Broadcasting live from Roberta's in Bushwick Brooklyn. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.com Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live in the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network. Joining the studio as always. Nastasha the Hammer Lopez.
How are you doing, Sas? Fine, how are you? Alright, Nastasha's trying to contact someone to set up one of our eight billion events. How many events do we have this day? Too many.
How many do we have today? Only one today. Yeah, but Bobby Flay's gonna be at the bar at six filming. I know, but not we're not, we won't be there. But you should be there, and our starts at six.
But no one knows what we're talking about. Nastasha's like, and my f and my brother Phil, he was no, no one knows who we're talking about. Mr. Tam is the contractor at the new Booker in DAX space. I mean, nice to speak on the air.
You know, I can't wait 15 minutes to tell me off the air. It's okay. Fifty. Fifteen. We go on break every 15 minutes.
No brains. Also joined with Jack, Intrepid Jack. How you doing, brother? I'm good. Good.
Calling all your questions live to 718497-2128. That's 718497-2128. Uh missed you guys last week because uh I was in Germany and we couldn't get the scheduling going uh with the you know, because I was actually I think teaching something or doing some sort of judging during the actual radio program. Uh but had a good time in Germany, didn't get to have any really good solid real German German food because I didn't have time to go out to any kind of good restaurants, which is not good. I went out to good restaurants.
I didn't go out to like a hardcore German German restaurant. I love German food. Stuz, you like the German food? I love German food. Yeah.
Oh, you know why? Why? Right. Because it's hearty. Yes.
You you love some hearty, hearty food. Um did uh was interesting. The contest I was judging was for a Havana Club, which uh you know is a rum. There is a Havana Club rum here in the United States, but it's not the actual Havana Club. The actual Havana Club is made in Havana and therefore we can't get it in the United States, which is kind of an irritant.
But you know, they gotta straighten that crap out soon how long can we hold a grudge against those guys? Don't know. I mean it's been like it's been like what like uh see 40, 50, like 50 50 years almost 50? 50 freaking years we've been holding a grudge against these guys. I mean I don't really care about the cigars one way or the other but it would be nice to get the rum in.
You know you can take planes there apparently now quite much more easily than you did before. You don't you don't need to like pretend it used to be to take a plane from Cuba there was like like two planes a day or something like that and you had to pretend that you were a journalist or some sort of crazy nonsense but apparently now it's okay. Spent a good deal of time when I was in Germany with uh Ryan I'm not gonna pronounce his last name right he's the he's another C last name from London so I can pronounce Connellaro for some reason I can do that. But Ryan's last name from the Worship Street whistling shop used to work with Tony actually Tony C at 69 ready Cheta Cheteya Wardana. Whoa it's hardcore even he says he can't pronounce his name properly and check this out he's doing some interesting stuff like he's uh you might know uh some of the uh bar stuff he's doing because he has like a balloon that he has a uh like a lemon I think essence sprayed on he then like lights a string the balloon flies up in the air and explodes over your head like as he serves you the drink interesting stuff he's uh aging uh aging drinks with uh radioactivity he's like handing them to uh you know people who are I guess doing radiation experiments either for food or for medicine and you know nuking the hell out of stuff to see whether he can accelerate age.
Interesting stuff uh I look forward next time in London to uh go to the to the bar. Uh anyways, so what was I talking about? I'm just talking about Ryan. Is that right? Ryan.
Oh, anyways, check this out. Dude's from Dude's family. I mean, he's you know, he's British, right? Dude's family from Sri Lanka hates spice. Wow.
Says he is like a complete pariah at family gatherings. Like black pepper is too spicy for him. It's messed up, huh? Yes. Messed up.
Anyway, we were talking roto vap because he's got roto vaps coming out of his ears as most people uh tech people in London do. We are we gonna get that new roto vap? We might get a new rotov. That's just who I was emailing. Really?
Mm-hmm. Nice. I don't know. Anyway. Let's rotovap in Japan.
Oh, we're gonna rotovap stuff in Japan. Nastash and I are going to Japan in uh how long? Like three weeks? Yeah. Anyways, we're gonna roto vap stuff there.
Mm-hmm. Oh man, it's gonna be a freaking nightmare. Alright, we'll see how it works. Okay. Uh first in from uh Bjorn in Sweden in Umea, I guess is how you pronounce the name, right?
Umeaw, because the A with the little dot over the top is aw. Aww, which means river, I think, in Swedish. Question on wild game. Hi, David. My name is Bjorn and I am a chef in the north of Sweden.
I have a problem when I brine wild game, especially reindeer and lagapus, which is what they call grouse, lagapus. Good one. Uh I normally do a solution between four and ten percent with normal salt, sodium chloride, but when I cook the meat in low temp, I get a gray line around the meat. Uh maybe two or three millimeters, depending on the time and the percent of the solution. It seems that the line gets more present on darker meat, especially when you cook low temperature.
With normal frying and cooking, it's harder to see. If I use nitrates to get a pink line, uh I get a pink line, and I don't want to do that. I've done some testing using ascorbic acid and citric acid with no result. What can I do? Best regards, bjorn.
Okay, now list. This is actually uh uh a big a big problem in general. One of the reasons that we don't recommend uh salting, pre-salting on a lot of low temperature meats, or brining for that matter, is it changes the texture of the meat as it's cooked over a long a long period of time. Uh but um color also can be uh quite quite affected. In fact, the color of meat is due in large part to the state of uh myoglobin, which is one of the proteins uh you know i in the meat uh as it's as it's cooking.
So there's three, you know, there's many actually, but there's you know the some of the main kinds of myoglobin that uh we deal with are uh deoxymyoglobin, which is what something looks like inside of a vacuum bag. That's myoglobin with kind of no oxygen bound to it. There's um oxymyoglobin, which is the bright red pink red color you get from what what we associate with kind of fresh meat. And then there's met myoglobin, which is basically a reduced form of it's like you know, it's a different iron oxide that uh it gives it kind of the brown brown color. Now, salting, right, affects several of these things.
First of all, the when you cook meat low temperature, when you cook meat in a vacuum bag, first of all, you're cooking with uh you're reducing the oxygen uh component so much that you get uh a lot more deoxymyoglobin uh than you would under normal circumstances, and that takes a long time to denature. It actually denatures slower uh uh under heat than either oxymyoglobin or met myoglobin does. So that's why in low temperature meats, uh also the the slower you heat it, the the less the my any kind of myoglobin denatures. So that's why in low temperature cooking, and especially in high vacuum vacuum bag cooking, you can get kind of very kind of pink results even at higher temperatures because you're not gonna and also when you cut the meat, it's gonna cherry up and get this balloon because you're not gonna get uh denature as much of the myoglobin as you would otherwise. Now, salting does two things.
It increases the rate of uh met myoglobin, which is brown kind of production, right? And it also uh increases the rate at which myoglobin is denatured and takes on a cooked look. So and it like by a lot, by more than double. Uh and it and that effect is more pronounced at lower temperature cooking than it is at higher temperature cooking. So the study to look at here uh is um it's fine, is the effect of muscle type salt and pH on cooked meat hemoprotein formation in lamb and beef, which came out in 1999.
Uh and so it's just it's right there, you can read it, it's the adding salt rapidly increases the rate at which myoglobin is going to get denatured. That effect is going to be magnified at low temperatures, and so having the salt in there is going to give you more of a cooked color and give you a line, a color line in that meat that there's really kind of no way around. Uh but one of the good news is is that you might not need to brine your meat as much or at all, really, uh if you're doing low temperature cooking, because you don't need to protect the meat against overcooking. Now, you if you're doing it for flavor, that's one thing, but you know, you know, not gonna not gonna affect it. Another problem is let's say you were gonna marinate for flavor, use a brine like an acid, the lower the pH, also uh the uh faster the the uh hemoglobin is going to um faster the hemoglobin the uh sorry the myoglobin is going to denature.
So you can't win by putting an acid in, you can't uh win necessarily by putting uh an antioxidant in like you did. It's just one of the things. If there's salt there and you're low temperature cooking, you're probably gonna see a line to the extent that salt is soaked into the meat. Um so that's that's all there is to it. Uh, they did in that study, which you should look at, they also tested to see whether adding fat changed the rate, maybe to help you out.
It did not. They also added uh polyphosphates, soy proteins, uh casein, and none of these things had any effect on the rate of myoglobin uh denatriation, which is I believe what's causing the uh the problem. Uh so that's uh that's that what do you think? Good awesome also salt can increase the rate of lipid oxidation not can will increase the rate of lipid oxidation in meats. Anywho, caller you're on the air.
Hey Dave Nastasha and the rest. How are you guys doing? Doing all right what's up? Hey um before I ask my question I want to say I uh thanks for the nick stabilization uh thing on your blog I made uh corned beef tacos for St. Patrick's Day with uh rye tortillas it was awesome.
Oh I love the rye tortillas with corn beef that's sweet. That's a great idea. They were good. They were awesome. What I uh grinding it of course is the problem.
I tried you know a mortar and pastel and it didn't work. What I ended up doing was uh just putting all the rye berries in a blender with enough water to make a puree out of it and then I added just enough of that uh masseca uh to to thicken it back up again but still had tons of rye flavor and the the texture was so great. Even fried you know for crunchy tacos had just a great great chew to it. I think that's a great idea adding the Masaka back because really the only reason that you need the hardcore grinding um you know implements like uh the corona which doesn't even work that well or like you know the the um the really you know the big professional jobs is because to grind it at home in a processor or blender you really need to add more water than you can to make a tortilla but adding the Mosaica back is a genius way to to get around that. And I think, you know, w well with well within the the bounds of uh of mean m mean like Mosica, like as much as I griped about it in the in the article, it's not a it's it it's a it's not a horrible product.
It's just and it sounds like it's a gr man, it sounds like a great plan. I'm glad that worked. I might do that from now on, make my life easy. I hate using that corona grinder. Yeah.
Hey, how'd your rum uh talk uh? Oh, rum talk went well. I uh you know, I was uh I didn't talk about it. When I was in Germany, uh I was supposed to be talking about and was talking about the effect of yeast on distillation because everyone who does home brewing kind of knows that yeast really affect like what yeast you use affects the flavor of the beer that comes out, but a lot of people don't think about it when it applies to uh distilled beverages. So what I did was I took the same crappy whole food molasses, it wasn't crappy, whatever.
I don't mean to insult it, although it was crappy, and then um took three identical batches, pasteurized them all, and pitched uh two different yeasts into it, and then did it in at two different temperatures to show the effects that the yeast is. And the yeast is I mean, the maj the a huge majority of the flavors that are produced in a lot of distilled beverages, the esters, uh the fusel oils, all these all the congeners that we think about, with the exception of just pure molasses aroma or can aroma, come from the yeast. Uh and so I think it was really kind of an eye-opener to some people to see, you know, kind of how how important particular yeast strain is and which is why people are kind of proud of it. But have you ever d visited a distillery? When you visit distilleries, they never talk about their yeast.
They they go right past they maybe they let you taste the fermentation, they show it to you, but they don't make a big deal out of it. The way they make a big deal about their stills or the way they make a big deal about the raw materials that go in, and it's really kind of a vital thing. So the the talk went well, in other words. Yeah. I used to be a uh head to ciller at a rum distillery, and we did a lot of experimenting with uh we were doing like fermenting with German Hefeweizen yeast and uh, you know, uh British uh fruity British ale yeast at high temperatures to try to get different characters, and they were just wildly different uh not only just the flavors but the distillates themselves were just you know one would be just full of acetone and the next one would have virtually none.
So it's really interesting. Huh would are you allowed to say who you used to distill with uh a rum distillery in New Orleans called uh celebration distillation. You make New Orleans rum and uh yeah we even tried we we found this dry yeast that's uh isolated off of Guatemalan sugar cane and it was you know to make the rum agricole and it was it's just so phenolic and plasticky that no matter how tight of a cut we did it it was just really too much. But it was uh it's fun experimenting with all that. Yeah I mean the tough part I guess is like you know I was talking to the Havana Club guys and you know they um you know they make a big deal about getting the their own yeast off the off the cane that comes out of the field then but then they need to be consistent and that's the big pain in the butt.
That's why you can't go totally wild on this stuff and why no one you know none of the big players can go totally wild because if they go totally wild there's no way they're gonna get a consistent product out of it. So then they're put in the position of kind of propagating a particular yeast strain over the course of years which then becomes you know difficult I guess. I mean I don't they they don't talk about that aspect of it. They make a big deal about their yeast coming from you know their area being kind of endogenous to their area but they don't uh or indigenous to their area but they don't um you know they don't talk much about how it's you know kind of kept as a culture over time or kind of how many strains of yeast there are in it, you know? Yeah.
So um my question is I'm uh I'm looking to start a small craft soda business and um I've got a lot of good recipes already uh like a a ginger habanero soda and a cucumber Thai basil soda. And my question is w uh you know with a lot of the like the cucumber and watermelon, I mean it tastes awesome and the color's beautiful, but a if it sits overnight all the particulate matter settles out. Right. So what what do I need to a to add? Do I is it like guargum or something like that.
What is there anything 'cause I want I want this to be as, you know natural as possible. Is there anything that's not gonna scare people off to see it on the uh the label of uh so you want to keep the stuff suspended. Yeah. Well I mean you could add I mean I mean uh the problem is is that anything that's gonna keep it suspended is gonna also I mean you're obviously you're going for kind of low levels of carbonation otherwise you're gonna get massive foam out anyway with the particulate matter that's in there. But there's uh you know y y you probably don't want to move to something like a PGA pectin.
I mean certain pectins would do the job suspending that's what I I spend most of my time obliterating pectin to try and desuspend everything that's in it. You know what I mean? So depending on the particle size that you have, I mean if it's stuff that'll pass through a coffee filter for instance, it can easily be suspended with pectin. Now the next you know thing down is you could susp I mean I I wouldn't want to go in a soda because I don't like what happens to the body of it, but uh you know I mean y we are you suspending big things or small things? Like big pieces of herbs or like just it just I'll juice a cucumber and strain it out through a fine strainer and uh you know pull mix maybe a like a uh a a Thai basil tea in with it.
And uh but it's all you know it's it's the particles are are big enough, I guess, where or small enough where they'll go through a fine mesh strainer. Right. And and it it'll h it'll be in solution for a day, but you know, i if I'm serving this in draft, you know, it's all gonna settle to the bottom of the keg. Oh, so you're not you're not bottling you're not bottling it, you're just putting it in a keg. Just yeah, I'm gonna just do corny cornelius kegs and you know, sell it as a kind of an alternative to craft beer for people who are, you know, trying to uh you know, sober up at the end of the night, or just people who like you know, interesting sodas, but you know right.
I mean, one thing to do is you treat it, I mean, obviously, you know, you're a distiller and a brewer to treat it like a beer and rack it, but do you like the flavor of it better before with the particles in it? Do you like the look and flavor of the particles or sh or you want to try and think of a way to get rid of the flavor of the particles? I mean you could just go a wine finding route, rack it, and then get that's all of that stuff out of there and be left with a clear clear soda, in which case you could up the uh volumes of CO2 that you pump into it as well and get more of a bite out of it from a CO2 standpoint. You know, the the flip route is to try and stabilize it, and I would guess if you want a really good label declaration with something like that, this is just a straight up guess because I hadn't haven't thought about it, is uh some form of pectin. Um, you know, similar to mean like th think about all the crud that's sitting in grapefruit juice and that stuff is totally stable.
Do you know what I mean? And it's basically because of pectin. Um you know, and other suspended kind of plant uh, you know, matter in there, like hemicellulose infection. So I would bet you could get some sort of stabilization that way. Um I haven't researched particularly what product, but like you know who would what you would talk to on that is uh the guys at CP Kelco.
CP Kelco, they make all of the um you know, th they're like the pectin people. Um and so th you know, and they're fairly helpful. So they they would probably have some sort of product that you could use. If you want to go like a straight hydro route, I mean the good thing about pectin, fantastic label declaration. You could just say what it comes from, like citrus citrus peel or apple pumice or whatever in the hell.
You know what I mean? Right, right. But um then the other people who I would talk to on stability and CP Celco also handles some of the the other stability stuff. I mean, FMC biopolymer, they handle a lot of the beer stuff, but I don't think you want to go, like I said, PGA, like propylene glycolalgenate, all that stuff, kind of head stabilizers for beer and things like that. Right.
No, I don't want that. I don't think you want to do that. And I don't think you want to add so much body because it's gonna be a real huge problem on foam out to do something like a gum arabic xanthan mix, which is what we use as our main emulsifier. Now, gum arabic is a good emulsifier and might hold stuff in. I don't know though.
It's not really th a thickener, you know what I mean? But that was used to uh uh stabilize soda emulsions, but I don't know that it's going to stabilize stuff from sinking. It's more of an emulsifier in case you had fats and oils in it. You know what I'm saying? Uh then TIC gums, uh you know, they're pretty good and they spend a lot of time thinking about label declarations, and they might have a a good way to go.
You know, Scott Riefler's their guy out on the west coast, and I don't know, I don't remember who is here on the East Coast, but they have a lot of proprietary blends, which are you know might have be a monetary issue for you if you're a huge producer, but you know, if you're not a huge producer, then the cost is gonna be negligible based on the fact that you're juicing fresh cucumbers. You know what I mean? So um so I would hit up CP Celco, see whether they have a pectin product for you. I would hit up uh TIC gums and see whether they have a straight up stabilization, and then as a last resort, I would go to FMC biopolymer. Alright, I don'll look into this.
Any uh I remember before in a previous uh show you had talked about uh like coriander and green tie chili soda or something of any other interesting flavors you could uh throw my way? Oh, I don't know. Well really expensive ones, but that one's good. In fact, we're using that one tonight. We're making a drink, we're doing a Lucky Rice event tonight, uh and we're doing we're making an old fashioned with that coriander syrup.
Uh you know, in general, for for us at Booker and Dax, we like to stock one or two syrups around that are dual purpose. So I can we can use the coriander for an old fashioned, and then I can also make a soda out of it. You know what I mean? Um we always have, you know, I always have a clarified lime juice sitting around, so we can always make a lime soda if we needed to. Um, you know, obviously, but the you know, the stuff that that Nastash and I have done in the past before we had a bar, uh has been extraordinarily expensive stuff like straight strawberry juice and raspberry juice you know, turn into a soda.
Delicious. Remember that one says? Strawbunkle soda? Yeah, that's stuff is amazing. Fantastically expensive though.
I don't know what you'd have to charge someone to serve that as a soda. You know what I mean? Sure. I mean, I'd have to charge like mixed drink prices or more even. And then people will be like, I'm paying 14 bucks for friggin' soda.
I'm like, well, I there's two pints of blueberries in it. What do you want out of me? You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm looking to do kind of like similar prices to a pint of beer, you know, 350, four bucks for a pint of you know, craft soda. So you want to stick with stronger flavors that you don't have to put as much in and and then have the majority of what goes in be water.
Exactly. Exactly. All right, thank uh uh do you have time for one one question? Um, quick one and then we've got to go to a break. Okay, um I was wondering about uh paratese and digestive.
Um, do you think that it really works? Is alcohol good for does it impu impede digestion and uh or does it stimulate digestion, or is is basically alcohol bad for digestion? And if you have any favorite apparatus and digestive. Huh. I never thought of that.
Whether it actually does anything, because I discount all health claims in general for everything at all times. So uh I've never actually thought about it, but I'm sure someone has done the study of uh kind of rate of digestion and alcohol consumption both before and after. Uh what do you like to have before uh before a meal? Do you like you like it? You don't really do that kind of stuff, right?
No. I mean, I like compari. Yeah, that's true. I like a compari beforehand. And afterwards, I you know, I don't I don't go for like the like uh upset stomach pound some Fournette afterwards or like you know the late night Fournette shot that all the bartenders go for.
But uh I don't know. I haven't thought about it. I'm gonna think about that one though and come back. In fact, if you send a question to Nastasha for next week's radio show, I'll try to remember to do some actual research on alcohol and digestion. Alrighty.
Yep. Let's do it. Oh the shop. Bump bump bump bump, baby. Bump bump bump.
Well bounce off. That's all right. Bubba Babotsi! Oh, hell yeah, Jack. That was a good call.
Oh, thanks. What album is that? Uh I'll check it out in a minute. I'm not sure what album it's from. Bootsy's rubber band.
Oh, hell yes. Yeah. Love Bootsy. You know, Bootsy's still playing. Still out there with the with the uh star colored uh base and the star-shaped glasses.
Amazing dude. Stretching out in Bootsy's rubber band. That's what's the album, yeah. I'll tell you something. If you don't like Bootsy Collins, you just have some severe problems with you.
Like your butt's broken, your funk motor is busted. You need to turn that son of a bitch on and go out and listen to some Bootsy. Anyway, today's show is brought to you by Chris. Who's it brought to you? Tell it.
Today's show is brought to you by Modernist Pantry. You're back. We love you. We missed you. We missed you, Modernist Pantry.
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Uh uh, we'll talk about that later. Okay, uh, if we have time, we'll talk about our Zimba our possible Zimbabwe trip later. Anyway, oh whatever. Anyway, we'll talk about it. Okay.
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So there are several VersaWhips out there. And as they said, VersaWhip is uh is a uh it's either a soy protein or actually a uh a milk protein, whey protein. There's two different ones, a soy one and a hue one. And um they they function slightly different. I guess uh, you know, Chris is selling the um uh the soy one.
Uh if you're using VersaWhip for the first time, uh the other good whipping agent that a lot of us use is Methylcel F, like Frank 50 is a good whipping agent. It's different. Proteins uh are whipping agents because they're large, uh charged, and they're large and charged. Anyway, uh and so they uh they're they're good at uh aeration thing, whipping agents. Uh and well, actually, foam stabilizers.
You that's actually it's not really a whipping agent, they're foam stabilizer. I guess I could be a whipping agent, but you might want to add some solid sauce to increase whipping when you're going. Another thing about Versawhip, VersawWhip can be weird. In other words, like when you're whipping an egg white, it it kind of lifts up kind of like slow and steady. Versawhip, you can whip it for a while.
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. Bang, you have a foam. So if you buy it, just be aware that that is uh it might happen and don't give up right away when uh you're whipping stuff, right? Yes. Yeah, okay.
Steven writes in from Moscow uh with remember he was moving to Moscow? Yeah. And uh uh with water for coffee. That sounds like a book. This water for chocolate.
Uh yeah. But water makes much more sense for coffee than for chocolate. Right? Anyway. Uh hello all, all love listening to the show.
Listening for a long time. Wanted to follow up on equipment issues. I called in a few weeks back. I live in Moscow, and the water is absolutely horrible. That's too bad.
Too bad. I usually get bottered. Our water here is good. That's mean. That's mean that's mean.
Anyway, that's mean. Anyway, I usually get botter bottled mineral water shipped in, but I want to go for an under the sink filter. The local bottled water is not too bad and has an okay taste. Uh as everything's not filtered out of it. Um the big coffee head that I am, I need to have something to play with, uh, water wise, filter wise.
So see that filters seem to clean out most of the crud. The filters that he that he finds that seem to uh uh clean out most of the crud tend to be reverse osmosis filters. Uh but at least from what I hear, the water tastes really bad out of an reverse reverse osmosis, aka an RO machine, uh, because it filters out almost everything. But is an RO machine really the only way to go? Will the basic multi uh filter system work for me?
Any specific processes that you would recommend, brands, etc. Okay. Uh keep up the good work and let us know when you're heading to Moscow. Stasi was almost gonna go to Moscow like two years ago. Yeah.
What the hell happened? The storm. Oh no, no, no. It was Iceland, the volcano erupted, right? Yeah, and the na yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and then no one would fly over that thing. Yeah. And so she's like, meh, meh. It's typical, right? You were like, you were like resigned yourself to it.
Yeah. You're like, that's it. Because you know, as uh those of you that know, Nastash is the curious mix. Half well, not really half Russian, like like quarter quarter Russian, quarter Ukrainian, but we call it Russian, no offense, Ukraine, and uh half Mexican. So she's you know, trying to see whether she can go to Russia and also deny that half of her existence.
I'm just messing with just messing with her. Anyways. Um the problem with reverse osmosis is that it takes out almost everything in it, and coffee needs to have some miner mineralization in order for it to taste good. So the there's a couple different things you could do. You could go uh RO and then use uh actually mineralize it afterwards.
And uh I didn't have a chance to look up there's some companies that will sell kind of um kits that where you can kind of remineralize the water. That said, I don't know what's in the water in Moscow that makes it taste bad. At my house, uh, you know, even in New York we have a decent water supply. Uh the a particular pipe that mine comes through occasionally is chlorinated. And so I filter all of my water for coffee and I use a multi-stage filter.
You want to go uh a big filter first. Uh, you know, when I say big, I mean, you know, uh somewhat porous, and it's gonna capture most of the stuff that will clog the later filter. And they have filters that uh, you know, so they'll have filters that'll take down almost everything down to uh cysts and and tiny little things, but that'll also remove almost all of the flavor out of it as long as the water is safe to go. The issue with those filters is is that when you add multiple system uh filters in a in a house system, you are decreasing the pressure coming through it by a lot. And so you uh want to make sure that you get enough pressure through it.
You want to make sure you change your filters. I use the GE home water stuff. I don't know whether it's sufficient for what's going on in Moscow. Um or you could have an alternate problem is that the water is not not just bad tasting, right? Uh or you know, it has problems, but is also too mineralized, in which case you need to demineralize it and then remineralize it somewhat.
But I totally agree with you, reverse osmosis system is not uh the way to go. I'll I I'll you know send us back some more parameters about what actually your problem with the water is over there, and I'll take a look and see whether or anyone else who has uh some experience with some real hard water places and coffee, maybe can write us in and tell us what they use. Yeah? Yeah. Okay.
Uh Tom Fisher writes in about gum syrup. Hello, Dave, Anastasia, Jack, and Carlos. Carlos is not with us anymore, brother. Carlos doesn't like us anymore. Jack, what do you go to do?
He's around. He is working at a hotel. I think he's uh delivering meals as a room service or something like that. Specifically because he hated us at the radio show. Not like I think specifically because he hated Nastasia.
Wow. Hardcore. You should see the faces that Nastasha shoots off at the people here. It's crazy. One too many vegan faces, I think.
Yeah, you know, we have people here, like they're eating their pizza, Nastasha gives them a look out the window, they just push the pizza to the side, they can't eat anymore, they leave. It's crazy. Anyway, uh Tom Fisher writes in. Recently I've uh g uh been given a book of cocktail recipes, and glancing through it, one ingredient kept jumping out at me. It's an old book, I guess.
Uh gum syrup. Uh confused, I looked up several classic recipes, drinks that normally have sugar or sure uh sugar syrup added, but in this book, all these drinks call for gum syrup. I have the ingredients on hand, so I don't necessarily mind making the syrup, but is there any need to do so? Does the gum Arabic really make a difference? Also, in searching for a recipe for gum syrup, I've found half a dozen different versions.
What do you recommend? Thanks and hoping you're having fun in Germany. Tom Fisher. Okay. Uh for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, gum syrup, is uh gum syrup is where you instead of just making a regular simple syrup, uh, which is just sugar and water, you add a boatload of gum Arabic to it, right?
Now I would I would add as much as you kind of can, right, within the realm of portability. The interesting thing about gum arabic is uh other than the fact that it comes from tree sap uh is, or if it comes from tree, it comes out of a tree. Uh, and the fact that uh, you know, for a while there was problems with it because it was coming from an area in Sudan, and maybe you were supporting terrorism and/or genocide by buying it. I think that's been fixed now. I'm not sure.
Anyway, uh I shouldn't say stuff like that, just like you're kind of like off the cuff as though like because it's it sounds horrible. But I think they might have fixed those problems. Anyways, gum Arabic um is really cool because unlike most uh hydrocolloids, which are long chains, right? Uh uh gum arabic is very highly branched in a similar way to a millipectin is very highly branched, and so it's a very kind of large weight uh hydrocolloid polymer, but is also uh you know not too thick, even in kind of very heavy solutions. It also has a protein in it that acts as a an emulsifier, which is why it was used for a long, long time, or still is used, although it's expensive, to stabilize soda syrups uh that have some oil in them because uh it also has the really cool capacity that it holds its emulsi uh emulsifying capabilities even when it's diluted radically and quickly, which is why it's great for things like soda syrups.
Uh it also adds body, which is why it's in these drinks. So it's an emulsifier, which means it's gonna in a shaken drink, it's gonna make the bubbles hold longer and it's gonna it's gonna get a better texture on it. Um and that's basically why it's there. Um I'd say it's worth it. I've never experimented exclusively with straight gum syrup, uh, but we use a mixture of gum arabic and xanthan called ticaloid 210s for all of our emulsified fat drinks, like cold buttered rum, uh in all of our house made orjaz that we have.
We have like a walnut orja, we have a pistachio orjah, we have a toasted almond orjah that we do at Booker and Dax, and we use this Ticoloid 210. We also have, we never put it on the menu, but we do it for one-offs. We have basically what we call tick syrup uh or tick simple. And it is a mixture of gum arabic and xanthan, uh, and it's basically like a modern day gum syrup. And when you shake it uh into a daiquiri, let's say, you get kind of a it's a different mouthfeel.
So half the people really love it. Half the people prefer regular simple syrup in it, and so it's hard to say it's not better or worse. I think it's creamy and it kind of gets a better head, more foamy. I kind of like it. Do you like the tick simple or do you like the regular better?
Do you remember? I don't remember. You don't remember? Like, but it splits along lines. Uh so I would definitely recommend making some uh and trying.
And we should do some regular good old-fashioned gum syrup. But if you're gonna do it, freaking do it right. Add a boatload of gum Arabic, right? I mean, like, don't sissy around with it. It's expensive though.
Maybe one reason not to. Anyway, hope that helps. Uh okay. Uh should we take another one more and then we take a commercial break? We can have time for commercial break.
I'm gonna rip this stuff through. I'm gonna rip through this. Teddy DeVico wrote in about the foie gras ban in California. I'm curious to hear your opinions on the upcoming foie gras ban in California. The way I see it is that animal rights activists uh are just choosing a battle they can win so they gain momentum to tackle the real criminals like Purdue, Tyson, etc.
I enjoy foie gras and personally think banning all foie gras in California is ludicrous. However, some foie gras producers do treat their ducks and geese horribly. But then again, the same goes for chicken, pork, beef, etc. The government should send out inspectors to approve of farms before they uh before they are allowed to sell their products. And also they should check up on the farms on at least a yearly basis to make sure the animals are treated humanely.
Teddy DeVico. Um, I you know I don't really know. Here's the problem, right? And I'm gonna like everyone's gonna jump down my throat now, I'm gonna be an outcast in in the in the chef world. I'm like I like foie gras fine, but I could really live without it.
I mean, like, you know what I mean? Like I like most of my friends, uh, you know, like if you you know take like take away their foie gras like taking uh you know, taking the guns away from an NRA member. Like they freak out. You know what I mean? Um But I don't think it's reasonable for me to decide like what I think is right or wrong just based on whether or not I really personally care about it that much.
Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, I do like a hot, hot foie gras, you know like nice I like I I like it. I like it fine. It's not my favorite freaking thing on earth. What about you, Stas?
Yeah I agree. Yeah. Uh and thanks for taking the bullet with me. I like that. See Stas, you know, Stas for all the crap we give Stas, she is loyal, right?
That is true. Yeah. Did you try the foie gras donut last night? I didn't no I didn't. Was it good?
I don't know. Someone said it was they thought it was going to be like a cream like foie gras and cream inside, but it was just straight foie gras. Really? Really good? They did not like it.
Yeah it doesn't sound good. I did not try it. I did not try it. I don't I do not know. Anyway I heard someone else who tried it they said that they liked it though and their foie gras was more like a moose on the inside.
Anyway we're not here to talk about it. Well anyway foie gras. So um I I really don't know where I stand on this. You know I believe that we should you know I I eat meat obviously I think we should move towards uh humane methods of production in in all in all forms uh uh of farming you know to the great greatest extent possible the the question is uh I I think the the real there's there's there's two things right there's there's one is that you know I I don't like anyone being forbidden to um do something or serve something that they want to serve in their restaurant but there needs to be a limit I mean obviously you're not allowed to like you know murder people and serve them in restaurants right so there there's obviously a limit on what chefs should be allowed to do uh in a restaurant um you know and then but there's the question of whether or not foie gras is basically just the poster child for what's perceived as cruelty, because you know, for those if there's anyone out there that doesn't know how foie gras produced, basically uh uh animals eat uh you force feed animals a whole boatload of stuff, their livers uh inflate uh and then uh and become delicious, uh and and it's called gavage. And that's really what people are griping about is gavage.
Uh you know, there's arguments that come in on a bunch of different sizes, because then you have people coming in saying, Well, you're you're you're shafting my cultural heritage. In fact, you know, gavage is not a recent thing. Like the ancient Romans practiced gavage on uh various different animals um to kind of fatten them up and increase their liver. So it's it's a very old practice, which doesn't make it right. Uh and uh, you know, people enjoy the product which doesn't make it right.
The real question is is is this practice um bad or not? I really haven't done the research on it to find out whether or not I actually think it is torture or cruelty. I'm sure that there are places where it's done in a completely horrible, inhumane manner. And I'm uh the but the question is is that necessarily the case? And from people I've spoken to, albeit unbiased people, um sorry, albeit biased people, um, there are ways to produce foie gras where it is not uh a torture for the animals.
And then, you know, there's the possibly, but you know, uh what do I know about it? You know, uh apocryphal stories of you know, in certain places, well-treated uh geese and ducks actually coming up to the person who's gonna perform the gavage. So in other words, they're they're not uh they're not afraid of it. I uh I I like then there's the problem of like, yeah, you're taking care of like, you know, the this one really high priced product, but on the other hand, uh, you know, you're allowing the horrible farming practices to take place. You don't even call it farming, like horrible factory meat processes to take place uh and not really bothering with those people because you're targeting someone that you can easily target because you are making people feel guilty for going out and spending a lot of money on a product that you're then associating with torture, the same way it worked on fur, right?
Uh you know, so again, I don't really know where I stand. I know Dave Chang uh trusts his foie gras producers, I think we get from Hudson Valley at uh at Mamafuku, and and you know, and has visited their farm, uh, has seen how they treat the animals. And for all the crap that Dave gets for being like all pro meat, like he is also pro-responsible farming. Uh and so, you know, I know he vouches for uh that, or at least he told I think he said he vouches for that. Um, Thomas Keller signed on saying, you know, he vouches for some of the producers out out uh that he deals with as being uh humane.
So I think if we can do it in a humane fashion, then I don't think it's necessarily inhumane just because their livers are diseased, unquote. That doesn't make sense, right? Does that make sense to you, Nastasha? Anyway. If my mom overfeeds my cat, can we eat the cat's liver?
My mom overfeeds my cat. Uh just in case you missed that, Nastasha just advocated uh eating pet cats. Just saying. That's what I heard too. Yeah.
Just just that's just what I'm saying. Anyway. Um, I've got to rip through some Jack. Do I have a little bit of time or no? Oh, yeah, you got like five more.
Okay. So let me uh let me rip through some let me rip through some questions. Um Greg writes in uh with a few questions. One, uh when you do low temperature cooking low temper sausage, low temperature oil, which we're gonna do for the uh Museum of Food and Drink, we're gonna do beer brats or something similar at low temperatures, come eat them. Uh, do you pierce the casings to let the oils into the casing or is this unnecessary?
Do not do that. You want to keep the oils that were in the thing in the thing to begin with. Uh water based things like beer will actually go through the membrane of the casing and like you know, suck flavors out and put flavors in. But you're trying to get as little flavor uh leech in or out as possible when you're using oil in like a Ziploc bag, so don't pierce it. And then you're just gonna lose juices.
Like, you know, when you take a properly cooked sausage and you poke it, it's like juice sprays out of it, and that's what you kind of want. You don't you want to keep that stuff in there? Uh so no. Uh two. I've been playing around with sous vide chicken breasts recently and really love how they come out.
I've been following Jason Lachin's recommendations at 56 Celsius for two and a half to three hours. That's low for me. Of course, the chicken looks anemic right out of the bag, so I've been trying to come up with a way to make fried chicken using a cheapo deep fryer. Alternatively, I could use a very hot pot of high smoke point oil, most likely peanut. Can you give me some recommendations about batters or coatings that would help here?
I think it's too low. You know, when you're gonna fry it, you're gonna bring the stuff up. Um anyway, oh, I'm looking for something that would adhere nicely, but be a decent vehicle for herbs and spices and would fry up quickly without significant heat soak into the meat. Listen, what you want to do is make sure you pull the stuff out when you're cooking it, let it hot, let it flash off for a second to get uh uh, you know, get a little bit of a pellicle on the outside, then straight flour, right? Or you could salt it, but straight flour, and then put all of the flavor into like a liquid.
I use buttermilk uh egg and uh I use I use basically buttermilk, egg, baking soda, baking powder, and you can put all the flavor you want in there and then back into flour and fry it. That's what I do. Now I got yelled at uh, you know, by some southern guys uh at the last thing because they use an entirely different technique. But that using low temperature cooking adheres like a bastard and you can get flavors into it. So that's what I do, and that's what I would recommend.
Uh also I'm the habanero pepper taming guy from way back, other than Steingarden, Jeffrey Steingrad, and our good buddy. Haven't spoken to him in a while though, right? Anyway, uh it's good to labor over peppers techniques. I haven't found a decent way to reduce capsation load in uh habanero peppers, which are extremely hot. Not as hot as Nagajalokia or whatever they're pronounced, ghost peppers, but they taste a whole hell of a lot better.
Anyway, I still have a few more experiments to try, but recently I got access to a centrifuge, and this technique struck me. Could you emulsify the trimmed pepper flesh with some um uh oleophilic that means fat-loving uh medium centrifuged the whole mess and extract the supposedly capsation minimized goodness from the bottom? My thought is the capsation uh is an oleomer, so if I can uh get it to stick to something, can I filter or separate? I guess I didn't mean fat. Anyway, I should be in good shape.
Any thoughts during the process? What about uh oleophiles? As a first cut, I was thinking about just using olive oil, but there's also casein or other things out there that might work. Thanks, take care, Greg. I don't think that's gonna work, Greg, because you might be able to well, I mean, there's no doubt you could probably get a a capsation enriched section of it, right?
But you're not gonna get all you're not gonna get all all of it out, or even probably enough to make a huge dent. Uh I did some preliminary research last week when this question came in. I didn't find anything. I'm gonna keep looking to see whether there's anyone that's done any research on centrifically uh accept separated capsation at lower uh at lower speeds. But I have very I have I am not holding out high hopes, but I'll look into it, right?
I could tell because you can hear the clacks. If I ask her to write an email, you hear the claggity clack, then you know she's doing it. Uh-huh, yeah, sure. Not anything about this. All right.
What's this? There's some cats that called in. Wow. That's hardcore. That's hardcore.
Uh, we're not gonna we're not gonna get to we're not gonna get to all the questions too. No, I don't think so. Okay, listen, it's because we had a week without the show. Okay, so let me let me do this, and then hopefully I can get it one more. But uh um uh Michael Nakin wrote in, uh long time resin our buddy, right?
Uh Herbivoraceous, uh, and comment on last two weeks ago on the show. So he said, Um, so I couldn't possibly listen to the discussion of the vegan menu at Del Posto without writing in. The idea that this is talking about what you know, you know, Mark and those guys said about cooking the vegan menus. Uh the idea that vegetarians mostly don't really love food and are just difficult diners who mainly want some sort of uh health food sustenance is how can I say this for the radio, complete and utter crap. I've been a lacto ovo vegetarian for 23 years, and I'm pretty much never think about anything besides food and how to maximize the pleasure of my next meal.
But I'm fully engaged with food. I listen to your show. I've read Modernist Cuisine from cover to cover and have started at a few restaurants. My first book uh cookbook is coming out this week, uh, and it's called uh Herbivoracious A Flavor Revolution with 150 vibrant and visual original vegetarian recipes. In fact, publication date is today.
I looked it up on Amazon. Should be interesting. Uh congratulations and uh good luck with the book. Uh anyway, uh and I think if you take a look at it, you'll agree that there's no aspect of self-sacrifice involved. For me, being a vegetarian is just a completely personal thing.
I'm not wired to want to eat animals, and I don't think I'm alone. There are many of us who don't eat animals but love food. I'd love to see more high-end restaurants take that seriously, not simply throw some pasta in a Burblanc our way and hope we don't care. Thanks, Michael. Now, first of all, in defense of Del Posto, clearly that's not what they were doing, right?
You know what I mean? Also, I think um look here's the thing, right? I mean this is a tough problem. I mean, like obviously you love, you know, Michael, you love food, and and there's whole cultures, whole civilizations that are based on uh especially lacto ovo vegetarianism. I think the the chef's gripe is probably more against uh vegans, I would say, right?
Yeah. Yeah. No? I I mean, I I don't know. But even so, like, there's there's no such thing as like personality.
Well, there's the thing. You're just it's like it's like it's like racism, basically. Yes. You're basically a r a racist. I have something to say.
Okay. Last night we were coming back from dinner. Mark and I were coming back from dinner, just a small dinner of like miso soup, uh salad, and fried chicken. And we have leftover fried chicken, and we're walking on like 58th and 9th or something. Sounds like a classic Nastasha story right here.
Okay. And there's a homeless person on cardboard, wrapped in like a very nasty blanket. This poor guy, right? And he's asking everyone who passes for change. And I say, I have some food in this bag.
And he said, What is it? And I said, It's fried chicken. And he said, I don't eat chicken because it depends on where it's been raised. Okay. See, you have no respect for human dignity.
Nastasha has no respect for human dignity. I'm saying, look at how, you know, lots of people are very discerning. It doesn't matter what. It's not discerning. The guy has a moral because the guy doesn't have a home, he can't have morals on whether or not he's chicken.
But yes. No, I'm saying good for him. So are you saying good for him? Yeah. Good for him.
Good for him. All right, so you're not. I know, I'm not. You're not saying anything bad about this guy. No, not at all.
Alright, well, I misjudge you then. Thank you. All right. Uh the the the the point is that um you know I g the the the the issue is is that a lot of chefs uh w here's the deal. Sh chefs don't like f pick what they perceive as pickiness in any form, right?
And so the the issue is is if they perceive um what's going on as just being pickiness, it's not that they don't mind the work. Chefs love work and they love problems. You know what I mean? They like to they they they like uh a challenge, they like this. They they intent don't like picky people in general, as a generalization.
And what they do is is that people they don't necessarily, and here's the real crux, respect the decisions other people make based on their diet, right? Say it's accurate, Nastasha. And so um they perceive that as being uh they perceive certain dietary choices, not in a hundred percent of the cases, but they perceive the people who make them as making uh decisions that are either a picky, b whiny or c antisocial in some cases. Right. Right?
I think they spent a lot of time they work with food, they make choices, they make recipes based on their love of food. And when there's a picky eater, and then it creates a whole new But Michael's clearly not a picky eater. That's what I'm saying. But here's the the problem was when it comes to generalization, you know what I mean? So I mean, and and it it it's disingenuous to basically give you know Michael a pass because he's lacto-ovo vegetarian.
I'm guarantee you there's vegans out there who love food. You know what I mean? Um it's a lot harder, I think. You know, anytime you limit your palate, it's more of a challenge, it becomes more difficult, and then it becomes harder for people who don't cook that way to produce a product on the quality of the quality level that they want to produce. See in other words, another problem that chefs have is that they want to produce the best quality stuff that they can produce for you, and if they don't sit around all day thinking about the best way to make a vegan meal, then it's hard for them to produce their what they think is their best showing, right?
That's uh uh when they're doing vegan. If you add on to that a per this is I mean, sorry to say it, but this is like innate, right? Like an innate distrust of any sort of thing that they see as picky, then you're like, you know, you're adding in insult to injury. But I think uh I mean as I don't know how the hell this is coming off the outside outside uh worldly horrible, probably horribly, but I mean the fact of the matter is uh that you know you're you're right. I mean we should judge every a chef should judge every customer they come in on their own merits, and there's plenty of meat eaters who are some picky some bitches who you know who chefs don't like dealing with.
I don't like salt, I don't like you know what I mean. There are people who legitimately can't have too much salt because they're hypertensive, but then there's people who say that they don't like it. People it it's it's like okay, like I'm allergic to stuff. I like I'll die if I eat like a large quantity of uh raw cherries, and the only reason I'm allergic to it is because I'm being punished for making fun of people's allergies for years. Do you know what I'm saying?
But chefs do that all the time. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Uh but I think, you know, uh, you know, part of the if you read, if you go to uh the Amazon and you and you look at uh Michael's cookbook, Michael Mackenzie's new cookbook, uh, and you read the copy for it, which I did today, basically he's saying, you know, this is food that you'll be happy to cook for your meat-eating friends because it's basically just delicious. I love that.
I support that. Uh and it's very similar, actually. Pat Brown, who's uh professor at Stanford, who's was working on the he's a vegetarian, is working to try and make meat analogs. He's like, he's like, uh, you know, and he's doing it actually because he does want to proselytize. He wants people to stop eating meat, he wants meat to stop being produced, he wants people to stop uh farming meat.
Uh he's friends with uh Harold McGee spoke to me. Anyways, so his point is you we will you will never decrease the amount of meat that is consumed in this country by the average person unless you make a product that a meat eater wants to eat more than the meat they're eating now. And that's it. Right? Yeah.
All right, listen, I got a couple questions I didn't get to. We'll get you next week. Cooking issues fish
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