum ratings on those are all right.
Uh they use it with an oil-based vacuum pump and a cold trap chilled by ice or dry ice when we have it. What are my thoughts on this setup? My thoughts on the setup. I use it, I saw their setup, it's basically mason jars, not even they're pickle jars, right? They're very cheap to buy.
Be very, very, very cautious uh using this in front of people who aren't wearing safety glasses. Standard uh pickle jar. Uh first of all, the vacuum that's created uh when you're canning in one of those jars is much less than the vacuum uh that you create when you're putting an oil based vacuum pump. The oil based vacuum pumps that I use, which are refrigeration pumps, they're not even that expensive, routinely get down to five millibars or less, absolute pressure. Right?
So you're talking basically a full vacuum, 15 PSI. If you are using a uh pickle jar like that, which is molded, there's seams in it, and there's lots of places where there's additional stress involved in it, you could uh be setting yourself up for a violent, uh sudden violent implosion. Uh so what I would recommend is putting a um, and the the problem with an implosion, even though it goes in, is that uh the pieces can pass each other. In other words, just because it's imploding doesn't mean that it's going to hit its counterpart on the other side. So glass goes everywhere, and by everywhere I mean in your eye, in your face, uh, you know, in stuff like this, in your ice well, even worse.
Uh, and uh so uh you you're gonna want to wrap electrical tape around it to stop like the pieces from flying too far, and or get a mesh. The old lab trick I was told by old rotoVap heads uh for people before before they purchased uh plastic coated glassware for everything, was to uh wrap um wrap everything in electrical tape basically, uh so that the pieces don't go too far. The other uh thing I would recommend move to uh move to a polycarb uh polycarb uh vessels. They have uh pressure-rated polycarb things like for instance pasta click keepers that will withstand that kind of vacuum level. Uh it doesn't cost that much more, and those when they shatter, polycarb has a much better uh shatter mode than glass does because it it will crack uh but it will not uh splinter into a bunch of pieces.
This is why when you're when you're making um potato guns and other sort of high pressure air guns with piping, PVC is actually not a great choice because P the fracture, the fracture um mode of PVC is into splintering kind of things, whereas certain other plastics, I believe like ABS or or polycarb, when they fracture have better kind of a fracture mode. Uh so uh that's just my thoughts. The other question you have was when working with a rotoVap, do you guys tend to puree the products before distillation? Yes. Uh although Tony Kunayaro, our good buddy in uh in the England, does not.
Uh I got in the habit of blending stuff into a pulp and sometimes straining it to get a better extraction. It seems like the puree plus straining method gives a smoother distillation towards the end of a run compared to just a puree. Okay. What do you think about pureeing versus puring pieces or chunks or straining out? Thanks very much.
Here are my thoughts. Well the reason you probably like the strained puree better is taste the stuff that you've strained out. If the stuff you strained out doesn't have as good of a flavor as the stuff that went through your chinois or whatever you're passing, that's the cause of the difference in the in the in the in in the flavors. I mean like the the the way I always figure how a roto vap, I sniff it and I see what's going to come through. I don't think the the straining itself shouldn't make it any more or less smooth.
I would recommend putting things through a very light vacuum cycle before you rotovap to get rid of uh uh a foam over problems. You might be also having problems your straining might be getting rid of some of the air bubbles that came through when you're pureeing by getting rid of those air bubbles when you're pureeing uh you're causing uh l you're getting less violent foam up on the beginning less violent foam up as you start is going to give uh fewer kind of uh uh mic microparticles of crap that are coming over along with your distillate as it's running so there's a study recently on uh amino acids in unaged uh in unaged distillates clearly amino acids should not be in an unaged distillate it's contamination of some sort because you amino acids they they don't uh they don't distill right they're non volatile uh and so uh one of the explanations is microparticles are things carried over in violent distillations uh and so by reducing the violent distillations by uh getting rid of some of the entrained air at the beginning, perhaps you are actually making a smoother distillation. But simpler way for that would just be to vacuum it. So my two things are if you're actually getting a smoother distillation, it's because A, you're getting rid of air, which is going to help you at the beginning of your distillation run. B, you are uh taking out products that don't have as nice an aroma as the other stuff.
Yeah? Yeah, anyone? We've got uh an email question for Brooks from a Paul. All right, you want to read it for me, Jack? I will, yeah.
Says I've seen statements Brooks has made on the creation of vegan desserts for guests. Can he comment on these desserts and keep the hammer from making her vegan face? Are these items on the menu, or would one need to call ahead to let the kitchen know that vegans are coming? Who sent that question by the way? That is a Paul.
Paul. Paul. Um No, we have a uh we have a seven course vegan tasting menu that's uh always there every day. On the menu though? It's um if someone asks, we have it.
You bring the menu with tongs? Uh no, we have it. It's just our it's just our way of uh being uh like proactive. Like we if someone comes in and they have that particular dietary restriction, then we absolutely have them covered. So when you're working it's a hospitality thing.
When you're working on something like that, do you kind of have to make it like a catch-all, like also hypoallergenic and all that other stuff or no? Um yeah, well actually uh I think we make it so it is it can be like gluten-free too, because often those two go together. But it can it's it's we have we have the capabilities to do any sort of like um almost any like dietary thing just because I said, it's a hospitality thing. If somebody comes in um you know to uh to our restaurant, like it's our job to make sure that they leave completely psyched. So that's great.
That's great. And uh di tell me a little bit about making it. Like, do you like working on that problem? It seems like it's an interesting problem. Yeah, no, it's it's it's it's fun because uh it's one of those that's like giving yourself limitation things because especially with dessert, so much of it is based on eggs and cream and butter and you know, stuff like that.
So to make stuff like that, but then have it still taste good and still be something that could be served at a you know at a four-star restaurant. That's uh that's a big challenge and it's a really fun thing too. So hey Nastasha, let's go to Del Posto and get the the the vegan. Yeah, let's do it. You want to do it?
Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it soon. Yeah, I'm gonna do that. Alright, so listen. I don't know if I'm gonna get to do it before next week, but Nastash and I are gonna go to uh the Del Posto restaurant.
Uh, you know, one of our favorite Italian joints. And uh we're gonna get the seven course such a jerk. Uh uh, we're gonna get the uh seven course uh vegan tasting menu. Uh super thanks to Brooks and uh Ariel for coming in. And I want I want here's what I want you guys to think about over the over the next week.
Uh because I want to talk about it next week. I don't really know what I think. There's a cohort study out. Cohort means they just choose a bunch of random people, not random, they're like a group, and then they have questionnaires and they data mine it. I hate most data mining studies in general.
Ariel. Oh, yeah. They suck, right? Data snooping, it's like not. So there was a huge uh one that came out recently called Red Meat Consumption and Mortality.
Came out in March on March 16th. It's one of the it's a big data mining uh studies basically saying that if you eat meat, you're more likely to die. Which we all die. But in other words, they mean faster. Uh so uh I haven't had time to go over the data set, but I'd like uh all of you uh actual science folk uh in our listening audience to uh think about this study, the pros, cons, whether you guys believe it or whether you think it's a load of horse hockey and just bad bad data or good data.
Anyway, I'm gonna leave you with that. Thanks again for Brooks. Thanks for real 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.
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