Today's program has been brought to you by Fairway Market, like no other market, a New York City institution that sells the best local, national, and international artisan foods for prices that can't be beat. For more information, visit fairway market.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. I'll see you in my dreams.
Jack, is that our new is that us now? No, that's not. That's plexiponic. But you know, we uh at Heritage Radio here, we're going all original, all licensed music. So the cooking issues theme is no longer so okay, so like no longer as of now.
No longer as of now. So basically okay, so for those of you that don't know how this works, right? Uh as with all other things in life, theoretically, if you use uh on the air in some sort of a program a song, you are supposed to pay for it. Right? You're supposed to pay what is it, BMI or Ass Cap, whatever it is, right?
Right, Jack? And we decided we didn't want to do that because we're nonprofit. We got we got no cash. Yeah. All right.
So now that I know that we're on the air. Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Aron, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live. A little bit late today. From the back of Roberta's uh even later than normal, actually.
Yeah. From the back of Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn here in the studio with Nastog Lopez and Jack Inslee, our intrepid engineer. And uh what what is your title over there at the radio? Grand Vizier. Uh that's a cool title.
Executive producer. Executive producer. Do you know what by the way? Everyone wants to know what Nastash's title is with the organization, and by the way, no one even knows what the organization means. No one knows what company we're talking about.
Uh or what what the hell we're talking about. Cooking issues not really a business, right, Saz? Right. Right. So it's hard to have a title there, but you have one.
She has the same title across anything she works for. And basically, uh, you can treat her however you want so long as her title is air parent. Yeah, well, uh, you know, I don't really know what like uh I said when she said this is what she wanted her title to be, and that was you know her only condition for working, really, strangely enough. I was like, uh I said, well, uh like air apparent to what? She's like, nah, that doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter. Right, Stuzz? Yeah, true, true story. Okay, calling your questions live to 718497-2128. That's 7184972128.
So anyway, just got back from London. Merry old, merry old England action, right? Uh, where uh I was with Harold McGee. We were at uh we were at the kind of the bar this year's, you know, I guess last year or the year, two years ago, whatever it was, the bar wedding of the of the century was uh was Audrey Saunders of of Pegu and Robert Hess of you know he writes about uh you know bars and you know bar kind of master writer thinker. Uh Cocktail Boy, I think is his uh blog, right?
That's the name of his blog. I don't know. Anyways, so that was the the wedding of the uh the bar wedding of the century. This year's well, the the the American Bar Wedding of the Century, and this one is uh you know, Rhea, formerly of Pernault Ricard and good friend, and uh Tony Connollyaro of 69 Colebrook Row and Zetter Townhouse in uh in the London there. Some of my favorite bars in the in the world.
So we went over, I should say we. I went over, and Harold McGee also went over, and Nastasha was like, no crap on that. And uh invited. Okay, I don't know. I don't know, I don't know.
What do I know? Anyway, uh went over to London for the wedding, uh, but the wedding wasn't in London, it was in the Cotswolds, which was beautiful. But uh, in order to write off the entire trip, uh Harold McGee, yeah, you know what he could do. Harold McGee and I went to the Brogdale collection again in Kent Favisham, which is, uh, for those of you that don't know, where uh the United Kingdom stores all of its fruit. Now, did I mention this on the last show that I was gonna go there?
Yeah. Did I talk about it in general? Uh just a quick quick refresher. Quick refresher. So when you're storing fruit, you store it in the form of a tree, right?
And so you go there and they actually have all the trees. Now, if you go to the United States' fruit repositories, which run by the good old uh it's a kind of a governmental plus university effort, right? So our apples are run uh in you know in conjunction between Cornell University and United States government, and uh pears and small fruits are in Corvallis, where I'm we're gonna go to are you going to that, Stas or no? No, Tristan is. Oh, to Portland Cocktail Week.
I hope to go to Corvalis, which is where the other ones are stored. So here's what I've learned about uh American fruit collections. They really don't care. They don't care. Like no one goes there to visit it, right?
And you can go in there and go absolutely nutty ape crap uh on the trees and eat as much fruit as you want with almost no supervision. This is what I found. Um whereas in the Brogdale, which is in Kent, it's not the case. They they they don't let you just go go crazy. Now, Nastash and I, was it two years ago?
We went and we went like we went nutty box in the in the orchards and we were able to eat whatever we want, and no one gave us any sort of guff because there was literally nobody there. This year it was pretty hardcore, and we had to sneak around and we got kicked out of the orchards like three times. Oh my god. Yeah. Here's another thing, sad to say for all of you English folk out there.
Uh, this is like, and I asked some fruit growers there. This is the worst season for taste for uh uh British apples and and whatnot in in many, many, many years because they had not enough sunlight and more than usual uh less than average sun, more than more than usual rain. And the apples just stars were not they just weren't bueno. I tasted a bunch this listen, I love the Brogdales, no offense to the Brogdale, but the apples just were no love, right? And I had apples, I tasted apples that I knew exactly what they tasted like, American apples, plus English apples that I knew what they tasted like.
So coxes, I tasted a cocks, empires, all these other things. None of them good. I also learned something else. The English prefer their fruit a little more sour than we do. Sour.
There was a speaking of sour, there was like I there's no way she she doesn't know anything, so she's not listening, but there's this woman on the tour with us, right? Because I had to take this tour to get out there, so we had to sit around. All these people, they care about stuff that Harold and I really just don't care about. Like the value of the trees as trees. Harold and I look look, this is an apple tree.
This is a pear tree. Its value lies in the fruit, in the fruit, the fruit. And then they're all like, the whole cultural blah blah blah blah blah blah. Like Nastasha hates this kind of talk. Some people care about that.
But why would you care about that? It's the fruit. In other words, if an apple tree looked like a cup of water and yet it made delicious apples, wouldn't you be like, apples? No. She's talking about the value of the tree that produces the fruit that's so delicious, right?
No, she didn't care about the deliciousness. First of all, the lady had no taste. I sir I I picked an apple off of a tree that was so horribly underripe it tasted like you were sucking on raw starch. And uh, because apples before they're ripe, they taste very starchy. Uh, and they're usually very acidic and they have very little roundness.
So this was ba this tasted of starch and malic acid and nothing else. And it was overly hard and you know, like kind of teeth breaking as you chew into it. She loved it. She's like, this would be fantastic with the fine cheese. And I was like, I was like, this lady has to be an anomaly.
And then I asked around, they're like, no, man. No, man. Crazy depressing. Anyway, call her. You're on the air.
Hey, Dave, this is Johnny from Memphis again. How you doing? Doing all right. How you doing? Doing good.
Thanks for the uh info on the suckling pig a few weeks ago. It turned out good. It did, it turned out well? Turned out good. I'm happy.
I got another question for you. All right. I know that you don't need to uh see salt uh like a pork butt or brine a pork butt before you souveed it. Right. And if I was gonna uh like open it up like a book and put uh herbs like porchata style and then roll it up and sous vate it, I wouldn't need to brine it, right?
Okay, so there's there's two ways to think about it. You don't need to so brining does two things, three things really. It it uh it alters the protein so that they're less apt to get overcooked, right? And that's the reason why a lot of people do it when they're doing traditional cooking, right? It also um, and that you don't need to do for sous vide, it's not necessary.
Two, they do it to flavor the meat, right? And so for the flavor, you know, that's still necessary if that's the flavor you want. But three, it also tends to firm up the meat a little bit and make it taste less like fresh meat, and that's okay in like a chicken, not okay in a piece of steak, and then it's up to you in a piece of pork whether that's okay or not. You know what I mean? Yeah, what quality of pork.
If I have been trouble uh making like a roulage style um that uh put some transglutaminase on it. Yep. And I know it likes gelatin. And if I make the roulade, souve it, and then want to crisp the outside. Um maybe I should use water and like uh pesto spread instead of oil.
Is that making it come apart the oil you think? Uh okay, so I mean, any time that there is uh oil in between I mean here here's the thing. Some oil, I wouldn't go water-based, it's just gonna leak everywhere. I think the oil's not gonna be too much of a problem. As long as there is some meat to meat contact, it's not gonna be a problem.
You what which transglutaminates are you using? Uh either one, I'm adding gelatin if I'm using the RM, uh the couple of sheets. Um I use a GS, whichever. Yeah, you shouldn't need to. I mean, the RM has the casein as a binder.
You shouldn't need to to um to add it. Um if you were if you if it wasn't sticking, I guess you could add some, or the, you know, uh, I mean, I would I would keep it if you if you want to brine it beforehand, I would you could just let it brine itself basic, salt it, you know what I mean? Then add the transglutaminase as a powder. I wouldn't wouldn't go crazy on it. And uh then the question, was it gonna is it gonna what's gonna happen if you put pusto on it?
You need meat to meat contact. Do you know what I mean? You need the meat to meet contact. You could make a j you could make a gelatin, uh you could make a gelatin water herb slurry, and that sucker would glue up. You know what I'm saying?
Uh put up dissolve the transglutaminase into that and put it in the cryo bag, get the air out. Uh I would make the slurry with the gelatin. Uh let it, you know, cool down till it's not set, but you know, like maybe starting to get thick. Whisk the transglutaminase into it, and then spread it on the thing and roll quick. Okay.
That's what I would do. All right. I'll pretty sure it's just all right. Let us know uh let us know how it goes. I will.
All right. All right, thanks a lot. Bye. So, Stas, I didn't come across as too harsh on the on the on the Brits. It was just a bad year for them, right?
No, you were wonderful too. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, okay. I like how the Stas just lies, so I get off her back. You were wonderful.
You want to hear it. No, I don't want to hear it. I want to know exactly what happened. Anyways. Uh okay, got a question in from Philip Lamont.
Hello, Nastasha and Dave. Uh, just saw your lecture at Harvard and loved it. Nice, thank you. Which but they only published the one that we did together, right? I think the one I did for the students was actually stronger because it was just about it was focused more on the students, so it was about the science and and what was going on, you know.
Um Phillips question. I have a small question about chlorophyll. I've been making an herb mayonnaise lately, and I can't get it to stay green longer than one night. Uh I make an herb puree by blanching the herbs in salted water and icing uh to keep them cold. I blend those herbs in an ice blender with just enough cold oil.
After blending, I add lemon juice or ascorbic acid. Uh then I add this to mayo via a RoboCoupe, uh, which the uh subsequent mayo is made in. It is nice green, but not for long. M I just screwed? Hmm.
It's an interesting question. I've never uh I've never I haven't done enough tests with it to know 100%, but uh just kind of off the top of my head, and I went back and looked at some of the books that I uh that I uh uh you know that I love uh to see what their recommendations were. Now, you specifically want an herb mayonnaise, i.e. you want the flavor of the herb in it and not just an a green uh mayonnaise, right? So what's most likely happening is uh, you know, as most people know, there is a um there are uh there's an enzyme in in in herbs and many plants called uh I forget what they're called, like polyphenol oxidases, I think is what they're called.
Uh and they uh when you break herbs or leaves or anything like that, apples, uh you release those enzymes that are otherwise locked up such that they can interact with uh the rest of the uh the juices from the cell, right? Some of those uh things are are phenols that get um altered by the enzyme and then can kind of stick together and form colored particles, right? Uh and so that that's what's happening. Now, you you're there's a couple of things that inhibit those enzymes. One are antioxidants, so ascorbic acid, so that's that's good.
And two is heat. So uh if you heat an herb, blanch it as you're doing in salted and blanching in salted water, by the way, is a good idea because it means you're gonna leak less of the color uh and stuff out out of the herb. So blanching in salted water, very good. Uh uh putting it into uh cold water to stop uh heating, which was actually break down the chlorophyll, which is a separate problem of browning. That's what happens when you overcook the vegetables, right?
And then having ascorbic acid. These are all the things that um that I I would do. Uh so but let's take a look uh specifically at what you say here. You you blanch the stuff in salted water and then ice it, and then blend those uh in an ice blender with uh cold oil. I don't think you really need to worry about the coldness of the oil, and you don't need to worry about icing the blender.
Okay. Uh you're blending it with the oil there, I guess, to get the water oil stuff right so that when you add it to the mayonnaise, it's not going to break the emulsion. And that seems fine, I guess. Um lemon juice or ascorbic acid that you that you add afterwards, also fine. Um then add to the mayo via a RoboCoup.
Here's what I would say. I wouldn't bother with the uh with the cold necessarily making it cold or icing the blender. Make sure you squeeze out the herbs after you blanch them to get rid of uh any any of the stuff that's in them. I would take out stems, um I would take out the stems, but I would also maybe use a different a different method. So you should go read, you should find, buy, go to bookfinder.com and get the out-of-print book uh from Harold McGee, The Curious Cook, which I keep telling him he has to bring back into uh circulation.
And he goes through an entire section in that book about um keeping things green and all the various different interesting ways he's trying to keep pesto and things, which is a similar problem, green. Uh so I I definitely recommend um I definitely recommend reading that. But uh here's how I would probably do it. Uh if I was gonna use your technique, I would blanch in uh water, uh, then I would in this cold, you know, in the in the in the salted water, very salted water, uh pull it out, sh shock it, squeeze it to get all of the stuff out, then directly blend that without uh added oil with ascorbic acid right away. Boom.
Then uh after you do that, I would add, if you wanted to, I would just start beating that into uh mayonnaise and then adding more oil as necessary to get the consistency back. I mean that that's that's what I would do. But I also I think one of your problems is is that you are uh adding the solids, and it might be the solids in there that are causing the problem. Because when I looked at one of my favorite all-time uh cookbooks, which is James Peterson's Sauces, which is a very you know, an early 90s classic, it's 1991 it came out, and it's one of my treasured books. And you know, one of the sad things about um cookbooks and cooking, you know, cook cookbook and and thinking about books is there's lots of books, especially from that era before cooking was wildly popular among uh a bunch of people that have just fallen by the wayside and aren't read enough.
So, you know, uh some of Bill Neal's old Southern cookbooks are s are some of those books that aren't read enough these days. And you know, James Peterson obviously is still famous, but I don't hear as many people talking about his sauces book, which I think is a classic uh as you know as much as they used to. Now, when you do read the book, by the way, and I recommend you go get in the book, uh, uh you do see some of the the some of the that time in it. So at that time, reduced cream sauces were extremely popular, and so there's a lot of reduced cream sauces in that book that you wouldn't necessarily see on a menu these days. But you just gotta, you know, you whenever you read a uh a really good book like that, you have to filter it through uh the lens of the time in which in which it was written.
Anyway, so I looked at what uh he had to say uh about it, and you know, he calls it uh by its French name uh sauce vert, green mayonnaise and the way he makes it is to actually make a chlorophyll juice I'll just read you uh what he says uh sauce vert green mayonnaise this mayonnaise tastes the same as basic unflavored mayonnaise because of the way he makes it uh only the color is different uh stir one half of a teaspoon three grams of chlorophyll into one cup of mayonnaise uh and to extract the chlorophyll from spinach leaves see uh chapter 15 uh butter sauces and chlorophyll butter and whatnot don't worry I have that for you so I can read you that as well uh if I can get my iPad to stop uh rotating on me uh which I did test I test that I test it's why I want it to stay where I want it okay um okay um okay uh then uh so that's what that's what he says you add the chlorophyll and I'll talk about that in a second he says mayonnaise can also be colored directly with the juice from spinach watercress or parsley now here's the technique that's going to be important to you because I think this is how you should do it. Uh blanch the greens in a large pot of rapidly boiling salted water. Quickly rinse the greens in cold water pat dry and finally grind in a blender or food processor. Place the puree greens in the middle of the kitchen towel and here's where he's doing something different from you and tightly wring the juice out into a bowl. This juice can then be used for coloring the mayonnaise.
The puree can be combined directly with the mayonnaise and the sauce strained. So and this think about this this is the way that we make parsley oil right even if you weren't to follow his directions in blanching you can you can blanch in quotes um you can blanch herbs directly in oil right so you could take your oil you could heat the oil uh with the herbs in it enough to kill the enzymes that are in the oil without ever putting it in the water. Then blend it and then strain out the particles. And that's how we make things like parsley oil and herb oil. So I would do that instead.
I think it's the solids that you're dealing with, and you could also get rid of the water blanching step. The only issue here is you're gonna have to sprinkle a little extra ascorbic acid into the mayonnaise as it's being made, which should dissolve into the water phase and have it be fine. But I think that is the key there is that you're getting rid of the solids and using the juice from it, right? And the thing he's not saying is that you can blanch the uh uh the herbs directly in oil so long as you're careful. You don't want them to br uh to brown.
You want the temperature to stay uh below right around or below the uh the boiling point of water. And you can see the bubbles coming up from the herbs, and you know when to kind of like mellow it out to stop it from getting too uh browned. Uh so for completeness sake, uh his recipe for chlorophyll butter, uh chlorophyll butter. This butter is good to have on hand for coloring uh hot sauces green. Uh plain chlorophyll can be used for cold sauces.
Uh first prepare one ounce of chlorophyll. To do this, grind one pound or 500 grams of raw spinach leaves with one half to one cup of water in a blender or food processor. Pour the green paste in the center of a clean kitchen towel and twist it to extract the green liquid. Gently heat the green liquid in a saucepan until it coagulates. Strain the liquid through a strainer, line with a wet towel.
So you gotta do that quickly before it turns brown. And then gently scrape the chlorophyll away from the inside of the towel with a spoon or a metal spatula. Chlorophyll can be uh stored in the refrigerator covered with a thin coating of oil. Right? So there you go.
And to prepare chlorophyll butter, work the chlorophyll with four times its volume of butter. So uh I don't know whether any of this is helpful, but hopefully some of it is helpful. And let us go to our first commercial break. There are music. There's a communication.
It's not HeritageRadio Network.org. Today's program has been brought to you by Fairway Market, like no other market, a New York City institution that sells the best local, national, and international artisan foods for prices that can't be beat. For more information, visit Fairway Market.com. Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins from Fairway Markets. I've devoted my idiot career to the old ways, the old recipes, the old tools, the old geography of where serious foods come from for centuries.
And I've strived to make these wonderful things available to New Yorkers for 37 years, so it's a feta complet for us to support Heritage Radio Network. And I hope you will too, and I hope you'll keep tuning in. For more information, please visit Fairway Market.com. Like what you hear so far? Support the network and become a member.
Membership helps us bring you the best food radio in the world and gives you access to thousands of dollars in discounts at the sustainably minded businesses that support us. To become a member, visit Heritage Radio Network.org today. Sounds like Booker. Have you ever met Steve Jenkins? No, he yelled at me once from a uh above the, you know, in the fairway, they have like a right by the cheese thing, there's like an upper counter where like they can look down and see what's happening in the cheese land.
Yeah, he yelled at me from that once. Oh, what were you doing? I don't remember. I just remember being yelled at. Oh man.
Is he pleasant to deal with here at the radio show? That's great. I love Steve. I mean, I love it, I love what he has done for the cheese world. Yeah.
I thank goodness many days for his 88 career. He he he was one of the people who uh, you know, for those of you who don't know Steve Jenkins, or for those of you that think that somehow everyone in America has always cared about cheese, well, you're wrong. Uh, you know, uh a long time ago, there were a couple of shops in New York where you could get uh you know cheeses. So, you know, you think they're you know it's Zabars for a long time. But Fairway uh I think really uh was one of the leaders in uh in the in the uh 90s and ear early, early nineties at least, in really kind of raising uh cheese consciousness among a large group of people.
Wouldn't you say so, Jack? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, so I I feel that we uh we owe Steve Jenkins as a cheese eating culture uh a lot. You know, and then you know, I mean obviously we have a lot of cheese gurus now. Do you know what I mean?
But I think I think we owe him I think we owe him a lot. We all always credit Steve too, all the people that go on uh Ansax will be show and talk about cheese. You know, he was one of the inspirations. Yeah, yeah. So gotta love him.
Thank God for idiots. Okay. Uh we have a follow-up from Rob Trapas, who by the way, I I now can just pronounce his name because he's had written in enough. I don't need the help anymore. It's tripos.
Uh we uh we had a discussion on the radio program about uh rebottling vermouth, and here's his follow-up. Dave et al. Thanks for your help and insight on my quest to rebuttal my apparatus and vermouths. He was having a problem with them oxidizing. Uh I found that fever treever Tree Tonic and ginger ale are bottled in 200 milliliter glass bottles that accept regular uh caps, i.e.
crown court caps that you can get at any homebrew shop and you could buy the bottler for very little. I mean the uh the capper for very little. Uh excepting regular caps, and then some champagne splits also take uh standard bottle caps. I thought they all did. No?
I thought they all did. Yeah, look. It's not an actual champagne slip if it uh uh uh bottle if it doesn't take the cap. So I don't know what your any non-screw top uh thing should accept it. Uh okay.
The reason why is because that's how they store it normally before they cork it when they're doing their racking stuff. Anyways, okay, okay. So after uh and it's convenient that you can pack a fifth into four small bottles. So after a few gin and tonics, horses' necks and French 75s. You know, that's what they used to call uh some of the people in my stepfather's family.
They all had dumb names for people, like mean ones, mean nicknames they use behind their back, and horse's neck was one. Uh why for Gerard's uh uh great grandma. Well, out of no idea why. I have no idea why. Why they call they I can't some of them are unrepeatable on the air.
Some of some of the in fact, the vast majority of the Adenizio family nicknames are unrepeatable on the on the air. Uh although they are hilarious. Okay. A um uh I collected enough bottles to rebottle my collection. A local wine shop and canned wine uh preserver gas, Argonne, which remember is the good one to use, that I used to purge the headspace.
I experimented our different dispensing techniques to get an effective blanket using a bottle filled with water and a match. Well uh the reason well, you'll see why. Uh one drawback to canned gas is that the pressure is high at first and then dissipates as you use it. I found that seven quick sprays towards the south side of the bottle, did the trick, and I checked my blanket by putting a lit match in the opening just below the crown. If the match went out immediately, I reasoned there was no oxygen.
I then used the same technique on the fortified fortified wines. When I noticed a different pressure flow out of the can, I checked the water uh blank. The attached poor quality cell phone shows the results. Happily I can now keep six small fresh bottles in my refrigerator along with my syrups and acid ingester without upsetting the family too much. I also attached a PDF, which is from a wine thing, you guys can look it up, uh, with some more information on inert gas.
Yep, what do you think? Uh he also uh remember I recommended pick uh picking up a copy of Fix the Pump by uh Darcy O'Neal. Remember that? Yeah, he did that and he likes it, so there you have it. Nice.
Yeah, bueno. Can I ask a really quick question? Sure. This is for me. Um if I don't refrigerate Vermouth, how long am I gonna be good for?
It's not the refrigeration that's the problem. Refrigeration slows the changes that are due to oxidation, right? So if you uh like w if you were to actually effectively remove all of the oxygen from uh where the stuff is, then its shelf life shouldn't be compromised over regular vermouth, but uh storing regular vermouth in the fridge is gonna prolong its its life after it's been opened if you don't remove the oxygen. Okay. Yeah.
Got it. Yeah. But I definitely recommend doing it, andor buying with most people, if they're not like at the very minimum, just buy small bottles of vermouth. I mean, the real problem is is that it's usually only the brands that aren't my favorite brands that come in the small bottles. So no one makes small bottles of carpano.
They only come in in you know, larger things. No one makes small bottles of dolin, no one makes small bottles of coke or all these other things that you know we like to use. And so it's a problem. If you're a fan of something like Martini and Rossi, then those do come in smaller bottles and the cost isn't so high, so you can use it in relatively short order. You know what I mean?
This is another dumb question, but a barrows are not wine, right? Uh well, I mean, they uh now you have to look up Nastasha, look up the technical definition of Amara while he's looking at it and we'll get back to it. I mean, they can be a wine base, right? They can have a wine base and then fortify with herbs and extra liquor to get the proof up. But Astasha's gonna look up this is the first time ever.
Nastash's gonna look up what? This is the first time I mean useful. Well, that's true. I mean, in general in life. Yeah.
You you probably didn't hear what she said because she wasn't uh her face wasn't in the microphone, but she was right here. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. All right. We'll get we'll get that, we'll get that technical stuff for you, Jack, in just a second.
We have a now, these questions I'm just I'm just reading, so I haven't I haven't had time to look at them beforehand. They're they're coming off of uh off of I don't know, Jack's printer somehow made them. Hello, gang. This is from Mike. Uh I have a practical question concerning chili peppers.
I frequently handle them when cooking, and by the time I'm finished with prep work, my hands often feel like they're burning. Presumably it has something to do with capsation, uh, which is the you know the heating part, the hot principle in uh hot peppers. Sometimes I'm smart enough to wear latex gloves, but this isn't always possible. Plus at home you don't like to wear latex gloves anyway, do you? Do you like to wear latex gloves?
Well, Nastasha likes to wear latex gloves when she's cooking. That's some weird stuff I don't want to get into. No. No. I'm making it up.
Uh do you know of any treatment which neutralizes this burning sensation? Uh sorry for such a uh housewife topic. Hey, don't be insulting the housewives, by the way. Uh but my hands really, really hurt right now. Much appreciated, and please uh keep up the great work, Mike.
Well, I don't know. Do you know of any if you like uh presumably you have some small nicks and cuts somewhere in your hand, right? So what would see I don't think rubbing it with oil would help because capsation is oil soluble, so it would go into in go you go into that. I mean, you could try it as kind of a a primary thing, but then your hands are gonna be slippery and you're gonna slice the heck out of your hands. I would just uh look, if you only handle as you're cutting, if you're careful to only handle the waxy outer cuticle section of the of the pepper, then you're not gonna become in contact with the with the with the seeds too much.
And probably if after you slice it, you give it a real quick, quick rinse in in uh in uh water to get the stuff off, it might help a little bit. But I don't really know. I've never been asked to have this problem fixed. Uh so listen, anyone out there, please give us your thoughts on uh if you have problems cutting uh cutting you know red hot pep hot chili peppers, and you know of a solution other than latex gloves, call us in, right? Yeah, and we'll do it next week.
All right, next one, which also has something to do with uh capsation, is uh from Rory Mearns. And Rory writes Hi Dave from the Land Down Under, aka New Zealand. Love the show. I listen to the podcast on my walk home from work. I have a quick that's a long walk.
Well, where does he live? I'm saying I don't know, but I'm saying it's a long walk. If you listen to the podcast on the it's a long, long walk. Uh I have a question regarding the coloring of uh of a capsecum-based sauce I'm working on that contains uh cap, you know, capsecum peppers, red peppers, presumably red, uh uh, although it doesn't necessarily need to be vinegar, sugar, salt, and a little ginger and garlic, no other additives. The sauce is bottled and capped while hot, and it's a stunning red color.
It retains this color well overall, but after a while there's some darkening seen near the tops of the bottles. What is causing this? I assume it is some sort of oxidation. But more importantly, what options do I have to prevent it from happening? Uh oh shoot, you know what?
When I was talking about the herbs, here's what I forgot to mention. McGee in his curious cookbook on the thing says that even if you um even if you destroy the enzymes, the polyphenol oxidases in the uh in the herbs by blanching, uh after you make uh uh pesto with them, they will still eventually go brown. And the reason is is that the oxidation of those uh phenols and then their uh eventual agglomeration into brown colored things will happen even if the enzyme is uh destroyed uh you know not nearly as much but will happen at a at a much reduced rate it all depends on the actual uh uh reactivity of those uh phenolic compounds because the phenolic compounds aren't destroyed it's the enzyme that's destroyed another interesting thing if you add a fresh enzyme like any fresh herb at all to the stuff that you've blanched uh the enzymes are there and they'll go and they'll work and they'll do their dirty brown work so that might be another thing to look at uh on the herb thing is the fact that you you know maybe there's some fresh herb getting into it afterwards or maybe you just get some browning anyway maybe you need to blanch it a little bit longer to really make sure you kill all the enzyme because enzymes aren't deactivated right away anyway uh so back to uh Rory's question I assume it's some sort of oxidation but more importantly what options do I have to prevent it from happening okay looking at your uh at your list you have uh capsecum uh peppers uh vinegar which is an acid acid should present uh prevent somewhat browning because if there are any enzymes in it that are if if it's an enzymatic reaction the vinegar the acidity is going to inhibit that. Sugar, salt, and a little ginger or garlic. Okay.
But here's the issue. You don't have in there uh so oxidation is going to take place over a long period of time, regardless of whether or not there are enzymes present, as I just said. What you might want to do is add a little bit of an antioxidant. So vitamin C, ascorbic acid is one that you might try. Sodium metabisulfate.
Another one you might try, although I don't recommend it. I don't like it because the metabisulfates to me, they have like kind of a sulfur y note, like an aroma that I I think is um unpleasant. I mean, clearly it's you're you're bottling it hot, so it's not uh not a probably not an enzyme thing. Uh and it's interesting that the discoloration is seen near the top. So it's either a drying effect, which it can't be because it's sealed, or it's oxidation, which is happening at the place where the oxygen is present, aka the top.
So I would say if you adding an antioxidant is a is a way to go, or if you can, going back to the last question about vermouths, put a uh an inert gas blanket on the top of it, that might also help you. So inert gas blanket on the top, um, and or an antioxidant. I would, you know, if it was me, I would do both. I don't know what kind of time length you're talking about to browning, so I don't know uh kind of how much you you know can can get rid of. But those are uh those are my suggestions.
What do you think? Good. Good. Um, if you have time for another quick question, uh, what would your three must-try food joints be in New York while on a budget? Can be street food vendor, takeaway joint, reasonably priced restaurant, etc.
etc. Thanks for keeping up the good work. So what what do you think? Robert is for lunch, let's say. Yeah?
Yeah. Come to Robert's for lunch. How much does uh how much does Pac Pac cost? Uh I don't know. No idea.
I don't know. Yeah. Um Jack, you got any good budget joints? I'm thinking now. I guess you could you could do Robert's on a budget.
Pac Pac, I'll look up the price. I don't know. I mean like Pacpock's a great restaurant. That's uh Andy Ricker's restaurant. And uh I don't think the prices were that high, right?
I don't think so. Who else's budget? Who's b uh Nastasha's Nastasha's thinking? Right? Yeah.
All right. Jack, are we are we are we about to get the plug pulled or should we uh we don't have time for another five minutes. I got another five minutes, but not not time to see what do I have any Twitter questions, Toss? No. All right.
So we can just uh blither I can just blither for five minutes. Oh, we didn't talk about the music. Yeah, we did not. Alright, I I kind of shunned it. Here's the deal.
So we're not allowed to use uh Vicious Vicious Vodka by Amos Milburn anymore. Which I enjoy. We can make our own song called Fish is Fish's vodka. And then you know be, you know, be all set. But uh that that's probably not gonna happen.
But here here's here's the thing. So so what Jack wants to do is to have some sort of a contest for kind of a user user, a listener to say that they you know have a song they think should be the uh the what's it called? Theme song. Theme song for the cooking issue show. And then I think you well, I know I just bought uh a bass, a new bass.
I haven't played bass in many, many years, but I just bought an acoustic electric bass, and I thought, you know, Jack and I could come up with some sort of crazy theme song. And he says maybe we should have the listener theme song versus our theme song of win, especially if we do fishes. Yeah, and then people can vote. They can vote. Especially if they choose our theme song and we give them some free heritage heritage meat.
That's right. But now you're discouraging people from entering in the entering into the thing. Well, I think uh we'll probably get a little bit more. All the people who enter the contest and give us a real submission will get some some work jobs from the Heritage Meat Shop if they happen to be in New York. What are the requirements?
Yeah, what are the requirements, Jack? For the song, yeah. Yeah. Shouldn't be uh it doesn't need to be longer than say a minute and a half. And uh should be clean for the radio.
Right. Right. Uh instrumental, right? Well well, you know what? Not necessarily.
No, I'm I'm gonna keep it pretty open-ended. Yeah, like why would it why would it be instrumental? Like, like, for instance, like I would be proud to have the Hearst Ranch grass fed beef. Oh, man. You know.
We should get him on right. Right? He should probably come up with your theme song. Well, I don't know. Uh yeah.
Yeah. I mean, like, I like the problem is that like I'm just a fan of that uh particular uh that particular song. So, you know, you know, Hirschwag Grandfed Beef. So anyway, send us your music. Info at heritage radio network.org.
Come up with a theme song. Does it have to be in a certain format? MP3 is best. Yeah, yeah. Alrighty then.
Uh so I guess uh, you know, you're gonna give you ten more seconds to call in. If not, have a good week, and we'll be back next week with cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio 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. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio.
You can email us questions at any time at info at heritage radio network dot org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.