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Today's program has been brought to you by the International Culinary Center. Offering courses that range from classic French techniques and 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 culinarycenter.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 the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn at roughly 12. Here in the studio today with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez and Jack and Joe in the engineering booth. How are you doing, everyone? Good.
You were here early today. I was here damn early. I've decided that I'm gonna come to the studio and uh do some of my research here. See, typically the reason I'm late is I'm researching whatever the questions are up until the last possible minute, at which point I get on my bike and come here and you know, I'm sweating profusely. And and remember the one time I came and I couldn't breathe.
I literally had to go to an early break because I couldn't I could not breathe. Yeah. Uh, you know, plus uh I have to bike, you know, next to a concrete uh manufacturing plant, which you know I always inhale. It takes me a good fifteen minutes to get all the concrete dust out of my lungs. So I thought to myself, being, you know, like why not actually do some of the research here at the freaking studio, right?
Yeah. Doesn't that make mean like it's unusual for me to do something that makes sense? But you know, there you have it. So I start the research and I'm like, oh. I'll leave at uh ten instead of you know eleven twenty.
On that note we have a caller. Oh, caller, you are on the air. Hi, Dave, it's Brady. Hey Brady, how you do this is my cousin Brady, folks. My cousin Brady.
How you doing? I've got a uh important question for you. All right, what do you got? The cocktail related. Ooh, good.
So a cousin of mine um is she has this thing where she goes to uh like a dinner party every month or so with four other couples, and everybody's responsible for bringing in some sort of appetizer, and then they rank them by the end of the night, and someone is the winner, someone's the runner up, etc. Um and they've come in fifth out of five couples for the past couple of events, and their daughter's beginning to um I think think of them as losers, if you will. So the new one coming up is an adult beverage based on uh sort of Mexican themed. The the food is gonna be fajitas, and everyone brings in a beverage and they want to come in first. Um their daughter's like, we can't have a fifth place finish again.
Now, is it is the daughter gonna be consum consuming the adult beverage? No. She will be home with a babysitter. All right. Now, have they enjoyed all of the things they brought before and uh it they thought they were good or did they acknowledge that they lost or did they feel like they were robbed?
Because if they felt like they were robbed, my suggestion is get new friends. No, see, like the the last time I went, actually, um I was in Boston, I went with them and they were fifth. I mean, they're what they brought was still good, and all the food is actually really good, but they were fifth. They just are not taking it up a level where I mean the the other couples are taking it really seriously and they're sort of doing this in their spare time right before they go. Right, right.
Right. And the the other thing is this does not need to be tequila based. But it is uh Mexican themed. Yep. Yeah.
Well, I mean, uh okay, so uh so these other people are thinking a lot. Are these people uh are they kind of food snobs? Yes, but yes. Okay. So uh if people are not food snobs, I think it's a very bad idea to make them uh feel bad to guilt them into giving you points.
However, i if someone is a food snob, then the best way to win is to pummel them with evidence such that they feel that they are the smallest human beings on earth uh with their lack of knowledge. In which case I would suggest making something with an extremely rare mezcal. I'll go get an extremely rare mezcal, uh like a what's that one we carry now at the bar? It's like something Dalmas. Like it's like super tiny, right?
So it's not even that it's uh more expensive than some of the other stuff you can get that's better known, like Del Magwe and all this other stuff, Del Magid, rather. It's just that it's harder to find and so be like, you don't know about this? What what? You know what I mean? And then like right then mix with there.
But if you're gonna go uh um Mexican, I mean I would suggest maybe going w with with a mezcal. The there's a qu there's always a question of do you want to try to go over the top or do you just want to go uh really, really just like spot on? I mean, do these people live in New York? No, they live in Boston. Uh are you gonna be up there or no?
No, I'm not gonna be. They're live in Westboro, so that's sort of the western suburb of Boston. All right. Uh canned peach juice and mezcal. So it's kind of Mexican themed, but doesn't taste it's not just a margarita.
Uh-huh. And you know that I mean I think that's probably gonna be different from from anything that uh that's at at that place. They could probably go buy clarified peach juice and do something similar. I'd have to go get the specs in in in my head. I can give them to you later, but do you think something like that might might win?
I mean, uh I I have a feeling that if everyone's gonna do adult everyone's doing adult beverages, that's w just what they have. No, everyone's doing adult beverages and I I mean I'm not for sure that everyone's going to do tequila, but if it's Mexican themed, I can't see that you know, out of the five couples that four of them are are gonna think outside the box and do you know something that's gin-based but still Mexican and theme. Yeah. I mean, I don't even I'm not sure. I mean, like you could go super like our friend uh Evan Clem once did a uh you know uh corn-based beverage uh as his Mexican themed beverage.
Uh I mean there are kinds of things you can do. The question is how challenging do you want to get? Do you want to just go kind of like uh food like food knowledge geeky? Do you want to get like you want to you definitely don't want to go with tequila, you want to go with one of the other agave based uh beverages just to to you know kind of be an outlier like maybe like uh Sotol or or like a really interesting mezcal. Yeah.
Um, I think uh like, you know, what's in order is like a trip to uh my well and uh you know here in New York and just like look at the their cocktail list and then b basically steal some of their ideas. And that's the that's the the best way to do it. Now the the other question is is is is winning going to be strictly based on on flavor or are is it gonna have to be some sort of a strange garnish to pull out a win or at least like a second place? The only the criteria for winning is your favorite. You vote for your favorite out of the five.
Okay and you're not allowed to vote for your own, of course, so you vote on the other four. Right. Uh and uh do people tell stories? Um yes. Yeah.
So you gotta beef up on the story. Like half of this stuff is the story. I can I can uh I mean uh if you serve people things and you have a really good story beforehand, then you know that makes the stuff actually taste better because you have this big story. So I would choose s uh like some sort of a rare, although not necessarily expensive, but m you know, more difficult to source or strange uh uh spirit. I would then choose um uh like an herb or a fruit that is not kind of normal and then everything else can kind of even out.
Like you can just use lime juice if you want to as your uh as your acidity. I would probably do uh I mean, I think it's interesting to do stir drinks. W I wouldn't necessarily go for a shaking drink like uh like a margarita just because uh that's kind of what you're expecting. I would maybe go for a stir drink, which uh you could probably pull off a little more of the sophistication and that adds a little more to the monocle in the eye food snob kind of a vibe that I think you need to win these sorts of things. Uh and probably get some sort of a uh spot on garnish.
I mean, you know, at Booker and Dax we kind of we kind of don't typically do the the garnish thing just because we don't want to be labeled as like the you know the people who you know do all the fancy tech garnishes. Although in this case that seems like it'd probably be a good idea. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Is it being helpful at all or is this too general?
No, this is helpful, but she also she sort of made a point of saying that she does not have liquid nitrogen. You know what I mean? So like they they can do stuff but um I think if it gets too difficult they're just gonna not you know they have two kids so if you're gonna do a stirred cocktail the best way to do it to get the temperature almost exactly right is uh especially if you're gonna use a fruit juice. So let's say they're gonna use a fruit juice in it. You can't use a fruit juice and a spirit and then stir it and then have the temperature right.
Okay. If you store the whole thing in the freezer then the temperature won't be right because it's going to be too cold. What they should do is just go buy uh some two inch ice cube cube uh freezing thing so that they can get like nice fairly nice I mean not like you know not super clear grade you know the style that we use that we pay a lot of money for but you know fairly nice ice cubes get like double old fashioned figure out whatever garnish their glasses figure out whatever kind of garnish they're gonna use freeze the ice cubes get the liquor base freeze that and then keep the fruit juice or whatever in you know plus whatever water they need in the fridge then when they mix the freezer uh they mix the freezer booze with the uh fridge um juice it'll add up to the exact right temperature in the glass at least usually does and so they can get something that's in perfect condition without a lot of stirring and mess and worrying about it and they all they have to do at home is you know but to practice is choose the booze, keep it in the freezer and whatever fruit juices are going to balance it with in the fridge, do their mix testing and then and then go. But a stir drink is going to be easier because it doesn't require a lot of texture. They can pre-figure out the um the the balance they need in terms of uh uh dilution, it can all be kind of pre-done mixed, and then just as long as you have access to that other person's freezer, bang, and then a nice two inch ice cube and then you know a a good either twist or some sort of fancy fruit as a garnish, and it shouldn't take too much longer.
It's gonna take more because they're gonna have to think in advance uh of what they're gonna do, but it shouldn't actually take many hours of work. Okay. Um I might say peach juice, if you can get clarified peach juice, even if you can't, it doesn't have to be clarified, it's just you know how that's how we roll, we clarify most things. But like something like peach and mezcal go very, very well together because it's reminiscent of smoky, kind of like a grilled smoky peach, which every which everybody likes. So like peach uh lime juice, some sort of like smoky mezcal, uh maybe even then balance with a little bit of uh tequila because mezcal can sometimes be a little overpowering in a drink like that, uh stirred with some sort of nice garnish in a in a double old fashion.
It's not a lot of work, but it's uh it's good. You're probably gonna have to add a little bit of water just because otherwise it's gonna be too intense, just like straight peach and booze and lime, too intense. And you might have to add some sugar to it, like a couple bar spoons of uh like demerara syrup to give it more brown sugar notes, which brings it more on the grilled peach. And that's just if you're gonna do peach, you could do a different fruit. But it is summertime.
Right. Um okay, so just and the final thing, you keep saying maybe throw a garnish in there, like what? What would be a good garnish? Everyone likes like some sort of like fresh piece of uh fruit. I mean, they can't vacuum infuse them, assuming they don't have uh vacuum.
I don't think so. No, but they could like you know, they could marinate some fruit in a different kind of a booze for a couple of days and then put it on a skewer and that always looks festive and tastes good. But it should taste good. Garnish is shouldn't just be I mean, I'm not an umbrella sort of I mean okay, I am. I really like an umbrella and I like a a cocktail monkey, I have to say it.
Nastasha, do you enjoy the cocktail monkey? Yes. Yeah, everyone really everyone we say that we don't enjoy it, but we all we love it. We do. Everyone does.
The little flamingo, I mean, who doesn't like that? You know? Uh so you know, there's that. Oh man, here's another one. If you really want to, if you want to go Looney Tunes, you can go buy some and and you know, but if you want to go on the kitsch side of Delicious, then uh go buy some fresh juice coconuts.
They're still available right now, and then serve everyone uh, you know, hack the top off, drain the stuff out, throw the coconuts in the freezer, those become the glasses, and then you can make a drink. Uh you i you normally I do rum with the coconut water stuff because it's but you could definitely balance out a mezcal or tequila drink with coconut water and uh and then serve it in in that thing of coconut, which is if you want to go on the kitch side, is cool. As long as you're like, oh, we know it's kitsch, but you know, the monocle pop the monocle out of your eye and then you say you know you know what I mean? Yeah. Um okay.
That's good. I wrote all this down, Dave. So that's very helpful. I'm gonna pass it along and um fingers crossed that she wins. All right, thanks, Brady.
Let us know how it goes. Thanks. Alrighty. Uh okay. Now uh I have some questions in from last week.
I'm gonna oh by the way, call in your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Okay. Uh question from last week uh that I didn't answer from Brian. I don't think I didn't answer the birch syrup question, did I?
No. Okay. Uh I've heard that birch syrup is uh also wonderful and different from maples maple syrup. What do you know about it? It is true uh that maples are not the only trees that are tapped for their sap uh to produce syrups.
Birch is as well. Um I have had birch syrup only once, and it was uh uh many years ago. I would say like six years ago when I first kind of learned about it. And I don't really I can't really say that I've tasted it because the sample that I got of birch syrup was in my opinion flawed. It tasted like it had kind of gone, it had a sour taste to it that I wasn't expecting, and it tasted like it had been burnt a bit when it was being reduced.
And so I'm gonna go ahead and say that I haven't actually had uh um birch syrup at its um at what I assume is going to be its best. I will say this about birch syrup. The production is incredibly small. Uh I you know, we should go get some more, see what it's like now, because I I love anything anything like that. You know, Stas, we should get some some birch syrup.
Uh birch sap has a much lower sugar content than maple sap does. And so you have to acquire more of it and boil it down more. But uh I'm anxious to hear anyone else's experience on birch sap. I mean, maybe it's supposed to have a little bit of a sour note to it. Maybe it's supposed to taste a little bit burnt, but my impression of it was that my sample was flawed.
And I handed it to a bunch of chefs. I gave some to Nils, uh, I gave some to a bunch of people. I said, Do you think that this is what this is supposed to be like, or do you think this is flawed? And everyone said this is flawed. So I don't I don't I can't say I know what it what it tastes like, but I also uh am intrigued and uh I love any sort of new new I'm a new ingredient freak, so you know if uh if you can if we can use birch syrup, then hey, let's do it, let's get it, right?
Yeah, sorry, couldn't be more help. Uh okay. Now we had another question uh that I didn't get to on um cream cream liqueurs, and I said uh I would deal with it this week. So here I am. So I looked up uh on the interwebs a uh some recipes, some industrial recipes for making uh cream liqueurs and what's what's in them.
And typically it does you don't you're not required to have uh an emulsifier in the cream liqueur, although it it can help. But they are typically in the range of twelve to sixteen percent milk fat, fifteen to 20% sugar, two two two and a half to three and a half percent sodium caseinate, that's milk protein, uh, nonfat milk solids, uh one to three and a half percent, and fourteen percent booze balance of forty-six to fifty percent uh water. Now, what does this mean? What is this what does this mean? It means they're fairly high in fat uh and they are clearly have in it milk solids and casein, and the casein is acting as the emulsifier there to keep everything together, which is a protein.
Notice the booze content, by that I mean ethanol, is low. So it's in the range of 14%. So uh I think that once you add more alcohol, the alcohol is going to start to destabilize the emulsion. So it, you know, the caller that called in before, I think he was having phase separation problems, if my memory serves me right, uh, not curdling, not breaking, but phase separation. And so to me that means that you the emulsion is destabilized.
Uh and that might be because the alcohol content is too high. Uh the other thing that you um might want to do, which is what he says, add an emulsifier. And uh by adding an emulsifier to it, you're going to reduce the amount of creaming, i.e., separate phase separation uh that you have. Uh and you're gonna want to go look at a book, and it's gonna be the next uh book that I try and get on the highly technical stuff called Food Emulsifiers and Their Applications by uh Gerard Hasenhuthoe, Hasenhutur, I think is how you pronounce the person's name. Uh and it really talks about the different kinds of emulsifiers and why you would use one versus the other.
And when you're when you're using something in a uh in a cream liqueur, you want to use what's called an alpha tending emulsifier, uh, and it's just a technical term, alpha tending uh emulsifier, and those types of emulsifiers tend to form films. They're film-forming emulsifiers that form at the interface between a liquid uh and and an oil or I should say a water-based liquid and an oil-based uh liquid or air or whatever. And so those film-forming ones are better at stabilizing things in cream emulsions, and one of those alpha tending uh film-forming emulsifiers is propylene glycol monosterate or PGMS. We have a caller caller here on the air. Hey Dave, it's Michael Matkin.
Hey, how you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? Doing doing well. I like like the cookbook.
How's the cookbook doing? It's doing really good. You know, we sold out the first printing, so that's exciting. Awesome. Congratulations.
Jack, can we get the applause applause meter on that? He's slow on the applause. There you go. Don't I'm blushing over here. Yeah.
So what's up? So uh I'm working on the equipment list for my first restaurant. It's gonna be a sort of a small lunchtime place. And I wanted to get your advice on whether I should go Paco Jet versus another kind of ice cream machine. Okay.
Uh okay. So you familiar with uh Pure Food here in Manhattan? No. Okay, pure uh it's called pure food and wine, right? That's uh Sarma Melingas' restaurant.
And uh she is the only person I have ever seen who does all of her ice creams in Paco Jet. Um, all of them. And uh and she had a an ice cream shop attached to the restaurant called I forget what the ice cream shop's called, like Lucky Duck or something like that, or one Lucky Duck. And she did uh like a lot of ice cream service just out of a Paco jet. So it is feasible, even in someone that's pushing a lot of ice cream to do it.
But how how much ice cream do you plan on serving? Um not a ton. It's not like it's gonna be an ice cream restaurant, but I want the flexibility that, you know, if I'm doing a dish to have an ice cream component on it. You know, I would imagine it would be smaller scoops. You know, it's not like I would be serving Sundays, at least not very often.
Right, right. So I mean, Paco Jet is fantastic at having lots of flavors available uh in smaller quantities. So you could kind of you you it's feasible to have like a flavor base that is there, and then you know, even if you only use a scoop a night, it's okay because you can only process the amount you need and keep the rest kind of and and you can reprocess it again and get it back into perfect temper. Unlike normal ice cream where you make the batch and then from there on out the it's turning to crap, you know, uh as you look at it, it's it's losing its its you know stuff. It's crystal, you know, decrystallizing, recrystalizing, blah, blah, blah, losing its texture.
Paco Jet is fantastic at uh at you know the perfect texture, you know, you know, because you just reprocess it if you need to. Right. How long does it take to spin one scoop? Uh not long. I mean, if you're spinning the entire uh Paco Jet uh container, uh that probably takes I don't know, two minutes or something like that, all told.
No, but three, maybe three. Uh it's loud. Uh, you know, so you wouldn't necessarily want to have it in front of a uh a customer, but it doesn't take a long time. And processing just you know one or two things doesn't doesn't take very long at all. The the one trick is you have to some people pre-spin some just because uh it's i sometimes it gets a little soft when it, you know, right after it's spun and they like to firm it up a little more.
The big problem with the Paco Jet is the freezer temperature that you have it at is critical to the making sure that if it's too cold if it's too cold, the product comes out kind of powdery. If it's too warm, the product comes out uh soupy. So it uh it's a lot about um temperature maintenance uh in inside the freezer, and especially during a busy service, going in and out, making sure you can maintain the temperature stability, and I think that's why a lot of people will process a couple of scoops and then you know keep those scoops in a dipping well or whatever. Uh but you know, I've done it uh out of a freezer. You know, everyone kind of gets that thing to work in their own sort of way.
The one uh some of the problems with Paco Jets are that uh if they break, they might have gotten better, but years ago, which is the last time that you know I had to use one a bunch at the school, uh if one breaks, they don't necessarily get you a loner instantly, and then you're without a Paco Jet. And so, you know, I've had to help people out. If you have a friend that has one, they can loan you one when yours is down, or if you can afford to have a second one lying around, uh, you know, then it's kind of okay. But you know, they break more, they used to break more often than, for instance, the Carpeganis do. Now, Carpiani, you know, uh, you know, the LB100 is going to take up a lot more space in your kitchen, which I don't know whether that's at a premium.
It's gonna cost like twelve grand. Do you know what I mean? That they're fan they're fantastic. But if you don't need the volume on uh you know on the on the Carpaganis, then you know, I would say you know, Paco Jet is viable. Just you know, just be aware of the of the issues.
Make sure that you that whoever you buy it from, uh you know, I haven't had to buy one in a long time, but make sure that whoever you buy it from is gonna help you get the parts quickly. It's not like all the parts are kind of proprietary on the inside, like all the belts and cogwheels are not labeled with any sort of normal labeling, so you can't just go to an industrial website and buy the parts for it, which is irritating. But um they're great. The texture is great. They're fantastic.
The other the other issue that's expensive is the stainless steel containers are expensive, and people in your kitchen are gonna tend to not realize that they're not Bain, Marie's, and sift them around, which can be uh also problematic. Uh the guys at Pure Food uh and wine used to freeze their stuff in quart containers and then jam those into the uh stainless steel buckets for spinning, and it works great. The one problem is is that if you jam it in crooked uh and it's loose and the blade as it comes down hits it cock eyed, you can shatter the blade. Uh so you know it's it's a question of what you know what risks are you willing to take. It won't ruin the Paco Jet, but it could, you know, could cause that that kind of a problem.
You're shoving it down in there in the plastic, or you're taking out of the plastic tub and shoving that block of ice down into the stainless. Yeah, the ladder. You pop it out of the uh you pop it out of the core container and jam it into the into the stainless, but it's not an exact fit. You have to really jam it down and make sure it's not at an angle. The b the the blade really doesn't want to all of a sudden hit something thicker than its you know incremental slicing.
Yeah, I got it. I got it. Okay. Very cool. Yeah, yeah.
But anyway, but yeah, I love Paco Jet. They're great. I mean, they really are great. For for all that I'm you know, complain about the fact that they cost a lot uh and you know that they're they're still fantastic pieces of equipment. Cool.
Well, thanks for the advice. That helps a lot. All right, thank you. Thanks for calling. Yeah.
Don't be a stranger. All right, bye-bye. Um all right, hey Jack, you want to go to our first commercial break? Yes, sir. Coming right back with cooking issues.
This is up from the south from the Buddha spending. The International Culinary Center is a proud sponsor of the Heritage Radio Network.org. The ICC with locations in New York and California provide cutting edge education to future chefs, restaurateurs, and wine professionals. We're proud to claim Dan Barber, Bobby Clay, and David Chang among our honored alumni. This is Dorothy Cann Hamilton from Chef Story.
Check out our ICC website at international culinarycenter.com. Hey Jack, what's the music that you put there with Dorothy? Oh yeah, some dreamy music. Yeah, there's some dreamy music. It's like uh ad music.
Hey, what's up? No Wiley? No Wiley? No, no love for Wiley. I don't know.
Maybe that's on the second commercial. The deans, too. All those deans. Yeah, yeah, we got some good deans over at the end. They've been uh they've been promoting you a lot, actually.
Nice. I appreciate it. Promotion's good, right, Sas? I don't care. I don't care.
Don't talk to me. I'm emailing people. All right. I had somebody real quick, I had a cooking issues listener ask if uh if Nastasia is is actually this is real. They're like, is she actually like rolling her eyes in the studio sometimes?
Because it sounds like it. Yeah, it sounds like it's a little bit more than a little bit. How do you hear that? You know? It's it's the pause, and then I think the sardonic reply.
I think that's what it is. I I confirm that it does indeed happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Right now, Nastash is buying some shoes on Zappos.
Okay, I'm paying paying lots of bills. What kind of bills? Debt. Awesome. Okay.
She didn't have the debt at 10 a.m. this morning. The debt came in at noon. Just so you know. Just so you know.
Debt wasn't there at 10. That's only there at noon. Okay. Uh this question in from uh Jean, I assume it's Jean and not Jean. Uh Jean Doe, which is an awesome name, dough, right?
Doe? Like dough, not like dough like doure me, like dough likes dough nut. Which is delicious. And not well, not like do not d you shouldn't spell dough not do and u t. That's uh that's horrible.
It's an abomination. It's dough like like dough that you work with. Anyway, uh one uh posted this to uh to me and to ideas and food. Wanna poach using ocean water. Any thoughts on uh dilution or other considerations?
I wouldn't dilute it, right? It's just uh I would filter the heck out of it. You know what I mean? And make sure that you don't get it from like the swampy tidal pool thing, which is what I already responded to this on the on the Twitter, but um just saying I don't think you need to dilute it, but be aware that uh seawater is a lot more bitter than salt water because there are many other salts in seawater other than uh other than you know, sodium chloride, table salt. And to kind of get an idea of what that does for flavor, you can pick up uh nigari, which is uh you know the Japanese uh salt that they use to set tofu.
You can also set tofu, by the way, in seawater. It's possible to set tofu in seawater, that's an old school way of doing it. Uh, but if you taste nigari, which are all the salts left over after most of the sodium chloride is removed, that bitterness is what you get out of seawater. So just be aware that that flavor is there. But people have been using microfiltered seawater for you know, you know, a long, long time.
It was especially popular ingredient in kind of high-tech Spanish cooking, um, and probably still is for all I know. Okay. Uh we got anonymous in. Please ask Dave Arnold if venison from a deer addled with Lyme disease is still edible. Yuck.
From Anonymous. What are your thoughts, Sasha? Before I before I tell you the answer, what do you think? Uh, you know the answers probably it's fine. Just because you know me and my answer to everything is fine?
Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, you happen to be right.
I mean, I don't think the reasoning is good on your part, but the you happen to be correct. I went on the uh CDC, which is the Center for Disease Controls website, and uh kind of looked up to see what what the theory is. And uh Lyme disease is uh a disease that actually you know it can be easy to treat if you catch it early. If you don't catch it early, it can be really horrible and can cause central nervous system problems that can be persistent um almost indefinitely. It can it can be really bad.
Uh and they you know it's named after the town in Connecticut nearby here, uh Lyme, where I guess it was first uh noticed, and you get it from deer ticks, most you know, most from deer ticks. Uh and it has a life cycle that goes from deer tick to rodent to deer, but you know, around in this big circle, and you get it, the tick bites you, the spirochete is injected uh into you, and then you get the Lyme disease. Sometimes you get a bullseye rash, sometimes you don't, and you get muscular, uh, you know, m muscular pains and headaches, blur, all the nasty stuff, and you treat it with uh with antibiotics, but you gotta catch it early. Okay. There's no evidence, this is from the CDC directly.
There's no evidence that Lyme disease is transmitted from person to person, so you can't get it from uh infected from touching, kissing, or having sex with a person who has Lyme disease. So what this means is that bodily fluid contact is not what's going to cause uh the Lyme disease. And similarly, uh although uh Lyme disease during pregnancy can cause problems, um a lot of problems, such as infec infection of the placenta and whatnot, uh if the baby makes it baby baby's okay. And uh and although there have been no uh cases of Lyme disease linked to blood transfusion, they still don't recommend that you give blood if you know you you have Lyme disease. So, what this means, uh what all this means is that you're not gonna get it from eating uh venison or squirrel meat.
And they say, for instance, that you're not gonna get Lyme disease from eating venison or squirrel meat, but in keeping with general food safety principles, meat should always be cooked thoroughly. And here's the here's the key. The key is uh note hunting and dressing deer or squirrels may bring you into close contact with infected ticks. So if you are hunting uh deer that are been addled with Lyme disease, then you are in uh much greater contact with the with the you know the environment where you're gonna get a tick. So you do deer uh do tick checks, uh be careful, put um you know repellents on you to keep ticks from jumping on you, you know, like soak your clothes and whatever that is, pyrethrine or whatever it is that stops the ticks from getting there.
But that's the main thing. Now, the interesting thing with deer disease that no one knows what the what the final thing is gonna be on isn't Lyme disease, it's chronic wasting disease, which you get from elk and I guess other deer, but not here on the East Coast, you get it in uh kind of the north middle of uh of the country. And this is a uh a spongiform and cephalopathy, uh, you know, a TSC, a transf a transmissible uh spongiform and cephalopathy, uh similar to Jakobs Kreutschveld or Mad Cow, and uh causing um neurological disease in elk and deer, not thought to be transmissible to humans. However, wise word on the street is that you never know when uh the TSE, which is a pre it's a they're prion related uh so like this weird little protein, prion related diseases, when they're going to be able to change a little bit and make the jump from one animal, uh for instance cows, mad cow disease, to human beings. So we don't know.
Like uh we don't know whether there's ever going to be a sheep-based uh scrapie that can come over to uh to us. We don't know if there's going to be a chronic wasting disease that can jump and come to us. And the fun part about uh you know transmissible uh transmissible uh spongiform and cephalopathies is they have something like 10, 15 year incubation period. So the thing that kills you you could have eaten 10, 15 years ago. Awesome, right?
Is that super happy times? Super happy times. And so because of that, I make a general rule of not eating um not eating uh brain matter or um uh nerve tissue uh unless like someone really offers it to me and I'm like and I feel like I'm gonna be extremely rude not eating it because being uh impolite is is uh much uh worse than dying in 15 years. Not really, but it's kind of what happens. So uh I tend to stay away from that stuff, and I know a lot of other people that do too, just because we don't know how that stuff's gonna suss out yet.
Um okay. Uh hello, Dave, Nastasha, Jack, and Joe. Finally, every so we're getting called out in the right in the right stuff. Uh Dave, you mentioned in several shows, including the last one, that you like making chicken stock at home in the pressure cooker. You've alluded to several changes to regular recipes that are required to get a good result, such as doubling or tripping, tripling the amount of onion, using less water, etc.
Could you spell out specifically a typical recipe that you will use that you would use? Also, I make a cocktail that uses a Leucuma puree. However, it's very difficult to find here in the Bay Area, and I cannot always get it. Do you know of any reasonable substitutes I could try? I've bought Leukuma powder, but I haven't had much luck.
It doesn't taste the same and imparts a gritty texture to the drink. Thanks, love the show, Michael in Oakland, California. Okay, I'm gonna handle this in reverse. I don't yet have a good substitute for uh Leucima uh puree. Uh I haven't used it really uh that much.
I've had it kind of preserved, but I've never had um the fresh stuff. I've had similar related fruits from South America and Colombia, but I'm gonna have to do more research on it. In fact, I'm going to Colombia in at the end of August, and I'm in Leucama's Peruvian. And it's like one of these Peruvian superfruit jobbies that they're doing a good job uh marketing. Uh so when I go, I'm specifically gonna do some research.
I'm gonna try to get the fresh stuff that's closely related as I can to it, even though it's not I won't be in Peru, I'll be in Colombia, and then the other substitutes, and then once I have more experience using the real deal fresh stuff, then I will be able to make a good uh substitution for it. Powders, yeah, they're you know, they're they're you know, yeah, uh the typically things like that might uh impart a gritty texture to a to a drink. Uh and the real question is are you adding the Leucuma for what purpose? For creaminess, for taste, for what? Uh so I'm gonna do more research, and then uh if you want to send an email back like at the beginning of next month, right when I get back from Colombia, I'll have an answer for you, and also please email why, you know, what it is you want, what it is you want to mimic about the Leukuma, everything or just the flavor or just the texture, right?
And then we can kind of uh work from there. Okay? Now, back to the stock. Um when I make so it's it I don't actually have a specific recipe. I feel like I'm like I'm really doing you wrong, Michael, but I don't have like a specific recipe uh that I use.
I just know that uh I kind of I always do uh stocks really by eye, which is dumb. But um when I do it at home, I'll typically uh I'll typically won't even roast off my bones. I'll I'll brown the bones in uh in a pan. So let's do chicken. Like I'll take chicken, uh, a lot of backs and you know the ac the excess meat from that.
Usually when I fry chickens, I have a lot of bones and backs and stuff left over. I have all the bones, in fact, because I make boneless fried chicken. I'll chop them up uh fairly fine and then I'll um I'll cook them actually in the pressure cooker in batches just so I don't have to go roast. When I'm cooking uh, you know, in a professional kitchen, I'll roast. Uh and I'll you know, I'll also like uh roast off uh the vegetables as well, uh, and then put them in.
I do typically add probably twice as much onion when I'm doing pressure cooker as when I'm doing a traditional stock. You don't need to, just be aware that the onion flavor will be different and will be a little bit muted. You can add a little bit of fresh onion afterwards and do like a 10-15 minute simmer of freshly sweated, not fresh, fresh onions, but freshly sweated onions to to bolster bolster that back up. Don't alter your celery uh or your carrot uh amount or it'll come out kind of too carrot and too celery. Um I jam the bones down in as hard as I can, and then I add water basically just to cover the bones and no more.
And I think you know, one of the issues, it'll everything depends on what you're gonna use it for. If you you know, uh uh from years of having the stock that they make at the at the French Culinary Institute, now the ICC, in my opinion, all of that stock was uh it's too too watery. So, like normal professional procedure is to add excess water and then um you know boil it for you know, simmer it for a very, very long time. Uh and uh in the end, you always end up having to reduce that stock before you use it because uh the flavor profile is just not high enough. Now, from an economic standpoint, it does make sense to use excess, well, I don't know, accepting the cost of gas to boil the stuff down.
It makes some economic sense to um use excess water because it means that the flavor, the liquids that are left in the stuff after you drain it, have less of the um less of the flavor and protein in them than they would if you diluted it, and then you can boil it back down. My feeling, which kind of goes back to reading, you know, Peterson's book so many times, is that the super long boiling times and reduction, constant reduction, while intensifying flavors can tend to dull the flavor. So I prefer to make a much more flavorful initial stock, even though I might lose some of that flavor in uh in the fact that there still is liquid clinging to the bones and whatnot when they come out. So uh when I'm doing it at home, I try to go for the most flavorful one because cost isn't necessarily an issue. I'm not serving a lot of people.
I'm just trying to effectively use a whole bunch of chicken backs that I have in carcasses. So I'll actually do a uh uh a triple stock. I'll do I'll do veg uh and then I'll roast off a whole bunch of bones and I'll put pack them in, fill just over the top with water, hit it once, and then uh drain that one and put it with a fresh uh thing of bones and do it again. I don't do uh remillage at home just because I don't do remillage at home, but uh, you know, if you want to do a Remy stock with it, you all you also could. Um anyway, sorry I don't have a specific obviously I don't salt the stuff because I don't know what I'm gonna use it for later.
Uh if you're making a broth or soup, you know, do whatever you do whatever you want. Uh I do typically add uh the peppercorns beforehand uh and bay just because I'm used to it, even though Jeffrey Steingarden tells me that I'm an idiot for doing so because all that's happening there is imparting bitterness from the pepper and not the aroma, which uh is very fleeting and goes away. Uh but I like that bitterness, so I'm gonna do it anyway, even though Jeffrey tells me I shouldn't. What do you think? I haven't spoken to Jeffrey in a long time, have we?
Yeah, I know. Say hello to my man Jeffrey. So sorry I could not be more accurate. Uh I looked up Miss Vicky's uh pressure cooker stock. She actually tends to be more Miss Vicky writes pressure cooker things.
Uh actually, you know, I snuck around, you know, the Amazon, I did the look inside on Amazon because I don't actually own her book, and it didn't give me the one key page in American Amazon. So I went to Amazon UK and they gave me that one page. So, like, you know, if at first you don't succeed on the Amazon look inside, try a different country, try a different country again. Thank God I didn't have to go to like Amazon.checoslovakia or whatever, because I I wouldn't be able to read the I'd have to go through translation, which is an irritation. Uh anyway, um but yeah, she cooks her pressure cooker stock for like half an hour on chicken, which I think is reasonable, but not on beef.
Um the you know, uh whereas Heston, I think Blumenthal cooks for like an hour. When we were running our tests at the French culinary, I think we cooked an hour or longer for our pressure cooker stocks. Really, you're gonna get, especially if you chop up the the bones pretty fine, you're gonna get the vast majority of extraction in a half an hour at 15 PSI. And so I think that's probably good enough. Half hour, forty-five minutes.
Then let it come down naturally. The coming down naturally is the key on the recipe there, so that you're not boiling all the stuff out of the uh of the bones and causing all sorts of uh emulsification problems, which we're gonna deal with in a second. Because the next question, should we take a break real quick? We don't have much time. Uh yeah, there's like five minutes, so I mean maybe let's just power through it.
Power through? I think that's probably a good idea. Power, okay, power it is. Power. Uh okay.
So uh which leads to our next question. Uh yo, what up with you guys? Can't get enough of y'all anyway. Thank you very much, by the way, for not being able to get enough of us. I can certainly get enough of us, right, Sas?
Stas has enough of me uh all the time. Oh, wait, we have another Twitter. Okay. Uh Dave, I was wondering when your book is supposed to be put on the market. Well, uh, I have to finish writing it first.
Uh the fact that I have not written it is uh putting me in deep hot water with uh my uh publisher. But uh, you know, be you know sure that uh it's like like my top priority now is finishing this book. And but after I write it, it's still gonna be about a year before it comes under the market. So unfortunately, no time too soon. Um second question, more food related.
Been having a little trouble with stocks lately. I always blanch or roast my bones and uh skim skim skim, pass through a chinois and and cloth, like you know, a cheesecloth. Uh after reducing by half or more and chilling, I still notice there being too much suspended particulate, what's going on? Also, this refers to beef and chicken stock, not pork. Thank you very much, uh Philippe.
Okay. Uh look, there's an interesting article b uh on clarity and whatnot, uh, that I don't have time necessarily to go through in detail, but you can get the abstract for it online and take a look at it. And it's called The Effects of Cooking Temperatures on the Physiochemical Properties and Consumer Acceptance of Chicken Stock by Mark Krasnow, which came out in uh 200 and uh eleven. And they b they basically do cold start simmered at 85 Celsius for a long time. It's cold water start, a hot water start at 85, cold water start cooked at 99 Celsius, and uh hot water start cooked at um 99 uh Celsius, and they run through uh you know questions of whether which is clear, which is cloudy, which has higher protein, which has higher uh taste acceptance.
And I will just read um maybe their final results. Overall, the results of the study show that there is a clear physiochemical difference between stocks cooked at 85 Celsius, i.e. a simmer, and 99, which is right at the boil. The starting temperature of the water, however, did not greatly affect these properties. The assertion, however, that protein extraction is greater in cold started stocks was partially supported by the results of this study.
For the stocks cooked at 99 uh C, uh the one that was hot started had more dissolved protein than the one that was at 85. The 85 had more dissolved protein than the hot started at 85. Okay, so uh so so there you go. But you can go go read uh their paper on it because it's too complicated to suss out, you know, uh to suss out instantly. Um they did mention by the way that uh blanching beforehand was something they didn't treat as part of their study, but it's it's in there in the discussion, so you should definitely uh read about it.
But I'll give you my my my points, my points on it. Okay. Um so what you did is you said you uh blanch orose your bones first and then uh skim skim skim. Now the skimming is supposed to get the scum off the top that otherwise gets emulsified into the sauce. By the way, you do this initial thing where you skim off the initial stuff and then you want to boil the hell out of it for certain Chinese stocks because uh they actually want to emulsify the fat.
So they're using protein to emulsify the fat into your into your uh stock. And that's basic that's the idea for call like cream stocks or milk stocks. I happen not to like them too much, but I haven't had that much experience with them. But I'm just maybe just because I'm not used to them. I mean, I'm sure they're great in there when they're used properly, but I haven't had enough experience with it.
So uh so you want to do the opposite of that for a normal stock, which is to you want to bring it up to the boil uh and then skim the stuff that floats off to the top because that's gonna contain uh proteins that are gonna, if they get churned in, will help to emulsify the fat into your stock, which is gonna make it cloudy. Alright. So you so one thing I want to make sure you're not doing is that you're not um you're not um uh they're you're not boiling it too hard, right? The second thing is you say you pass it through a chinois and cloth, and then after reducing by half or more and chilling, there's too much suspended particulate. Here's what you need to do.
You need to uh pass it through a uh chinois and a cloth carefully, like ladle it. Don't upset it or stir it around too much, like pour it gently and whatnot. Then chill it first before you reduce it. If you reduce before you chill it, you're not gonna get all of the uh fat and stuff off the top. You're supposed to chill it.
There'll be a lay it'll separate into layers, you separate it and then scoop out the gelee, and then reduce the gelee. So maybe maybe uh that's the problem you're having. So the one problem you might be having boiling a little bit too hard, it sounds like you're skimming it enough, so that's probably not the issue. Um and the other thing is make sure you chill it thoroughly before you uh do any reduction. Um and if those aren't the problems, uh there could be other things like the type of uh I mean that maybe you're including bits of the chicken like uh certain gibblets can apparently cause cause cloudy stocks or whatnot.
But call you know, email us back and tell us what the issues are. Okay. Uh we're about to have to go but I just want to uh go one we have one last uh what is this Twitter or email coming in. Hey Dave uh Nastasha and Jack. First off just want to say the Changwa demo at SF Chefs last week was a great time.
I didn't make it to the cocktail demonstration at the tent, but I'm sure it was awesome. Thank you. I'm a big fan of iced coffee, usually cold brewed and sparkling water, but when I combine the two it isn't a good result. Any tips on how to make a sparkling iced coffee? I'm particularly looking at ways to improve the mouthfeel.
Also is there a way to make a cocktail version thanks Tim. Okay, very good question Tim. We'll take this as our last question today. There are certain uh coffee bars, for instance Blue Bottle in San Francisco, that serve you uh carbonated water with your uh with your espresso shots. And it's kind of interesting.
It's a different uh mouthfeel also Columba here in the U in uh New York you can get some carbonated water with your uh with your espresso shop but Nastasha you wouldn't like the carbonated water I think they serve San Benedetto which is not your favorite because you call it uh agua di boca. 'Cause it doesn't have a high enough carbonation level for you. Because Nastasha like me likes a very bubbly bubble, right? You don't like like a you don't like like a like a petillon, like a minor bubble. You like a major bubble.
Yeah, yeah, true, true. Uh and in that uh I am uh wholeheartedly agree. So this is one situation where I'm not gonna rant against Nastasha's food choices because we just one savor it. Okay. Um now the problem is is that i you get some very unusual results when you add um the bubbliness which has that sharp biting and people perceive as acidic, although I don't perceive it that way.
Uh I mean, you know the the science says that I do, but I don't feel about it that way. When that's mixed with coffee can be kind of strange. If you want to taste the only commercially carbonated coffee thing that I know of, there's a soda called Manhattan Special uh coffee soda, which I don't know whether it's only regional or not. Uh have you had that, Jack? I don't think it's in there right now.
No. Or Joe, have you had that? No. I have actually. Do you what do you think about it?
I think it's pretty awesome. Yeah? It's a local specialty though. Right, exactly. It's hard.
It's actually pretty hard to find, too. Yeah, and it well, it's new, it's not made in Manhattan. It's made on Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn. Right. Yeah.
Manhattan Avenue special. Yeah, the factory is pretty close to here, actually, right? Yeah, yeah. But so what you should do is try to get a hold of that and then taste that to see kind of what the commercial uh version of it um is. But yeah, it is it is a unique, it is a unique uh kind of a flavor.
My only problem with Manhattan Special is that it's kind of too sweet. You know, what do you think, Joe? Too sweet? Or do you like it that way? Oh, I'm into it.
You're into it? So go get a hold a hold of that. One issue when you're making a cocktail and you want to carbonate it, uh or any sort of carbonated coffee beverage is uh coffee, especially espresso, which is what I deal with, um, has some uh foaming properties to it. And so uh it can foam like a like a weasel when you want to carbonate it. So when you uncap a carbonated uh coffee drink, especially espresso, which has a lot of suspended solids in it, you're gonna you're gonna get some serious foaming problem.
If you are a milk and coffee person and you want to carbonate it, the milk can have problems because you can get curdling reactions with certain milk-based things, especially as the alcohol level goes up. But uh you're even more gonna have an extreme, extreme foaming uh problem. And so uh you're gonna have to make a very small amount of it and then let it uh foam off in order in order to get it to uh to work properly. I'm gonna have to think more. I also is if anyone has a good carbonated coffee thing, uh please uh write in.
I'm interested because I haven't done enough experimenting with carbonation uh and coffee, but I definitely have experimented with it. When I make coffee drinks and I want them super foamy and creamy and cocktails, I don't use CO2, I use nitrous oxide, which makes a nice creamy beverage. And you can I've made many coffee cocktails with nitrous oxide, although they do foam, and that gives you uh the super creaminess that you get out of a fresh cup of coffee, but in a cold situation. So I would try nitrous instead of CO2 unless you really want the prickly texture of CO2, in which case um experiment away. Cooking issues.org.
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Thanks for listening. Oh, you dare to do that.
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