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Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Marlon, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live every Tuesday in Bushwick, Brooklyn at Roberta's Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network. How you doing? How you guys doing? Good.
You're right on time. It's like 12 on the dot. You like that? How about that? Yeah, man.
What do you know? What do you know? So listen, big news. Nastasha has joined the social media scene. No, I don't believe it though.
Believe it. No way. Yeah. Yeah. So anyone that can hear this, I want you to go out and I want you to follow Nastasha on the Twitter.
Yes. Wow. It's hammer bdx. No underscore because that would prevent that's like a barrier between the hammer and you. So there's no underscore.
Yeah. Right? Yeah. Do you have has anyone followed you yet? No.
Really? Just at hammer? That can't be. And no, at hammer bdx. Oh, BDX.
Oh, P DX. Okay. Capital B D X. I don't know if that matters in the. So BDX is what uh we shorthand call Booker and DAX the bar.
Right. So that's so BDX is like Booker and DAX. And the the equipment, the equipment company on 54 Eldridge, we call BDX EQ. So anyway, so that's it. That's it, folks.
So please follow me. I'll answer you, but I won't provoke. Not only are you on social media, you're asking people to interact with you. Well, if she's gonna do it, she's gonna do it. If you met it all the way, yeah.
Have you met her? Yeah. Have you met Nastasha? It's like once she's gonna do it, she's like, she's like, no, no, no, I don't want to do it. No, people who do it, no, that's bad.
Well, she's gonna do it, she's gonna do it. But listen, like, I want her to be like the vicious one. Like, I answer nicely, but if you Twitter her, it's gonna be the vicious. So if you friend me or whatever you call it, I'll be vicious. Right.
Yeah. Right. So expect it. Except for the fact that I think also you will be able to tweet in radio questions to Nastasha. What's one of the reasons she decided to do it?
Was you were getting all them and then yeah. Blah blah blah blah blah. In some other non-cooking, oh, by the way, calling your questions live, too. 7184972128, that's 7184972128. But uh in some non cooking related news, uh well Nastasha was non cooking related news, but uh you will not know this unless you know us personally, but we are kind of cognizes of uh of uh tabloid headlines, and you know, we flatter ourselves that we could someday be good tabloid headline writers, but I saw uh in the subway today.
Oh my god, the best it's the best. It's like it's right up there with it's one of the great headlines. You've never told that one. Just sit telling. Which one?
The one. That's real. Which one? The one that you love the best. Oh, my my favorite all-time tabloid headline, and like, you know, there should be awards for this because it's like such a genius art, was uh when Lorre right after 9-11 when we first palmed uh Afghanistan, and the headline was Kabulzai, Kabulzai.
And you know that there's just some dude or dudette or whatever sitting in a hole somewhere that they throw raw meat at, and they're like, We just bombed Afghanistan cabozai! And they're like, oh my god. You know what I mean? But so like, you know, like at three in the morning or whatever, someone wakes the headline writer and they're like, listen, listen, the Pope's advocating. The Pope's advocating.
Says he's too tired to, you know, mentally tired. Too pooped to pope. Boom! I was like, oh my god. You know what?
It's like I almost just like quit my job right then and was like, you know what? I need to study at the feet of this person who can come up with a headline that's so genius. Daily news or or post? I don't even know. It's one of those, it was probably in one of the real papers.
But it was it was in one of the ones that they hand you at the subway, so I don't know who who does that. Oh, like the Metro, yeah. I was like, you know what? It's like it's like hilarious and like not offensive, but you know that the person meant it is a f oh genius. You love that too pooped to pope.
Genius. I've got bad news though. Nastasia, your Twitter account doesn't work. What the what hammer BDS look at it right now? Hammer BDX?
Yes, I'm looking at it right now. Why can't we get it? Elliot just wrote in too. He said he can't can't get you. Exactly.
Do you have to activate it? You know what? We're gonna get uh figure it out. Jack and Joe, Jack and Joe know how to do the social media thing. I'm gonna pass you my computer, Jack.
And so we'll get you know, so another banner thing. Nastasha won't be typing if stopping for shoes during the show. This is like this isn't people, this is an incredible show. Anyway. Okay.
Deer cooking issues, peeps. What are your thoughts on glassware shape affecting the taste experience? If a diner sips the same wine or spirit out of two very differently shaped glasses, does it taste difference? If so, is there any science to why? Keep bringing the awesome from uh John Riper.
And it's uh because you know it's spelled R-I-P-E-R, so there's a question, and as everyone knows, I'm horrible at pronouncing names. So uh he hopefully added in parentheses, uh pronounced like the adjective a riper apple beats an unripe one. And you are so right, John, about the ripe brow. Before I answer your question, let me Nastash is putting her uh her dumb her dumbass face on, which is the face that you see when she's talking uh sitting next to me. Anyway, uh a which is a little different from the vegan face because it's like some liking in it, just you know, ah my uh anyway.
So here's the problem uh with with apples that are aren't aren't ripe. Uh so have I said it, I've said this before probably on the show a million times, but in just in case uh I want everyone to go to their local farmers' markets. Too late now, don't worry about it. But like next season when it comes around uh for apples, uh I'm a huge uh encourager of new of uh using old apple varieties, getting farmers to bring old apple varieties into the market. The problem with a lot of old apple varieties is they lose their crunchiness very quickly.
They're in fact not intended to be crunchy. And one of the things I hate most about Americans and the way we eat apples is that we refuse to uh eat apples that aren't in like just like hard like rocks. We think that there's only mealy and bad or hyper crunchy, and so we tend to go after apples like Granny Smith, even though it's an Australian apple, that are extremely uh crunchy. Mistake, because not all apples are supposed to be crunchy. But the problem is a lot of the older varieties, especially the dessert or the early season varieties, uh, are uh crumbly, which is the way you want a good apple of that type to be.
And in order to have it be crunchy instead of crumbly, because consumers we're too stupid to try and bend our heads around what that apple wants to be instead of what we think every apple should be, that uh the growers pick them when they're incredibly underripe. And when you pick an incredibly underripe apple, it is just monotonically acidic. And there are some people out there who will like that uh thing because what they really want to do is suck on a warhead. But if you want the flavor of an apple, you want to let it ripen, even though those ripe apples aren't gonna last very long, uh, the old ones that were especially the early ripeners. Anyway, so yes, a riper apple is better, John.
Now to your question. Um that's an aside. Yeah. Anyway. Oh, my Twitter account works.
Ooh, Twitter bugging! Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna follow you at the end of the show. Um, so to your question, so so the Riedel, uh, and it's it's it's Riedel, actually, it's not Redel. I refuse to call it, but it's it's Riedel. I spoke to Maximilian Riedel once, it's Rietel Glassware.
Um really? Yeah, Riedel. Uh so uh even though everyone says Redel, right? Everyone. Well, if you took some joymin, you'd know it's Redal.
Anyway, so the uh uh, you know, they've made an incredible business off of the shape of the glass being incredibly important to the way uh you experience particular drinks. Um I in fact went to a uh seminar, I can't remember who's who there's the the older Riedel and the younger one. I've met both of them, uh, but the older one gives and one of them's Maximilian, I forget what the other one is, but I was with the younger one, and he we we were in a uh we were shooting something for a friend of mine who's doing a pilot. This is like 15 years ago or something, and uh he takes two of his expensive ones and he goes, ting and he knocks them together. You know what he said?
This is the sound of money. That's what he said. He literally said that to me. This is the sound of money. And and the younger one's kind of an Australian playboy skills uh skis around in the Alps and stuff.
You'd like him. She loves the Alps. Anyway, so the uh so one thing she likes, she hates biscuits but loves the Alps. Who figured you know, go figure? Anyway, so um so you know, Riedel uh goes around, gives his seminars and makes a huge uh you know thing about how the glass uh shape uh is extremely important and does these incredibly compelling seminars where you'll be uh you'll be there and there'll be uh nine glasses, so like uh no more.
Three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three, three. That's what is that? Uh 27? Yeah, anyway, and so you'll you'll so you'll sit there and he'll do a grid. So he'll have uh the same spirit uh going across, right, with three different glasses, and then uh the same glass going down.
So you'll taste three different spirits in their correct glasses and in two wrong glasses in a grid. Not being very clear, but it makes sense if you think about it a little bit. And then he'll describe how only the particular glass shows off that particular uh spirit uh properly. And it is quite a compelling uh presentation. Uh however, I will say this.
Uh uh he himself is a great salesperson, and he guides you through the the tasting. So it's not uh triangle testing where you're testing to see which one. I mean, you can tell the difference, there's no doubt. At least it's when you know, I've never done it in an unguided way, but when he did it in the guided way, you definitely tell the difference. There is some um uh BSRy we'll say, some kind of bull BS around it, where you know, the the Riedles are still talking about the um the tongue, and they should show a picture of the tongue and they bring out the widely discredited incorrect view that you taste only uh certain things in certain areas.
You know, the old when you're growing up, they show you that map of the tongue, and in fact they still show that freaking map. The kids brought it home. And did you know for those of you out there that you're not allowed to t tell your kids that your parents are wrong? Your wife starts punching you under the table if you start just saying that your teachers are crazy and wrong and what they're teaching you in school is incorrect. Because apparently you're not supposed to do that.
I think that's fine. Well, it has to be if what they're teaching is incorrect, you know, uh like the nutrition that they teach kids is insane. It's insane. And I get in so much trouble because I'm like, well, your teacher is not a bad person, but they're just in wrong. You know what I mean?
But uh, whatever. And then uh whatever going back. So that the tongue thing is uh incorrect. In other words, the old map of where you taste salty and sweet and all that's uh incorrect. And Riedel used, although you do have different densities of receptors uh you know over your tongue, and your tongue does differ.
It is, it does have a map, but it's not the way it worked, uh, you know, like we were taught when we were kids. So Riedel uh makes a big thing about the shape of the glass directing, especially the shape of the lip directing certain things towards certain parts of your tongue. And I think that in in general is horse hockey. Now it is true that things taste different uh to you depending on where they're delivered in your mouth, and the shape of the glass does make a difference. I think the majority of the difference in the glassware is the bowl, the actual uh size of the bowl uh versus how much is poured in it.
That makes a huge difference because that determines the airspace to uh liquid volume ratio, which is extremely important. Uh also the shape of the bowl and how it holds and or concentrates and or dissipates the uh um aroma molecules, I think is vitally important to the way that we uh enjoy wine uh or any any liquid. So I think it's you know, for instance, I'll give you a for instance. So in um when we do the red hot poker drinks at the bar, um we we hit them with the red hot poker, and if you stick any of those red hot poker drinks into a normal glass and put your nose anywhere near it, the alcohol vapor is so concentrated that it's literally unpleasant. You can't bring it to your nose uh to drink because uh you just can't.
You know what I mean? It's just the alcohol vapor just blows your head off. So we always put those into coffee cups and you know, not tall wall mugs, but wide coffee cups because it dissipates more of that alcohol vapor uh as you bring it to your nose. Uh similarly, a very small glass that you can't even stick your nose into is going to de-emphasize aromas and things that have strong aromas. For instance, you know, those little tiny tasting glasses, versus the ones that are like have those giant bowls, and then like the your nose just fits into the rim of it, and then you're you know, you're sticking your hot box in your nose with the wine.
So you're you know, it's it's uh I mean that it can make a huge difference. Um and obviously there is science behind it, but I don't, you know, I wouldn't go so far as to say that that there is one particular glass shape for each particular wine, is true, although I have to say, uh, from personal experience, uh the guy's spiel is compelling when done in person. Yeah? Uh-huh. Yeah.
She's like, yeah, whatever, Google, whatever. Don't care. Okay. Um you gotta announce have people call in for Jack. Oh, yeah, this is the Valentine's Day.
Hey, by the way, cleared up the Twitter issue. You're not at Hammer BDX. That's your display name. You are still at Booker Index bar. No, no, no, don't worry, I changed that.
Nope. She messed it up. Look again. Just now? Yeah.
Wait, like right now? Oh my goodness. I'm learning. Wow. Well, let's not learn on other people's time, shall we?
Okay. We're not talking about Jack. Oh yeah. So Jack uh still dateless for the Valentine's Day. Very disappointed.
Maybe Nastasha's right. Do we have any? I mean, look, Jack, I looked the picture I tweeted out of Jack, not necessarily. He's he's the one that's not the stuffed uh boarhead. Yeah.
In that picture I tweeted out. But he's looking for the Valentine. And this is the Valentine's Day. Fingers crossed, caller, you're on the air. Hold on screen.
They hung up when they knew patch it to be hold on. All right. Thank you. Hey, how you doing? Hello?
Hi. Hi, this is uh Judah from Maryland. How are you doing? I love your show. Oh thanks.
Um I have uh I have a question regarding uh gelatin and bloom strength. Okay. Uh so I I keep codes for myself, and um like so many other things, there aren't very many uh kosher products on the market uh in certain areas, and gelatin is one of them. There is one company that produces uh powder gelatin, which they say is similar to Knox brand. Right.
But uh it doesn't have anything re uh you know indicating the bloom strength on the package. And I've tried to get in touch with them, and I've tried to call, email, whatever, no response. I was wondering if there was any way to you know, uh short of getting some fancy uh lab equipment to determine that myself. Um whether or not it's I know you mentioned uh in one of the past issues, like an over-under test, the numbers game, I think it was with the beep powder. Um if I did that comparing that to the Knox gelatin, what what characteristics should I look for?
Yeah, well the bloom, you know, the bloom strength is um uh you know it's not like blue I you're stretching my memory a little bit. It's been a while since I looked at the technical thing, but it's basically how uh I believe the bloom test is a penetration test based on a certain percentage of gelatin after the gelatin has been aged for a certain length of time on a certain test block, I think. Um I I believe that's what it is, but I have to go back and look it up. Or Nastasha, you can look up the definition of bloom strength while we're talking. Ooh, computer useful.
So um what I would do though from uh from your standpoint of what actually makes it useful is uh I would by the way, Nox gelatin is extremely high bloom strength compared to a lot of uh Nox is a pretty strong gelatin. It's like 220 or something, right? Yeah, it's pretty high. It's like in the gold, it's in the gold or platinum range if you are dealing with leaf. You know what I mean?
It's okay. Um so and this is another thing, by the way, that I encourage everyone to pay attention. So like when I write a recipe, I write a recipe for Knox because I'm I'm you know, I'm depending on that bloom strength. Uh and my guess is that the bloom strength is pretty much uh you know directly related to the um chain length of the uh gelatin uh things. I'll I'll read you what the Wikipedia says.
Uh bloom test is a measure of the strength of a gelatin, uh originally developed by a guy named Bloom, that I knew. The weight in grams needed by a probe to deflect a cer uh the surface of the gel four millimeters without breaking it. So it's also a uh a measure of its uh uh yeah of its you know inability uh ability to take resilience. Correct. Good, thank you.
Um so what I would simply do is, you know, these things are fairly easy to tell by uh what was the concentration it said to test it at? Uh at a kid. Oh. Yeah. Uh for the product.
No, it's six point six. When they're doing bloom tests, they do it at six point six, which is very high. Um six point six percent. So what I would do is I would just make uh I would just make the two j uh gel side by side and then just test them. You'll be able to tell with your finger.
You don't need a you know, a four or six millimeter probe or whatever it is. If you just take the two um and make them side by side, you'll be able to see uh exactly what's happening. I have my doubts that the kosher gelatin's gonna be anywhere near as strong as the Nox. Um because I mean i do they say what it's made out of? They don't uh from bovine skins.
Okay, so it is a well, okay, so good. It's not one of the kosher fish gelatins. No, it's not a fish gelatine. Yeah, the fish gelatins are horrible. Everyone knows they're horrible.
They're not as strong. They have a low melting point. They're just they're bad. I mean they're not bad, but you know, they're not bad. They're not bad.
That's sort of not what I say it. But like they're not a good replacement for Nox. Um but yeah, so if it's made by cow, you actually it has a good shot if they d you know, depending on how it's it's all depends on how they extract it and at what point in the extraction you get your stuff. Like I think the first stuff that comes off is the higher chain li uh or is it yeah. I think anyway, so like the the the stuff that's you know easier, I think to extract is the higher chain like it's been a long time since I've looked it up.
So it's in too possible. Just make the two side by side and push on 'em and you'll see what's going on. I mean, if you're gonna use it for a more technical recipe, like if you're gonna use it for gelatin clarification, for instance, then um, you know, I would uh then it's gonna be a little more important exactly what it is, but i i if it feels fairly similar to the Nox in reasonable concentrations, then I think it's probably gonna act pretty much like the Nox, especially if it's a cow based gelatin, uh and not a you know, not some sort of a fish based gelatin. Right. And let's say let's say I do the test and it is pretty far off from my uh perception of it.
Um there would be really no other good way of determining what it's comparable to. No, I mean y you know, you're short of getting short of getting um, you know, a bunch of different uh gelatins together that you like the the leaf strength, right? Right. And then you can figure out excuse me. Sorry, you can figure out where it is in relation to the other standard leaf strengths, you know, the silver or the gold or the you know the um but you know if the the the person you literally spoke to a person and they said that it was comparable to Nox and Bloom strength.
No, it says it on the package actually, but I can't I can't get through to a human being. Yeah, you know, you I would be careful there was a big thing with uh, you know, vegetarian uh marshmallows back in the day. Someone was using a supposed vegetarian gelatin that was also kosher, and the uh the people who were making it were just liars. They were just liars. Yeah, yeah, they just lied on the package, straight up lied.
And and then uh and you uh you can actually it's an interesting Google uh search to dig down into is to is the case of these uh all these people who were really excited that they could all of a sudden make these really spot on vegetarian marshmallows using this supposed kosher vegetarian gelatin replacer when in fact they were just using jello. Um but I'm not saying these people are liars. I don't even know who you're talking about. I'm not calling them liars. Yeah, yeah, but uh yeah, yeah.
Nastash is looking at me like you're calling these people liars. I'm like, I'm not, I'm not. Uh but uh I would uh you know it has look, if if it's if it's from cows, it has a good shot of being a high quality uh there I mean high bloom strength uh gelatin. So I would just make them and hope that they are the same. And if not, you can always um you know, make like you were saying over under, uh, you know, make a make a like a two percent uh uh two percent um knocks, right?
And then make like a two percent, a three percent, and a uh a four percent of uh the unknown one and then see where it falls, right? And then if it's in between, and just from a you'll you can tell just by you know seeing how far it bends for breaks, pushing through it, seeing how much force it takes to push through, and then you could probably hone it down to within a couple of tenths of a percent of how to adjust the recipes. Okay. Make sense? Yeah, and then what I would do as a final thing is I would take it down after you think you know what the answer is in a firmer gel, I would take it down until just the point where it doesn't gel, like a very, very light aspic, because that's gonna be where the numbers are more critical, and if you can if you can make it mimic that on a light, light uh gel aspect kind of situation, you'll be able to do it pretty much at all the ranges.
Okay. Alrighty? All right, great. Thank you so much. Thanks.
Good luck with it. Okay. So wait, did I answer I answered the what I answered the glass question? Yeah? Yeah.
Okay. Oh, wrong password. Oh my gosh, we're just breaking up today. Okay. Uh question in from Zach in Pittsburgh.
How you ins doing? I like you ins. You don't like you and's? What is you're ins? UN's or yen?
It's like you, you ones, you, you, you plurals. Okay. Like use. Like we would say use here. Pay use.
Uh although here in like the Jersey, in the Jersey, New York situation, you can just be one person. Uh but that's a that's a complete anomaly. It shouldn't be. What are you doing? You know what I mean?
But it's it should be you're meaning like you plural. You know what I mean? Like y'all. Like that's our y'all. Like the people in the south are like, we have y'all.
What do you have? You, hey. You guys, what the hell? Anyway. Uh I've recently this is Zach talking now.
I've recently improved the quality of the cheese I keep around the house, which has been a very pleasurable experience. My only problem is as the prices good cheese go for in Pittsburgh, and everywhere, by the way, Zach, although you can get some decent cheese prices in uh in New York for certain things. Uh, you know, I'm always uh um what's the word? Shy or not shy, I beware of uh cheap, uh inexpensive cheese, because usually it means that it was stored uh crappily, and then the people who are gonna sell it for a lot of money didn't want to buy it, and the bargain basement people decide that they could push a higher end cheese that isn't necessarily in peak condition, so they get it at a bargain basement rate and sell it out. And you know, I'd rather not even I'd rather not even buy that cheese unless it's delicious, but you know, usually a lot of that stuff's really busted up, it's not that you know what I'm talking about, Sus?
Oh, yeah, I know. Yeah. So in other words, beware cheap, beware, you know, inexpensive is one thing, but beware like you know, cut rate cheese emporiums. I had a friend who brought uh cheese recently to a dinner party that had a big red sales sticker on it. You know who that friend is.
Yes, yes. Nastasha, Nastasha's uh has the neg the negative uh house guest Olympics, like so nor like the house guest Olympics are where you keep a track of your house guests as they come and you see you like, oh, they bought a nice bottle of wine, they're good. Let's have these people back, or you know, oh they brought a cake, oh nice, you know. They brought you know, bupkis. Special Olympics of the case.
Yeah, she has the reverse Olympics, like to see who can bring the crappiest thing to her house. If you're invited to Nastasha's house and you really want to make an impression, bring the crappiest thing you can find. You'll be invited back all the time. Yeah, Boons, Boone's Farms, you know. I'd bring Pillsbury biscuits.
Hey, you know what? You you you would like, you know, that's like the nicest thing anyone's ever brought her in her house. I don't like biscuits. Oh, because you hate biscuits. Boom!
Got her. Uh see, you know what? I wasn't even thinking because uh even though I know that she doesn't in my head knows she doesn't like biscuits, my heart can't believe that I work with someone who doesn't like biscuits. It's like, you know, whatever. Uh okay, so uh wait, where was I?
You want to take a quick break? Sure. Wait, wait, answer the question or no? Well, did I even say the question yet? I didn't say the question.
All right, we'll take a break, we'll come back. Cooking issues. I'll see you in my dreams. You are listening to Plexophonic. I'll see you in my dreams on cooking issues on Heritage Radio Network.org.
Still, I feel the thrill of your charms. Lips that once were mine. Tender as that shine. They will let my way tonight. I'll see you in my dreams.
Did Jack test? Yeah. Alright, Jack has tested Nastasha's new email and it works. I mean, new uh Twitter. Twitter it works, yeah.
Where we last oh, by the way, were we gonna get still gonna get our fish as fish later? Oh yeah. Okay, okay. Always gotta get it. So where we last left off, Zach was buying cheese in um where was he in Pittsburgh?
Yeah. Zach was buying cheese in Pittsburgh and he was having some problems because the uh cheese is expensive. So let's get back to his question because I wasn't able to finish it because as usual, I spun off into some crazy BS. Okay. Uh Zach's only problem is at the prices good cheese go for in Pittsburgh, I want to use every gram of the good stuff.
Is using the rinds to make stock viable. I've seen it described online, but have my doubts as to how well it would work. The cheese uh seems uh to be so non-porous that I'm not going to get much out of it. I do most of my stock making the old fashioned way. I know you like using the pressure cooker method.
Would there be much difference in results using a pressure cooker for cheese stock versus the traditional stock pot? Thanks for the great show, Zach in Pittsburgh. Um yeah, it works. It works great. I mean, uh, you know, uh Wiley for a long time has been making uh Parmesan rind uh parmigiano.
You're like Parmesan, what are you an idiot? That's what the stash is saying. Look, she's giving me the idiot look. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. So uh no, but like the rinds of hard cheeses make uh fantastic um stocks, assuming that, you know, obviously if you put something that's been like waxed, then I wouldn't do it because um well you could skim the wax off the top, I guess.
Or, you know, I wouldn't do it with something that's extremely uh you know it works well with um rubbed hard rind cheeses. And um they it's not that they m melt out, but you remember it it was originally like a porous uh an agglomeration of the uh solids, the milk solids, and stuff comes out, you leak fat out, you leak flavor out, so you do get a really good uh uh amount of flavor out out of the rinds. Stay away from rinds that are disgusting. So when you eat a parmigiano rind, the rind is hard to get flavor out of when you chew on it because it's so freaking hard and dry and dense. But it is not literally disgusting.
You know what I mean? Whereas uh certain rinds are literally gross. Like, you know, I wouldn't I can eat a little bit of it, but the outside of a cloth-bound cheddar isn't a rind that I would sit there and make a stock out of because it's you know musty and mighty uh, you know, and uh I'm fine with mites. In fact, you know, there's a cheese I've really been wanting to try from I think the north of Italy on the on the border in Austria and in Austria that's all mites. They make a qu a quark-like thing, like put it in tubes and stick it in drawers and let uh cheese mites eat it until it's mites all the way through, and you break it, and it's just a big brown mighty mass.
They're alive. Well, kind of, some of them are. Mighty mass. Well, there's this famous Italian cheese with the maggots, the maggot cheese. Where the flies lay the eggs and then they make the maggots in it and you break the cheese open and it's all wriggling.
And you know, it's not so common anymore. I don't even know if it's still legal in Italy, but it was very common back in the day. And uh, you know, and they would break them open, and some cheeses would have them and some wouldn't, but it was considered a good thing, and people would mop up the maggots with the uh with the with the bread. Wow. Yeah, yeah, real deal.
Um, so yes, uh, yes, and it works without a uh without a pressure cooker. Although I would highly recommend moving to pressure cooked stocks in general, uh based on flavor and time. If you get a non-venting one, everyone knows my feelings about pressure cookers and that you should use a non-venting um uh pot to do your um to do your although interesting. I was thinking about this before. I wonder whether or not a venting pot like the Fagors that you know I'm not a huge fan of.
I wonder whether they're actually better for things like mustard seeds and sulfur things where we're flashing stuff off, or whether they're better for remember uh way back in the day when I pressure were you that was this when we pressure cooked the durian? I wasn't there for that. You were there? So we were pressure cooking durian and um it was uh it was pretty cool. Uh I we made a mistake and I had the durian in the bottom.
I usually put a uh the I usually put things like that in a bowl and put water underneath so that I'm pressure cooking it, but I'm not worried about scorching. And I don't know, we put the durian directly into the pressure cooker and it was a venting kind of pressure cooker, and we cooked it for an indeterminate length of time, and I opened it, and what we had was this kind of durian candy like like stuff at the bottom that it caramelized and it had no it was complete even for a 100% westerner with no like like of the durian smell, stuff was great, and I've never been able to mimic it. But you know, my a lot of my post uh tests on durian have been with the Coon Recon, which doesn't vent. I wonder whether durian requires a venting pressure cooker. Interesting problem.
I have no idea. Um, so what do you think? You think we answered that one? Yeah. I'm looking at the maggate's.
Uh of course she's well, I'm trying to figure she got her hand over her mouth because she doesn't want me to describe her faith. I can't tell you whether or not uh Dan Rabinowitz writes in. First, I love the show, it's one of the few that uh both assumes a working. I'm gonna interrupt Dan Rabinowitz, thanks for becoming a member. Oh, that's it.
Sorry, you can't go on. Thank you, Dan. Okay. Uh uh first love the show. It's one of the few that both assumes a working knowledge of cooking and modern methods, but it still dumps it down enough for me, an attorney by day to understand.
Uh I find it the perfect compliment to modernist cuisine. Well, thank you. Nice. So double thanks. Uh I've heard your terrific method of infusing alcohols with ISI whippers, and I was wondering if it was necessary to use as a base something high in alcohol content, or couldn't I use wine and make a vermouth using the ISI whipper infusion method?
I've been making vermouth using the recipe on www.wine mag.com. Uh and that's a wine enthusiast from April 2008, uh, which requires infusion, uh, which I've done sous-vide in 45 minutes, uh, and then after the infusion, the addition of sherry to fortify and stabilize, right? Could I infuse the herbs and botanicals via ISI and then add sherry and then voila vermouth. Uh I am kosher and there's no good or even drinkable kosher vermouth, so this could be a godsend pun intended. Much appreciated, uh Dan.
Okay. First of all, if you're gonna yes, you can do ISI infusion with uh water alone. It does work. It takes a lot longer and the higher the alcohol content the faster the infusions are. Um I would add the sherry before uh but I I looked at the recipe uh very quickly and I could try to look at it again or Nastasha can look it up.
Uh I think there's heating involved in that in that recipe right while you look up that go into the email and look up the recipe if there's heating involved in that recipe uh then obviously you're gonna add the higher stuff to fortify it later. If not, you know I don't see any reason why you can't add uh the sherry earlier and boost up the alcohol content. Um that might help. Also one one thing I'm you know I I really want to say about it it'll work. It won't be the same.
It could be better, it could be worse, it will be different. So you know every aspect uh and this is the something I come back to uh again and again with new new techniques um in the kitchen is sometimes sometimes techniques completely replace other techniques. Like the only clarification method that I use at the bar now is centrifuge because I don't see any reason to use any other clarification technique. But when it comes to something like um in unless our centrifuge is broken in which case I would use one of the other techniques. But with infusion all the flavors are uh are dependent upon exactly how they're produced.
So the temperature at which something's infused, the alcohol level at which something's infused, the concentration of the thing you're infusing, um the length of time, the pressure oh every single one of the in fact, also whether something's infused on its own or with other things is also uh dependent, whether the the size of the particle is extremely important, um, you know, whether you've sucked a uh aside from the actual pressure, the whether you've sucked a vacuum and therefore gotten better contact by removing the air so that you got better contact between what you're infusing and the and the and the product. Um all of these things have uh an impact on the flavor. And it doesn't necessarily make things um better or worse, just different. So, you know, if you're using a vermouth recipe that has you know wormwood in it, let's say, which the recipe did have, then um ISI is going to is going to be faster and for uh the same length of time it will um disfavor the bitter components in wormwood, right? And it'll preferentially pull out uh other elements.
So when you know the the way we when I use ISI I like to go back to one of the ones the things that I do a lot in them, things like coffee, things like chocolate, and um the advantage of them in those uh instances is that uh it tends to extract less of the bitter components that you would get out by doing a longer term extraction, which favor uh extracting everything in, including all the bitters, and uh and instead tend to favor the extraction of some of the higher notes and you know some of the uh the things that pull out faster. And so I like you know, I like it for that. ISI is also obviously good for doing things that are fresh and will not infuse well if you need to let them sit around for a long time. So it's not uh better or worse, different, right? What do you think?
Was that a heated recipe? The salsify? No, the the the homemade vermouth uh with that one, no, I'm on the other one. Yeah, so go go check it out. But yes, you could do it in ISI whipper.
I would just let it sit a lot longer. You can also do oils in the ISI whipper. We've done we've done oils in it. Anyway, so yes, it will work. And I would try it for uh I mean I would try it for much longer than we do with hard liquor.
I would try it for tens of minutes, maybe even up to an hour and see see what happens, see what kind of infusion you need. Yeah, it's heated. So uh that's why they add the sherry later. So you wouldn't even need to add the sherry later if you're never going to heat it. You could add the sherry at the beginning, that would also accelerate your uh your infusion.
It still will be different. But it could be delicious. I would let it sit longer, like like maybe the length of time you're doing the sous vide one, like 45 minutes. See what happens. If that's too strong, dial it back.
Do you know what I mean? But remember, whenever you're doing ISI infusion, um, and you can go back on Cooking Issues blog because it's open again. Uh the uh look up the technique. When you're doing it, remember that it takes a good 10-15 minutes after you've uh unscrewed it and let it flashed off for the flavor to stabilize. Okay?
Okay. Um question in from who we can oh actually, no. Yep, we have a question in from Tony Harry, and I know we do. I'm looking for it. Okay.
Hope you are all well. I have a couple questions about distillation in a rota vap uh for Dave. Uh, do you still vouch for the use of a peristaltic pump on the condenser side? Is it really worth it? And what is your take on distilling several botanicals together or or versus separately in a rotovap?
It's quite hard sometimes to distinguish uh if they create diminishing effects on each other, uh, as described in the following quote from a magazine article, or if it is just harder to identify the specific flavors when you do uh distillation of multiple things together. And this is a quote uh from uh Difford's guide, uh class magazine or a class magazine has quoted on Difford's guide um with someone who's doing his own distillation in in the London. Um and the quote is there is a this is in quote, negative activated carbon effect from distilling botanicals separately. When botanicals are distilled together, as in traditional gin distillation, the presence of just one single absorbing element will affect the entire gin as it will absorb flavors from its neighboring botanicals. Well that that quote is somewhat uh um what's the thing?
It's a bit muddled in terms of like understanding it on its own. So what they're I've never heard of, by the way, a negative activated carbon effect before in my life. Uh so I don't know exactly, I mean, I uh what I think is is that the fellow that was making the gins in London, like that's something that he and and like you know his crew talk about a lot, so it probably makes more sense. They're probably referring, I don't know why it's negative activated carbon in a situation where they're probably talking about the effect that activated carbon has of absorbing flavors and somehow relating the effect. What they're really saying is is that uh multiple things distilled together uh they can affect uh the amount of flavor released by the other ones, and so we want to do it uh separately.
So then the the question is, and this is from Tony, which do I prefer? To distill each individual ingredient separately and blend it uh and blend them together, which is how this fellow makes his gin, or distill it all together in the flask and do one single run. Uh I think there's advantages to both techniques, flesh flexibility versus speed, just to begin, but it's not always easy to reproduce the result of one method using the other. Keep up the great work, cheers, Tony Harrion. Okay.
Uh so my feelings are this uh they are entirely different. Uh there is no doubt in my mind that um flavors taste different when they are distilled together and they can uh affect each other. What I think it I don't think about it uh in the in the way that um you know they're thinking about, by the way, in case people don't know what the hell we're talking about, a rotovap is just a still that runs at uh at a lower temperature because the entire thing's put under a vacuum. And it has a couple of advantages uh over a normal still in that we can get extremely high recapture rate of the flavors that go into it. So it's very good, very, very good at doing uh redistillations of botanicals uh because we can do them at very low temperatures, especially fresh botanicals that you couldn't otherwise do that are very heat sensitive.
Uh and so that's that's what we're talking about. Um here's the deal. Uh I always recommend the first time you distill a botanical to distill it by itself in pure vodka. I don't recommend you do it in water, and I don't recommend you do it in uh in super high proof ethanol. I recommend you do it in vodka.
And when you at 40 proof, uh uh 40%, 80 proof. And so then when you distill that down, right, that that is gonna and taste it. That is gonna give you an idea of what that sucker does on its own, right? Then you can do some blending, but I would also encourage you to try a mixed recipe because I find that sometimes it is much better to do a mixed recipe. That the that the flavor you get from distilling things together is better than any mix I can make of things on their own.
However, there is no easier way to try to reach a target than to make all the botanicals separately and then blend them together to taste. And I think that that is a very good way. And also, by the way, if you're doing bitters uh or even things like vermouth, a good way to figure out what's going on is to do them separately to figure out what's going on and then mix them together and see whether you get a good result. However, uh, then I would also try to do after you've done that, then do a mixed uh version and see whether you like the blended one or whether you think you're gonna like the mixed one better. And so that's what I said.
What do you think? Dean. Good. Oh, and on the peristaltic pump, what the hell that means is uh roto vaps the way they work, one of the downsides of a rotovap is that the distillate stays in a vessel uh uh called a receiver and uh over the course of the distillation and and that causes two problems. One, you can't taste it, so you don't know what the hell's going on.
You don't know what it tastes like as it's going. And any r regular distiller knows you want to taste uh the stuff to see kind of when you should cut the distillation and then also to taste how the distillation's going during the run. Uh and if you needed to cut the heads which is the beginning part which we don't typically do in a rotovap because we're not doing we're not distilling uh fermentable fermented things we're distilling you know spirits usually um so uh you know it's good to taste right so that's the one thing and so well you know I developed a thing for the rotovap that you plug on and it uses something called a peristaltic pump which is uh you know it's it just it's a it's like a squeegee that squeegies the stuff out peristaltic pumps are great because they don't contaminate your product and they can work on on a vacuum system. So uh install a peristaltic pump that constantly pumps the distillate out of the vacuum system without you losing a vacuum uh and lets you taste exactly what the distillate tastes like at any particular point in the distillation. Here this is the key part the distillation tastes different at every single point in the distillation because the boiling point of the product is different as as it as it distills and therefore what you're distilling off is different.
So it's I think it's vitally important to be able to taste the distillate as it's being produced to figure out what's going on. And in fact certain uh distillates are better if you remove certain portions of them and so you can do that only if you have a peristaltic pump attached to gauge accurately what's going on. The other situation, if you have an old rotovap that's at all leaky, uh the the product sitting in that receiver is constantly losing flavor over the course of the distillation because you're you're you're losing, you're getting some air stripping through the through the system because your roto vap is leaky. In a perfectly sealed roto vap, assuming you knew exactly when to do your cuts, you would not need to have the peristaltic pump. But I find that in the real life, when it's a little bit leaky, you get a lot of flavor stripping out of that thing.
And so the peristaltic pump is extremely helpful. The problem with the peristaltic pump is that uh your tubing needs to be in top shape, and you can't use the tubing recommended by the manufacturers because it's not strong enough to stand up to the vacuum levels that we're doing in the rotovap. And so uh it you know it degrades very, very quickly, and once the tubing degrades, you actually get vacuum loss through the tube, and then it's just a big it's just a big jumbota. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, so that's that's that.
So should we go to our second commercial break? Uh I think you should keep going all the way through. Keep going. Wait, just keep wait, I gotta hear my fish's fish. All right, second commercial break.
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Uh Dan writes in. Just finished listening to last week's cooking issue show and had a comment. Hope you can pass along. The show dealt with calcium oxide, and they didn't know what it'll be used for in cooking. Uh in uh Andoni uh Adoree's recent cookbook, Moogaritz, he uses calcium oxide for at least three recipes where the calcium oxide is mixed with water and then a vegetable.
From what I understand, after soaking, the vegetable skin is left intact, but the uh entire inside is a puree, so you get a solid with almost a liquid inside. And you can see an example uh called false uh fossilized salsify uh uh on the website. Uh but a better one is uh beet that is soaked in calcium oxide and then turns the color, uh turns uh the color and wrinkles like a prune or a pumpkin, and this hard outside but a puree inside. I too is wondering if I could buy any calcium oxide and use it or uh uh or if it has to be food grade. Thanks again, Dan.
Okay, listen, once again, uh that has got to be a mistranslation because uh it's calcium hydroxide. You know, the f the fossilized vegetable thing, you know, uh it's something you know we've done uh b before a calcium calcium oxide. Look, I could be 100% wrong here, in which case please write in again. But uh calcium oxide added to water will immediately react with the water and form calcium hydroxide and a large amount of heat. So uh my guess is is that you know we're dealing with, unless you read it in Spanish, that we're dealing either with a mistranslation or I don't know why he is using the oxide, which is literally going to just sit there and convert into calcium hydroxide when it's added to water uh and the and liberate heat.
Um that recipe should work with calcium hydroxide, which is cowl or or cow uh, you know, uh or any one of those other things, uh pickling lime or anything. I didn't get a chance to actually look at the at the website to take a look or look at the recipe, but uh all of those uh stiffening things are not the result of the uh base nature of the calcium oxide, but due to the calcium itself, the calcium it first of all lowering the um the calcium um strengthens the pectin, right? So what happens is the calcium goes in there uh and encourages the uh crosslinking of the pectins that are in the outside, and because it's not vacuum infused in it only works on the things that are outside, and so the pectins don't break down uh even over long periods of cooking. Uh in something like uh when you're doing nixdamal, the the basicity is also useful in dissolving the seed coat uh on the outside, but uh I don't know what effect the basicity has on um on something like uh on something like uh, I don't know, my brain is totally fried, but the basicity has on the effect of something like uh like a vegetable. Except for this.
I know that uh when you add baking soda to uh broccoli, we did this test it. Do we ever put this on cooking issues? I can't remember. If you add baking soda to broccoli water, the stuff stays green forever because it's not acidic, and so the chlorophyll doesn't get uh changed in form and stays bright green. The problem is it gets mushy because um in basic conditions the pectin breaks down much more rapidly.
Right? Yeah, yeah. However, if you use cow, right, the calcium prevents the basic nature uh from uh the from turning it mushy and it stays uh stays hard. So, you know, my my feeling is is that if you used calcium oxide as your uh as your calcium source, that it would just turn to calcium hydroxide anyway. But please, someone who's better in chemistry, call back and tell me what's going on.
Anyway, uh what do you think? Enough, enough, nothing? Okay. Um okay. Marty writes in uh could you please ask Dave what his experiences have been like fermenting rice?
I made a giant pot of glutinous rice, pitched a couple of Chinese yeast balls in with it, and put the whole mess into a fermentation pot for three weeks before straining out the liquid. The results taste like cloudy shwaty balls. If you remember that, remember that? Shuddy balls. Uh I love that, like uh I love though that you actually have a mental whatever, I'm not gonna talk about it.
I'm thinking I didn't let it ferment long enough. Any tips thank Marty. Marty, I'm thinking you fermented it too long. So what we're talking about here is these uh these balls you can get in uh did McGee ever write about them? I don't know.
Harold McGee taught us about them is that you can go into almost any uh you know ch large Chinese grocery store in uh in Chinatown and you get these little yeast balls and they look like little white, almost like malted balls, you know what I mean? And then uh and they're a mixture of uh uh you know bacteria, I think, and yeast, similar to kind of koji, but different, you know, similar to the Japanese koji kind of thing, but different. And you cook a glutinous rice, and then you crumple up the ball and you mix it with water and you put it into the glutinous rice, uh, and it breaks it down, it breaks into a liquid, so you can make something you know, this kind of liquid uh drink, uh Chinese style liquid rice drink, or and the rice hus left over can be fried. And McGee was doing a lot of work on it, and I think he might have written about it for for either for something or other, because he had done a lot of work with it, and Dan Felder at Mamafuku's lab has worked with it a bunch because they're doing a lot of work with different kinds of koji. Um, but those things ferment relatively quickly.
Like when I was doing it, I've only done it like three times. Uh I I let it only go for like four days. Do you know what I'm saying? So I think that your your cloudy shweddy balls uh is mainly due to uh letting it go too long. Now I wasn't getting super high yields out of it, so maybe you're trying to let it go longer because after it broke and went liquid, you didn't get enough of a yield out of the situation.
I know Dan Felder has been doing some interesting work where he's break pre-breaking the rice grain to try and increase the yield for stuff like that. But uh I don't I don't know enough about his actual techniques because you know we're we we don't actually work together, right? Uh but I I think your problem there is you're just going too long. It's I think I I I used mine like a day or two after it broke, and I did my D I did my stuff in uh my dehydrator. I put it in a big bowl in my dehydrator covered, so I wasn't actually dehydrating it, but so that I could keep the temperatures high.
Because my temperatures, I think I was running it at like 120, a little under 120, maybe like one, like maybe like a hundred, a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, a hundred and ten, hundred, something like that, uh covered with uh with plastic wrap, and it it only ran like for like four days or something like that before I used it. So don't go as long, Marty. And taste it as you go. Taste it as you did. Did you forget about it, Marty.
I think what happened is Marty made it and he let it sit there and he forgot about it. And then he came back, you know, several weeks later and tell so because like it did because what I would do whenever I do anything like this is you gotta make a large enough batch so that you can taste a little bit as it goes, so you know what's happening to it along the way. And I think you'll find that earlier in in the process it's gonna be um a little bit better. Right? Okay.
Um uh Kevin uh Liu writes in and uh we you know uh Twitter What are you doing? Nastasha literally smashed her head into the microphone. Yeah, it was the headphone. Yeah, sure it was the headphone. Anyway.
Uh so yeah, we we talked to Kevin a lot on uh on the Twitter, and uh he writes in that uh he's been working on a cocktail book, it's 90% done, uh, and uh sent us a copy, so we're gonna read it and then I will make some comments next week on the on the book after we get a chance to read it, right? Yep. Yeah. Uh you know, I myself am also it's on the cocktails in science. Uh and uh so I you know, I look forward to look forward to reading it.
I am also, of course, writing a book on a similar subject. Uh of course, mine is is six months overdue, and I'm a bad person, and I'm getting threatening letters from my publisher. True or false. So eight months overdue. What did I say?
Six. It was due in June, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thanks.
Thanks for the moral support. Stas just a font of moral support. Um anyway. So uh Ken what? What the heck?
Your head has been on your neck your whole life. How do you not know where it is? This is the best segment of the show yet. Seriously, people, I think, you know. Okay.
So I'll leave you with this. Ken Igber, longtime listener, friend of ours, friend of the show. Uh, is he a member? Is Ken a member? Uh not yet, but Ken if you should be.
He came to the Museum of Food and Drink uh uh event that we did uh a couple years ago. By the way, little little more expensive than the members. Yeah, that's right. Membership is only sixty bucks, Ken. HeritageRadio Network dot org backslash donate.
Wow. I have to. Yeah, to plug the plug. Okay. Uh speaking of the museum, uh before before we go out, uh good news on the museum we're we're we're looking at some different spaces for spaces.
So look for more stuff happening in the museum. A lot of people are like, what's going on with the museum? What's going on with the museum is uh and this is a museum of food and drink for people that this is the first time you've ever heard what's going on. Uh we're working on a museum of food and drink that we hope to open up in New York City uh in the next couple of years. If we're gonna start small as a gallery space, and we have a lot of really, really good, good people um behind us in the food community.
And uh there's an RFP uh request for proposals for spaces in the Lower East Side right near where I live. Uh and so we're trying to work on on that. And if we can't get that, we're trying to find some other spaces. So anyone that wants to come help out, we have people working on the museum full time. We have a team of three people working on it full time.
Anyone wants to uh you know, volunteer to help help them out or give any advice on that stuff, you know, please uh tweet us on in and I'll send you on over to the Museum of Food and Drink people. Or tweet me. All right, tweet Nastasha, please, please follow her. Otherwise I'm gonna have to hear the mopingness of no one following Nastasha. Oh my god.
All right, anyway. So long time listener and uh supporter of the museum, Ken Ken Ken Ingber, uh uh wrote in about the question we had on uh philosophy. Remember, oh, before I do that, do I have I do have time to that we had a a call in real quick. Uh not a call in, but uh uh someone who tweeted in uh late. I'll do their question real quick because I'm I'm gonna be fast.
Elliot writes in uh Dave, Nastasha, and crew. I'm thinking about making bread with a portion of the flour replaced by dehydrated vegetable powder. I would juice the vegetables, reserve the liquid to hydrate the dough, then dehydrate the pulp and grind to a fine powder for use in uh as a dry ingredient additive in the bread. Any suggestion on what to do, uh what to add to the dry ingredients for gluten development? Thanks for the help, Elliot.
Okay, so I'm assuming that you're dealing with a regular gluten bread, uh, and then uh so that this is not a difficult problem. And I used to do this all the time. Just go buy vital wheat gluten uh in the store, and then uh you know, the whatever percentage powder you're adding, just add enough vital wheat gluten to equal the proportion of bread flour, and you should get not a hundred, it's not gonna be a hundred percent similar because the product that you're adding isn't flour, but you should be able to get some of the strength involved. So let's say you were gonna add 20% of the weight of uh, you know, of the flour um as this vegetable powder, right? Then you what you're talking about is uh 20% of the weight of the flour, you figure you're like, you know, 14% protein or something like that, 12%, you know, whatever, 12%, 14% protein.
So you should add uh whatever 12, 14% of that, 20% you should add as vital wheat gluten, right? And it's not gonna be 100% the same because you're adding like a pectin slurry and stuff like that. The other the other way to do it is uh not go through that trouble is here's what you're doing, here's what you say you're gonna do. You say you're gonna juice the vegetables, right? And then you're gonna hydrate the dough with the liquid from the vegetables and then add the pulp.
It seems to me that if you just figure out, go on the internets and figure out the moisture content of the vegetables to begin with, then you could calculate how much liquid is in the vegetables. Oh, I see what you're you're worried that you're worried that there's not gonna be enough. I see, you're worried that it's gonna be hard to hydrate. Uh, my my head is thinking, well, you're worried that's it that it's gonna be difficult to hydrate unless you actually separate it out versus just adding the puree to the bread. That's my guess, right?
Right? Anyone else with me? Anyway, so if you think that's otherwise, you can just add the puree and add gluten to make up for it, but I see what you're saying. You want to get the juice, hydrate the dough properly, then add the paste back. Whatever.
Try it that way, but just add some vital weak gluten, it shouldn't be a problem. Okay, back to Ken. So uh a while ago we had a question on um on why is it that there's so many uh chefs who you know have philosophy degrees. And you know, I speculated maybe it's because uh, you know, uh chefs like useless degrees. I don't know, right?
I have a philosophy degree, um, you know, whatever, Wiley, I think Chang maybe even we said there's a whole bunch of people that have Chang's religion? Hilarious. Anyway, uh so Ken Ken had some uh Ken had some uh thoughts and I will share them with you on the way out. Uh Ken writes, I am not a chef, so let's be clear my answer is not from a chef's perspective. I am merely a home cook with an interest in the modernist approach and a degree in philosophy.
Uh although Ken, I guess putting it to good use, unlike unlike you know, me. Um I think the connection is that uh we philosophy majors are particularly interested in the essence of things. Julia Child first brought my generation the Platonic ideal of both French cooking and fine cooking. The long-standing movement back to ingredients and back to authentic styles of cooking relate to the essence of food. And I believe modernist cooking and its progeny start with the notion of the essence of food.
The works of chefs like Wiley are charming in both senses of that word because both chef and customer begin with an understanding of the essence of the food and launch from there. The food challenges both chef and customer as to what is the essence of food, the nature of food, and the platonic ideal of food. Maybe even God help me, the epistemology of food. Ken Ingber, cooking issues. Hey, what's up?
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