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Cooking issues. Cooking issues! Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from a vertical speech in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined in the studio uh again, uh normal we're normal style today with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez.
How are you doing, Stas? Okay. Yeah? Yeah. Jack decided not to join us today.
I don't know what that's all about, but we have Joe. Hey Joe, how are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you guys? I'm doing alright.
I was listening to the uh little blurb we have at the uh beginning there. And you know they they have a word for something that's both entertainment and information. It's edutainment. Isn't that right? Yeah.
Edutainment. Yeah, sounds right. So we edu edutain what how would you say that? Edutainable? Edutainment?
Anyway, whatever. Anyway, calling your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128. Hope to be joined uh soon on the telephone with uh the uh one of the sponsors from today's show, Chris Young from uh Chef Steps and Modernist Cuisine. And in fact, he's a um bit of a coffee nut.
So I have some coffee questions that I put off uh from last time and some also I think ones from this time. So I'm gonna hold off on those until Chris calls in so I can get him to weigh in on as well. By the way, Stas, how did uh Mark's uh barbecue, his Italian barbecue go? Really well. Yeah?
Lots of people. It raised a lot of money, I think. Yeah? Uh like uh what how was how was the food? Pretty okay.
Oh, Stas with her with her uh Ray Ray Ray reviews of everything. Okay. Hey, uh, we have a caller. Oh my god. All right, caller.
Caller, you're on the air. Hey Hey Dave, this is Chris from Seattle. How are you? Hey, doing all right, doing all right. So uh Joe, this is Chris Young, our sponsor from today.
Oh yes. Do we have the opportunity to take other calls in as well or or no? Uh we have one line open still, so all right. So for those of you that want to pester Chris with any of your modernist and or non modernist, and or when he was working at Fat Duck and or gliding, because he's a glider pilot. If you have any uh I didn't realize you knew that.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. So if you have any questions relating to any of those things, uh call on in. How you doing, Chris? I'm doing well, man. How are you?
Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah, I know. When you when are you in New York next? Uh I don't know. When you uh when are you gonna invite me out for drinks.
Oh, you are always welcome at the bar for drinks, Chris. But uh I uh uh well I've just about recovered from my last trip to New York, so uh when I when I lose any sort of a judgment, I'll be back out. But uh exactly. Well, so now are you still spending all of your time in Seattle? Or sh now where is Chef's B sh uh Chef Steps?
It's based in several locations or how's it working? No, we are in we're a we have a four thousand square foot space in Seattle's Pike Place Market overlooking the water, and so we've built out our own experimental kitchen and and tooled it up. We have our software developers and and entire production team here. We do have a bit of a hardware engineering lab just south of Seattle in Georgetown and uh a couple employees uh in Chicago and LA, but other than that, we're here. Nice.
Well I have to come out and visit you guys sometimes. Yeah, you absolutely should. I I was thinking we maybe need like a an East Coast, West Coast uh uh cocktail challenge. We we've we've got we've got our own uh fairly talented bar bar staff here as well. Oh yeah?
Well, I'm down for a challenge. What would the challenge be? Uh I I I know you well it it's your show. Uh what what do you think it should be? Man, I don't know.
I mean uh you know that my particular my particular bent is towards things that uh look somewhat normal. Uh huh. Like Stas, what do you think of a good challenge would be? I'm actually I need a good challenge. I was just saying the other day, like I need a new cocktail problem to solve, not just a new ingredient or taste, but it's a whole new problem to solve.
Can you think of any, Chris? Or should we leave this open to our readers? Like what what or listeners rather? I I I'd actually like to hear from your from your viewers. I've always found uh I certainly find in our forum that the best the biggest challenges tend to come from unexpected places.
Yeah. Although although being barbecue season, uh you know I'm certainly have you done much with uh with smoke and cocktails. In drinks? No, I'll tell you why there's been a a bunch of people who have done a lot of work with it already and so you know I I I tend to do the hardest work in places where I think there's a lot a lot lot more work to do, but there is a lot more you know the a lot of the problems I think I have with people when they've smoked the cocktails is they take they tend to use uh they tend to use uh kind of those uh those uh small format uh smoke generators and uh when they when when you over smoke a drink with that it tends to take on more of kind of the over phenolicy burnt uh flavors from it and it can be hard for those it can be hard for people to dose I mean I think the best results I've seen are actually from more of the smoky flavor off of charred chips and whatnot. I've seen I've seen good results off of that and had good results off that obviously smoke and alcohol go together.
I mean have you done any good experiments with it or not? Well yeah we just uh we just did a cocktail uh we've done a couple things we did uh we did one where we take charred oak chips and we pressure infuse it with an ISI siphon uh um uh to basically get uh a rapid aging of the of the bourbon and and that sort of smoky flavor and that's that's fantastic and we have another cocktail where we uh we use charred cinnamon sticks at some uh a cocktail we call church old breakfast yeah how and how's that one come out no that uh that one's delicious. Um, I will happily drink that just about any day. I've had good luck with the ISI and uh and oak doing like a semi char semi-oak at the same time. But my favorite way to add wood is of course to take an age spirit that I like, rotovap it so that I have the uh I have the oak left over and then add it back to my other unaged stuff.
I mean that's stuff that's fantastic stuff it's a little bit pricey and out out of the range of most people working, but Hey Chris and Dave, we have uh a caller for both of you. Oh yeah? Yeah. All right, caller, you're on the air. What's up?
Hey, uh this is Iboda collin from Silver Spring, Maryland. How you doing? Um good, good. Uh so I had a qu I had a couple of questions uh for you and for Chris. Uh first I'd like to say, uh, you know, just that's really impressive, uh it's an amazing, amazing resource.
I have minor Susan and Minor's within at home, but it's always fantastic the videos. Just the the breakdown that everything is done on there. Really really great work. So thank you for that. Well thank you.
Um so I my friend and I are throwing kind of like an ice cream party uh tomorrow. And we didn't have time to do a lot of side by side tests with one of the recipes that we were doing, but uh one of the things we were doing was a recipe from the uh Humphrey Locum restaurant in uh I think San Francisco. It looks like an ice cream book. And it's um strawberry and candied jalapeno. So the candied jalapeno we make by, you know, just uh taking out the seeds and the ribs and then just uh cooking it with simple syrup.
So we were kind of expecting that it would there would still be some heat left over in the jalapeno, but there really wasn't anything that we could discern, both in the jalapeno itself and then in the syrup, you know, that had kind of like the infusion afterwards. So we were wondering if that was because the the recipe was kind of imprecise, it was just like one jalapeno. So it didn't say how big, how much um and you know they can vary in terms of their heat. But is do you do you know if if if there's some issue that uh the caps and it gets kind of neutralized when you go through that process. Uh would it make a difference if we use more I I I'd like to I I want to get a little clarification here.
Is the halo is the jalapeno going in a dairy base and is that when you lose the heat or is it after you poached it in the sugar syrup that the heat seems to be diminished. Uh it seemed to be after the syrup it went in the syrup. I mean there was there was nothing there was no no trace of anything in the syrup either besides for the kind of the the um floral notes of the jalapeno itself. Did you eat the jalapeno did you eat a portion of the jalapeno beforehand to verify that it was indeed spicy? No, no we didn't but that you know that's that's a that's a fair point because it would milk kind of takes away the uh the heat right well the the the capsaicin is fairly soluble in in fat.
So when you when you put you know when you put the the the the the chilies in an an ice cream base y absolutely it's gonna diminish the fat. I've made I've made habanero ice cream that would be un inedible if it if it wasn't dissolved in in that much fat. But if you're losing the heat during in the syrup, there's really only two things that come to my mind and Dave jump in here if you see it differently. But one, my best bet would be my my first guess would be the jalapeno you had just wasn't very hot to begin with. Yeah.
Um and the second thing is I don't know how much syrup you were using, but you're going to dilute some of the capsaicin down in that syrup and and if you take a fairly small amount of cact taste can be split and dilute it down in a large amount of syrup um it's not gonna your end result's not gonna be very hot. So if you want a little bit more heat, I might look uh you know, I might look to using something other than a jalap a jalapeno. Yeah, but that said, if you take a jalapeno and slice it thin, even in a relatively like if it's a if it's a you know a good you know a good one with some strength, and you slice it relatively thinly and do a boil out with it in the sugar syrup, you should be able to pick up a good bit. I mean the good thing about sh you know sugar syrup is you can continue to heat it for a while. So you know what I typically do with uh heat I tend not to use uh green when I add heat to things most of the time uh in drinks and and in uh ice creams and things like this I'm I want to add a more of a red flavored heat so I tend to use red things.
Uh so but you s just keep tasting it and what'll happen is is I is it'll it'll be the right amount of spice and then eventually it'll over it'll over extract and get too spicy. So I just keep tasting tasting tasting and then throw it through a coarse chinois to strain it out as soon as it's at the place where I like it. Um and that that tends to be what I what I do. It's almost impossible to measure uh peppers because they're so variable with regard to their heat levels even from pepper to pepper unless you're dealing with something preposterously hot like a habanero where you know that it's gonna hit you with a wild fat. But even then you can be mistaken.
You can get an ahi dulce which looks for all the world like a habanero and smells like it but doesn't taste like it very much and isn't hot hardly at all. Um you know so like peppers can be extremely extremely variable. Uh and so you know I would always get a couple of extra chop chop them, throw them in while while you do the heat. And be aware that what Chris says is right, when you then mix it down with your with your milk and cream base, it's going to reduce the heat even further. So you might want to just have some spicy crap sitting around that you can dose back in the spice with.
But you have to be careful because usually then when you're dosing something back, you're dosing if you're dosing a dry spice, let's say those things get radically hotter when you infuse them. So the red pepper flakes you get at a pizza parlor, you can eat them on their own without too much trouble. You infuse them for a long time in a liquid and then they can start blowing your top off correct right Chris? I mean you're you're Yeah no the the basic issue is when they're dry you tend to swallow them before they have time to to rehydrate and start diffusing out the capsacan. If you rehydrate them first so that the capsacan can can easily hit the soft tissue in your mouth you're gonna you're gonna be a very unhappy person.
Yeah I mean that's the classic mistake people do when they're making sauces is they'll throw in a bunch of dry chili flakes and they're like oh it's not hot enough and then they'll throw in some more gi dry chili flakes. Well it's still not hot enough. And then they'll throw some more and then and then 15 minutes later they're done you know yeah you gotta you got you gotta wait and you gotta give it time. Yeah. That's not as much of a problem as fresh but oh thank you I had uh I had a drink question also uh maybe you know up your up your challenge.
I was wondering if uh we wanted to kind of pair some of these things with alcoholic drink. Um and then I was thinking did you have you ever tried to do like an alcoholic version of an icing float? Oh yeah. Oh yes. Oh and so you made kind of like an alcoholic um like a a fizzy frothy drink and then you know just dump the ice cream in there.
Yep. Delicious anything in particular any any good combinations that you'd recommend? I mean there's the obvious ones root beer there's some couple of good root beer uh liqueurs out there or you can make your own root beer flavor and you can do a classic root beer float. That's probably the first one I ever did. Uh you can mean I mean, I would imagine that uh you know, a recarbonated rum and coke would make a good float if you want traditional flavors.
Uh I've done um, you know, if you like vinegar cocktails, uh fit like a really nice fresh fig ice cream with uh with like a slightly vinegared carbonated soda cocktail is nice and works as a non-dessert kind of a thing. Um but there's I mean, Chris, have you ever done uh what what flavors do you try with that? Uh I haven't done a I I haven't done a ice cream, an alcoholic ice cream float, but I'm I'm immediately thinking of how to how to do something like a boozy creamsicle. Oh yeah. Well, we have a we have a drink now.
I mean like like uh carbonated uh well Jin, I don't know how Jim would go with ice cream. You might have to switch to a different spirit, but uh orange. We have a drink on the in the bar menu now that's uh clarified orange orange juice, uh, where we add a citric uh and malic blend to it to give it the acidic characteristics of lime juice. And we use that we use that in a daiquiri variant where we milkwash the daiquiry to give it a nice heavy, so it tastes like an orange julius. We call it Dr.
J. But that orange base, uh, we don't clarify for the daiquiri because we want it to be foamy, but it clarified. You can you I've made uh uh kind of gin, like a gin, so I would make like a celery, a celery ice cream or sorbet, and then do like uh clarified orange with malic and citric uh and like liquor of your choice, carbonated carbonated and uh poured over could be quite nice. You know what I would try? I've been playing we've but we've been playing with this a bit lately is is uh old school phosphate and uh uh using phosphoric acid as is our seasoning with various citrus citrus juices and then carbonating them.
And I I've kind of got a hankering to to sort of make an alcoholic mandarin mandarin soda that's that's getting a tested extra acidity, not only from the citric, but but of uh phosphorus. Have you ever worked with phosphoric acid, Dave? Uh yeah, but the problem is that Nastasha hates it, and so like whenever I want them go towards uh well, in that case, we're we're done. No, I mean but the well, I mean the issue is is that yeah, well, Chris, you know this. Like you you you if someone asks you to work on something, you work on something, but then if the people around you are constantly saying how they hate things, it's like makes it kind of a pain in the butt to work with.
The same way that like we don't do a lot with cherries because I'm allergic to it, you know. So it's that's a that's a horrible thing to be allergic to. I know, I know it is. I uh they're certainly my favorite, and have you not had therapy for that? I I I think I'm you know what it is, it's uh it what happened was is that you know, I have uh I'm being punished.
I'm being punished for all of those years of making fun of people with allergies, and so they're like, oh, world's greatest fruit. Well, now you're allergic to it. Enjoy. I think that's what happened pretty much. So this is karma.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, bad, bad, uh, bad karma. When you are carbonating things, be aware when you're carbonating um is that you can probably go h a little bit higher alcohol and a little bit higher sugar than you would for a drink drink, but um the more alcohol you have, the harder it's gonna be to carbonate probab uh properly. When we're making carbonated drinks uh at the bar for consumption, uh you know, straight drinking consumption, we use uh ratios of between one point uh seven five uh uh two up to two ounces, that's sixty mils of uh of high proof spirit in a total uh cocktail base of five ounces just for for your you know general edification. Anything stiffer than that, and it's gonna be more difficult to um it's gonna be more difficult to carbonate properly and also when something stiffer than that is balanced out with acids and sugars it's gonna tend to taste syrupy and the first couple of bites might be good but they I mean the drinks might be good but as it goes down it's gonna be more cloying. So just so you know now if you're working on a float you could probably go a little a little harder than that but also realize that an alcoholic based soda will foam even more than a regular soda when poured on an ice cream base.
Really? Yeah well because alcohol tends to foam anyway like when you're carbonating cocktails it foams so much you know so my it like I there's already a foaming issue with it. And then obviously floats are a foaming issue. So it's just you know it can become a big foam. It's delicious though, but it can be a big kind of a a foamy mess.
Alright Chris while you're on the air here let's I have some coffee questions in. Uh so first of all uh we had a question last week someone was asking about uh frothing frothing milk without getting an expensive frother and I'm actually you know in uh modernist cuisine you guys have a recipe where you stabilize uh foam with uh with whey protein isolate and uh sucroester sucrose esters. Uh will that actually make latte art foam with an air latte? Is it dense enough? Does the sucrose make it uh fine enough?
Uh the the whey protein helps you probably more than the sucrocesters. So you you could probably leave the sucrostors out of that and and and still make it work. It's possible to make a uh a a latte foam that you can pour latte art with using an aeros latte. There's a fair amount of technique. What I've found is you generally sort of uh you need to be warming it as you go, and you want to be working though the the aero latte wand really sort of more at the bottom.
You're gonna try to drag a little bit of air in, but then mostly what you're trying to do is just have the aero latte sort of buried deeper and constantly sort of breaking up the the bubble so that you're getting a smaller and smaller microfoam. So I tend to be moving the aero latte around the bottom of the pot of the pot, slowly bringing it towards the surface. But I've sort of brought the aero latte to the surface at about the same time that the milk is the right temperature. The real thing that most people make a mistake with, in my experience, if you want to get a a really wet foam that's velvety and silky and you can't really see any individual bubbles, and it's gonna you know, sort of have that viscous pour to it, is don't overheat the milk. The milk really shouldn't be much hotter than about 45, 50 Celsius at the most.
If you really want to have uh have some milk that's really easy to pour uh pour latte air with. If you start getting the milk up to like 60 Celsius, 140 Fahrenheit, it's gonna be really dry, and when you go to pour it, all the foam's gonna slide back to the pitcher and hot milk's just gonna come out beneath it. Um and so I found that that's really almost more important than anything else you add to the milk. So you can't get it. You can't get it to the temperatures that you would get if you were actually pulling it from a steam wand.
When I pull it from a steam wand, I very rarely go much hotter than that myself, but I don't tend to drink huge milky beverages. So, like if I drink a traditional cappuccino or a uh or a five-ounce latte, um, I generally won't heat my mood much hotter than about 45 Celsius, and that gives me just this really nice milk texture. Almost every coffee shop I go into, I I I tend to have the opinion that they they oversteam the milk so that it's piping hot when you're carrying around this sort of bladder busting size coffee. Um, but for me that's not a very pleasant drinking experience. Well, like my wife, for instance, she likes the taste of the foamed on uh kind of lower temp, but she prefers the coffee to be hotter.
There's no really no way around. I mean, like like can you do like a quick nuke and like not ruin you're just automatically ruined as soon as it's heated up. Well, the the thing to do there is you're your your your your espresso is gonna come out plenty hot. Yeah, nearly boiling, right? No, it's the milk, yeah.
Yeah, it's the mouth. Have a hot cup. Um and and then don't if if you if you're gonna drown it in in a huge amount of milk, yeah, you you're you're hosed. Um you can probably get the with the steam wand, you could get to fifty fifty-five comfortably and still get a wet foam. Um but my experience is you go much hotter than that, the foam starts to get really unstable, it starts to get dry and it just isn't as pleasant to drink.
I mean, I always pull uh I always pull like a hefty amount of uh hot water out of the hot water tap on my espresso machine before into my cup to preheat it. But is that not standard practice? Well, so uh I I suppose standard practice is is have the cups on the top of the espresso machine so that they're they're nice and hot. They they they you know, they design the machine so that the boiler heats uh heating the the top surface. But um if you want it really hot, yeah, just you know, d dose some of the boiling water out of the boiler into it.
But more than anything else, I just like it when it's served in a in a in a warm cup. There's something really nice about how that feels when you're when you're drinking it. Well, that's also you know, cups in general, which is why, you know, paper cups are the devil. Yeah, but uh paper cups have the advantage that they go in your car real nice and uh and uh you know that that I I know that that's you know, more of a West Coast thing to drive around through your your drive through Starbucks and and get your your your your th what is it I think it's 30 some odd out Starbucks uh uh latte now. Wow.
So you know that's with one double in it? That only has one double of coffee in it? Oh, I I I have no idea. It's like the big gulp of the latte world, and I think it's like two shots. Yeah, so it's I'm sure somebody can call in and correct us because I've never had it.
Yeah, so that you never that doesn't happen in New York because here what you would have to do is walk past five Starbucks to get to your car, then drive to the Starbucks, double park, go into the Starbucks, get the thing, come back out, put it in your car, and then you could drink it for the next hour and a half while you look for your parking space again. Yeah. You're just reminding me of why I'm glad I don't live in New York. Yeah, but on the other hand, we walk everywhere. Okay, anyway.
So back back back on the coffee. Uh oh, by the way, so Scott from Guelph wrote in uh commenting on that question from last week, and uh Scott says, uh, I wanted to write in first thing on making decent milk foam without a steam wand on a high end espresso machine. I found a fairly good and cheap technique. You can buy a small French press style coffee maker, some specifically designed for milk. You add the cold milk to the bottom of the press so it comes up over the mesh uh mesh screen, and you rapidly pump the screen up and down in the milk and make it fairly dense and stable foam.
You can then heat the milk inside the glass container in the nuke. Uh the foam doesn't overheat and pop since the air mixture doesn't absorb microwaves as well as the still liquid milk at the bottom. With my setup, it takes about 45 seconds to get to the proper temperature for a cappuccino, and the foam seems to work best if you use very cold skimmed milk, although you can get a richer but less impressive foam with higher fat milks. I do not like skimmed milk foams. What do you think about that technique, uh, Chris?
I I think the uh the the biggest challenge I I would be concerned about is is as you sort of nuke it, essentially that you're gonna have the dry foam rise to the top and it's gonna drain out. So I I suspect with a lot of care and attention you can sort of swirl it and keep the foam wet and together, but to me uh I'm I'm I I I've seen the technique. I've never been able to get it to work where I can get a nice, evenly wet, dense foam from top to bottom of the pitcher that I can just free pour to get a nice rosette. But you know what it totally works. You don't even if you just want an okay milk foam and you don't want to spend a lot of money, you can use any French press to do that.
Uh skim milk does work best, but it tastes unpleasant in my in my opinion. I I'd use two percent. It's uh skim milk's a bad product. Let me just say this right now. Skim milk should not exist.
Why? It's horrible. It's just a nightmare. I mean, like, look, if you want to like dehydrate it and get the milk powder for use in something else, maybe. But why would you ever want mean it's horrible?
You know, my 90 uh how old is he now? Ninety-four almost year old grandpa is is only drinks full fat milk. Like this, like you're not saving that much. It's just wretched. It's just a wretched, thin, gray, awful thing.
I gotta say, I'm sure it has some culinary applications, but as an actual product to consume, it's wretched. Do you disagree with me? I don't drink skim milk. Yeah, no, it's horrible. Uh so uh now uh Scott writes in also uh a separate issue we had, Chris, last week was uh someone wanted to uh serve a non-alcoholic uh drinks to their wife uh uh who is pregnant, and uh and so you know, ideas of drinks that you could sip for a while, uh, you know, and sort of instead of having an alcoholic drink.
Scott writes in, uh, there are dealcoholized wines that aren't appalling, but uh what I wanted to share was making your own drink out of the spice sumac sumac. Uh, this is an old idea and is usually referred to as sumac lemonade. You basically steep the sumac in hot or cold water, add sugar to taste. Sumac is high in malic acid, uh, and so has a wine-like bite to it. The flavor is somewhat woodsy and floral and makes a very refreshing summertime drink.
Sumac grows wild around here. He's from Guelph, Canada. I wonder whether he's involved with the university. They have a great dairy department there. Um the flavor is somewhat woodsy and floral and makes a very refreshing summertime drink.
Sumac grows wild around here, and many people harvest it themselves. Sumac trees grow on the sides of the road and they spread out as clones of the parent. The spice comes from the red cone-shaped spears that adorn the tree, and you are supposed to harvest them when the weather is dry or the malic acid gets washed off during the rain. I did not know that. I did not I did not know that.
I've been tempted to ferment some sumac lemonade, but of course that won't help you if you are up the spout, which I learned last week means pregnant as well as broken or pawned. Uh keep up the awesome show. Scott, uh ac actually I love sumac. We uh in fact, one of the flavors of uh I shouldn't say this. Um we we have s we do a lot of sumac work, but just not for the public yet.
I happen to love sumac a lot. But uh you work with a lot, Chris? Uh I haven't used sumac in a while. I I I enjoy it, but I uh you know, I think the last time I was using it was when I was working in sort of this classic French restaurant. We were using it with lamb, and and I think I made that dish a a few hundred times too many uh to want to keep working with sumac.
Yeah, so you I mean, uh it's got a really distinctive flavor that that that's uh that's interesting. I guess uh I I've just never really had a reason to play with it. Yeah, it's not only malic, I think there's probably some oxalic in there as well. It's got that kind of like sorely kind of hit to it, too. Um but uh but I don't know that.
That's just coming off the top of my head. But you know, it makes fan as you know, as Scott points out, it makes fantastic, uh it makes fantastic still, but it makes really fantastic sparkling drinks. Really good. So so something I've I've I've made in the past that I think is a great non-alcoholic attorney is is I'm I'm a huge fan of elder flower uh blossoms and uh maybe that's from my time in England because it's a pretty popular drink over there. But uh if you can get uh sort of elder flower cordial uh the the syrup or you can make your own a blend of that of lemon juice and then I'll make a a simple syrup infused with uh Douglas spur and a blend of of the lemon juice the elder flower cordial um and the Douglas fur syrup and then dilute it down with water and ice I think that's that's a fantastic combination that uh uh has a lot of sort of y you almost could think of it as sort of the the the wrestling of the faux wine world because it's got that that really aromatic bouquet a nice bit of acidity and and and a slight the the the slight resinous pine flavor is a little bit unexpected but quite pleasant.
Yeah I've never done pine and elder flower that sounds good though. I wonder is it really lemon juice I think to to bring the two together. But is there is there anything in someone do some research and make sure there's nothing in pine tea that pregnant people can't have uh but that sounds delicious. I'd like to I'd like to try that another good thing for sumac, we used to uh we used to grind uh sumac finer uh along with uh the salt and use it uh as a French fry spice it's really good on French fries. Uh you know it's it brings some of that acidity to it and uh it's almost like you know if you're not gonna if you're not gonna douse your French fries and ketchup sumac's nice I mean if you're gonna douse them in ketchup it's just really no point.
But um Hey Dave it's Jack. Hey Jack Hey so I see here women who are pregnant or could become pregnant are advised not to drink pine needle tea in general for fear it could cause abortion. Wow. And Jack, welcome. I didn't know you were in the studio.
Here, yeah, hey, what's up? Hey Jack. Uh well, you know, t there y dare there you have it. But uh so good if you don't want to have alcohol, maybe not good if you're pregnant. Don't know.
Or leave the p or leave the pine out. Yeah, leave the pine out. Leave the pine out. Because I know I've I've never done lemon and uh elder flower, but you zoo and elder flower I know is delicious. Uh with pear, pear juice would use you and elder flower, very good.
Uh carbonate that sucker too. But here's something that you're gonna know uh more about again, Chris. Uh you got a collar, by the way, Dave. Okay, caller. We'll take the collar and then we'll go back to coffee.
Caller, you're on the air. Hey guys, it's Chris Kohler from North Carolina. How you doing? Good. First I wanted to thank Chris for uh Chef Steps.
He's always answering my questions on the forum, and it's a great resource that uh everybody that listens to this, you know, radio and that likes your blog would absolutely love. Thanks, Chris. Nice nice to actually hear your voice. Yeah. Uh it's it's great, you know, get into ask you guys a question.
I just got a bunch of ramps and I want to know what to do with them. I've always kind of avoided them because, you know, I feel like they might be overhyped or that they're like, you know, a little too, you know, whatever, but uh what do I do with these things? Well, so Stas hates Nastasha hates ramps just because other people like them. This is just a caveat, right, Sus? That's right.
Yeah, that's why I've always avoided them. All right, Chris, give me some ramp, give me some ramp, uh uh drop some. Well, there's there there's obviously the the pickled ramps, charred ramps. I I would uh you know, one of the things I would do is I I'd like to make a nice sauce from them. So I would ch I would char them slightly, uh pure them and turn them into a fluid gel.
So do you have any agar or gel and gum? Yep, got agar. Um would you charm just on the grill or should I just use a blowtorch? Uh you could do it with a you could do it with a blowtorch. If you check out the charred rapini video on Chefsteps.com, you'll uh you'll sort of see a nice technique that that we use.
And so I just give them uh uh a light charring, then then puree them. Uh I would let them down with a little bit of water rather than uh a stock, just because I think the flavor is fantastic. Uh adjust the seasoning. And then if you wanted sort of a a a thicker puree that that uh that you could drag or that would stand up and have some body to it. With agar, I'd probably set it with about one percent and then puree it um and and and sieve it.
Uh if you had gel-an gum, you might be able to go down to about 0.75% for a for a fairly thick puree. But what's nice about the fluid gel is it's not going to be gloopy or cloying in the mouth. It's gonna be very clean and really let the charge to ramp flavor come through. One thing though is definitely um don't add the salt or any acid to the puree until right before serving, or you're gonna end up just coloring this sort of vibrant green green appearance. Cool.
Yeah, and uh one other thing in general when you're using ingredients like that is since since you're gonna ha since you're gonna charge extra for them and people want to know what they taste like and they're expensive and they only come around once in a while, usually you should use them in things that highlight them. I mean, that's you know, just common practice when you say clean. Yeah. You know, it's it's you know, the yes, that's true, and I agree with that. The other thing though is people can get a little bit overly precious.
And so if you sort of that follow to its logical conclusion, you get this sort of farce of uh of of a of a cooked ramp on a plate with nothing else. Right. Um because it it's so special that we have to highlight it. It's like uh you can do a little bit more to it and and still really uh show off the ramp. What you might end up doing is composing a couple different textures.
So the pickled ramp, the ramp puree, um, you know, some some some some very thinly sliced ramp, um, all of those could be could be really nice. What do you what do you call that dish, Mike? You call that ramp it up? I'll leave the puns to you. Yeah.
Uh yeah, well uh again, we uh we at Booker Intact are the world expert punished. Uh yeah. All right. Well, I don't know what what do you like? What do you like for ramps?
What do you like uh uh pairing ramps with? Well, I don't I don't I've never uh I've I never used them uh at the French culinary uh because I just never did. I would only ever cook them at home. And so then I usually just I just do them as uh as a side. I do like a c uh like a quick saute and then a little bit of sugar down like I would with uh asparagus, salt and like a little bit of correction with acidity at the very end as it comes out and just serve them kind of glazed and wilted like that.
But because I'm doing it at home, you know. Well, two two things just came to my mind, Chris, actually, is uh somebody on our forum mentioned that if you have a lot of ramps, if you want like a ten pound case, uh ramp kimchi, and that sounds fantastic. So that would be very cool to do. That sounds really good. The other idea that comes to mind is i it's gonna definitely shift the flavor a bit, but if you do end up making that ramp curee, enrich it with a little schmaltz, a little uh uh a little roast chicken fat.
Um and and that's just gonna make it incredibly uh delicious. You just wanted to say schmaltz, Chris. I did. I I actually I have uh I have a a a notepad here with words that I want to get into our conversation. It's sort of the subliminal programming going on.
Well schmaltz is a good one. You know, people don't have the schmaltz on the table anymore. That's like so old school. I think Sammy's Romanian is the last restaurant in New York where you can go have like uh the big thing of schmaltz on the table. Well, and it's it's really easy to do.
If you pressure, if you if you take like your roast chicken carcass and then pressure cook the heck out of it, you're gonna have all this fat on the top, and most people throw that out, which that's kind of a crime. I mean, you should you should skim that off and save it because roast chicken fat's awesome. Oh yes. Oh, yes, it is. It's delicious product.
Uh all right, so I hope that answers the ramp question. Yeah, thank you guys. Thanks, Chris. That's a great word. All right, thank you.
All right, so uh there's a schmaltz brewing company. Uh, that can't that can't be good. I don't want schmaltz in my beer, Jack. I do not want schmaltz. I mean, like I like I I will go places other people will not, but schmaltz in my beer is not one.
Although I will taste it. If if someone ever hears this who can get a hand uh their hand on a can of schmaltz beer, send it our way, and we'll definitely I'll eat I'll get bread and schmaltz and drink the schmaltz beer with it. Uh okay. All right, here we go, Chris. Coffee, right?
So remember for those of you that don't know, uh, I think uh because I think people don't really know, and this is actually an interesting question, although we shouldn't spend too much time on it because we have a bunch of actual questions to get through. But maybe we can take a quick break too, unless you want to squeeze this out. Yeah, let's squeeze this out for a second. So, like the uh in in the modernist cuisine, there are certain sections that different ones of you in the you know, in the big one had more of a hand in because it's kind of more of your thing. You had a giant hand uh in the the coffee section, correct?
This is why I'm pestering you with the coffee questions. Yeah, no, I I I I I'm I'm a big fan of coffee. I would like to say that I stood on the shoulder of some giant people like Jim Hoffman, uh World Greece Champ, and run Square Mile Coffee in London and Tim Wendelbow uh had some uh some really wonderful people uh help out extensively with that chapter. But uh we w it's at least something I'm passionate about, so we tried to make it a great chapter. Right.
So now there's two questions we have uh from last week that I didn't answer, one on mocha pots and one on aero presses. But before I get into it, let me just say that my my uh you know expertise, if you can call it that in coffee is almost exclusively related to uh espresso shots, because that's what I drink, and that's all I drink. Uh I drink a lot of it, but that's what I make, and that's what I what I think about uh a lot. Uh but before we even get into this, I think everyone uh should probably go check out if you don't mean modernist cuisine, I I read it the section on coffee actually today, uh, but also go to um look at VST Mojo to go and what they have done with uh like linking refractometers and initial uh coffee weights to kind of targeting where your brew is, and probably read uh Scott Rayo's book uh on uh everything but espresso if you're interested in kind of the mechanics of non-espresso brewing. Is it would you agree with that fact or no?
Uh I would actually recommend both of Scott Rayo's books. I think they're two of the best books written on the subject and uh certainly influenced uh our thinking on coffee. So but his everything but espresso book uh I think is the standard by which other books will be judged. I wish ours was that good. Right.
But I mean I so I mean the the key is and we're gonna talk here about aeropress and mocha pots, but the the key is to is to understand uh that each one of these things has uh a lot of variables involved in it, and each type of coffee maker that people still use on a regular basis can make a delicious cup of coffee. However, they're not interchangeable and they won't make the same cup of coffee. And so the the the question is figuring out how to control the variables accurately to get it consistent and the best of that style of coffee that you can get. Would you agree with that, Chris or no? Yeah, I I think that's what's interesting about it is you know, you have this raw material, but depending on how you extract the the literally hundreds, if not thousands, of compounds in it, you get a very different drinking experience.
And and to those who care about coffee, it can be incredibly interesting that something as simple as the difference between a pour over and a French press give you such a very different uh outcome. All right. Now, on the on the French press variant up to new newer style aeropress, the first question. Uh hopefully uh an easier question. This is also from uh person who doubled up on a question.
I recently acquired an aeropress and a burr grinder. Uh this is why the acquisition of additional materials would lead to a domestic dispute. So what we're told is he cannot purchase a more expensive uh machine other than the aeropress and the burr grinder that he has. Uh and I've been experimenting with different amounts of coffee, different grinds, and different water temperatures. Small changes seem to make a big difference to the taste.
I would greatly appreciate your comments on how the various factors affect the result. The AeroPress website suggests that making a very concentrated initial brew and watering it down will get a better result than adding more water. Why is this? Also, why does grind size seem to make such a difference? One post I found online recommends inverting the press and very carefully making sure that the foam on top of the coffee made its way into the final cup.
Although you don't like that stuff, right, Chris? That stuff that floats up. You're not a fan, right? I'm not a huge fan of breaking, I like to skim the raft off uh in the case of French press before uh before plunging it to prevent it from sort of overbrewing and over extracting while it sits on the table. Right, right.
Well, in fact, uh the person who wrote the question, Alex, also agrees with that because they found the results of the turning it upside down a bit oily and harsh. But perhaps my palate is immature, says Alex, or perhaps I need better beans. Any advice? I enjoy tinkering with different options, but would love to understand the basics of what's going on with different grind sizes, temperatures, and concentrations. Keep up the good work, Alex from Toronto.
Well, uh I mean very, very simply put, in uh in an aeropress, when you do the aeropress, I do I do a full stir down, let it sit and then and then do the press extraction. Is that what you do or no? I mean I thought that would be that would be what I do because you're putting it through a through a extremely fine membrane filter. So the idea of it sort of over extracting once you once you essentially uh uh um strain it as it were uh i i it's irrelevant so yeah a stir down there for even wetting of the grounds and a a more uh uh in and a sort of a more uniform extraction is gonna help this is one of these things where you can very easily start chasing your tail um and uh and I'll be further to say that I've I've used aero presses I I I like them I think they're interesting there's a lot of great techniques online um but I'm not an expert on air press because I don't make it all that often um you know a couple things that I can point out is the water temperature has a huge impact. Generally speaking the cooler your water the more acidic you're gonna get the hotter your water the more you'll tend towards the bitter side um something around ninety eight Celsius I think in the aero press folks actually recommend a slightly lower temperature um but something in the upper nineties is going to be about right you'll have to find where that sweet spot is for you with everything else held constant but in general as you lower the water temperature you're going to tend to find it more acidic and maybe a little bit under extracted and as it's uh as it's hotter water it's going to get a little more bitter and over extracted.
Right. And the finer the grind, the faster you will extract, and the coarser the grind, the slower finer. Same thing. Finer grinds tend to, you know, favor over extraction, coarser grinds five favor under extraction. That interacts with water temperature as does contact time.
So the problem is you kind of have to choose which of those you're going to keep fixed while you adjust the others, otherwise you start to get really befuddled and lose track of where where you are and what you're trying to tweak. And the in the in the aero press, the quantity of water you add to the quantity of coffee should not change the extraction appreciably because you're not getting close to any sort of equilibrium. That should just change how strong the coffee is relative to pure water. Would you agree with that or no? Yeah, it's going to change your brew strength.
And this is what the guys at Extract Mojo have done some phenomenal work is most people tend to tend to, you know, it's surprising how tight the range is that people actually consider sort of a well balanced cup. And you know, you can use a refractometer to actually quantify this and say that you actually want to get sort of you know an 18 or so percent uh extraction from from the grounds. Um that would be for espresso. I actually suspect it will be similar for uh for for aero press, but I've never really looked. Yeah, I mean the rail numbers are between around 18 and 22 for non-espresso, between eighteen and twenty-two, uh, you know.
And that varies a little bit culturally. Norwegians like it, you know, what I've heard is Norwegians and Scandinavians favor slightly higher. They also like to not slightly Americans, I think, are tend to be 18, 19 percent, although our friend Jeffrey Steingarden told me I'm a fool for liking 18%. Well, what does he like? Uh higher.
Yeah, it sounds like Jeffrey. That sounds like Jeffrey. But of course the Ely's like it lower, right? That's why the Ely's use a sh uh like the actual Ely family. And you should also go look at espresso, the chemistry, uh, the chemistry of qualities.
A great book on espresso only. I mean, it's came out a long time ago, so I don't know kind of how up to date it is, but they they favor kind of very low numbers. Um they use you know very like longer shots with lower uh lower initial doses, but yeah, they they they talk in, I mean, if you talk in terms of sort of brew ratio with espresso, like and that's what mass of a shot do you get out of from what mass of ground in a particular time frame? And you know, that you you'll find that the Italians in general sort of like um you know something that's it's it's uh uh usually they'll use smaller dosing to begin with, and they'll pull a slightly faster shot, and the brew ratio won't be quite the same as what what they'll do like you know, closer to two to one brew ratio, so maybe a seven gram dose, get a 14 gram shot out. Whereas you have a tendency in in in this country, because we drown our beverages in so much milk to use much higher dosing, maybe 18 or 20 grams, and then like a one and oh, you know, this will vary depending on style, but you know, somewhere closer to like a one and a half, maybe even towards the ristretto of a one to one brew ratio, and it's gonna make a much much stronger coffee.
Um maybe even a little bit bitter, you're gonna lose some of the acidity, some of the floral note. But then if you drown it in a gallon of milk, it has a chance of sort of standing out. Yeah, but even as the so I mean, you know, Ely, Andrea Ely told me once, yeah, when I I asked him, so and we're talking now like 10 years ago, so you know, kind of in the early period of the huge expansion in the in the coffee scene out where you are in Seattle. I guess you weren't there at that time, but you are from that area, but whatever. So uh, and you know, he I said, what do you think about what these guys are doing on the west coast of New York of uh the of the U.S.
where they're using much higher dose rates than you are in pulling shorter shots, and as you say, he's uh you know he's like the florals are going to be reduced. I happen to think that a circa two thousand and three, you know, like kind of pan West Coast, so take vivace as like kind of the one that we all kind of heard about over here, right? That kind of a shot, I loved that that kind of a shot, like two thousand and two, two thousand like that kind of a shot, I thought was amazing. The last time I was out there a couple of years ago, like these kind of like skim coat shots where they're like hyperdosing it and pulling out like way less than an ounce. I don't know about that style.
What do you think? I I'm I'm not actually a fan of that style. I uh I I probably prefer something closer to 18 gram dose pulled in, depends on the coffee, but around 27 or so, uh 20 24 to 27 seconds. And I generally like to get like uh more towards like a 1.6, 1.7 brew ratio. It's not it's not an Italian style, but it's not this really overdosed um uh you know sort of hyper ristretto shot that uh that that become fairly fashionable.
Is there any snap back on the West Coast back towards like slightly more normal shot volumes or no? Yeah, uh I I would say actually there's an interesting trend going on at places um like Millstead Coffee. There's a a grape for uh an up and coming uh uh young Grecian named Andrew Milstead, who runs this place in Fremont, and he's basically going back towards smaller, uh smaller, you know, if you order a uh uh a a cappuccino, you're gonna get a five-ounce cup there. And so when you start reducing the amount of milk you're serving, it allows you to sort of start bringing these shot uh doses down and the brewing ratios to you know, maybe more normal levels or levels that really sort of maximize bringing out the florals and and and and the various aroma uh aroma notes you get in the coffee and away from this shot that's really just designed to stand out in 24 ounces of hot milk. Yeah, Dave, I gotta squeeze a break in here.
Uh we have to have a break. We have to, yes. All right, all right, right. Commercial break. We're right back with Chris Young.
This is Chris Young, co-author of Modernist Cuisine. Together with photographer Ryan Matthew Smith and Chef Grant Krille, we've created something exciting and new at Chefsteps.com. Each day in our kitchen at Seattle's Pike Place Market, we're working on new recipes, as well as updating classic ones that we love. And we're always looking for new techniques that make the impossible possible. At ChefSteps.com, we publish it all online with detailed step-by-step demonstrations, as well as explanations of the science that answers the why behind the how in the kitchen.
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All right, Chris, you're still with us, right? Yeah, I'm here. Okay, cool. So uh another question, also from an Alex, different one. Uh Alex uh Gorodetsky writes in about mocha pots, which actually, you know what?
I'm gonna go ahead and say this. I don't drink mocha pot coffee, but the real problem with mocha pots is that people have uh linked the word espresso to the mocha pot, and they're just entirely different types of coffee, right? I mean, they're just not the same thing, right? And I've never taken the time to get a good mocha cup, but apparently people who like it like it. Yeah, so I I I'm I'm gonna say I've been given like three mocha pots in my lifetime is a gift.
Um, and it appears to be sort of this cult that people who have mocha pots, it's like Tupperware or something. It's like you want they they give you a mocha pot, and it's like join us. And I've never had a good cup of coffee out of a mocha pot. It might be possible, but I've never had it, and so they've never really captivated my interest. And and then there's just people who are who love mocha pots.
They sort of make me feel like I'm joining a cult, so I've sort of shunned them. Right. Well, hell well, I think the thing is is that you know, there's a lot to control. Wait, well, let's I'll go with the question here. Okay.
So we've been using the stovetop Italian mocha coffee maker for many years, and we love it for a variety of reasons. So maybe Alex is also a member of the cult. I don't know. Had some questions to see if we can make the mocha coffee better. First, grind.
We have been grinding between espresso espresso and Turkish. That is too fine. That is too fine for a mocha pot. All the indications that uh I have are that you want to go slightly coarser uh than uh slightly coarser than espresso. Um water, we use tap water.
Whether or not tap water is good, depends on which tap you have. Uh, you know, like kind of, you know, New York City water is a little bit too uh soft, I think most people would say, but uh I don't know. How's Seattle water must be good? That must be one of the reasons why the coffee stuff took off over there, right? Everybody's got reverse osmosis filters on their line in Seattle.
Oh, really? And then do they re-that's perfectly good here, but um, you know, uh it it seems that what I've the numbers I've heard going around is something like a hundred and fifty uh PTMs of uh of of some of your your hard minerals. Basically, if you were to go get like Bulvick water or or Dasani or some some sort of name brand pretty middle of the road water, that's about perfect for coffee, and people will go into fairly great effort of making sure their tap water is about that. Right. And then uh Alex asked, would it be better with hot tap uh tap water?
Any other tips would be useful as well. Now now neither Chris nor I are uh mocha heads, as we said. However, Stumptown Coffee has a good little thing if you go on their website on using the mocha pot best. They say you want to preheat the water before you put it into the mocha pot. This makes sense because it means it's less time on the stove and less time to dry heat your coffee grounds, which is not a good thing.
Uh they also say that the one of the most important things when you're doing mocha pot work is to keep the lid of it open so that you can look down on it so that as soon as it starts blonding out on the extraction, you can pull it off before you over-extract out of it. And then the other thing that they say is to wrap a wet towel to stop the extraction at that point almost instantly. I would say easier would be just to have like a pan of cold water next to it that you could just put the whole bottom of the uh just quench it. And that's something I hadn't thought of, and that's probably a good good technique. Um so I think if you add those, that's probably gonna boost your uh stuff.
Go to the top. I would use a coarser grind. Uh and I think like those I mean I'm I'm almost, you know, intrigued now to go out and uh go out and try it. Uh you know, one of the things that's false about a pe everyone who's against it says, Well, you're boiling the water, therefore the water is too hot, therefore it can't possibly make good coffee. But the fact of the matter is is that from the one or two people I've seen who've done kind of initial measurements of the temperature, it's actually by the time it's getting through your coffee grounds no longer boiling and not that far above what it would be in a good espresso machine.
So, you know, this is all stuff that can be tweaked out. Yeah, m my guess is, you know, I I I'm sort of taking this weird attitude towards mocha pots. I'm sure it's possible to make a a pretty good cup, and I'm sort of spoiled that I have a nice espresso machine at my disposal. I have all these other things, so I've never really looked at it. But I think you're right.
It you're I I can't see why you'd want it finer. I because I think you're having a longer extraction period. You'd actually rather have a slightly coarser grind, which is going to give you a slightly bigger margin for air of under versus over extracting. And that and with something like a mocha pot where you have to quench it to try to stop the extraction, having anything that uh that gives you a little more wiggle room is gonna be worthwhile. I I agree.
Hey Dave, quick tweet. Yep, what are you? Just uh FYI Schmaltz beer doesn't actually have Schmaltz in it. They're just using it, you know. Using the term.
Jewish beers like Hebrew and things of that nature. I'll all I'm saying is send send it our way. That's all I'm saying. You just want beer, yeah. I just want beer.
You know, I'll drink it with uh I'll drink it with uh Jimmy uh Carbone. We'll we'll have some beer together. Okay. So uh Brian in San Francisco, this is a good one, uh Chris. Uh I've wasted many cups of olive uh oil, grapeseed oil, and sunflower oil trying to make mayonnaise from scratch.
I followed the recipe from Sirius Eats Food Lab with the immersion blender, uh, and it comes out liquidy. I've also followed McGee's advice from Keys to Good Cooking about using another yolk to save it, but I couldn't. I've also tried the old-fashioned way with a whisk. Please give me a foolproof recipe for mail, also. What about adding flavors?
Garlic, mustard, and making holidays, uh bourgeons and other A's style sauces? Finally, how long will it keep? In the fridge? The Japanese don't refrigerate theirs. What's up with fat?
Thanks, Brian in San Francisco. Okay. First of all, uh, it's unsafe when it's made unless you pasteurize the eggs. However, the longer it sits, assuming you've used the correct acid ratios in the manufacture of it, the safer it gets. Uh so that's why in New Orleans people don't die from eating the mayonnaise.
It's been sitting out all day. Uh but initially made mayonnaise is not safe, and you can always, as modernist cuisine will tell you, or as Chris will tell you, or as I will tell you, it's very simple uh to pasteurize the egg yolks before you use them, and they still make a good mayonnaise, correct? Yep, they make great mayonnaise. Okay. Now, this technique on uh on what's it called?
On uh on um that Kenji uh Alt did on uh on the blog there on the Food Network, uh not food network, what's it called? Food Lab is really cool. What he does, Chris, and I don't know if you've seen the video. What he's done. Yeah.
So what he does is he takes uh an immersion blender cup, puts an an a single egg yolk in it, uh a tablespoon of water, which is a mistake because water doesn't add flavor. I would add a flavorful liquid, but you know, whatever. I think it was just because that's what he did. Whatever, I'm not gonna get into it. Little vinegar would be nice in there, maybe some mustard.
Yeah, yeah, well, he has also adds mustard, but like just straight water like came out with like a flavorless, because I just did it today, flavorless mayonnaise. And then he put it into a uh a cu the actual cup that comes with the immersion blender, and that turns out to be the key. So what happens is you put the immersion blender in the bottom, you hit it, and uh because the egg yolk is sitting at the bottom underneath the blades, you actually are slowly adding the oil to it. It makes us an emulsion before the bulk of the oil face starts getting mixed into it. And you can make a very stiff, banged-out, awesome mayonnaise in like in nothing flat.
It's actually amazing. It's really kind of amazing. So like that's the way I when I was Garmeret Chef at the Fat Duck, that's like the way I made our mayonnaise twice a day for service. So I was unaware this was even a technique. Yeah, yeah.
Well, but here's the thing it's easy to mess up because uh so the results you're getting too liquidy. When Brian first said he was results were too liquidy, my initial assumption was you didn't use enough oil, right? Because we we all know that like you actually oil that thickens it as you as you as you bulk it up. Bingo. But I did as a so then I as an alternate test, I also did it by adding, you know, the I added the ingredients in all different orders.
Uh I added, you know, very, very high proof uh, you know, 10% uh Scandinavian vinegar to see whether, or no, Polish vinegar to see whether or not over aceting the yolk could mess it and it couldn't, it was all perfect. But then I made the recipe in a quart container instead of in the actual immersion blender cup, and it did not work because it created too much mixing of the uh yolk and the oil before a stable emulsion was formed. So the key to that technique is to use the actual cup that the immersion blender came with, or if you've lost that, use a mixing tin for like a like a tall uh cocktail mixing tin, because I tested it in that as well. You just you just want a cup where down at the bottom of it, it's not the diameter isn't much bigger than the diameter of the end of the stick uh the stick blender. And you know, you can start with all the oil, or if you're if you haven't practiced this, you can put a little bit of oil in it, almost sort of chop it up to get that initial emulsion, and then get the rest of the oil in and just start blending from the bottom, slowly pulling up.
And uh, you know, I've I've always found that's a very easy way to get a a thick thing. So m if he's having trouble, my guess is too big of a container. Yeah, and because I it was in I tried it four times in a core container, it's not possible to do it in something that's too wide at the bottom. Anyway, okay. So uh I am being told uh that uh we are out of time.
So I have a question about souffle with acid. You have anything for stabilizing a high acid souffle, other than making sure that uh the base isn't too hot when you put the acid ingredient in before you fold the egg whites, Chris. Um not off the top of my head. You know, the my general reaction when people want to talk about stabilizing the souffle, uh they they generally mean they don't want it to collapse. And the problem is if you make a souffle so stable that it doesn't collapse, it's a cake, not a souffle anymore.
Um but you're you're talking about being able to add a uh a high acid into the egg base before baking. Yeah. I mean, um well, I'll I'll talk a little bit more about it next week. Mark Jensen also wrote in with uh a good great use of his uh leftover 64 degree eggs. He makes a hollandaise without having to pre-cook in modernist uh cuisine style.
So I'll talk about that. It's a good use. Uh and then we had someone who's having problems with their creme anglaise, Tom Fisher. We'll get to you next uh week. So I'm sorry we didn't get to finish your all the questions, but that's just we have so many good questions and good colors in.
And you gotta talk to us about the cereal puffer next week, too. Oh, yeah, we have a new puffing gun, Chris. Next time you're in the city for the summertime, come in. I saw the photo. I I'm I'm extremely envious.
So uh uh maybe a trip to New York to come out and play with your toys. Well, you know, you guys, you know, Chef Steps is willing to c like if Chef Steps comes out here, what you guys can make your own proprietary puffed snack mix in our puffer, you know, in the museum's puffer would be awesome. Also, we shipped uh we shipped a beta test unit of the uh Searsol out to you guys. Do you guys get it yet? Uh I will check McCame.
I haven't seen it yet, but uh I I'm I'm I'm I'm interested. I was very interested to see the results you had on blowtorching and that uh you know you you might be proving us wrong that we've got to redo some revisions to MC. Alright, well, see see what you think about it. And let me just say this. For those of you that still cook foie gras out there, the Sears all is ridiculous on the foie gras.
And Chris, thanks for coming and uh speaking with us cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network dot 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.
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