Today's program has been brought to you by the International Culinary Center. Offering courses that range from classic French techniques in culinary, pastry, and bread baking to Italian studies to management. From culinary technology to food writing, from cake making to wine tasting. For more information, visit International Culinary Center.com. Broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn.
You're listening to Heritage Radio Network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 on the Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting out of the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Joined uh as usual with uh Nustacha Hammer Lopez. How you doing?
Good, how are you? And the whole crew in the in the engineering rooms give a shout out. Yeah, we're here. Yeah. Okay.
You were right on time today. I know it. You know an up at twelve. Maybe I'm just getting faster on the bike. It's awesome.
Yeah? Maybe I'm just I I'm I feel like I'm getting less in shape, so I doubt that's the case. Maybe I actually left on time today. It's possible. Nah, I doubt it.
Probably not. Uh so anyway, uh the cooking issues crew, uh Nastasha and I, along with uh Tristan Willie from our Bar Booker and Dax were on the Jimmy Fallon show yesterday. Uh for the second time, right? Yeah, second time. It was a lot of fun.
They put a picture of my kids, Booker and Dax, up with the uh with their bartender's mustaches on, thanks to Nastasha who emailed them the picture. But uh they were a great crew, right? They were a great crew. They were. I made a uh chocolate drink for uh Quest Love as well, which was a lot of fun.
Anyway. Uh enough about us. Okay. Uh William writes in, I hate peeding potato uh potatoes. Uh I actually like peeling potatoes.
It's weird. It's like you know how like in every book about like a f like a famous chef novel. Well, no, it's like for instance, okay, so like you ever read uh Ruleman's book, Soul of a Chef? No. Right?
No? I have it. Anyway, you have it you just haven't read it? It's not that long. I mean you could read it.
I'm not interested. I don't want to understand the soul of a chef. Oh, because I was like, oh, okay, Mark, I'll get a soul of a chef. And then I was like, nah. So it was enough like What?
I I wanted to try to understand and commiserate with the chef. Having being dating a chef. I just haven't gotten around to reading it. No, it's a choose not to read it. You choose not to read it.
What's that about? Nothing, I'm joking. What is that? Some people will know. Did you really read it?
No. What is that? What is fifty shades? What the hell am I behind everything? What the hell?
I'm like eighty years old. I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I I don't know what any of the people are reading these days. I know nothing except about food technology these days, I guess.
I guess pathetic. Anyways, uh so you bought it was enough to buy it to be like, hey Mark, look, I own this book. Aren't I nice? Yeah. But I but I don't want to read, I'm not interested.
Nah. Anyways. Uh so in that book, like they make a lot of hey over Thomas Keller liking to w wash dishes, as though it shows a sign that he's interested in all aspects of what goes on in the restaurant and the search for perfection, not just uh, you know, the the finished cooking preparation, but everything from cooking dishes and scrubbing pots and all the way up. Really, I think he's just a psycho and likes to likes to scrub pots. It's like I I like I like juicing li limes and lemons, and I don't mind peeling potatoes.
Do you know what I mean? It's just it's like a zen thing for me. It's not like because I care about the little things, which is also true. It's just I don't mind doing that freaking job. Mm-hmm.
Cooks are weird. Anyway. Um back to the question. Uh I hate peeling potatoes. Is there an alternative shortcut to peeling potatoes other than uh the blanch for fifteen minutes, dunk in ice water and rub the skin off?
I tried this technique with large russets, but it was quite messy and a pain in the pitukas, uh and feel that using a peeler would have been easier. Uh thanks, William. Uh well, William, you know, uh I've never actually uh used that technique for peeling potatoes. I peel all my potatoes with a uh Y-peeler. Um I mean I just I mean I can rip through uh I can rip through I've only really ever had to do like twenty pounds at a time, though.
So I don't know if you're doing like a whole bunch. I would bet anything under 10 pounds or even fifteen pounds, you're gonna be much faster, I think, just busting out with uh a Y peeler. The only advantage I think of the blanch is if you're not gonna soak them in water uh right away after you peel them. I peel them and directly throw them into uh water. Uh the blanching will probably kill the enzymes right at the surface of the potato and uh therefore um stop the potato from discoloring.
So if you weren't gonna throw it into water right away after you peel it, um then maybe that blanch would would help you on that. But I I would just use a Y-peeler. If you're doing more than like 20, 30 pounds of these at a time, uh and you have space in your kitchen, they do sell um for not that much money. Uh Nils used to use them in Sweden actually, because the restaurants he used to work with in Sweden, it's like basically all they served were potatoes and herring and salmon. That was it.
Potato staring. I'm just kidding, but that's not really though. Uh and so they had these uh abrasive peelers, and the way an abrasive peeler works, it's a drum uh and it's got sandpaper on the inside uh on the bottom of of the drum in a wavy shape, and the drum spins and you pour water into it, and the potatoes literally tumble around and uh and produce like a potato peel sludge, and the longer you run it, the more crap that you uh get off of it. And that's how um like large larger restaurants that do a lot of potatoes sometimes get those, uh I think they're more common in Europe. And that's how um potatoes are peeled in um big uh potato factories abrasively.
And and then they'll also a lot of times use a high uh uh a high pressure water jet to spray on the potatoes as well because that'll blast out any of the dark areas that are uh on a potato. See here's the other thing, right? If you're gonna blanch and then rub the rub this stuff off, you're still gonna need some sort of a knife or a peeler to get rid of all the black spots that are on the insides uh of the potatoes. And you know, that's why this is another thing. People who don't peel their potatoes beforehand, I mean, the problem with not peeling your potatoes beforehand is that there are plenty of potatoes that look sound after you wash them.
You know, you scrub them and you wash them. Uh but um after you peel them, you notice the black spot underneath. So if you're not peeling your potatoes before you know you make french fries and stuff, and then you have to pick through all the french fries and worry about all the black spots, right? No? Anyway, uh my my two cents.
But sorry I couldn't I didn't really help there. I think a lot of it, a lot of times when people are uh their peelings uh not as fast as they otherwise could be using a regular peeler, it's just because they're using a traditional straight peeler instead of uh the Y-shaped peeler. In fact, the the the my favorite, you know, is and I you know I I feel like I'm shilling for these guys because I also talk about their pressure cooker. I've never received a single thing from the Coon Recon Corporation, but they're relatively inexpensive uh and colorful Y peelers uh work great. They cost like four bucks, and they're so much faster than the metal, kind of more professional style Y peelers whose blade geometry I don't think is correct, or uh any of the other expensive ones, the cheap plastic one.
And they come in a bunch of different colors, which is nice because you'd be like, yo, mine's the green one. It's the green one. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Uh I'd stay away from the serrated edge uh peelers. They're theoretically for soft, peeling soft uh for uh things where um I don't know, but I've never had any damn luck with them. Nastasha likes them for some reason. She likes the way they look. You like the serrated peeler look.
I do. But not in there's no sort of functionality that you care about, right? No. No. Hold on.
Got a tweet in about the Fallon show. Oh, yeah, what'd they say? Most amazing thing about the Fallon appearance is cooking issues didn't drop the F-bomb once. Oh, someone must know me. Someone someone tweeted in.
What's his name, did? Who? Uh Joseph Gordon Levitt. He he dropped the F-bomb? Yes.
I couldn't watch. I was working. There was nothing to do. Like nothing for you to do. You're sitting around in the in the fish room.
I'll talk to you after. Nothing to do. Tristan and I were sitting there prepping this stuff out during the during the. Well, I said I'll talk to you after. Yeah, and you wouldn't know because where were you not?
With me working with Tristan. Okay, we'll talk about it after. Yeah, right. So it makes heritage radio better than Fallon. We'll let you drop F-bombs.
I know, but I actually I don't. I know, we appreciate that. Well, that's where you had that. We had that write-in once, and they said their kids listen. Yeah.
By the way, that's classic Nastasha, for those of you that don't uh know her, is to talk about something. She was not even with me during the the entire thing. She was working on email on the computer in the in they have these weird little rooms, and they all have weird names. We were in the fish room, right? And it had like all sorts of weird cereal boxes uh on the sidewall.
But that's where that's where Nastasha was chilling most of the time. Right? Right. Right. Uh okay.
Um, and also from William. I've been catching up on older podcasts. Uh, and in one you mentioned about not having the resources to buy certain things to test out for the listeners. Why not putting up a donation link on the site? I'm sure many of us are happy to donate.
After all, you're giving us a wealth of uh info. William McGee. That's a good idea. It is. Right?
Yeah. Nastash, look into that. Listeners can donate to Heritage Radio on our homepage. Yeah. But will that will that buy us cooking equipment to test out for our readers?
Um. Check with Aaron on that. That's funny. Okay. Uh Joe writes in Amazon.com is advertising Mirval's modernist Well, Miravold et al.
Mirvold et al. Uh Modernist Cuisine at home to be released on October 8th. So what's the story? Is this just an edited version of the original or will there be new content? Can those of us that have the original safely give this a pass?
Thanks, Joe. Listen, uh, I've got to be honest, uh I didn't have time to get in touch with um any of those guys. So I don't know. I haven't read uh any of the pre-press on that. Like, you know, uh our heads have pretty much been in a hole because we got a lot of projects we're working on, so the outside world hasn't really been penetrating much.
Um I don't know that they've I think it's probably a redux of stuff that's in the larger book. Uh might have been represented somewhat uh or changed, but I don't think those guys have had the time to to do anything. Let me put it this way. Uh if that crew is going to do uh a totally fresh thing, they're gonna put as much energy into it as they put into anything else they do, and I don't think they've had the time to do that. So it's probably going to be pulled uh from the other one.
But I'm gonna, you know, if anyone else knows or wants to write in, uh I'm I'm anxious to hear because I don't know. Um passing along this question. Uh in my most recent article about the benefits of anesthetizing fish, lobsters, and crabs for enhanced flavors, I was wondering if uh if I've ever tried doing the same with bivalves, and if so, whether it's made any difference in the flavor. Thanks, Craig. Uh okay, so we're talking about the uh recent uh two weeks old now, uh cooking issues post on um using anesthesia, specifically clove oil on lobsters and crabs.
Um and the the theory is is that if you anestheti them before you kill them, uh they taste better, which is true. We've done that test many, many times. Uh and they they taste cleaner, sweeter, they're awesome. And plus, if you should feel bad about throwing uh a live crustacean into a pot of uh boiling water, this will uh allay uh your nervousness somewhat because uh they don't they don't twitch, they don't move at all, they don't they they just sink to the bottom of the pot and there's no sort of reaction from them at all. Uh so anyway, so I wrote about the technique of how to do that using clove oil that you get at um at Whole Foods.
Um anyway, so uh plus you know, or the benefits of just shoving a knife uh through them and taking out all of their ganglion and then and then and then boiling them. Problem with that being that you lose some of the juices on the inside of the lobster and so you uh lose some of its taste. Anyway, question is can you do that on bivalves? I don't know. Uh I've never I've never tried to anesthetize a bivalve.
Bivalve meaning uh I would guess specifically clams and uh and mussels or you know, perhaps something like a whelk or uh or something else. Like, oh that's not a bivalve, that's a univalve, right? Uh anyway, um the um so if we're talking about mussels and clams uh and and oysters. Um here's the problem. Clove oil water that you anesthetize things uh in has uh an aroma of clothes.
Uh and this is why when you're using clove oil, you have to be especially careful to not get it on your hands because it becomes impossible to find out whether anything's then contaminated because whenever you bring your hands to your nose to see what's going on, you smell clothes. Uh when you're dealing with lobsters that are then going to get boiled, or you're dealing with fish that are gonna get uh you know sc scrubbed and gutted, you don't the clove oil flavor doesn't come through because it's been diluted twice, right? But like it's not really enough of it is not on the fish or the lobster uh or in the thing so that you can detect it. But in a uh bivalve where you have the act where it like part of its juices are the fluids in which it is sitting, then uh I'm pretty sure you're gonna detect the uh the aroma of clove. And so I don't think you'd be able to do a valid taste test between uh anesthetizing a lobster, I mean a um uh uh uh an oyster versus not.
Um it's an interesting question though. I've tried using uh gases to gas them open uh without much luck. You know, Mirvold and Chris Young and those guys use a a quick freeze with liquid nitrogen to uh shuck their uh oysters uh quickly to you know kill them, kill them quickly. Uh I don't know how fast high hydrostatic pressure is, which is also used on oysters. I've never actually tasted one of those oysters.
It's uh killed and pasteurized with high hydrostatic pressure. Uh so I don't can't tell you whether they taste good or they taste bad. But there's a lot of other effects other than not cutting open a living creature in in that in that scenario. What I have done with uh and it's totally separate, it has nothing to do with anesthesia, is uh I've put oysters, this is years and years and years ago, I would make flavored seawater uh using uh we would use for clams we once used uh chicken stock with bacon in it uh for oysters we used to use carrot juice and uh cardamom and we would I would add uh aquarium salt back to it to get it to be just like the ocean and then I would have the uh oysters and or clams uh drink the fluid right they would basically I would put them in this I would aerate it I would you know keep it at the at the temperature that the clams and the oysters would want to feed at they would feed and then when you shucked the oyster it would be bright orange like so you'd have an oyster there in the shell you'd shuck it and it would be bright orange and it would taste like carrots and cardamom and that that was a nifty trick. I haven't done that in a long time.
I've ever done that for you nostashers that before that was before you were working with us but uh and it's been a a long long time since I've done it but it's a fun it's a fun little trick. Uh anyway so that's for whatever it's worth there Craig. Anyway you want to take a break? Sure. Let's take a break come back to cooking issues If you want to be a great chef, you can't learn everything from within the walls of a classroom.
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Right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Anyway, uh back at cooking issues. Call in your questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718497-2128. This one into uh Nastasha, myself. Well, real quick, Andy Melka says, why the Y-peeler? Feel like I'm gonna peel my hand somehow. Love traditional straight peeler.
Well, I don't recommend peeling your hand. That would be a mistake. It's all about hey, look, here's the thing, right? Watch someone who's adept at a Y-peeler. It's a different kind of uh a skill, right?
From using it. So, uh but I I know what you're for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, this peeler looks like a Y. That's why they call it a Y-peeler. Duh. And uh if you're not used to using it, you what you feel like you're gonna get is like let's say you're holding a potato, you're holding a potato in the palm of your hand, and your thumb and your index are like on it, right?
And you're peeling down, and then you're using your thumb and index to rotate the potato as the as the Y-peeler is going slap slap slap slap shap. And you do, if you're not used to it, get the feeling that you're gonna nick your thumb somehow. But uh I haven't. Do you know what I mean? It's just like I guess getting getting used to it.
But it's it's just I mean, look at anyone who's really good with a Y-peeler, and they're just much, much faster with it. Uh I guess just because of the the stroke. Now, um what you don't get is that same feeling. So with a regular straight peeler, you're keeping the straight peeler kind of in between the your four fingers in kind of like uh in a I don't know, what would you call that kind of a palm I'm making? Uh like the like kung fu iron fist, yeah.
No, black power's a fist. Yeah. Yeah. What the hell? Uh but like uh like kind of like a kung fu like like s like palm slap thing, and you're using your thumb and you can pull the the straight peeler towards you with a curl of your of your wrist, it's kind of like a snapping motion, but still not as fast as uh as a really uh adept person with a Y-peeler.
Another thing, and I gotta call it one second. Uh in a but with a with a Y-peeler, like let's say you're doing carrots, you put the carrot flat on a uh baking sheet, and then you just you just the the Y-peeler is like slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, stop, stop stop stop as you're rotating the carrot underneath you, and the peels just go flying everywhere. It's it's amazing. Try the why. Anyway, Kohler, you're on the air.
Hi, how are you? Doing well. How are you? Good. Your show's great so far.
I'm really enjoying it. Oh, thanks. Um, I have a really silly question. Now, I always try to like whip my own whipped cream, and I don't know if it's because I'm buying ultra pasteurized or I'm not whipping it at the right speed, but it's literally about two steps away from becoming butter. Maybe you know what I'm doing wrong.
Yeah, I think you're probably just whipping too long. So usually when you're when you're whipping your own um cream, right, uh you uh it's not gonna be as hard or as stiff as the stuff that you know that is commercial out of a out of a can, or you know what I mean? Uh those guys. Yeah, because those guys add a lot of uh stabilizer. So I would start with like a really cold cream, get the highest fat content cream you can get.
I've never done a lot of tests on ultra pasteurized versus not, but I can tell you that uh at the school they they use uh a non-ultra pasteurized, a regular pasteurized cream, which is hard to get in supermarket. And it just it's totally it tastes better. I I mean it tastes better. And the cream we get is also a very high fat content cream, so it all it also whips up um quite nicely. If um I mean if you want to cheat and you want it a little bit stiff uh stiffer, you could add uh stabilizers.
I mean, and then and if you look at the label on uh on whipped cream, especially the ones that are trying to reduce the fat content, they use light cream, and they stabilize the hell out of those things. Oh, okay. Yeah, and that'll get it a little bit better. If you whip it even a little bit too much, what happens is is um so cream is a uh is an oil in water emulsion. The continuous phase is uh it's water.
And then uh if you over whip it, right, and then when you whip it, the f the fat uh is you know basically you're forming um like a foam and the and the fat's at the at the layer. Uh with air. If you over whip it, the fat starts to kind of um agglomerate together and the emulsion starts to uh invert. And if you go too long, obviously you get butter, but the first thing you get is the is that kind of grainy feel and starts watering down a little bit, the texture loses, and you start getting a buttery taste to the whipped cream, which is not what you want. Yeah, yeah.
I I tried to make a peanut butter pie, so I was like, oh, this should be super duper easy. I'll just do it this way. And it still came out like really good, but it was like super thick and like not that aerated, and I'm like, ah crap, what do I keep doing wrong? So Right. You could fortify like so you look at traditional mousse recipes and they got whipp their whipped cream and they're fortified with uh like a a gelatin mix afterwards, they're folded together.
And that'll keep something like that pretty stiff. Um you know, another uh uh let's see, over whipping, what else could be. I mean that that's that's the that's the main thing, and you know, obviously something that people I mean, I'm sure you know this already, but just to tell people when you're whipping cream, don't forget to add salt to it because it really pops the flavor. Yeah. A little bit, not a lot.
You don't want it salty, but it just really rounds out the the flavor, makes it makes it a lot better. Oh wow, I never knew that. Well, thanks so much for your help. Hey, no problem. Hope it helps.
Yeah, thank you. Have a good one. You too. Um was I what was I took I was like ranting about something before potato. Oh, the wide peeler.
Anyway, yeah, I hit that. Okay, so by the way, Jack, this one's for you and for anyone out there listening wants to download the podcast. Uh-huh. Uh this is to everyone, including Indy Jesus. This is from Kevin, but remember Indy Jesus is no longer with us.
He doesn't work our shift anymore. Mainly. But he will rise again. Jesus is all you guys, and you're gonna get me in some big trouble. Oh man.
No, it's Indie Jesus hates Nastasha. That's the problem. Yeah, that I mean that that's my best guess. Yeah, yeah. Anyway.
Uh first off, it's from Kevin. First off, enjoy the show and want to share a tip for anyone who is on the Android and doesn't have an iPhone. You can download uh Heritage Radio's RSS feed for the show into the Google Listen app and it will automatically download and sync all the episodes over the air. That's right. I did not know that.
They're just MP3s. Yeah, I did I did not know this. Uh it used to be a huge pain to download the episodes one by one and copy them over USB, so I hope this helps some folks. Uh number two, uh, this is from Kevin Still. I have the opportunity to give talks on food science for Australia's National Science Week in Melbourne in August.
Although they pronounce it like Melbourne, right? Or know how do they pronounce it? Don't know. It's I can't do it. I can't do the Australian version of Melbourne the way they pronounce it.
So I'm gonna say it like an American Melbourne. Anyway, uh I'd like to tailor the message to the ingredients and cooking equipment available uh down there, i.e. in Melbourne. Uh do you have any experience working in Australia? And would you mind plugging my request to your Australian listeners?
The best contact would be Kevin at ScienceFair.org. Uh fair as in food. F-A-R-E. Keep up the inspirational work. Kevin, I do not have any uh experience in Australia.
I've never been to Australia. If there's anyone out there that wants to fly cooking issues down to Australia for any reason, we'll do it, right? Right. Uh but uh I'm sure, you know, if anyone from the Breville Corporation is listening, they can hook you up with some equipment, right? I mean, like a Breville like owns uh like like Australia's cooking implement universe, don't they?
Breville. They also they love Mama Fuku. They love like you know, our partners Dave Chang, they love uh Christina Tozi. Christina Tozi's, I think her her shop is basically constructed out of brevel brevel pieces of equipment instead of bricks because they have uh so much brevel equipment. True or false?
Yes. Not I mean, not honestly. I mean, it's like, you know, it's an example. I'm exaggerating. Anyway, uh Dave, Nastasha, and Jack.
By the way, it it's it's I always pronounce pronounce your name properly because I always mispronounce it. Nastasia. Yeah, I say Nastasha. One syllable less. Yeah, it's one syllable less because I'm a lazy, lazy son of a bitch.
Alright. Tom Fisher writes in Dave, Nastasia, and Jack. Hope you had a great 4th of July. I've run into a snag. I've been making clarified fruit juices using your instructions for some time and recently started using them to make flavored ice cream.
The juices were not strong enough on their own, so I froze them and re-melted them, drawing off the concentrated juice. This worked well, but I got very inconsistent results as I have no way to determine the concentration of the juice. I remember you were mentioning a bricks refractometer to measure the concentration of sugar in solution. Will this work for my application as well? Many thanks, Tom Fisher.
Hell yes. Yes. That's the easiest question I've ever had to answer. Yes. Now, uh here's what you gotta do.
You gotta figure out uh so you want the sugar content of the uh ice cream probably to be on the same order of concentration as a uh sorbet. And I can't remember off the top of my head what a proper bricks concentration for a sorbet is, but it's on the order of uh I think 20, 20% sugar or something like that, like like 17, 20, something I can't remember. Uh so what you're gonna want to do is uh figure out what percentage of your recipe is uh is is juice, right? And then it figure out any other added sugar that you're going to add to it, and then you can calculate on a weight basis of your ice cream mix what the bricks because all bricks means is is percentage by weight uh that of a solution that is sugar. Okay?
So uh, you know, let's say your your mixture was going to be one quarter fruit juice, uh, and it was going to be the only sugar that's in the in the recipe. Well, then you'd need a very high bricks, right? Because if you were looking for 20% uh of the thing to be uh sugar and you wanted to add you know only a quarter of it being juice, almost all of it would have to be sugar. So but that said, you it's all doable, right? But what you need is uh uh you need a a bricks refractometer.
Um most of the ones that people buy uh are zero to thirty-two bricks, so they can only do from zero, well, zero to thirty-two percent sugar in a solution. And that's fine for fruit juice and fine for survey, but not fine if you're gonna need to use something as concentrated as a simple syrup, let's say, typical simple syrup, somewhere between 50 bricks, normal, or which simple syrup is gonna be at like 66 bricks. So um I use I use an elect an electronic one that's uh you know a lot more expensive because I need to be very, very quick for the bar. But you can get a bricks refractometer that's zero to eighty-five percent bricks, which will take care of a lot of what you're gonna do. Uh for about uh 40, 50 dollars.
If you want, you can buy two of the cheaper ones, one for the higher range and one for the lower range. The disadvantage of getting a single bricks refractometer that's an extremely wide range, like zero to eighty-five, is it's just not very accurate because it's hard to look into the refractometer and read the scale. But uh, you know, the they're they're not complicated to use, they're easy to take care of. I've only ever had one person break one. Me.
Uh but uh but yeah, go ahead and get them. And I've that's another one of those things. Uh, you know, if you ever need one, the needs are gonna come up for it again and again. No one's ever said, Man, I wish I didn't have that refractometer. You know what I mean?
Okay. Uh okay. Uh have some uh Twitter questions then I'm gonna take care of real quick uh before we go to our other commercial break. At cooking issues, have you ever run tests on centrifuges to clarify high density items like bean puree? If so, would it be efficient?
Okay. Uh well, yeah, no. We've done a lot of work uh obviously with nut oils where we're trying to get the um not obviously, I mean only if you know me and have for years is it obvious, but we do a lot of work with uh nut oils, where uh we blend nuts, uh and we've done we've done a bunch, right? Walnuts, pistachios, uh hazelnuts, uh Brazil nuts, uh macadamia nuts, bunch of nuts, uh pecans, peanuts, uh which aren't nuts. And uh blend them and then uh spin them in a centrifuge to extract the oil.
And it's I wouldn't call it efficient, but it it is uh it is delicious. Um I have spun um tomato paste, and it's not efficient at all, but that tiny bit of uh of juice that you get at the top of the tomato paste after you spin it is delicious. You tasted that right, Saz? That was good. You would like that.
It's incredibly inefficient, though. Uh well, and here's for more inefficiency, uh uh Tony Caneliaro, our buddy uh at 69 Colbert Grow, who I'm gonna see uh this week, I guess he's gonna be in New York before Tails, although I don't know when. Uh he uh I'm weird tails of the cocktail, by the way, next week. I'm probably gonna have to do that show from New Orleans. I gotta find out when my plane lands.
Uh he literally sticks whole olives in a centrifuge. Talk about talk about paste and spins them and gets uh a ridiculously small amount of ridiculously delicious product. I've never done bean puree. Your success is gonna be based on two factors. One, how tightly bound is the water to the puree, and two, how much physical water is in the puree versus solids.
Because a centrifuge at 4,000 times the force of gravity is only going to have a certain amount of separating capability. So I guess the answer, and it's not very helpful, is it depends. Not very helpful, huh? No. You could also try to use something that breaks the puree down.
If the puree is basically based on pectin, you can use a uh uh an enzyme to break down the pectin and increase your yield. It'll be at the expense probably of the texture of the paste that's left over because you would want to be able to use both. Yeah? Okay. Uh at cooking issues, heritage radio, where to eat in Chicago.
Coming from Dublin, Ireland, first time in Chi Town. Where's interesting cheers? Well, unfortunately, I haven't been in a couple of years uh to Chicago, so I don't know uh what's hit and happened anymore. Um I mean, obviously for the kind of work uh that we do, you're gonna want to go to uh a linea, but you gotta book up uh kind of well in advance, right? Uh and uh I the problem is is that a lot of the places that I really want to go in Chicago I haven't gone yet.
Like I haven't gone to uh aviary, and I'm just not I'm not plugged in in Chicago anymore, unfortunately. Um it's been years, and I'm loath to recommend places that I haven't been yet. Right, Stas? Right. Is that fair?
Right. Fair? But I would like uh readers to uh or or answer back on the Twitter. Answer me back on the at at cooking issues uh on the Twitter uh and get some uh recommendations uh for eating in uh Chicago. Uh okay.
Uh hey, Jack, you want to take one more commercial break? Uh yeah, give me one second. Alright. 718497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
Cooking issues.org. And welcome back. By the way, crazy guitar, right? Oh yeah. That's Tim Power going crazy.
Man, he was a nutty guitarist. Any any comments about the music from listeners on your end? No, nobody'll nobody. Look, it's like it's like a freak show's college band from 1991. They're like, okay, we'll put up with it.
I'm pretty sure that's what's going on. Maybe. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Um, although, again, like one of the best parts about being uh in the Fallon show is getting to listen to the uh roots play. Those guys are awesome.
Mm-hmm. Did you get to hang out with Quest Love at all? I mean, look, those guys are busy. I mean, the way the way it works is um, you know, we I wanted to I wanted to do something with him. It's it's gonna be up, I guess, on their blog on on Thursday.
Uh but he likes uh chocolate drinks, and this is his quote, not mine, so I don't want to hear anything. He also like he's accused of all by all of his buddies of liking his words not mine, bitch drinks. Uh and so, you know, he likes he liked uh last time chocolate flavors and he liked uh kind of drinks that tasted lighter. So I wanted to make a drink uh I want to make a drink for you know for him that it was also about the album that came out a year or two ago he did with Booker T called uh uh The Road from Memphis because obviously the bar's name is Booker and Dax, my son's Booker and you know Booker T and Quest Love and Chocolate and Beverage. So I made one and uh we did a little he did he and I did a little segment that's going to be on uh Fallon's uh blog uh or is it MBC's or Fallon's uh Fallon's blog uh sometime later this week so yeah I got to hang out a little bit nice I think he he liked the drink he drank the whole he drank it I met him at Milk Bar once he was buying a lot of cookies.
Really? Yeah. Yeah was he seemed he's a nice guy. Yeah really nice guy. Yeah.
Yeah. Impressive fro in the real life. Very more impressive even in real life than it is on the uh on the television. Uh anyway uh got a a question in really interesting one actually I'm just trying to find it on my uh on my machine here from Mike. Uh I've been reading a lot of Chinese cookbooks uh and uh which is a a good plan.
I wonder which Chinese cookbooks uh you like I I I've got to get the fuchsia Dunlop books. I don't have those uh yet uh but uh always a good plan reading Chinese cookbooks. Uh some talk about the importance of seasoning walks. The general method is to heat up oil and/or lard and uh some sort of allium. Traditionally uh garlic chives, but a combination of scallion and ginger is also recommended.
They say that the heating process opens the pores of the metal, uh, the aromatics permeate the metal, and the whole process helps create a nonstick surface. Could you please talk a bit about seasoning a pan? Is it crap or is this something I should be doing? And if so, do you have a better method? Thanks, Mike.
Excellent question. Uh so uh the last time I spent a lot of uh time researching um seasoning and in general is uh when I did a post years ago on cast iron uh pans in in general cast iron pans. Uh and seasoning is not uh crap. Seasoning is actually important. And there's a slight debate in the community uh about what exactly is going on when you're seasoning a pan.
Uh I think pretty much for me the the accepted reason uh seasoning a pan is that you are creating uh well, you you put a thin layer of oil and then or you know, fat, and when you heat it, the fat is breaking down and polymerizing and forming a basically a uh polymerized oil film uh on top of the pan, it's binding with the pan, and it's that surface that is uh nonstick. Okay? And also you know, black. You know you have it there because it's black or it's brown. And it's the same sort of uh reaction that happens uh in oil paint, when oil paints uh are dry, right?
Those they they use in oil paints they use specifically something called a drying oil because it polymerizes and forms uh this kind of solid network. If you've ever seen uh vegetable oil that's spilled on a surface or been allowed to stay on a surface for a long time and it forms that yellow gunk, right? Stash, you know what I'm talking about, that yellow gunk. Uh that is partially polymerized uh oil. Uh and so uh th that's what's going on.
Uh and it works. Now there's uh there's a um uh another group that thinks it's a different kind of oxidized uh iron that's the same, but it's uh what's it called? Uh magnet magnetite or whatever it is, that is the uh another form of iron oxide that's not rust, that's protective uh and is a similar one that they use when you're blueing guns, uh blued, you know, blued steel for bluing guns, similar sort of thing. I don't think that's the case. Um I think it's a polymerized oil.
Now, in a pen, when you're seasoning, a couple of things uh are important. Uh first is that you want to I uh a lot of people debate whether or not a particular kind of oil is more or less important. I don't really think it's that big of a deal. What you want to make sure of is that you don't put a thin, a thick, thick, thick, gloppy layer of oil on it when you're seasoning it. And the reason is that uh if you do, uh it's gonna form thicker layers and those layers will partially polymerize, but they're never going to be as tough uh or as uniform uh as uh lots of thin layers built up.
And uh if you um if you and you'll see this, if you let a thin layer thick there, when you when you start when you start scraping it down with a spatula, you'll uh you'll it'll dig into it and and pieces of the seasoning will flake up and that's not considered good. So that's why there's a lot of rubbing with paper towels. That's why when you're seasoning a pot in the oven, they turn them upside down so that any oil that is free that's not been wiped around enough drips off of the uh pan before it gets too polymerized and forms kind of little crappy spots. All right. So, I mean, the classic technique is uh multiple coatings of oil in an oven that is hotter than frying temperature.
So like 450, I usually use something like that. Or like if you're seasoning a griddle, I can s I'll season it directly. I can even season pans on a flame as long as you don't heat them up too much, because uh, you know, you'll you can burn the seasoning off of a pan if you if you put it at like 650 in a self-clean cycle in an oven, you can burn the seasoning off of a pan. Uh although I don't know the exact temperature. Now, the the interesting thing about the uh the onion the the onions, the alliums, when you're seasoning a wok.
And I looked into this. And before I get into the seasoning of the alum with uh with the wok, I let me say this. Uh I don't have a lot of experience because I uh another thing I was interested in walks when the question came in is is you know what's the difference is there a difference in cooking in cooking capabilities or style or feel between a traditional hand hammered wok, which is made by taking a sheet of steel and hammering it into a wok shape, uh, or uh a spun wok, where basically they take the the the disc and uh press it between uh two uh you know wooden chucks and s and spin it fast and then use a stick to push the wok down into a wok shape. Or a stamped walk, which is basically just you know a big hydraulic press, boom, stamps out the stamps out the wok. And uh I don't know if there's a difference, and I wasn't able to find any sort of difference uh online.
Now there is a possibility, and you mentioned in your question, uh porosity. Uh and and i I think it is uh no one has I don't remember uh because it's been a long time since I researched, but I I don't think that that I don't know what the difference is in porosity between uh different things. But I will say this. The surface of the pan does make a difference in uh how something works when it cooks. And let's go back to regular cast iron pans which I have a lot more experience with.
Modern cast iron cookware that is produced is basically straight from the cast. So if you look at the surface of a cast iron pan, it's got a little bit of a I don't know hard to say. Like you know what I'm talking about a little rough sandpapery look to it. And uh I don't like that, right? Uh that's always got that little bit of a of a of a rough feel.
Some people think that's going to actually enhance the uh non-stickness because it it decreases the actual area of contact of the food with the pan, which therefore less area to stick. That's why certain nonstick pants have those little dimples in the bottom. I think it's a horrible idea. The pans I like were sanded to relie to show a bare metal uh surface at the bottom of something that they called polishing but you could literally just take like a sander or a grinder to get that kind of sandpaper that sandpaper feel finish off the bottom of it. And those things take seasoning like a mother and they come out like a black piece of glass.
They're so slick and and my cast iron that is you know at least 50 years old that was made that way is the is the cast iron in my place that is the best in terms of uh non non stickness. Um it's just it's great. Um and another thing, by the way, back to walks. Uh, when you're looking at a walk, some people are worried about using a metal spatula with their cast iron. Don't be worried about it.
In fact, with a walk, you're always using a cast iron. It actually helps to to knock little bit. If you have a good seasoning on it, using something metal will help to knock little bits that were st that will stick off and build up on your and your product. So don't worry about that. Uh but the interesting part of your question, it's something I hadn't thought about, was the reaction of the chives or garlic chives with the pan.
And I don't think that it's horse hockey. I think that there's something to it. But I woke because I watched a couple videos of people seasoning walks online. Here's a couple of things. First, uh uh first of all, most people don't cook with uh cut with carbon knives anymore, with knives that other words that will stain, that aren't stainless.
I have a couple in my house because I happen to like them. Everyone who has a carbon steel knife, one that you know will rust, will tell you that when you're cutting uh an onion, uh that onion will taste bad, especially if there's uh if it's not properly seasoned. Wait, you know what? I got a quick call, I'll take the call in, and then I'll go back to onions and knives and walk season because it's it's it's uh super interesting, at least to me, hopefully to somebody else. Caller, you're on the air.
Hey Je uh hey uh Dave, it's Brian uh here in San Francisco. How are you? Doing well, yourself? Good, good. Um I wanted to thank you for answering my question about sugars uh a couple weeks ago.
And so now I'm I'm no longer paranoid about NutraSweet and uh all the uh the artificial sugars. Good. And you're and your your wife's okay with it, every everyone's good? She hasn't dropped dead yet. No, good, good, good.
I had some neutral sweet last night and I'm not dead. What? I had some neutral sweet just last night and I haven't died yet. Well maybe you should uh maybe it'll take another couple days. We'll see.
Well, to be to be honest though, though, but back on that, that's not actually like the fact that we haven't died yet isn't necessarily uh a good argument because there are things, I'm not saying neutral street's one of them, because I don't think it is. There are things that take twenty years to kill you, like asbestos. Anyway, uh go ahead. Right, or mad cow. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There you go. Um, so my question has to do with the uh uh I was reading the Modernist cuisine, and they recommended um putting a slab of like quarter or quarter inch or three quarter inch um aluminum into your oven as a hack for pizzas. And I know you have some experience with um um hacking your oven, but uh I I don't want to completely destroy and dis um dismember mine. So I'm wondering what you think about that as a as uh a better um technique than um than a pizza stone. Hmm.
So wait, they they're telling you to put they're telling you to put the pizza directly onto the aluminum? Exactly. Huh. Well, I've never tried it. I mean uh the here's the the basic theory of operation.
Um have you ever fill okay, so if you have an oven that doesn't have a lot a lot of power in it, and you fill that oven with stones, not just like a sm like one pizza stone, but a lot, you'll notice that it it takes a long, long, long, long time for your oven to heat up because it it you have to put a lot uh it's taking a lot of power to heat up those stones. Do you know what I'm saying? So I once had an oven that I've yeah, like a long time. I had an oven I completely lined the inside almost like it was a masonry oven, and hours it would take for it to heat up. Uh and um so maybe they're thinking that's not a a good tack to take w with your oven.
Aluminum, how thick were they saying? They were saying three quarters inch, but then I was reading E. Golid's and Nathan said oh, you could go down to a quarter inch. Well, I don't know about here aluminum just because it's light. Right.
Aluminum well, the here here's a couple of things. So the what you want to do with the crust, I'm assuming that their theory of operation is that they want to put a big and instantaneous heat wallop into the bottom of the crust, right? Exactly. Now, aluminum is the a super fast conductor, one of the best. You know, it's like right up there with copper.
Not as good as copper, but right up there in terms of heat. And uh the issue with it is is that it doesn't store it it it it transmits heat very quickly, but it doesn't store heat very well because it uh it just doesn't it's lighter, right? So it's doesn't have as much mass, and uh you know, and it doesn't take that much energy to heat up a block of aluminum. So the advantage is your oven will heat it very quickly compared to other things. It will heat very evenly, right?
And whatever heat energy is in it will be delivered to your pizza very quickly, and uh it also won't cool down that much uh because the oven can supply heat to it uh fairly quickly as well. So unlike a uh a pizza stone, if you're gonna make a bunch of pizzas with a pizza stone, you'll notice that it it starts lagging after a couple of pizzas because you've exhausted the heat that is at the surface of the stone, and it's taking a long time for it to kind of replenish that heat because the stone doesn't heat up very quickly, whereas aluminum heats extremely quickly. Because you know, those guys are good at that, I'm sure those guys did the calculation of how much heat is really necessary to deliver to your pizza on an instantaneous basis to get that good crust, that good boost on the crust. And that's why they're getting whatever thickness of aluminum it is that they're getting is so that there's enough energy in that ingot to zap your crust fast. Is that makes yeah that that that makes sense.
Does it make a difference the kind of metal? Yeah. Well c mean really expensive. You know what I mean? Yeah, obviously if fly with copper then you you know.
Yeah, and heavy. Uh and heavy. Stainless? No, awful. No, with stainless steel work?
Yeah, awful. No, terrible. Yeah, stainless is terrible. So like I like uh when I was testing uh um like before I was making my own red hot pokers for drinks, I would have uh uh slugs of different metals that I was using to heat over a flame and then and then uh and then heat drinks with and stainless was just awful. It's a slow conductor uh of it's a very slow conductor of heat compared even to uh iron.
Very slow. Uh yeah it's just it has the advantage of being non-reactive. Uh is is all it's got. It's expensive, it's heavy and it's slow. Uh you know which is why your good pots um are a th you know uh have a big chunk of aluminum in the bottom of them and uh you know or copper uh and then like a a layer of stainless that your food actually touches it's probably quite thin.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah stainless terrible you think this would be good for bread in addition to uh in in in addition to pizza or it would be too hot for bread. Uh no I mean no it's I think it it would probably it would probably work. It would depend on what temperature. I mean, obviously you're not cranking your oven as high on um you're not cranking your oven as high for bread as you are for a pizza.
Uh I it's been many years since I've done very thorough research on um bread baking and crust interactions, so I'd have to figure out whether you're actually getting any sort of benefit from the masonry surface other than the delivery of heat. But uh I don't see why it wouldn't I don't see why it wouldn't wouldn't work. I don't see why it wouldn't work. But if you can afford the thicker one, I would get the thicker one. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Uh if you look online, uh go to McMaster dot com. It's not cheap, but they uh it's easy to uh obtain aluminum from them and you can uh figure out there's a there's a uh you know, most of this stuff goes by weight, but then sometimes there's a price uh break where if you start getting it thicker, all of a sudden the price jumps more than just the weight jump. And so you can kind of see where that sweet spot is. I looked it up a while ago and I think it's somewhere around half inch that starts getting expensive to get bigger slabs, uh, at least n normally.
Or if you know if you if you live if you have a car and you live uh, you know, outside of the major city, you could probably just go to aluminum supply uh and get it. But McMaster Car, they're everywhere. You could at least get an idea of prices. They're about thirty percent more than they should be at McMaster Car, but it'll give you an idea. Okay, great.
Thanks. Um uh do you think I should season it? Aluminum? No, no, aluminum, no. No.
Okay. Yeah. It forms its own oxide and it's not n you're not gonna be able to do anything good with it. Okay, great. Thanks so much.
Hey, no problem. You two. All right. Jack says we have one more minute. Oh, one more minute!
All right, so when you take a carbon steel knife and cut through an onion, uh you'll see that it picks up a flavor, right? The onion picks up a flavor and the onion tastes uh the onion tastes bad. Uh and I did some more research, and old timers used to rub onions on their knives to develop a patina on the knife. And I looked on the web and people are now uh for um kind of environmentally friendly corrosion inhibitors making garlic extracts that they rub on knives as corrosion uh inhibitors on knives. So there is, and it's it's basically these sulfur compounds that are in uh that are in onions, in alliums in scallions that are uh interacting with iron, right, to inhibit corrosion in uh on an on a knife, but they also take up the bad flavors into the onions themselves.
This is apparently th the theory of operation in the stainless steel anti-uh onion smell on your hand thing. But I don't know if those work because those are stainless. It'd probably be better off using carbon steel blocks instead of stainless steel blocks to get rid of the onion flavor. So there is an interaction between onions and iron. Uh the other thing is that if you look at people on the web seasoning with the chives, it's basically a way uh to scrape around and also move oil around so that the oil is not sitting in one place.
So the the chives are the these like chives, the long chives or garlic chives, are one uh kind of uh interacting with the metal, taking metal away from it. I don't think it's adding a good flavor to the pan. I think it's removing bad flavors from the pan, right? And and absorbing those bad flavors onto the onion, absorbing uh, you know, any sort of uh free iron that's on the on the surface of it. Now the other thing is is that instead of uh onions, which don't act this way, the scallion things, because they're like paper when they wilt, they're almost like a scrubby pad that you're using along with the metal spatula to move the oil around so that you're not getting any caked-on pieces of oil anywhere.
So uh the theory is they're um interacting with the metal to remove stuff that you don't want that's on there, and they're pushing the oil around in uh in a nice way such that you have a nice even coating all the way around the pan. My bet this is a good way to season it. Now, why scallions and not something like garlic? Uh I don't know, I haven't used that much garlic chives with this sort of thing. I mean I've used them, but not that much.
If you were to use this with garlic, it would make a scorched awful flavor, which would probably mess with you and mess with your pan, but but chives don't have an awful flavor once they get charred. And so you can continue to use those chives all the way up until the char point, which is where around where you're gonna want to be to get accurate seasoning of the pan to get it nice and black. And there you have it, cooking it juice! Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradio network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes Store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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