Today's program has been brought to you by Underground Meats, an American producer of handcrafted salami and cured meats in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, visit shop.undergroundfoodcollective.org or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Kicking Issues coming to you live from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday from roughly 12 to 1245. Joined today by Nastasha the Hammer Lopez with Jack Joe and Eddie in the engineering booth. How are you guys doing? Hey, you you're pretty revved up today, huh? Well, it's so freaking hot out that, like, I don't know, my body now that it's cool in the air conditioning here, has all this extra energy it was using to cool itself.
I don't know. I don't know. I made that up. Interesting. Calling your questions to 7184972128.
That's 7184972128. We hope to be joined soon, correct, Nastasha? With uh, you know, one of our favorite all-time people, Harold McGee, great master blaster of uh science as it relates to uh making things delicious. He is actually en route now from his hotel in Manhattan to the Heritage Radio Network Studios here in Brooklyn. So we'll see how long that takes.
It's actually a really crappy time to travel from Manhattan because they're always working on the freaking bridge. Everyone takes the bridge and they're always working on it. You guys notice that? He's taking a subway. Subway.
What's that? The traffic sucks from here to from Manhattan to here uh around noontime. Sucks. I think he's making a joke because he never goes. Oh.
Oh, I get it. Uh thanks, Mr. I don't understand people who don't go to Manhattan. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, we're traveling out here in the in greater greater Brooklyn.
Um anyway, so should we hit some questions before uh he shows up? Sure. Anything cool happening, Nastasha? No. Nothing?
Finally hit some questions. All right. I have uh I have one little message. I was at Bonaroo with Heritage Radio and Roberta's, and it was all crazy and everything. And we got a little message from a friend that I'm gonna play.
Yo, yo, Jeremiah Bullfrog here at Bonaroo. Hanging out with Heritage Radio. Y'all know the deal. I love myself, St. Jeremiah Bullfrog.
He's the he's the uh the king of the Miami food trucks, if I'm not mistaken. Gastropod. Gastropod. He's a good man, good man. Uh met him a number of years ago back when I used to teach at the French Culinary Institute.
Back when it was called the French Culinary Institute, before it became the International Culinary Center, right, Nastasha? Right. Yeah. Uh okay. Have uh first of all, a shout out to Jack and some information about the museum from Kate.
Hello, everyone. I have two questions, if you don't mind, but uh first I'd like to apologize because I'm still catching up on the backlog of cooking issues. So I apologize if you've covered these topics already. Please do not feel obliged to listen to our back catalog, right, Stas? Right.
Uh I realize oh wait, uh she says, uh I realize this website for MoFad, that's the Museum of Food and Drink, uh, is updated and looking good. Uh I'll check the website once in a while and hope that more is developed. I would be so excited if it happened, as I live in Brooklyn, love cooking and museums. I do work in the nonprofit sector, so I understand that it takes a tremendous amount of work to get them going. I am down to help in any way possible.
I sent an email to them with an offer to volunteer if needed, whatever it takes to get those doors open. I enjoyed the Southern Food and Beverage Museum uh so much when it was in New Orleans and was when I was in New Orleans, it's about time New York has a spot of their own. I'm sure working alongside the New York Historical Society could be fun too, as they recently had a beer exhibit. Well, good news. Uh two good news is one, Kate, we are going to have a Kickstarter launching Wednesdays?
Uh Saturday, June 20th century. Saturday? Uh Kickstarter for the Museum of Food and Drinks. So there's gonna be a lot happening and a lot uh to uh look at and a lot to look for. So please, everyone, look out.
We're going to put it on Twitter blast, but the Museum of Food and Drink Kickstarter on the Puffing Gun is going to be up within a week, I'm told by Nastash, and she knows all these sorts of things. And the second piece of good news I have for you is that Harold McGee is now in the studio. Is this the first time you've been on the show live? By phone. By phone, yeah.
By phone. In person, isn't it? In person, first time. So listen, Trumpsuckers. This is your chance to call in personal questions to Harold McGee at 718-497-2128.
That's 718497-2128. And congratulations to all you recent graduates out there. Okay. And uh and Jack, you might be interested in this before before we start up. Uh Kate also said, I just listened to the Cooking Issues episode that was recorded right after Valentine's Day.
And I can't help myself but let Jack know that I would have inquired about a potential Valentine's date. He sounds sweet, funny, and interesting. I'm flattered. Yeah? I'm also taken now, though.
Oh man, Kate, you're too late. Yeah. Too late. Well, you never know, Jack. This might mean I don't do I know your new girlfriend?
Uh no, you don't. So it's so if I can say this, you should maybe it'll be over. Maybe there's room for Kate. Maybe it won't last. I don't know.
We'll see. I don't know. I'm getting the I can't believe he's saying this shaking head look from uh Nastasha. So Harold, how are you doing? I'm doing well, except for having taken the red eye and and uh had problems with a hotel, but otherwise.
Oh what kind of what kind of problems? Uh went to one place in a reservation, went to the second place in a reservation. Damn. So up in the air. And uh by the way, he is coming here directly off of the red eyes.
So this is probably the only chance that you have. I've never like he's never been tripped up, and he's never gotten angry at anyone. So here is your here's your chance to maybe try either, because we we have with us a tired Harold McGee. Uh but thanks so much. Thanks so much uh for coming on the show.
So so uh I have some questions. Uh here's one that you might want to weigh in. Uh Barry Muncasey writes in please ad uh please address factors that contribute to food aroma. Now that's very broad, so I'm not gonna ask you to do that. Because uh, you know, that's like a topic of a whole book that you're probably working on now.
Uh but uh E.G., how can the aroma of almond chicken soup be enhanced and fill the room? And you've done some work with this in classes with just simply with fans, right? Uh yeah. Um well a bunch of different ways. Uh that's certainly one of them.
Heating the soup up so that it's um uh giving off as much vapor as possible. And it turns out that uh if you have room to do it, uh if if the soup could use a little salt, salt will actually help drive aroma out of a food and into the air because it makes the the food more polar, more uh electrically charged, and aromas don't like that, so they they get out into the air where they're more comfortable. Now, is that effect uh reach a certain saturation point, or can you take a small portion of the soup, put it in a wide vessel? Presumably you want the soup in a very wide vessel so you have maximum surface area. So I mean, could you could you punch that up and take a bit of it, put it in a super wide vessel and just salt the pejesus out of it?
I've never tried that experiment. Worth trying. Yeah, I mean if you have some extra soup lying about, you know, sacrifice a couple ladles full in a frying pan with some salt and see whether or not you can really amp up the uh well and frying pan, I mean, why not fry it? I mean, put put the heat on and and boil it. That'll get it into the air even faster than just kind of letting it evaporate.
I guess that's true, huh? I hadn't thought about that. But you might get bonding of stuff with the oil, right? No? No, I guess you maybe, I don't know.
Well, I I don't mean fry fry, I just mean boil. Boil, yeah, yeah. Boil bo boil hard, use a fan, maximize surface area, right? It's all about volatility with that stuff. Yeah.
The aroma is fairly simple. I mean it's very, very complicated in how it's integrated, but fairly simple in that it's crap that goes up into the air. Yeah, that's right. That's right. And into your nose.
Yeah, and it's to be in the in the air first. Right. And then you know, if you want to cheat, I mean, people have done things like put things in vaporizers and actually volatilize them, or you could um uh use uh ultrasonic humidifiers actually don't boil things, they create uh tiny kind of mist droplets that can carry heavier molecules with them, so you could use an ultrasonic humidifier. But on chicken almond soup, I think that's gonna be kind of a nightmare. It needs to be water thin for that to work.
Um another thing you can do, not fill a room, but uh the Japanese are very fond when they have their soups of covering their soups with a bowl on the way to the table uh with uh an inverted like a smaller bowl, and it has the effect of concentrating the head space directly above the soup. So then the person grabs the uh the lid, lifts it, and the soup wafts up into their uh nose and they get the uh the full aroma of it. And that's how the Japanese get away with having relatively underflavored broths. Boom! Boom!
Uh but the uh it's a little you know, a little little dig at the Japanese broth there. But the uh but right or no? Yeah, yeah. And and you don't get uh if you can smell it coming, then your nose is already beginning to get adapted to it, right? It's it knows what's coming, it's it's gonna say, okay, yeah, that's that's chicken almond soup.
But if you present it with no fanfare, you just open it up and there it is powerfully, it's a much more uh intense experience. An excellent point that I hadn't thought of, and the reason why we should have Harold McGee here all the time. All the time. Uh yeah, in fact, you know, it's interesting point. Uh modern cooking, when I say modern, modern American home cooking is uh all about kind of integrating the kitchen with uh with the dining experience.
And part of that is because people who wouldn't ordinarily 80 or 100 years ago be cooking, you know, people who are actually kind of running the house now, take pride in in in what they're cooking. So they want to be integrated in with their guests and have it, and so it's become part of this, you know, aroma of the kitchen is considered a positive thing. Whereas uh, you know, a hundred years ago, it would be you'd be horrified to smell what was going on in the kitchen in your house. It would be horrif horrific, a sign of you know poverty and disgust. You know what I mean?
Uh and although I definitely fall in the more modern camp, it is interesting to the idea that maybe you could have in certain circumstances a much more powerful presentation if they didn't smell it until the moment they were gonna cook. Yeah, eat rather. Yeah. Ren? Yeah.
So so maybe you want one kind of uh wafty, welcoming aroma. Uh, but that should be not something that you're actually gonna serve at the dinner. Best of both worlds. Yeah. Uh okay.
Uh Joel writes in, by the way, Joel, if you're listening, this is Joel of the uh of the heavy of the you know metal version of cooking issues, writes in uh with a rib problem, your idol Harold McGee is here. Did you ever hear his song he sang to you? No. We'll play it for you later. Uh you know, I'm sure Jack ha has it here in the archives.
Uh Joel here, a cooking Issues Personal Performance Artist. Uh, still wicked excited to hear my song being used and pumping up the heritage Radio airwaves, and still waiting to hear more about the Sears all attachment progress. The deal with it is we're just trying to figure out uh like my partners are a little worried about safety and people burning themselves is really the main issue. So we're that's what we're dealing with, right, Stas? Yes.
Yeah. Uh okay. Um I would be more than happy to be a tester and would like to report back my findings. On to my question regarding low temperature short ribs, boneless, but first here are the specifics. Forty pounds of ribs at 57 degrees Celsius, which is roughly 135 Fahrenheit for you, Fahrenheit heads out there.
I cooked them for 60 hours, uh, and the bag contents were seared, unsalted meat, reduced red wine, raw miropoix, herbs, reduced chicken stock, uh cold in the walk in for a few days. All items bagged at room temperature and vacuum sealed and placed into two separate preheated bass and covered for 60 hours and left to run for the weekend unattended. Uh results. Uh one bath of bags came out great. No sign of bacterial growth or off smell.
I ate about six ounces and I'm feeling fine, as you should, because it's safe. Um I'm also re-searing and bringing them up to temp uh the good portion of the meat. All the bags from the second bath were puffed to near explosion. I opened one bag and it smelled like death and gym socks. It's a good combo.
Uh, pretty close to what my grease trap smells like. Besides the few hundred dollars worth of meat I threw away, the only thing I can take away from this is to turn into a learning experience for myself and my team. So I need help finding out what happened. I know it's hard to figure out if both bass were at a concert temperature since I left them unattended, but both bags were plugged into the same outlet and running when I returned. Although that's no sign of anything because they can turn off and they can turn back on again, like a plug can get unkicked.
Uh by the way, in the future, never plug two circulators into the same outlet. It's possible that they'll continue running, and then it's also quite possible that you'll blow a circuit. Like, very possible you blow a circuit because uh even a 20 amp circuit, like I mean, they're not running for the same, they're not running full bore all the time, but you I've more than I've on more than three occasions seen people do that and have circuits blow. Uh, even even on a 20. You just never know, so don't do it.
Um, but both bags were plugged into the same outlet and running one hour turn. Here's my thinking. Chicken stock. It's possibly too much age on it being the culprit. Do not think that was the culprit.
Uh I kept my vap vac bags very close to my baking area in my kitchen where I use natural starters. This may have caused a reaction from uh reason for microbes to find their way into the bag. I do not think so. Uh one circulator maybe off calibration. This is possible.
You should calibrate your circuit uh circulators with ice waters. The very first batch of the new style of circulators had an issue where it was very easy to set the temperature offset incorrectly and have problems. Uh so it could be a possibility, but it's fairly unlikely because I think I know what happened. Uh red wine causing some pickling or fermentation, not the culprit. Uh cross-contamination, also not the culprit.
Uh I've heard that blanching the bags at a much higher temperature is a good safety step. I'll try that next time. Help me, help me, please. Love Joel. Uh, you have a couple of problems.
One, you put raw miropoix in the bag. Raw miropoi has a lot of air in it, and so unless you suck for a super long amount of time, there was probably a lot of residual air left in the miraclo. As you started cooking, it started heating, the air migrated out of the miracro, creating uh an uh air gap gap in your bag. You probably had a further complication that the bags were very tightly packed together. That's a lot of meat to be putting into two circulators at the same time, right?
So if they're packed tightly together and then you get any air, you have two major insulating effects in your bag. As the air puffs up, you're also taking up more space, and it's more difficult for the water to get into the center of the bags. As that happens, if your bags don't get up to bacteria-killing temperature within a couple of hours, you're gonna get lactic acid bacteria growing in the bag. The lactic acid bacteria is gonna create some awful disgusting funky smells and cause the bag to blow and puff, right? Uh and then subsequent cooking will actually probably kill those bacteria over a long period of time because they probably won't survive at those high temperatures.
However, it's too late. The meat's already ruined and the bag's already puffed. So you have a couple of things you can do. We have a phone? Oh, we have Patrick.
Patrick's going crazy with the I Got the Call. Patrick, come on in here, you crazy, crazy. Harold McGee? Here's Patrick. Our founder.
I feel like a com I feel dull-witted in this room right now. Wow. Three of you guys. Wow. Have a seat.
So uh there's another mic, Patrick. Why do you sit over here? Climb over. I won't clean, but did I interrupt the show? Poquito, poquito.
Okay, so here we go. Uh so uh you can dip them in very hot water, like 85 C simmering water to kill the bacteria on the outside. You can start the cooking in a combi oven and then throw them in to finish. Uh and just don't overcrowd them in general. If you cook the mirapoi, the uh the air cells will get ruptured as the vegetables shrink down, and you also get less puffing from the air, and you can suck a hard vacuum.
Don't be afraid, by the way, to salt your ribs before you put them in the bag because they're being cooked for a long time and you don't want a fresh steak texture on them anyhow. And also over reduce your stock, right? Yeah. Yeah. All right, you want to take should we take a quick break so we can come back with maximum Harold McGee?
Sure. Quick break. And today's break song is The Hustle by Alan Wilkes, and you are listening to Cooking Issues on Heritage Radio Network.org. Underground Meats is an American producer of handcrafted salami and cured meats in Madison, Wisconsin. They use small farms from southwest Wisconsin to source their meat.
The animals are raised on pasture for their entire lives by farmers who care about animal welfare. While Underground Meats uses European traditions, they also use ingredients from the upper Midwest to try to create new types of salamis, experimenting with both ingredients and techniques. The salamis are made using heritage breeds, mostly red wattles, tam warts, berkshires, and mule foots. Try their award-winning cured pork shoulder and goat salami. To learn more and purchase products, visit Shop.underground Food Collective.org.
Or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. And we're back with Cooking Issues Calling your questions too 7184972128. That's 7184972128. So Harold and I were talking about one of your questions, and so we might as well talk about it on the air. Paul writes in on honey and fruit.
Hey, Cooking Issues Crew, just sending you a link about using honey water to stop fruit from browning. I thought it was an interesting alternative to ascorbic acid, which is vitamin C different from citric acid. Remember that people. Everyone always makes that mistake. You notice that, Harold?
No. Really? You don't make that mistake. But people well, when I'm teaching people, they're always like, I bought the, I bought the citric acid and it didn't work. I'm like, no.
It's vitamin C, it's ascorbic acid. Citric acid will prevent browning somewhat by lowering the pH, but not nearly as much as ascorbic acid, which is an actual actual antioxidant. So the video in question uh is by uh Rebecca Marsters on America's Test Kitchen, and it's available even if you don't pay. So you can go look at it. And what she does is she soaks uh slices of uh apple in uh well I don't know what she uses because I don't remember, but uh the paper relevant papers say about a 10% honey solution.
So Harold, you want to talk about this for a minute? Uh sure. Uh this came as news to both of us that that honey would do this. Um but uh a couple of things. One of the reasons I think we haven't heard more about honey is that uh the experiment suggested that there were peptides, pieces of proteins that were responsible for this.
And the people who wrote the paper in 1990 saying that honey would uh inhibit browning said they were going to follow up on that and find out which peptides were responsible. And it's been radio silence from them ever since. So it never got followed up on. And then there were was a paper in 2000 that did follow up on the honey, but said that they got really variable results depending on which honey they used. Some were good, some were not so good.
So I think my guess is if you actually did uh an ascorbic acid, honey side by side, probably ascorbic acid would be more reliable. Right. Well, I I forget which one it was. I read another paper on the various different I mean ascorbic acid is also interesting because it can actually reverse some of the some of the browning after it's already occurred. But they said also some of the honeys, I mean it's really conflicting information.
Just to be clear though, the paper from 1990 uh specifies clover honey, right? So like you think clover honey is more likely to work than other types of honey, or no? Yeah, I don't know. Don't know. Hard to say.
Good thing for you know, somebody to follow up on. Yeah. Oh, and uh by the way, honey is a and I didn't really, I mean, I've always, you know, like I don't I don't know whether I ascribe, do you ascribe to this whole uh local uh allergen honey de leo or no? Uh I don't know about that one. Where if you if you uh show up on a place and you're gonna have uh seasonal out of allergies in that place, you just pound some honey from that place and it they wipes out your seasonal allergies from the place.
I wish I'd known that two weeks ago. But I don't know whether it's true or not, but this is an often held belief, but I have no idea about the efficacy of said thing. But honey is a miracle. Uh honey syrup is an incredible foam forming agent in cocktails uh because of the extra proteins. Uh so we use that in conjunction with um uh some of our milk wash drinks at the at the rest at the bar to uh get really dense heads of foam.
Uh-huh. That was Piper's call. Piper came up with that. Are there any concentrated feeding operations for bees where like bees get overused or don't have the room to do what they need to do? Well, I mean, I I don't think that the the bees aren't I mean I wouldn't uh I I wouldn't go crying about you know overcrowding on bees.
They kind of that's how they groove, like they on overcrowding and like keeping their temperature up in the winter by being close to each other and buzzing. And also how they kill uh how they kill uh giant uh the giant hornets uh you know by gloming onto them and shaking so hard that they heat them up and kill them. So uh bees don't have the same problems with overcrowding that we do, although they will swarm out of their colony. If if if they're too crowded, they'll swarm. Uh but yes, so if you talk to natural honey producers as I have done, remember that lady who chewed our Eurofstas?
Anyway, National Honey Producer. Anyway, my point is that uh like the the big thing that they hate is it is uh feeding them sugar water to tide them over on the winter. That's what uh the honey producers are like I don't feed my bees any sugar water. You know what I mean? Ruins the honey.
Anyway, but uh so yeah, I mean, and then the other problems with bees, obviously. I mean, well uh the other problems with bees if you if you like when they're stored too close together, I don't I am not up, I haven't been up on the uh colony collapse uh papers in uh for about probably five years or something like that. But um, you know, they used to think that overcrowding and uh too close a proximity of commercial hives was part of the spread of colony collapse. Do you know anything about modern uh modern colony? Actually, you're mentioning the sugar water uh is interesting because uh the the latest I've heard is that you know it's probably lots of different things, these mites and a virus and crowding and pesticides and all that kind of thing.
But one of them is the fact that uh uh it's big become more and more common to feed bees on either sugar water or high fructose corn syrup. Woo! And and what they've found is that honey actually has lots of stuff in it that's good for bee health. And if you deprive them of that and just give them sugar water or high fructose corn syrup, they're gonna get sick. So the the idea is give them enough honey to feed themselves, and maybe things will get better.
And no allergies for the bees either. No, nothing, nothing, no problems with that. Hey, did you know I just read this, but I don't know if it's true. Certain linden flowers are irresistible to bees, but toxic to them. No.
I gotta research more. That might be crap, but I read it somewhere. But it could be crap because many things that I read are. Here's one that uh you might want to try chime in on. I have a good recommendation for where to go look at it, but uh Joe Blow, which is like kind of the best well, they're Joe Blow67, but it's a good uh it's a good what's it called?
It's a tweet, tweeter, tweeter name. Uh uh love the podcast quickie. Why does OJ taste so horrible after I brush my teeth? Well, uh the go to www.bite size with a Y, as in small, like as in bits and bites. Uh bite size science.com, the American Chemical Society, of which Harold is a member and a regular speaker for their things, they have a web series of short videos on science that people might find of interest and they did one on this.
And they say that it's the sodium laurel sulfate in toothpaste that uh that A suppresses sweetness and B washes off the phospholipid, so it suppresses sweetness and enhances your ability to taste bitter. You ever uh read anything on that? No. No. Yeah.
Interesting. I did read a paper uh by commercial uh commercial tasting thing where people who you know we're apt to brush our teeth in the morning because that's what we do, and they show up to work and they need to taste, and they actually cancel the effect of the toothpaste and get them ready for tasting by pounding several glasses of OJ. So there are some studies on that. But uh I I recommend you uh Joe Blow to BiteSizeScience.com. Interesting little website.
All right. Can I interrupt with a question? Sure. Um I'm always hypersensitive about how I eat, uh, you know, because I eat out a lot from my work and my wife's in the food world too. So um I always wonder about the effects of that on my health, and I read Michael Pollins' piece, Germs.
And uh I was wondering, I mean, should people who are worried about such things like send their feces to that place in Colorado and and uh have them do studies on it? And is it as important as DNA and all of that? Your is your poop as important as your DNA? Well, they say the microbia that lives in your stomach, you know, and that there's this new budding science. And I was just so interested that he likened that microbia to DNA in terms of importance for its effects on human health.
And I was wondering, is that true? I mean, is was that a real seminal piece that people I'm gonna go ahead and toss this one to Harold. I know it's a crazy question, but no, because uh in fact you read more and more about that in in scientific journals these days as well, and that's I think where Michael Pollan got the the lead for this. My my feeling is that we're just beginning to understand how important the the gut microbes are and what to make of them. And at the moment what we kind of know is that people in different states of health have very different communities down there.
But uh whether it's possible to change them quickly or over time by changes in diet, or whether changing them more drastically by taking little pills with lots and lots of them is a good idea, we we have no clue. I think we're we're still figuring that out. And also to say that it's as important as DNA, let me put it this way you can, for all intents and purposes, wipe out a good chunk of your uh gut microflora by intensive antibiotic regimes or like super sickness plus antibiotic regimes. I mean, I've gotten like I this it's not microflora, but I you know I I I had a a situation once where I was so cleaned out that I was lactose intolerant for like a week and a half because I had no enzymes left in my body. Uh but fact of the matter is you can re-establish those colonies.
If I were to uh supply enough radiation to you to destroy your DNA, very difficult to reconstitute. Very, very, very difficult to reconstitute, right? Yeah, so let's leave DNA at the top of the heap, but maybe microbes are right up there or just underneath. I mean there are there are plenty of things that are completely necessary but not as um critical from an everyday standpoint, right? Yeah.
You know? Yeah. We've got a caller Dave. Water, it's right up there with DNA. Hey caller you're on the air.
Hi Dave. Hell this is Johnny Kirk from Memphis, Tennessee. How are you doing? Alright, how are you doing? I'm doing good.
I was looking for some advice on the addition of moscarpone to cheesecake. I was working with three pounds of cream cheese, uh five pound uh moscarpon, and anywhere from two to three eggs per pound of cheese. And sometimes when I cut through it it it appears broken. Right. Any advice on you know maybe maltidextrin, cornstarch, flour addition and sous vide.
Who's umgestion? Yeah well I've never mean it mean like uh when you say sous vide you mean like in a in a CVAP or something like that. I've never put a cheesecake in a bag although I'm sure you could. No reason why you can't I yeah I just bag it and circulate it and for a couple hours you were doing it in the tubes right you were doing it in the tubes no I was well I was just doing it in uh three or four small bags and after um like two and a half hours pull it out and pipe it into the molds. Well, I would imagine mascarpone has a higher water content and the water in it is less bound than it would be in cream cheese, wouldn't you think so, Harold?
Yeah. Yeah. And so I would guess that it would be a lot looser under all conditions. I mean, um can you hang mass carpone to just firm it up a little bit? Uh you probably could.
I what I don't know is you know how much you'd be left with. You know, would that be an economical thing to do? If it if it only leaks. That's what I was thinking, Tapia. Uh yeah, I mean I wouldn't use I mean, if you're gonna go to Maltodextrin, I mean maltodextrin doesn't supply a lot of thickening power.
You might want to go to an actual starch. You know what I mean? Something that's uh has a little more thickening power to it. I mean multi-maltextrin is more of a bulking agent, so that when you dry something back out again, you're gonna have more bulk. I mean, I think that the addition of a starch to it to thicken it up, maybe.
I mean, you can up your egg quantity a little bit, which is I think what they do in uh in the Italian cheesecakes that are ricotta based, right? Don't they up the egg content in those things? I think that's right, yeah. Yeah. I mean it's been a long time.
Yep. Do you know right show on what they do for that? I don't. I don't, but I mean, like the classic Italian style cheesecakes are using a much looser cheese without all the, you know, they're using ri ricotta-based typically things, which are gonna be they have a grainier texture. I happen to love them.
I happen to love those uh those styles of cheesecakes, but um I don't make them myself, but they're typically much grainier, and I would imagine they're bound with a higher egg proportion. I mean, they taste like they're bound with a higher egg proportion. Yeah. So I would up your eggs, I would move to perhaps a starch, one that has a good thickening power, maybe one that doesn't require uh a complete boil to activate, so maybe something like potato that has a lot of swelling, but then it's not gonna hold as much eventually. It might break.
I don't know. I'd have to think about the starch that you're gonna use. Um but I would I would definitely add a starch to it. What do you think, Home? Yeah, no, I agree.
I also think that it's the kind of thing where you're just not gonna know for sure without trying it. Yeah, I've done uh a few test runs and uh corn starch and AP flaw just looking for any other stark congestion as well. Hey, you can you could you uh could use uh to to get around the problem of the temperature if if you're doing it sous vide, because you might not be functionalizing the starch, you might want to use a uh pre agglomerated, I mean an agglomerated pre uh cooked starch, like uh um not ultra text, but ultra spurse. Yeah, wondra. Wundra could work, that's pre-cooked, but like ultra spurse or something like that.
Uh because uh Wondra is still gonna have all of the like it's gonna have a more of a flowery note to it, 'cause it's it's flour, whereas the ultra spurse is gonna be more neutral. And you can pick I think you can pick up ultra spurse from the uh guys at uh uh monitor's pantry. Duck them. Okay. Yeah.
But give it a shot, let us know what happens. Uh with uh what's the percentage of ultrasparse? Jeez, I don't know. I think it's a lot depends on how much water you need to bind, right? Because it's the ultra the it's it's the it's uh it's the percentage of ultra spurse compared to the free water that's available in the mass carpone.
But I mean I wouldn't guess that you'd probably need to add more than a percent or two, right? I mean 'cause it if it's almost set, right, then you don't need to add that much. I mean a lot depends on how much you need to bind up. You could also just cheat. You could just cheat and set the stuff as a gel.
I mean ch cheat. You know what I mean? Like that. Yeah, you know, uh, like use like uh, I don't know, like make a f fluid gel uh or or any sort of gel, have it set up. You know, if you could do uh you could do a you could do like an iota carrageenan or a or a kappa that will melt in the in the thing, you could pipe it while it's hot, it'll set into a gel and you're done.
Very light gel. You know what I mean? And especially because there's dairy in there, you could use a very small percentage of carrageenan and have it set up pretty nicely. So you wouldn't use uh carragain and then no ultra sparse, right? I'd probably try one or the other to see how they work and uh see what the texture uh difference is, but might try that.
Okay, I appreciate you. All right, good luck. Y'all have a good day. All right, you too. You too.
All right, we have a question in from uh Brian regarding mustarda. You like mustarda? You know the uh Italian uh fruit-based kinda? Yeah, I do. Yeah, me too.
I haven't had it in a long, long time. Because no one else in my family, uh Jen likes it, my wife, but my kids you know, not big on it. You like that stuff, Sas? I mean the cherries and the pears and that kind of gelatinous uh no man's land, just like floating around. Yeah, yeah, in a sip, we like to call that like a syrup or a jelly, yeah.
Yes, yeah. Uh they make one from watermelon rinds that I really like. Um but anyway, uh Brian Rights meant to be eaten, is it? All the you don't eat all the gel, you just eat the fruit and it's I put this stuff on bread with cheese. I just eat the whole guy, the whole damn thing.
You, Harold? Yeah, yeah. It's condiment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go.
Uh hello, cooking issues team. Hope you guys and gals are staying cool. Uh, we are not. It is hot as hell. Not in the studio, but it's nasty out.
Okay. After some research, I discovered that true mustarda does not contain mustard powder or mustard seed, but mustard essential oil, which they call sinape in Italy. Sinape, how do you pronounce that, Stas? Oh, thank thank you, Patrick. With the with the Italian.
Uh apparently, this is such strong stuff that only pharmacists in Italy sell it. Uh, or a shola from Studio Kitchen dot blog uh studio kitchen blog does use a rotov app to extract it from mustard oil. Do you have a source for this product or a substitute? What does Cesare or Mark say about this? I didn't have a chance to speak to them.
Did you speak to Mark about this? Nope. Thanks, good job. You got only uh whatever. I mean, we missed it.
Okay, okay. Uh uh, thanks again for your awesomeness. Brian, okay, so uh mustard essential oil is available on the internet on eBay from uh Neval Company, the company's Neval, N-I-V-A-L, Pure Essential Mustard Oil. Uh it's available on eBay. And also from Essential Depot.com in Florida, but that stuff's expensive.
Let me just say that there's two things. If you go to like uh an Indian restaurant uh Indian mart, like or you know, uh like Calustian's here in the city or dual specialty shop in the city, anyone, you can buy stuff called mustard oil. That's pressed pressed mustard oil, and that stuff it can be pungent or can not be pungent. It's all labeled as uh not for human consumption because of you know it contains what is it? It's uh something I have it here on the thing somewhere.
I can't remember. Arousic acid, yeah. A fatty acid that causes problems in mice, but apparently not in people, but we haven't gotten around to cultures have been using it for thousands of years internally, and it hasn't seemed to be a problem, but we're worried about it. So can't can't have it. Yeah.
But here's the bad news. Mustard oil in uh because I've purchased it. Mustard oil uh in Indian uh stores, or I guess Korean, uh I guess they use it in Korea as well. Um Bangladesh, a bunch of other places. Uh it's just not that strong.
It's just not, I mean, it's got some sort of mustard thing to it, but I once had a pure vial of the mustard essential oil that was given to me uh by a Japanese gent, and that stuff is ridiculous. Like two drops in like in in in like your mashed potatoes, and they're like completely mustarded up. You know what I mean? It's like it's like this stuff's crazy because it's it's uh distilled, but not distilled like rotovap style with a bunch of water left over, like distilled the oil floats up to the top. You take the supernatant on the top of the stuff, and that's your mustard essential oil, and it's almost uh it's it's some it's some like I don't know, isothytocyanate, some sort of allium sulfur derived thing of a jig.
So it distills quite well, uh, probably the same way that horseradish does, which distills like a demon. Uh but um yeah, uh I would recommend the stuff's really expensive, but it goes a long way. Buy it. I would buy it. I'm thinking now of buying it.
I don't know whether this one's any good. Have you ever bought it, Harold? No, no, I haven't. Yeah, I mean, people swear on Amazon, the best you're gonna get, because I look for a while, is mustard oil, like pressed mustard oil, not mustard essential oil. Right?
It's not the same. You have to like dump a whole boatload of that into your mustarda to uh what's your favorite kind of mustarda? You like them all? Uh I I think actually the pear, with you know, the the grit goes really nicely with the with the heat. Yeah, I think nice with the with a nice pecorino.
Yeah. Doesn't Mark say that Golden's is the best mustard ever made? I think he just said that today, yeah. Really? For real?
Did you just make that up? No, it's in my book. Uh and uh uh Marion Cunningham, who was James Beard's assistant, said that uh Hellman's is the best mayo. Why would you ever make a mayo? Nothing could ever taste better than almonds.
So it's a thing that it was uh the essay was don't make ketchup. Unless it's really better than Heinz. If it's not better than Heinz, just also serve Heinz. Well, uh anyone who's listened to the backlog here knows that Nastasha doesn't care about different brands of ketchup, which is one of the my main gripes with her, is that she doesn't see that there is possibly a difference between different brands of ketchup. And I haven't tried the new fancy stuff yet from Portland.
The fancy ketchup from Portland. However, uh Heinz, it makes a delicious ketchup. Let's just be clear on that. That in what's your opinion on Heinz ketchup? It's delicious, but there's uh somebody in San Francisco who makes a nice one too, June Taylor.
Yeah? Yeah. June June makes a nice ketchup. Yeah, yeah. It it's different.
You wouldn't mistake it for Heinz, but it's delicious. Is it ketchup in like the 1820s sense of mustard, I mean uh uh not mustard uh uh mushroom based uh ketchup or no, no, it's tomato ketchup. Tomato based, but with with more of the spices showing. Yeah. Yeah.
You know, you know what I'm about to get myself in trouble for? Because I always bust Nastasha for stuff that she doesn't like. But you know what I actually uh it's not that I don't like it, but I'm not a huge fan of, or I don't care about it. Here's something I don't care about. I don't care that much about the nuances of different barbecue sauces.
I don't. I mean, I I see that there are differences, uh huh, but to me they're all fundamentally ketchup molasses and and like vinegar and sugar and stuff, right? Yeah. Am I wrong about this? No, I'd I'd agree with you.
Yeah. I care more about the base ketchup. Uh-huh. In the barbecue sauce. Yeah.
Although uh Paul Prudholm has an excellent recipe from the mid-1980s that uses a lot of ground up nuts in a barbecue sauce, it is pretty good. Ground up nuts. Yeah, really good, actually. Huh. Yeah, pretty good.
What kind of nuts? Uh, I don't remember because uh my mom used to make it all the time back in the day. I'm gonna say it was uh cons, I guess. Probably. Yeah, although he probably subbed out for Northerners when he was right.
This is back when Paul Prudholm had uh had just recently opened K-palls in in Louisiana, and he was still famous for sticking really red hot uh peppers into uh into uh liquor and calling them Cajun martinis, and back before everyone had you know blackened this, that and everything, he came out with a cookbook early on that I think was pretty influential. Uh huh. Yeah, my mom used to cook at it all the time. So I have to admit, but you know, whatever. Uh speaking of old school, Christopher Milt writes in, because I guess because of the Sears all torch that I'm working on, and wants to know uh if we've watched the old uh Julia Child episode where she goes on uh David Letterman and they don't have equipment that works, and so she has to she was gonna make a hamburger and melt the cheese with a torch, which the Sears all is great at, by the way.
Uh and instead has to make beef tartare, and David Letterman is being vicious to her the whole time. Have you seen this? No, but he's always vicious to the chefs. Yeah, I mean, but Julia Child, I mean, like this is 1987, so she was probably what in her 70s, late 70s? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And uh he's just like ripping her up and down, and she's like taking it completely as a good sport and is every bit as quick on her feet as uh Letterman is. She's like uh it's gonna wanna it's uh I kind of wish that I had met her. Uh you may you met her a couple times, right? Yeah, I did.
I did. And and had dinner with her once and felt after and this was when she was in her eighties. Uh and afterwards felt just totally inadequate because she had read, you know, ten books I hadn't read and seen ten movies that I hadn't seen, and I just couldn't keep up. She was an amazing woman. Yeah, and uh a spy during World War II.
Yeah. Interesting, interesting character. I haven't seen that movie based on it. Well, I haven't seen the movie. I don't I don't know.
Anyway. Uh Jay Matthew Miller writes in about Aroncello. Do you like Arncello? I'm not a big limoncello fan. Do you like Limoncello or orange?
Orancello being the orange-based uh variant of it? Every once in a while. It's it's sweet, and uh to my problem with it limoncello, and again I'm gonna get in trouble now. Now what is this? Is the episode where it's like well, it's it's a little bit sometimes detergent from my taste.
Anyway. They make orangello in Italy. I mean, the the with using their red oranges or blood red oranges or something? I don't know. I haven't had it over there.
I've only been to the north of Italy. They don't play that game. Yeah, they do. Uh yeah, I've I haven't been south of Rome, much to my much to my chagrin. Okay.
I've made some uh calamondan, which you might out there also know as calamansi, uh, which is sold mostly green, but is in fact orange when it ripens. Okay. I've made some calamondan orancello from calamondan peels. Um of course you didn't, because what else would you make it from? Uh grown in my yard.
I soak the peels, uh, the fruit have almost no p pith. In 190 proof ever clear for seven days, then mixed with equal parts one to one simple syrup. Uh uh, see, that's sweet. That's some sweet. The resulting product is pretty good, but a little bit stiff by itself.
Next time I'll probably add more water. Anyway, I've been storing it in some mason jars, and I get a dark orange ring where the surface of the liquid meets the glass of the mason jar just around the edge. It is really tiny but noticeable. What's going on here? Is this excess citrus oil?
Yes. Uh what can I do to prevent this from happening? Nah. On my next batch, my tree produces three times a year. I want to make enough to give his gifts, but the ring around the mason jar makes the end product less appealing.
Thanks for your help. Jay Matthew Miller. Yep, that's the oil coming out when you're diluting it, because you can uh absorb more of that stuff into alcohol than you can into water. And that's it, right, Harold? I mean, that's that's what it is.
Yeah, and thanks to all the sweetness, the density of the liquid is pretty high, and the oil is that much lighter, and so it's gonna pop up to the surface. Good call. So maybe making it a little less sweet, you could get around it. That's it, yeah. That's a good I see.
Again, I hadn't thought of that. Here's the things I thought of. Don't go and try to buy brominated vegetable oil, which is what everyone used to use back in the day to keep citrus oils in suspension and things like sodas. See what happens is they add bromine to vegetable oil. It's extreme exceedingly heavy.
It gets in close contact with the citrus oil, and the average of the uh makes them kind of float around and makes it cloudy. And that's how they made things like uh sunkist uh soda uh you know work. Uh you're not they don't use it anymore uh much. They use something that you also can't buy, which is uh sucrose diacetate uh hexoisobutyrate uh S A I B, which is a sucroester derivative, but also probably can't buy that. Here's what I suggest you do.
Uh either reduce the sweetness, um, try that. Also, put it get one of those old school, like uh who makes them Lipton sun tea things, one of those giant iced tea coolers that has a spigot at the bottom. Uh put your product into it, your entire batch. Let it sit for a week and a half or more after you've diluted it. The ring will form around the top, then drain it from the bottom.
Right? Brilliant. Brilliant. Yeah, yeah. See, Harold's thinking about it from an actual kind of thinking standpoint.
I'm just thinking the mechanics of what to get around it. That's that's therein lies the difference. Uh okay. Now we have a question in uh from Will about sours, uh, whiskey sours, and uh zucchini. Word to Dave, Nastasha, Jack Joe, and the new guy in the booth.
I guess that's you, Eddie. How do you? That's Eddie. Yep. Uh I've got two questions I'm hoping you can help me with.
The first is a cocktail problem. I want to pre-batch whiskey sours for the 4th of July. I like mine with egg whites, and I make designs on the phone with various bitters and eyedropper bottles and a chopstick. I use simple syrup that has gum arabic for a better mouthfeel and a strong rye for a better flavor. What I want to do is pre-mix and dilute the sour and then run in a blender with dry ice to chill for service and top of an egg white foam, decorate, and serve.
I've got a whisk that goes into a power drill for stick mixer-like effects, egg white, santhangum, uh gum arabic and nox gelatin, etc. How can I get a good foam without an ISI? I have not yet incorporated gelatin, but my efforts up to now have resulted in a foam that is too stiff to decorate well with bitters and tends to break when added to the sour. I've seen many people online suggesting that cocktail foam should be its own fully realized beverage. I mean, yeah, I don't know about that.
That uh compliments the underlying drink. That's true. In normal sours, the foam is essentially fully flavored by the drink, modified by the approximately half teaspoon of various bitters I decorate with. Do you have any suggestions on a direction to take the flavors for this foam? Looking for a direction to take my generally very tasty experimentation.
Let's hit that before we go into the next thing. One, be very careful blending dry ice into something with a blender because if you serve any chunks of dry ice to someone that they ingest, it can be extremely detrimental. That's one. Two, when you blend dry ice into a product, you will get a very light pétillon carbonation in there. And you have to make sure that that's not going to hurt the flavor of your whiskey sour.
That's two. So I, in general, I am somewhat loath to chill with uh dry ice in blenders, although I've seen plenty of people do it, but uh it just makes me very nervous uh and I'm not in. What are your thoughts on that, Harold? Um I have no experience with it, and uh, but I take your point. Yeah.
Um yeah. The other thing is remember, as you say, a normal cocktail, okay. So a normal cocktail with egg white in it, the thickening effect of the egg white is manifest uh most visually by a foam on the surface. However, the body of the entire drink is changed by the protein addition. So, you're not gonna have the same drink by blending with dry.
What you mean what you're going to be doing is making a slushy and then putting a foam on top, which could be delicious, by the way. I mean, I would use liquid nitrogen instead and just get it slushed out. Because, but but drinks that are slushy are so freaking cold that they're actually somewhat painful. Whiskey flavored drinks actually taste best when they're not so cold that they're slushed out, in my experience. Right?
You want them just when they start going clear after you've chilled in liquid nitrogen is when they start being good again. Otherwise, like uh they don't end up being balanced and anything too much more than slushy in it. It's literally painful. It's so cold. Uh, in terms of foams to put on the top, you know, um methylcel F50 makes a nice foam, but it's still pretty uh dense.
Um I have to think more about this. Uh you might it might end up being shorter for you just to just to shake the dang things, like pre-blend some egg whites and just shake it. I understand how you're trying to do something different here. I don't know what do you think, Harold? Any any feelings on the foam?
I mean, I know that should be my kind of uh uh of a of a thing. I mean, you could use ISI uh and then do like a really like a like a lighter, a lighter foam, but I mean the egg white foams are also somewhat fugitive, which is nice. And most of the foams that are made aren't they either have a very large bubble size or they're not so fugitive, but try methylcel F50 or VersaWhip under a percent. They make a really nice foam that's quite stable, and you could probably make a slushy and then literally spatula of the foam in, strike it off the top, and then uh draw a design in it. What has Piper been using recently?
Remember? I don't know. He's been making some foams recently for cocktails. He makes he he actually literally whipped egg whites, I think, and put it on top. Could do that too.
Whipped egg whites. You could take egg white powder, hydrate it with some flavors, uh, and then whip it. Uh not with alcohol though, but like whip it and then and then strike it off the top and draw with the bitters, right? That would work, right, Harold? Yeah.
Yeah. Uh second question is about grilling vegetables. I enjoy really well caramelized zucchini or brown zucchini, I guess. Unless it's well, no, probably some sugar and zucchini. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Both. Both. Uh most people would say uh bordering on burnt.
The flavor that develops with a good garlic marinade and that mesquite smoke and the vegetable flavors is out of this world. Unfortunately, they end up very delicious but a bit mushy. I'm wondering if some type of calcium slash pectin treatment might help here. I'm cooling uh with a raging grill, uh, cooking with a raging grill and the coals right up under the food. It's charred to my satisfaction about two minutes if that helps.
Thanks very much for your great work. Looking forward to the Mofad puffer. Uh I don't think that I don't think you need to firm it, right? I think it's more of a water problem, right? That's what the mush is.
I would I would pardehydrate the stuff. What do you think, Harold? Uh that and maybe just chill it. You know, put put them in ice water so that when they go onto the grill, they're really cold, and so the inside will just take that much longer to heat up. Oh, so you think he wants to keep it.
See, I was thinking Monet more chewy than I mean, zucchini has too much freaking water in it, in my opinion. Yeah. I don't really mean I have issues with it. Because it's got so much water in it. Yeah, yeah.
And if you're gonna char the outside in two minutes, there's no way to get the water out of the inside. Right? So you you have two choices. Either try to keep it raw on the inside or try to get rid of the water beforehand. Yeah.
Or I mean, look, you could try a calcium bath that will firm it up a little bit, but that'll make it bitier, but it won't won't change the fact that moisture is gonna migrate from the inside of the zucchini to the outside of the zucchini and ruin your crust. Well, except that's not what he's saying, right? He's saying that the crust is fine, it's just the inside's a little mushy. So uh I think maybe uh the first thing I would try, because it's very simple, is just put put the zucchini in ice water for uh half an hour before they go on the grill, see if that takes care of it. If it doesn't, then take more drastic actions.
But if it's just you know the matter of uh preventing the inside from getting quite so hot, that should take care of it. Right. Hey, what do you think about for dehydration? Do the paper towels microwave thing. Yeah, yeah.
Or or you know, I I don't know how how exactly he's presenting them, but you know, you could also cut them into slices and salt them. Uh all kinds of things. Like you do with eggplant. Yeah, yeah. Anything you would do for eggplant to get rid of moisture, you could probably do to zucchini to get rid of moisture, right?
Yeah. Okay. Adam writes in, here's a good one for you. Did you read this one yet? Adam writes in, dear Nastasha, Jack and Joe.
My question is for Dave uh and for Harold. Little did you know. Uh, what do you make of the recipe for fermented juice of mushrooms and oats in the Favican cookbook? If you haven't seen it, which I have not, the basic idea is steam salted mushrooms and grain. After cooling, combine with sourdough, uh sourdough starter overnight, seal in a jar for six months.
When you open it up, it should have a fleeting odor of peaches. That's the cookbook prose right there. Uh the fresh juice doesn't last long, so Nilson, Magnus Nelson, recommends allowing it to turn to vinegar or pasteurizing it. He describes the pasteurized product as being like soy sauce. He also stresses that anyone who attempts a recipe should not eat it until it's been analyzed by a lab to determine whether or not it is edible.
The procedure is somewhat similar to the mixed yeast bacteria fermentations of the Chinese yeast ball that McGee likes. Here you are, right here to talk about it. But I've never read such uh about such a long sourdough fermentation or one that isn't cooked afterwards. It's strange. Just what is happening and what's your opinion on the food safety?
Thanks for the thought. Well, I I looked into Sandor Katz's uh book. I mean, I think correct me when I'm wrong, I'm gonna let you just take this for a minute. But the sourdough thing is just to kickstart the fermentation to get the pH low enough so that botulism doesn't grow first, right? Isn't that what the deal is?
And after that it's gonna just gonna take over on whatever it wants to do. Yeah, and the part of it that I don't understand is why do you have to seal it? I mean, because that would uh you know remove the issue of bot botulism bacteria anyway. Well, I mean look, so the recipes for fermented mushrooms that I could get were they were all pushed under the water to encourage anaerobic stuff after the pH is dropped, right? I mean lactic acid stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. Um sauerkraut kimchi style. Right, but then why do you have to seal it? Yeah, yeah.
And and have it out of view. I mean, why not do it like uh like a sauerkraut fermentation where you can kind of check on it, see how it's going, whether you've kept everything submerged or not, that kind of thing. Uh also I I would I don't think I would ever myself want to make a dish that I had to have a lab check before I could eat it. I mean, that just sounds like legal ease. I mean, if you check the pH before you start the fermentation, then it should be everything should be copacetic.
If it's acid enough, you won't have botulism. Yeah, acid and salt, I I imagine there's salt in there as well. Yeah, but I mean again I'd have to know the levels, but I mean, but if it's tart enough, the botulism's not gonna I mean, like that's essentially how pickles work. Yeah. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Non-acidified mushrooms are dangerous to to keep for long periods of time in the absence of oxygen. Yeah. Yeah. That much we know.
That's the classic thing to kill yourself with. Poorly canned uh non-acidified mushrooms. That's right. That's right. Right?
Yeah. All right. Uh really quickly. Andy writes in about ikijime and Botarga. Uh hey, Nastasha, I have a couple questions for you, Dave, and the cooking issues crew.
I wrote in a year and a half ago about ikojime spinal cord destruction, which is where you but for those of you who don't know, uh, you take fish, especially like pelagic fish, fish that swim around a lot, and when you kill them, you can increase the quality of their flesh by shoving a needle through the spinal cord to uh disrupt it. And the theory being that you you by by destroying the spinal cord, you're preventing any sort of electrical messages from going to the muscles that happen regardless of whether the brain is still present, therefore uh increasing uh the amount of ATP that remains in the muscles because it's not being used uh to respond to these errant electrical signals, and that therefore it takes longer to go into rigor mortis, and when it goes into a less strong rigor mortis, and when it comes out the flesh is firmer and better. That's in a nutshell the theory of what's going on. Okay. Uh so he tested it for us.
Um and I had always been interested why people don't do it on bluefish, and it's because uh I don't think in Japan they eat much blue fish, even though I think it's a delicious fish. Are you a blue fish fan? I love bluefish. Delicious, right? Yeah.
Uh okay. Uh I wrote about uh a Nikajime spinal cord destruction test on bluefish in Alabama. I'm heading back to Alabama next week, and we'll be trying the test again, likely on a wider range of fish as well. After my trip last year, I read somewhere that one should only use iced salt water or seawater as opposed to fresh. I was using fresh frotter from the rinsing hose at the end of the pier, and the results will c were clearly still far superior to non-uh ikijime uh EKGMA spinal cord destruction.
Any thoughts on this? I will be, of course, trying it, but I may not have the capability to do a side-by-side of salt versus fresh. Any other suggestions for tests that I could run while I'm down here? Well, the reason for salt is so that the the heart keeps pumping and that you're not putting it into shock right away so that you can keep that going. And also uh you want to keep it relatively isotonic with the fish.
So salt water is obviously the best call, but I don't really know what the effect will be. Do you have any idea? Yeah. Um I don't have any suggestions right now for other tests you should run, but please just let us know what all of your tests are because this stuff's fascinating me. And I want to know how good bluefish is after it comes out of it.
Because blue fish, everyone says it doesn't keep, but if you were to do spinal cord destruction but don't fillet it now so that the oils aren't exposed to the oxygen, could it become a fish that keeps longer? Uh-huh. I don't know. Uh my second question is about botarga, which you know is salted uh cured roe, typically from uh mullet, and what's the other one? The one that uh the what's the other one they make but target?
Oh, tuna in the Mediterranean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Uh in Alabama we often go uh cast netting for mullet. I'm quite interested in making my own botarga.
It's really expensive here. Really freaking expensive here. Uh Nastasha does not like botargo. Nope. Yeah.
Uh not sure if this is the right season, but I had a couple questions anyway. Uh there seems to be a fair number of recipes and techniques out there, and this seemed perhaps the best. Soak the row overnight in salt water solution, 10 grams of salt per one liter of water. By the way, the soaking is there just to leach out the blood and any sort of other strong flavors that are there. I don't think that's actually a cure step.
Yeah, and that's just what uh one percent? That's less than a tenth of a percent, right? Uh no, yeah, 10 grams per one liter, one percent. That's roughly isotonic, right? It's just to not ruin it, not blow the eggs up, but soak the stuff and get it out.
You don't want to soak it in pure water because then you'll you might blow the eggs up because of osmotic pressure. Yeah. Uh remove the solution and pat dry on paper towels, all good. Lay out fresh paper towel on a tray, liberally sprinkle with salt, okay. Place row on top and cover with more salt.
So far, so good. Uh place this in the fridge, replace the paper towels daily, add more salt, right? So the cure is taking place at low temperature. Uh after three or four days, the rows will have firmed up. Use a skewer to poke a hole and tie them with butcher's twine a long loop.
Hang the row in a cool place to dry for 10 to 14 days or longer if desired. This seems like a good technique, but I wonder if there are other better ways. I would put them uh I would put them in a curing chamber, but of course I won't have it in Alabama. I also wonder if cool, dry place would cause uh case hardening. My thought is to salt them for a few days in the fridge and put them on a rack or hang them outside in the sun to dry them dry them.
The air would be humid and hot and most likely breezy with enough salt. I'm not that worried about contamination, but should I be? Then I could take them home and put them in my curing chamber for longer drying and eventually backpack them for storage in the fridge. I would dip them in wax, that's the traditional way, not to backpack them, although backpacking will work. But dipping in wax is the traditional way.
Yeah. And pretty cool. Uh any thoughts would be appreciated. Okay, Andy, uh, I got a treat for you. Uh it's not Alabama, it's Florida.
But if you go to the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, or simply type this into your uh browser. Solar drying of seafood products, coal and mullet row. They did a bunch of experiments uh literally on the open-air drying of mullet row to make botarga in the 70s in Florida, which is fairly similar to Alabama, and you can look at it. And your main problem is actually not going to be case hardening, although they do mention it, I think, in the paper. Your main problem is going to be that unless it's fairly covered, you see you need to increase the the the temperature of the mullet row needs to go above uh atmospheric temperature because it's humid as hell.
As soon as it goes above atmospheric temperature, which it will from the sun hitting it, right? Uh it will uh start getting water off. And so it doesn't matter how humid it is, as long as it's hotter than the outside environment, because then the vapor pressure is gonna be the however, uh it got so freaking hot. By the way, they used a word that I hadn't I didn't know. Insulation, meaning how much sun hits.
Not insulation, insulation, which is awesome. Uh but uh the mullet road that they were testing uh that had uh like a plastic covering like greenhouse that let the uh sun hit it but had screens all around it so air could waft through, 150 Fahrenheit that stuff got up to. Hot enough to cook your huevos. Uh but uh anyway, so go read that paper, and that should give you some good uh suggestions. Now, before they rip my microphone away from me and kick me off the air, since Harold McGee is here, I want to talk about Clostridium perfringens and Rachel Dutton and these papers with salt risen bread that I promised I would talk about before.
Uh so you want to give us a little uh little clue in there? Whoo. Uh why don't you get us started? Because that was a few weeks ago, and it's not in the front of my head. So here's what happened.
A number of years ago, uh on the radio show, someone asked me about salt risen bread, and I had never done it before, so I I made some as a test. Uh and salt risen bread is a an interesting, uh interesting because it's bacterially uh raised product, and in fact, it's raised with an anaerobic bacteria, Clostridium perfring, which is a um a pathogen, right? Uh and in fact, certain strains of it do really nasty things like cause gas gangrene, which was a big problem in world in the World War One. I guess and probably even after, but that's when it first became a big deal, right? Yeah.
So uh anyway, so I made it and the bread had a very distinctive taste to it that I I remembered. Went to Africa uh and tasted a cassava uh like a like a dumpling that was made from cassava. Cassava, as you may or may not know, is redded, so it's soaked for a long period and allowed to, and that's to get rid of uh toxins in it, right? But it also goes through some sort of fermentation and picks up um characteristic flavor. And when I tasted this, I said, Oh, that tastes like salt risen bread.
I wonder whether it's clusterdium uh pulsiterium, clustering porfing, same thing. And uh so Harold and I were hanging out at what was that, the World Science Universe or whatever it's called? That's right. World World Science Festival. Festival, yeah, festival.
And uh met up with Rachel Dutton, who is uh uh a microbiologist at Harvard studying various fermentation things. What's her actual field? What's she what does she do for a living besides help chefs with that thing? Uh well she she has a uh five-year postdoctoral fellowship essentially to kind of open up this whole subject to to academic study, which it really hasn't been open to before. Nice.
Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Uh who's paying for that? Uh I forget who who the fellowship is from. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, because the pro the problem is is that usually work only gets done in food when there's money behind it, which is why most food scientists suck so hard. Right. Yes. Yeah. So so well, the avenue she's taking is to uh uh study cheeses in particular, but other fermented foods as model systems for understanding um uh microbial ecosystems because these things generally, cheeses, for example, you know, each cheese has a different set of microbes that ripens it and it it tends to be four or five and it's relatively stable, and so understanding how all that works uh she feels will help us understand microbial life in general, and that's the the uh proposal that that got funded.
That's a good sale. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Strong.
Uh strong. So anyway, so she found an article showing that in fact cassava redding does indeed involve a uh Clostridium, not porfringens, uh, but um one that produces butyric acid. I mean I I can't pronounce butyrins, whatever it is. Clostridium right, yeah. Butyri something or other.
But anyway, it's there, so it turns out that you know this is in fact like half of how I ever accomplish anything is that I taste something different, I put it away in my memory bank, and then like years later it like something comes up. Is that how you work as well? Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Um and then Harold because then I said well I wonder whether or not the Clostridium in salt risen bread is in fact not perfingize. I wonder whether it's this other one as well. And Harold found and emailed me possibly the best article uh I've ever read in my life. And I don't have it here unfortunately but it didn't get pasted into my thing but it is um from nineteen twenty three and you want to like I this most isn't that one like one of the coolest articles you ever read? It is it is they they made salt risen bread from a traditional starter standpoint and then they also made salt risen bread from uh a culture they had taken off of an injured gas gangrene patient in World War One.
So like some poor some poor fella who you know in the trench got hit with something developed gas gangrene which they isolated that strain and he baked bread with it. Yeah. And then ate it presumably because he said that you know he described the crumb texture and oh it's good you know kind of I think he ate it. And then then then took the bread and recultured the bacteria from the bread to prove that the spores had not because it remember folks, clostridium is spore forming. And was in fact able to culture it and inject it into guinea pigs and notice that the salt risen bread Clostridium was active but not as virulent as the one that was developed from the gas gangrene patient.
So it is it's fan fantastic stuff. And then specifically said it wasn't this other one because it had a different kind of fermentation. Fantastic paper. Yeah, yeah. Something you could never do today, right?
No, walk up and just inject that in the guinea pigs and eat eat like baked bread with uh baked bread with gas gangrene stuff. No. No. That's pretty cool, right? It was amazing.
Yeah. Yeah, good paper. Uh and anyway, so but then uh later work um later work, including someone who has a she has a salt risen uh bread uh uh blog, Susan Brown, they did some paper where there's been never been a case. They don't really, I think in the recent research, prove that it can't cause disease. They just show there has never been a case of disease from Clostridium perfringes and salt risen bread.
But what do you think about are they can would you have concerns making that in your kitchen? No, no, I've done it a couple of times and and now I'm gonna do it again because you've you know raised this whole thing uh uh for me again. But it it is fascinating for exactly that reason. You take uh foodstuffs, I mean uh milk and cornmeal and things like that, and uh kind of intentionally let it rot, right, for a day, and then make bread with that. And uh you do end up with this really interesting s some people in my own family found it off-putting, but I found it really interesting flavor.
Yeah, I like it. And and it rises. It's um Yeah. Well, redding is a very interesting. So redding you do it for cassava.
By the way, redding, literally, you just take the stuff and you throw it in a big vat of water and you let it sit for a couple of days. And in West Africa, it doesn't take very long for it to do its thing because it's hot as hell. Uh but you know what Harold has for now for several years been telling you about retted amaranth stalks. Yeah, yeah, which is how you make um stinky tofu in China. You you let vegetable kind of waste vegetable materials.
You or amaranth leaves are delicious, but the stalks are so tough that they're inedible. You throw them in water and just water, no salt, so you're not doing a lactic acid fermentation, and other things take over, and you end up with something that's really stinky. Uh, and then you can either serve that or you can put tofu in that same vat of stuff for a few days until it soaks up those flavors, and that's how you get stinky tofu. Has the microbiology of that been studied yet? Not to my knowledge, not in you know, English accessible materials.
Well, more work to do. Harold, thanks so much for coming on the air. We love having you. Anytime you're in New York, please come by and see us. Cooking issues.
Oh, wait, by the way, thank you for the bacon, Matt and the bacon band-aids, whoever you are. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage underscore radio.
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