This is Chris Young, co-author of Modernist Cuisine, and co-founder of ChefSteps.com. We've just launched a free course on spherification that's quick and to the point. It teaches the fundamentals and then reveals the details the best chefs use to create amazing dishes that border on culinary alchemy. Sign up now at Chefsteps.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn.
If you like this program, visit HeritageRadio Network.org for thousands more. Cooking issues. Cooking issues! Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues coming to you live from the back of Robertus Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn, on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly one. Calling your questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718-497-2128. All your questions. Cooking, tech cooking, non-cooking, questions about Nastasha, maybe. Who knows? All welcome.
Uh joined in the studio as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez. And Joe is all alone in the booth today. So lonely. Jack just got back from Bonaro, so he's uh taking it easy. I'm sure he has a lot to recover from.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. We'll hear from it maybe next week.
Maybe Jack will call in if he's listening. Yeah? Yeah, right. What are the odds? Uh, okay.
Got some questions. Oh, by the way, amazing stuff. Before we get into the questions, the Museum of Food and Drink, Mofed uh did its inaugural explosion of the puffing gun on Sunday. Uh we did a test uh puff because uh our uh graphics team, Labor, uh Ryan and uh Wyeth, amazing fellows, are filming a Kickstarter campaign for us because we are going to kick start the uh this late summer's exhibit of the puffing gun. For those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, uh back in the day, uh starting in the I guess just around the turn of uh the last century, around 1900, uh they uh developed a technique for puffing grains where you seal the grain in a in a sealed kind of gun uh and you uh heat it, and and as you heat it in the sealed container, the pressure increases dramatically, but the gr the liquid can't boil off because it's sealed inside of a container like a pressure cooker.
But instead of going up to 15 PSI, like a pressure cooker, it goes up to like 180 PSI, 200 PSI. Then you release the pressure all of a sudden and boom, all of the grain uh instantly puffs as all of the water instantly vaporizes off. And there are various machines that are uh used for this nowadays that are small, but the museum wanted to get one that was actually used, designed by Kellogg, and is still made by the Puritan Manufacturing Corporation in Omaha, Nebraska. So we got one of these uh large machines. It takes, I think 18 pounds of grain at a time, or 18 or 20 pounds of grain.
Seven feet long, big machine. Uh, and uh we fired it for the first time on Sunday and didn't really have an idea kind of of how uh kind of much of a poof there was gonna be coming out of it, but uh Nastasha unfortunately had to miss it, but I will just say that uh everyone involved had chunks of rice stuck in uh in their hair. Their rice was sprayed all over Heritage, uh all over the Heritage headquarters, like just everywhere. It was just amazing. I like let me just say, first of all, you should fund the Kickstarter when it comes up.
And second of all, no one is going to be disappointed when they come visit the puffing gun in uh outdoor venues in New York City later this fall, uh later this uh summer. It's just gonna it's just a crazy piece of equipment and uh super duper fun. Uh and uh we have a picture actually, follow MoFad, the Museum of Food and Drink. Uh they now have their Twitter up at Mofad uh on Twitter, and you can see a picture of the inaugural puff. The inaugural puff.
It's a pretty amazing picture, right, Stuff? It's amazing. I mean, like you can't believe it, like stuff flying everywhere. It's like uh it's like you know, Star Wars, like you know, the Millennium Falcon going into hyperspace. That photo looks kind of like that.
Good stuff, good stuff. Okay, questions in. Alvin Schultz writes in. Uh carbonation question. How do you control the bubble size in different cocktails?
Topo chico versus champagne. Uh is it a question of PSI? Topo Chico, by the way, is a Mexican mineral water. Uh right? Mm-hmm.
I think so. You drink that stuff in LA? No. I was like, hell no. Hell no.
Remember, half Mexican, so she's allowed to be racist against her own kind. I guess. I guess. Not really. It's not really cool.
Right. Right? All right. So uh anyway, so uh I don't really uh I've had it, uh, but I don't remember the the bubble kind of uh quality of uh Topo Chico. Champagne is known obviously for uh, you know, the finer the champagne, the smaller the bubble size.
However, uh it's fairly simple in this respect. The bubble size of any given drink uh is directly related to the pressure of CO2 that you put into it and the temperature at which you serve it. So uh basically how fast CO2 is leaving. So the more pressure you carbonate to, the bigger the bubbles are going to be for a given liquid. The colder you serve it, or the warmer you serve it rather, the larger the bubbles are going to be for a given liquid because CO2 is going to be leaving it faster.
Okay. So if you want smaller bubbles, you carbonate to a lower PSI. Downside is it also doesn't taste as carbonated, right? And if you want larger bubbles, just carbonate to a higher PSI. Downside, sometimes you can get over carbonated.
Now uh now remember I said for a particular liquid. So uh whatever the alcohol content is is going to increase, uh is going to affect both the bubble size and how carbonated it tastes. The higher the alcohol content for given pressure, the less carbonated it's going to taste and the smaller the uh bubbles are gonna be. Um for also what is in the drink besides alcohol can vastly affect uh the bubble size. So in champagne, uh that's actually done method champagnoise, uh the product sits during a secondary fermentation on its lees, and those uh the yeast products break down over time and create uh uh the the liquid actually becomes uh such that the bubbles are smaller.
So the bubble size will be smaller for uh champagne that is aged versus champagne that is unaged. And definitely champagne, so the longer you age it, the the smaller the bubbles are gonna be. Also, they are smaller than if you were to take a base wine that hadn't been refermented and carbonated. So it's what's in the product is gonna determine the bubble size, uh, how cold it is and the pressure. Yeah?
Good? Good. All right. Uh Dave Kleinman writes in, uh, back on Father's Day. Happy Father's Day, Dave.
Question for the show over here. Uh homemade jalapeno cheddar Doritos. I have Enzorbit M, whey, and uh cheddar powder. And also he wants to know uh the best uh uh breakfast in Williamsburg or Manhattan. I don't eat breakfast out.
What about Manhattan? You ever eat breakfast out? Not really, no. No? Really don't like it.
No? Joe, you eat breakfast out? No, he's gone. Sorry, I'm here. I generally do not.
Yeah? Roberta's is supposed to have a nice brunch, right? What about brunch, Stas? You got a good brunch? No.
I eat a home for the first meal. You know what? Let me tell you what. If you're in uh Manhattan and uh it's not a sit-down thing. I mean, Barney Greengrass Sturgeon King.
You ever been there, Stas? It's Upper Manhattan. Barney Greengrass Sturgeon King, that's like old school New York. And you know, you get their omelet with the fish in it. But it's gonna go to Russ and Daughters and get like some amazing locks and bagels, get their amazing cream cheese, go out, have a picnic.
It's nice out. I mean, Robert is I haven't really have I don't think I've been here for for brunch, but they're supposedly they have a good brunch, right? Yeah. Who else? Can you think of anyone?
Uh no. I just don't eat out. I don't eat out for the morning. You don't eat it at all? I mean, unless I have to do it.
Yeah, but you have a disgusting look on your face. Usually friends choose like those brunch places that are just bad and expensive. That's your favorite combination, bad and expensive, right? Also, there's hardly ever reservation, so you're waiting forever. Yeah.
And you could already be eating. Yeah. And you're starving because it's first thing in the morning. Yeah, and you're starving, and like if you're gonna go out, you want that mimosa, but no one else at the table is drinking. Yeah.
And then you don't want to be the dick because you know they're gonna split the check and you don't want to be the dick. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you hate that, right, Stas? That's the look I I I could sense all of that just from the You can't see the look on her face, but I could sense all of that. Okay.
Back to the Doritos. Uh all right, so here's a trick. Uh I called uh Piper on the way in, uh, Piper Christianson, who's our uh kind of uh coating snack chips with powder's kind of fellow, right? He's our our guru on that. Uh he says that Doritos are actually applied not as a powder but as a slurried spray.
Like probably he's not sure whether it's an oil-based slurry or water-based slurry that they then dry out later, but they make a slurry and spray it onto the chips, which is why they get such an even coating over such a fine thing. Piper typically, when he's making slurries, um, does about 40% oil by weight with uh spice mixtures that he's gonna put in, but your results may vary. Here's what you definitely don't want to do. You don't want to add enzorbit to that thing. What you want is, in fact, the in the cheddar powder that you have is a lot of multixtrinal already, which is an anti-caking agent and what's allowed them to spray dry it, and that's gonna get in your way uh too.
But here are the basic ingredients for uh Doritos. Uh Piper did some uh research when I was on the train over here. They are uh cheese powder. They add milk powder and whey uh proteins because uh they want to be cheap and don't want to add extra cheese powder. You can just add more cheese powder if you want, or if you want it to be more kind of milky, uh, you know, without more cheesy flavor, you can add uh milk powder and uh whey protein powder.
Okay, uh whey powder, rather. Um also tomato powder if you want it red, right? And to get that tomato powder, then they add various pepper powders. Oh, you could source all this stuff by the way. Uh pepper powder.
So you want jalapeno. The problem is I couldn't find a s I I don't know if they have a source of freeze-dried jalapeno, which you could just pulse. Otherwise, you're gonna have to just get um like sliced very thin and dry them out and then pulse them and then maybe redehydrate them. Or this is why Piper says maybe incorporate them into a slurry or get other forms of powdered uh peppers, probably both sweet and uh and spicy. Uh, and then uh salt, probably a healthy chunk of salt, and uh everyone's favorite ingredient, especially uh Nastasia's MSG.
And so then you're gonna want to mix all those things together and don't add any extra bulking agent because these things are gonna be bulky enough. Now you could either take the fresh chip uh as a first thing, like uh fry it, pull it out, like shake it off a little bit, and then shake it with the powder in a core container, but you're gonna get clumps. Piper thinks the clumps are coming probably from the Malta Dextrin, uh, but it's hard to say. Or you could try spreading them out and then making the oil slurry and spraying it with a sprayer. The trick is you gotta get a sprayer that can spray powders.
I don't have one, so we don't do that. Piper has tried doing a slurry just with shaking, but it was kind of uneven coverage, so you might have to stay with powders. But stay away from the insorbit because you're not trying to absorb oil off of it. You're trying to spread a uh a powder over top of the chip. Yeah?
Mm-hmm. Okay. The other John Stewart writes in. That's he that's so he that's what he calls himself. Yeah.
The other John Stewart. The other John Stewart doesn't write us. What well the uh you know what? You know what the other John Stewart, you you are our real Jon Stewart. The other the like the what everyone else considers the real John Stewart is the other Jon Stewart for us, right?
Yeah. Right. About rice. Hammer Dave and the boys are just the boy today. Uh thank you for the popcorn advice the other week.
I ended up finding a decent used popcorn machine on Craigslist for a hundred and twenty-five bucks. Worked great for family outdoor movie night, Craigslist. Do you are you a Craigslist shopper? Yeah, I used to be. Yeah?
But you mainly for apartments or for stuff? Both. Did you sell stuff on Craigslist? Do you like those people? Uh-huh.
Yeah? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, yeah, I've never been a big Craigslist guy. I should get into it though, because I was I'm a big auction guy and eBay guy.
I'm so used to eBay that I gotta get used to the Craigslist. The whole kind of like where they don't necessarily call you backstows. Like, that means they already sold it. I'm like, well, why don't they why don't they take it off the listing? Like, they just don't do that.
So I'm not into that. I'm not into that. Nastasha comes from the generation where it's just like it's well, whatever, it's free flow. Hey man, maybe they sold it, maybe they didn't. They don't want my money, they don't want my money.
You know? Anyway, whatever. Uh the question I have for you today is about sticky rice, which I cook pretty regularly and is glorious stuff. I take uh white glutinous rice, which by the way has no gluten, as we all know, uh rinse it, soak it for a couple of hours, and steam it. And by the way, that is the traditional technique.
You steam sticky rice traditionally. It's not how I cook it anymore, but that's the traditional way. Um and the pre-soak gets the kind of water in it, get it started, and the steaming, you can steam it through without any sort of agitation, and it doesn't kind of wash the awesomeness off of it, and so it stays sticky and awesome and shiny and it looks great. Anyway, yeah, it is a really good way to cook. I mean, come on, it's the way to cook sticky rice, let's be honest.
Okay. I've wondered if there is some way to do it with brown rice for both the nutty flavor and the purported health benefits. My one experiment in this regard was a miserable failure. Mixing white glutinous rice and brown rice cooking similarly, i.e., soaking and then steaming. It didn't stick, and the brown rice never cooked through.
Do you see a way, thanks, John Stewart? Okay, first of all, uh first of all, if you haven't already tried this, uh, you need to go out, and this is a separate, it has nothing to do with what you just asked. But you need to go out and buy some black sticky rice or Thai black sticky rice or whatever the black glutinous rice. There's a number of different things they call it, but it's it's it's it's a long-grain sticky rice, so it's already unique there. And they don't mill the outside, so it's got and they and the brand layer is black.
And when you cook it, it kind of turns purple, and it's it doesn't stick together, but what's awesome about it is the inside of it has that gooey texture of sticky rice, and the outside still has some like snap from the hull on the outside. And it's typically used uh for sweet recipes, but I use it all the time, or I used to use it all the time, because I just think it's awesome. I love it. Also, if you cook it, uh overcook it, dehydrate it, it puffs and leaves kind of a black puff thing with a white thing coming out of the inside and puffs extremely well. So black sticky rice, if you haven't already tried it, uh you're gonna love it.
Everyone who tries it loves it. Um very few people I know use it for its traditional uh dessert, you know, applications. But like most people I know just like they just end up loving it. Uh I know I do. Okay.
Here's the thing. Uh my rice cooking has gone way downhill uh uh you know since the past ten years, basically, because about ten years ago I was given the most butt-kicking at the time. I think there's higher levels now, Zoji Rushi uh induction neuro fuzzy uh rice cooker. And that sucker is so awesome that it can cook fairly good sticky rice just by pushing a button and uh letting it go. Uh wait, one second.
So wait, wait, wait a second. John, I'm gonna I have a collar on the air, don't want to don't want to lose them. I'm gonna finish your question. So stay tuned for rice cooking and I think for a traditional steaming solution to your problem, after this caller caller, you're on the air. Uh hey Dave and uh Nastasha and Joe, this is Salmon Queens.
How are you? Doing all right. How's Queens doing? Uh Queens is great. Um I have questions about cocktail cherries.
And I know you're I know you're allergic to them, which is a tragedy, but uh hoping you could help me out. Okay. Uh so chiefly I'm concerned with uh storage and firmness. I've I've been doing cocktail cherries every year with sour cherries from the green market, and I use a recipe from the New York Times where I heat up Marisquino liqueur and add a splash of almond extract and pour it over the pitted cherries in the jars, and I put the jars in the fridge, and two weeks later they are delicious. Is that Toby's recipe, by the way?
What's that? Is that Toby's recipe? It very well may be. I don't remember. It's just in my files.
Um But my first question is I'm assuming that I need to store it in the fridge, but I've wondered if the sugar in the liqueur or the alcohol level, because it's about sixty sixty or sixty-four proof, if that inhibits mold formation or other nastiness. I mean, can I store it outside the fridge at uh at room temperature. Huh, what's the total weight? I mean total weight of cherries for weight of alcohol? Um gosh, it's probably it's probably I would say uh about a uh about a four to uh three or four to one ratio with cherries to alcohol.
But I basically just fill up uh I fill up a uh a pint jar of uh a pint mason jar with the cherries and then just uh cover them with the alcohol. I mean the question on yeast and mold is strictly comes down to the final proof of the product. You know what I mean? If you're if you're if your product is you know uh well above uh twenty twenty twenty-five percent then you're inhibiting acetobacter you're inhibit in inhibiting um you're inhibiting I think most yeasts I mean uh this is off the top of my head um I would think although uh I'm trying to think of what all there's a bunch of reactions going for like and they have how long do they stay firm when you leave them out? Why do you want to leave them out?
Does you don't have room in your fridge? Well but yeah I'd basically just to say yeah it's a safe fridge space. I mean I uh they keep more or less indefinitely in the fridge. I have some that are two or three years old that are that are still fantastic and no signs of mold or anything. Yeah well I'll tell you this.
They haven't killed me yet I'll tell you this uh my uh my stepfather's grandfather in about 1920 uh put um cherries in high proof uh brandy uh and they aren't stored in the fridge they're stored in um they're stored in the in the basement in in uh in my stepfather's father's basement so he's now ninety three ninety four uh they're in his basement and they're still good. Do they do they can those are those are the bottom vacuum sealed or anything? No, nope. Just in a bottle. Uh in a you know in a mason jar.
And then they uh they they pull them out and there's still three left. Uh I haven't had one since I was probably, you know, 13, 12, 13. It knocked me on my butt, but at the time it was still, you know, it was still good to go. Uh another thing you might want to do if you want to experiment with extremely firm uh fleshed ones uh is um hit them with a little uh novo shape. Uh soak them for a while in uh Novo shape and calcium uh pr just prior to the alcohol soak uh and see whether or not they because I haven't I haven't run the test because you know I can't eat them.
You clip the stems but leave the stems you you leave the stems in, and they say that that is what keeps them from going mushy. I don't know if that's true or false. I mean, and now people do that just so that they have the stem in the cocktail, but I don't know. What's your experience been with that? Are you a stem on person or stem off?
I'm usually a stem off person because I I just I just throw them in, I throw them in the bottom of a Manhattan and uh, you know, the the stems get in the way and I don't want people to choke on them. But yeah, that was my next question, it was actually going to be about the firmness, because you know the Luxardo brand cherries are really just kind of meaty, and you know, the mine, well they they taste great after two weeks in the in the in the liqueur, they get kind of flabby, and I was just wondering if there was some sort of additive, you know, I could use to preserve the texture. So it's you called it uh Novo Chem? Uh Novo Shape, which is an enzyme that's being sold by uh well you can it's you could buy it now at Modernist Pantry. I think they carry it now.
Uh you know, you could test it, but it requires extra calcium to work. And you could also just try adding calcium, and that's gonna firm it up too. But the calcium uh helps the pectins um uh crosslink. Uh and when the pectins cross link, uh then they uh the thing stays firmer, it doesn't break down. Novo shape is an enzyme that uh actively cross links um uh the the stuff in the presence of calcium, so it just accelerates that.
There are uh it's called uh pectin um was it pectamethylesterase is the enzyme and it uh it there are natural ones in the in the fruit that will continue to work but you can just you know jack it with that the one issue with it is that unlike uh the pectinase enzymes that we use to break down um fruit pulp I don't know how Novo shape responds to alcohol concentration so I know that I know that the Pectanx Ultra SPL pectinase that I use was uh works fine uh in liquor I don't know about Novo Shape you know it it would be nice to run some experiments uh maybe you know I can I've just been so strapped recently I haven't ha had the chance uh but the guys at Gusmer might even have like a protocol for it because I'm pretty sure they use stuff like that uh to do the cherries. And in in in absence of that any sort of added calcium is going to help you. Okay. I think I'll I think I'll uh as soon as the uh the very brief sour cherry season starts I'll uh give it a whack myself and uh I'll I'll put the results up on cocktailions. Thank you.
Super thank you. Appreciate it. Bye bye. Oh you didn't say it was that Sam. Hey Sam.
Okay. So uh John uh Stewart back on rice. So here's the daily. So the rice cooker, first of all, if you don't already own a Zoji Rushi or equivalent like super rice cooker they're they're just freaking they're just they're just awesome. But uh so what it does is uh it just controls the temperature very accurately use a pre-measured amount of water.
So unlike steaming where you keep steaming it until it absorbs enough water for it to be perfect, you have to pre-measure the amount of water and they have a line for sticky rice and whatnot. But the good news about these rice cookers is that they can cook mixed rices fairly effectively because they just wait for everything to absorb the proper amount and then they click out. For instance, I today cooked uh white rice, regular crappy white rice, on the brown rice setting of my rice cooker this morning for like an hour and a half, and it was a little more blown out than normal, but was pretty much fine. So you might be able to get away uh just using uh like the semi-brown setting uh or even maybe the sticky rice setting, but I would try the semi-brown maybe of one of those cookers with the mixed rice and get it. The other thing is is that you're never gonna get stickiness out of the brown rice, right?
So you need to have enough sticky rice to inh to have it stick together even though the brown the brown rice is always going to be inhibiting on your stickiness, it's always gonna be ruining, it's always gonna be like kind of you know, uh uh uh a fly in your stickiness ointment, so to say. Because uh, you know, it's not gonna provide that stickiness. But the actual accurate answer to do it your traditional way is uh is pretty simple, and here it is. Ready? Do your uh do your soak, do your soak adoke, whatever you're gonna do on the sticky rice.
I unfortunately don't have times because I didn't I didn't have any sticky rice, so I couldn't run a quick test. Um do your soak, then before you steam the sticky rice, boil the uh brown rice in copious water, right? Like it's pasta. Right? Now you're gonna want to boil it for anywhere between ten and probably twenty five minutes, depending on how much more steaming time it's gonna take in the with the sticky rice.
Okay. Then after you parboil the stuff, don't let it cool down. We're not doing a retrograded parboiling thing. Uh drain it like it's pasta. Stir mix it in with your sticky rice and steam as as usual.
Now the the the major variable here that's going to to change is how much you pre-boil the brown rice before you start steaming it. I can't say. I would start if if the brown rice the last time you did it was close to being done, I would boil it for maybe eight minutes, ten minutes, somewhere in there. They they the the hard thing is is that brown like rice is gonna cook a lot faster in copious boiling water because it can absorb water a lot faster than when you're doing typical absorption methods that don't have uh a lot of extra water around. You'll know like everyone knows when you cook beans and when you cook rice that the last little bit of uh cooking is the hardest part to get, right, Stas, when you're making like a and it's because there's not as much free water around to get back into your product.
So you know it might it might only take like five minutes of a pre-boil or eight or ten, I don't know. Uh and then mix it in and steam it. That should work. What do you think? Good.
Good. All right, she's like, I don't care. All right. Uh you want to go to our first commercial break? Yes.
Coming back with cooking issues, and I'm not sure what you're doing. This is Chris Young, co-author of Modernist Cuisine, and co-founder of Chef Steps.com. We've just launched our free short course on spherification, a modernist technique that can imbue a flavorful liquid with the appearance of being solid. A culinary illusion that's broken when the spheres burst with flavor as they're eaten. Our free course offers helpful step-by-step demonstrations of reverse, frozen reverse, and direct spherification.
We also explore the science behind spherification so that you can go beyond our recipes and create your own to surprise and delight your family and friends. And as always at Chef Steps, you get the support of a friendly community of experienced cooks and world-class chefs who will answer your questions. If you're interested in learning modernist cooking techniques, if you want more from the creative team behind modernist cuisine, and if like us, you're a fan of Dave Arnold and cooking issues, then we think you'll find a lot you'll like. Sign up now at Chefsteps.com. It's a good word, right?
Yeah, it's good. Nice. Nice. Go check out Chef Steps, our good friends. Uh yeah, those good people.
They're good people. Known them a long time. Good people. Okay, oh, by the way, uh, this weekend, uh, I went up to Riverside Drive. Uh, have some friends up there up in the hundred and fifties, you know.
You know, ever you ever been up there, Sas? Yeah. You ever you ever gone under the uh under the George Washington Bridge? There's a little red lighthouse? Yeah.
When I was a kid, I used to go there, but as a kid I didn't I didn't know any better. Uh so I went there, and the entire Riverside Park over there is nothing but okay. There are other plants. There's a lot of oaks and stuff like that. But the three things that struck me were so many mulberry trees, all completely in season right now, so many different kinds of shad slash service berry trees, all almost pretty much in season right now.
And eight boatloads of poison ivy. Like so much poison ivy, like so much poison ivy. But the good news is that the mulberry trees and uh the service berries are not in the poison ivy. So you don't need to ruin yourself to get these things. But the really sad part about it is that I when I was there, I saw no one, no one gathering uh the mulberries or the service berries.
And uh I, you know, you know, me and uh and my crew, we picked uh a couple of quarts of mulberries, uh, you know, the the red ones, and made a delicious pie. I made I cooked myself a pie on on Father's Day with mulberry pie, but delicious. And then I know I started noticing there's so many mulberry trees around uh New York. And so I've now started sampling them, uh, and it turns out they're incredibly variable in quality. Like astoundingly variable in quality.
Like some are almost inedible, they're crap. And some of them are amazing with you know, the the thing that the thing that makes a really great mulberry is a no kind of like not too musky, off-flavored, uh, although I like a little bit of musky mulberry flavor in there. Uh, but enough sweetness and also enough acidity. A lot of like when the mulberries are very ripe, they kind of lack acidity and they're kind of a little flabby and flat. So you have to taste all your mulberry trees around you, and now is the time if you live in New York, we're at the upper bounds of uh of them and taste them.
So the interesting is that uh over there there's uh here in the United States, our native mulberry is the red mulberry, Morris rubra, right? Which is can be very delicious. But the problem is that they imported these white mulberries, Morris Alba, which uh uh which the the good news about them is that uh that's what the silkworms eat when they're doing the silkworm stuff. Um but uh silkworm, as as you can tell if you've been to the United States, we don't have a giant silk production here. So that whole silkworm thing didn't take off.
But these uh these freaking white mulberry trees, now I like a white mulberry styles. They're like a little more vegetable, like they're all right. I mean, like they're no kind of they're no they're no Morris uh rubra, you know what I'm saying? Uh uh but uh the problem is is these these white mulberry freaking things uh hybridize like lunatics. They're just like they hybridize with our with our native mulberry trees, and they produce all of these like weird crosses, some of which are delicious and some of which are bad.
Uh and so you just have to go and and and also even within just straight up uh you know, red mulberries or white mulberries, the tastes are incredibly different. And then some fool has developed fruitless mulberry trees, which is like I can't even I can't even describe I can't you there are no polite terms to describe kind of what I think because oh the mulberry tree is so messy, crap on you. For like the two, three weeks a year that the mulberries are coming off the tree, it's like it's like the most often first of all, mulberry they're they're beautiful trees, so I can see why you would want one, but if you don't want the fruit, just don't park your car under it. You know what I'm saying? Jerks.
Jerks. Oh yeah, 18th year anniversary. Good. I had some leftover pie on that uh last night. What did I cook?
I cooked, I I what did I cook? I cook crab salad. My wife likes crab salads like that's one of our big like and she loves uh pineapple crab salads. I made her pineapple crab salad and some salmon. But uh Dave, did you know there used to be a mulberry tree on this very block?
Did you eat did you partake of it? I used to all of the time until they built the uh they built a parking lot for the for uh at the end, right next to Roberta's. And this would, you know, I just walk by and you could just, you know, pull down a branch, pull some berries off, and uh be on your way. Sons of bitches, when did they knock it down? It was probably two or three years ago at this point.
But when I first moved in around here and and it was a sad day when I noticed it was gone. That sucks. Yeah. Bummer. That sucks.
Uh so you know, when you're gonna cap when you're gonna get mulberries, just like don't wear clothes that uh stain, because the suckers are super fragile and they're gonna break all yeah, your hands, right? Even if you just get a couple, they're gonna stain the hell out of your hands. You're gonna look like uh like a vampire too, like you have blood all over yourself. Oh, I know. Dax, when he was eating all my his whole face was all uh coated and sprayed and mulberry juice.
But hey, it's worth it. You know what I mean? Uh so you know, there's a couple on uh up near we we had some yesterday, Stas right near uh Casimono where we went for lunch. Yeah, they that they were really good. The ones by my uh by the parking lot near my house, real spitters.
Real spitters. But I wish we still had the one from Roberta. It wasn't it wasn't a Roberta's person who knocked it down, was it? I don't think so. I think it's for the there's a parking lot for the Wonton factory that's also down the street.
I think it's uh has to do with that. Yeah. I can't imagine that the uh Robert's people would knock down the mulberries. No, that'd be crazy. That would be absolutely antithetical.
Yeah, because they could they could just be making pies left and right. Yeah, exactly. Oh my god. Very local. You know what the thing is, like I'm not like a like a local forager by any means compared to people who actually are local foragers, but I mean that stuff is delicious and it's right there.
It's so depressing to not see people eating it. Yeah, free food, free berries. Free food, right. I mean, you know, like if you like if you live see see the problem is that people aren't used to branching out of their normal what they what they eat, you know. So like that a tree pun?
Oh, wow. Yeah, I didn't know. So like when I used to go to Arizona all the time, because my in-laws lived in Arizona. There's all this free, free citrus on the street, and no one eats it because it's sour, but it makes great lemonade. They're basically still or marmalade, and yet they're sitting there rotting because no one wants the free fruit.
But if Baldar was gonna sell you that fruit at, you know, X, you know, for whatever, then you'd be like, oh, that's great. People are dumb. Not you guys. Not listeners. People.
Okay. Tom Fisher on a Kun Recon follow-up. It's probably a little strong before. I didn't mean dumb. I just meant they should break out.
Don't worry. Our listeners love you. Whatever. Okay. Tom Fisher followed up with his Coon Recon remember.
If you remember, Tom was having some trouble with uh some leaking of steam around the valve on his Kun Recon pressure cooker. Uh and I had a couple other people write in saying that they had had uh similar problems, that maybe there was a QC issue for a while, because mine never did that. Uh you know, mine never did that. Anyway, so uh Kunricon wrote him back. Uh, and here's what uh Jill Stroop from Coon Recon did.
Uh thank you. This is to uh to Tom. Thank you for providing uh the additional information about where it was leaking and whatnot. It is normal to have a slight hissing coming from your valve as long as it is coming up to pressure and not leaking any water from the valve, your pressure cooker will work as it should. Please let me know if you have any additional questions regarding Jill Stroop.
So they're not owning it. Not owning it. Not owning it. I'm sorry about that, Tom. Uh, you know, a little bit of steam.
Now remember, when we talk about steam coming out of the pressure cooker and the flavor loss in a pressure cooker because of the steam coming out, you gotta the ones that actually vent steam vent a lot of steam. They're like or shh the whole time, and you can see steam coming out. And I think that you know, small amounts of steam coming out probably won't have as much effect, but that's probably uh of little solace to you. Okay. Uh William McGee writes in uh we named an episode after him when he became a member.
Yeah. Uh about dehydrators and vacuum machines. I'll do I'll do it in reverse. I'll do man, I'll do it. I recently bought an Excalibur Five Trade Dehydrator and been using it like crazy.
Good call. Excalibur is a good dehydrator. Uh dehydrating things like do you s do you like when people say herbs instead of herbs? Or do you hate that stuff? I don't like herb.
You don't like herb? No. No offense to anyone out there named herb. No dude is named herb. Herb is okay.
That herb's okay, but not herb that you eat. Okay, so herb the guy. He's okay. He's okay. All right.
Uh tomatoes and bananas. The bananas taste great, but the texture is leathery and it's chewy. I've read that store-bought banana chips are either freeze-dried or fried. Any way to make them crispy without frying? Yeah, freeze dry.
No kidding. Anyway. My other uh let's do that first. Okay, here's the problem. Uh whenever you're drying something uh in a normal dehydrator, as it as it dehydrates, the uh the cells are gonna collapse down, and there's really almost nothing you can do about it unless you can either preserve the structure, which is done in freeze drying, uh, by freezing and then sublimating the the liquid out of it, or uh frying where the uh water is boiling out of it at at a kind of a ferocious rate and keeping the structure expanded until it's dry enough to hold its own weight afterwards.
So really like that that's the problem. There is you know, there are very few things you can do at at home to mimic that. You can, for instance, par dehydrate bananas and then explosively puff them in the Museum of Food and Drinks puffing gun. There are a bunch of uh people who have dried uh fruits and vegetables using explosive puffing techniques. It's a little bit outside the range of what you can do uh at home.
Uh another thing that's outside of the range of what you could do at home that does a similar thing is microwave vacuum dehydration. Now, uh please do not tamper with your microwave in any way. Uh it can be very, very dangerous. That said, I've done it, and I had very miserable results when I was trying to do vacuum microwave dehydration, which shows that even if you have uh, you know, a you know, fair amount of uh uh willingness to mess around with the technical aspects of things, it's not exactly uh simple to do. I'll tell you what the main problem with microwave uh vacuum dehydration is.
Uh and the principle there is that you uh put a vacuum on your product and then you put a microwave to boil the water out, but because it's under a vacuum, it doesn't boil at very high temperature so that the products don't get uh cooked and the sugars don't caramelize and it keeps its uh it's you know it it works nicely. Uh now the problem is is that if you even slightly overheat a portion of the thing with the microwave and it's under a vacuum, uh you uh can sort of carbonize the outside. Once it goes black, you get huge plasma arcs coming out of it. And so you it forms almost like a giant light bulb on the inside of your microwave and we get some awful burning, terrible smells, and not to mention the fact that you've you know uh you know you modified your microwave and you know had to hook a vacuum machine up to it. It's just a just a just a nightmare, just a real nightmare, right?
So I'd say I'd say I have no good solution for you there. Right? Yeah, sorry. Uh now the other question I have an opportunity to buy a used Vacmaster VP 215, the one with the oil based pump for a good price. What are the things that need to check out to make sure it's in good working condition?
The unit's about a year old and was primarily used in a home. As always, keep up the awesome work, William McGee. Here's what you need to do. Uh, first of all, check to make sure it seals bags. If the Teflon seal uh bar across it, if the seal bar is kind of burnt, that's not such a big deal because you have to replace the Teflon tape that goes over the seal bar on a relatively regular basis anyway.
Um open the machine, run it for uh like five, ten minutes to heat up the pump and to boil out any uh contaminants that are in the oil, then stick a container of ice water uh into it, close it, and run it. If you can eventually, and when I say eventually, after like you know, several minutes, boil the ice water, then your uh then your pump's probably in pretty good shape. It can boil it off, and then you know you're doing well. Uh if it can't boil that, see if it can boil uh like cold tap water. If it can boil cold tap water, also probably doing okay.
Make sure the gauges work properly. Um other than that, right? I mean, that's those those are the things I would check right off the bat. I mean, it should sound smooth, uh, it shouldn't sound like it has any any problems. Uh other than that, that's those are the main things to check.
Also, make sure that the vacuum setting knob that allows you to change how what the preset vacuum is, make sure that it works properly, because a lot of times the vacuum gauge can go on it. Uh and by the way, when you're running those tests, you want it at maximum vacuum so you can see what it can do when it's trying to pull all the way down. Uh, you make sure that it can actually that that thing works. A lot of times that goes. Not that that's a big deal.
Uh, but check those out and see what's going on. Right? Yep. Okay. Uh we got this one in from Scott at in Guelph.
But although we don't know whether he's at the University of Guelph or not. Okay. We don't know yet. We don't know. Maybe he'll tell us a day.
Hey, hammer. Uh, he wrote two different things, so I'm combining them. Hey, hammer and the nails, Jack, Joe, and whoever the heck is working today. Uh, that would make me the nails. Which which I guess sounds like it's cool, except for I'm getting hit over the head with a hammer.
Anyway. I've been inadvertently reading a lot lately about coffee. I love espresso as well as a balanced American-style cup of coffee. Uh, and then he says, Stop burning your beans, Starbucks. You're in.
I agree, yeah. Yes. Well, yeah. I love Stas. Now she perks up when someone throws a similar hate down.
Yeah. Well, we all know that uh Nastasha prefers coffee that she gets on the corner out of the person who like lives in that metal box. Um no offense to the guy in the metal box. Yeah. But I know.
I just don't think he's sourcing you know the highest quality beans or really cares about them that much. No. I mean, if the quality, if the quality of the coffee mimics the quality of the buttered Kaiser roll, then you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Kaiser rolls are so awesome though. Back, you know, like for I haven't eaten one in many years. I love Kaiserle. You like Kaiserroll?
Mm-hmm. Little swirly shape? With the poppies, right? You don't like a plain Kaiser roll, right? Yeah, okay, good.
Finally we can agree on something. All right. Uh I got a chance. Oh, sorry. There are a lot of people out there doing a lot of techniques and experimenting with different variables.
I got a chance to try cat crap coffee a couple years ago, and I really like the richness and strength of the coffee without the bitterness or harshness. Uh what he's referring to here, of course, is Copi Luwak. And it's not actually a cat, it's uh it's called a civet cat, it's a civet, it's just little creature. It's also the same creature that they uh that they uh in kind of keep in cages in uh North Africa, I think it's in North Africa, and get musk from that civet mutt that perfume thing, and uh people are up in arms. I don't really know whether it's good or bad for the animals or if it's painful.
I've known nothing about it. But uh what happens uh over in Copi Louac uh land, uh, you know, in the Pacific, there is uh these civic cats run around, eat the choicest, ripest uh coffee cherries, which by the way don't taste good. I've had coffee cherries, they don't taste anything like a cherry, so I thought I was gonna go through it. No, no, no, no. Don't do it I mean, not terrible, but like like a papery husk with like a little bit of mucilage.
Eh, whatever. So they eat the choicest, ripest ones. And the great thing about these uh civic cat things is they they they always go to the same place and they crap in the same place and they crap out a load of beans, and you know they do it pretty quick because you know they're hyped up caffeinated because there's caffeine in those uh beans as well. And I'm sure that the fruit does a similar thing to you that the that the brew does, and so I'm sure that the civic cats are like running over there to crap out their little pile of beans, and uh you the they've been uh kind of de-hulled at that point, and their intestinal system, which is somewhat short, uh does some work on the outside of it and supposedly makes these beans awesome, right? So that's the theory of the cat crab coffee.
Cat crab coffee sounds like uh cat scratch fever, like the Nugent that's Ted Nugent, right? I think it's right, Joe? That's Ted Nugent, right? Cascatch Fever? Definitely.
Yeah, okay. Uh anyway. Uh so here's my rundown to try and recreate the cat crab with non excreted coffee beans. First of all, uh, and this is just Scott like letting letting you listeners know his technique, which I've never tried before, so maybe we'll try it. Maybe one of you guys will try it.
Here's my rundown to create this with non excreted beans. First of all, you need a funnel and a coffee filter. The key is to hydrate the grounds first. You boil a kettle of water and then pour the freshly boiled water on the grounds a little bit. Uh like the ISI method uh you developed that I developed for infusion.
Uh, this allows the liquid to get intimate with the grounds and start the process of dissolving all the coffee goodness. After about five minutes, uh the kettle is cooled to the ideal temperature for coffee extraction. Slowly put slowly pour the water over the grounds, keeping the ground swirling around for a maximum extraction rate. I use three tablespoons of coffee for a regular 12 ounce coffee cup. The whole extraction takes between 30 seconds and one minute.
This is enough to get all the richness and flavor out of the coffee, but not long enough to get the acidity in the tannins. The result is a very rich brew without the harshness. It even tastes good when it has gone cold. I know you love the espresso, but this is a brew that is impressive, even if it lacks a slap in the face beauty of espresso. So uh someone give that a try.
See whether you like it. Interesting. I haven't tried I have not tried that. I do not know. I have not tried it.
Now, on the topic of sugar, I've been teaching my hospitality students. Hospitality. Uh I've teaching my hospitality students how to make hard candy stained glass sculptures. We've been assembling the structures with hot glue or molten sugar. Uh although, you know, isomalt is much easier as you know, because you're about to talk to me about my isomol.
Because isomalt is non-hygroscopic, so it doesn't suck up uh uh, you know, it doesn't suck up moisture from the atmosphere as readily as sugar does, and it also uh doesn't brown as much when you boil it, and you can re- you can when you heat it and you can reheat it and re-melt a couple times without getting all brown and breaking down the way sucrose does. Anyway, it occurred to me that a hot glue gun might be loaded with sugar to melt it without caramelizing it. We use a mix of granulated sugar and straight vinegar brought up to 310. The straight uh vinegar there, for those of you that don't do sugar work, is there to um invert a portion of the sugar uh because the acid at high temperature hydrolyzer sugar breaks the sucrose into fructose and glute glucose, that's invert, and the invert is there to prevent recrystallization of the sugar as it cools. You gotta get the amount right, otherwise it otherwise it it's too soft.
Anyway, whatever. Uh and straight uh vinegar brought to 310 to get crystal clear sugar glass without recrystallization. Since you have experience with 3D printing food, I was wondering if you had any thoughts about 3D printing sugar rather than chocolate or masa paste. Can you imagine chowing down on a Nastasha-shaped jawbreaker? Or or just breaking it.
Just breaking it. Uh so uh here's the thing. There are there's a uh a I think it's uh I forget the name of the website, uh, because I forgot to look it up. But Evil Mad Scientist, I think, or the rep rap guys, and they uh did a extruded sugar, and so what they extruded sugar, I believe, either into more sugar or into cornstarch and made a giant wood screw out of uh sugar. So, yes, sugar, molten sugar has been 3D printed for a long time, and there are tons of uh pastry arts people out there who load isomalt sticks.
They don't use sugar sticks, they use isomalt sticks uh into hot glue guns uh and then use the isomalt sticks as hot glue. Uh there's in fact a company called I think get sassy, sassy shot is the name of their uh thing that sells some a tailor-made item for this. I would use the low temperature uh glue guns and realize that uh you will probably burn yourself. Let me say this again you're gonna burn yourself, uh, and then as a secondary thing, you might want to know that you're gonna burn yourself. Also, the auto feed things don't work, so you're gonna have to use a chopstick or a stick to push the isomalt through the uh glue gun.
Duh, do not use one that was already used on glue. Get a fresh one, and also I believe use the low temperature, the low wattage ones because I've heard that the other ones, the sugar just melts out into nothingness and sprays all over and does what stuff? Burns. Yeah, burns you. Um anyway, so yes, that's possible.
Um now, um second. I just wondering, Dave, there's a whole bunch of info on sucrose syrup water concentrations versus boiling temperature. Do you have any info on boiling other sugars or sugar alcohols? What is the temperature versus concentration uh curve for fructose or dextrose or xylitol? Do any of the sugars have interesting properties other than isomalt?
Scott, well, uh yeah, the book you want to look at that has a lot of those charts is uh alternative sweeteners, edited by Lynn O'Brien uh neighbor. Uh and uh it's a lot of it's available on uh Google Books or and on Amazon to sift through, including some of the charts for things uh like isomalt and xylitol to get their um their sugar versus concentration curves, uh temperature versus concentration curves and and how soluble they are, in other words, how high a solids you can get out of it. Um and other properties, obviously uh xylitol is cooling. Uh I'm I've been interested in a while, although I haven't played with it with isomulchulose, which is a uh sucrose derivative. And uh the cool thing about that is it's it's about 50% as sweet as sugar.
It is caloric, meaning you you you actually process it in your gut, which means it doesn't set your butt on spray if you eat too much of it, which I've never actually had with isomalt. People say if you eat too much isomalt, it causes it it causes uh multiple trips to the bathroom. Let's put it that way. Uh but um apparently um isomaltulose does not uh and it's absorbed slower, which I guess some people think is good, but I do not I also think what's interesting is I don't believe it is extremely fermentable by yeasts. In other words, you might be able to use it to back sweeten beers uh after fermentation and then not have them get further fermented by the yeast, although I'm not sure.
I haven't checked up uh very much, so I'm not sure. But look into that. Okay. Uh very quickly, Mike writes in about bones. Hey, it's grilling season, so I have a question.
Many people write about how cooking meat on the bones leads to a more flavorful finished product. Is there any reason to believe this? Uh I get that bones are inherently flavorful, which is why we use them for making stock, but I don't see how a bone can transfer flavor in a grilling environment. Thanks, Mike. I agree with you.
I don't think it does. What happens with a bone, uh, I mean, when you're using it in stock, you're using it for gelatin extraction and for the meat that's stuck to it. Uh but when you're doing it in a um when you're doing a grilling environment, really it's there as a heat uh you know it modulates the heat so that you don't uh overcook it. Some people like gnawing on the bones, and so there's that, but uh I don't really think it's adding uh much uh flavor uh to it. Right?
Matt? What do you think, Stuz? Right. Yeah? All right.
Uh okay, so it looks again. Do we have any time? Are we are we I think we're good. Well, you can go on a quick quick nothing's ever quick. I know.
Nothing's ever quick. All right, I was gonna go on to a quick rant about uh Clostridium uh perfyngens and Rachel Dutton, the mic uh the microbiologist from uh Harvard, and Harold McGee, who sent me the greatest scientific paper I have ever read about salt risen bread and uh clostridium in the salt risen bread, and about this awesome uh cassava product from uh you know from Cameroon uh and Africa that I've eaten and how they all link together and how this links in with gas gr uh gangrene and uh wound uh victims in World War One, but I guess there's no time. Cooking issues. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org.
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