This is Chris Young, co-author of Modernist Cuisine. I'd like to invite you to check out Chefsteps.com. It's a free website we've created as a place to learn new cooking techniques and collaborate with curious cooks from around the world. Sign up now at Chefsteps.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwig Brooklyn.
If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Cooking issues. Cooking issues. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cookie Is Cookie Live from Nicolas, Florida, where I'm down here in Florida for my Uncle Luke's 100th birthday party.
How you guys all doing over there? Who I got in the studio with me today? Uh Peter and Astasia. Hey Sas, how you doing? Okay, how are you?
Alright, what'd you do? Uh we went to the beach. Yeah, which beach? Um, Westport yesterday. I mean Sunday.
Westport, Connecticut? Yeah. Westport, Connecticut. People actually go to Westport, Connecticut for vacation? It was just a day trip on Sunday.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Well, uh I've been down here uh waiting for Montalope to turn 100, which we did today, right after the radio show. I'm going over there for his uh actual party. Uh Peter's here.
What'd you say? Peter's here. What's up, Dave? Hey Peter, how you doing? Yeah?
How much can you hear the weed whacker going on in the background? Zero. Oh, nice. The uh crazy burnouts that run this joint that I'm at in the comis uh can't seem to get the internet working, but they do have a weed whacker, a nice gas powered weed whack. So, uh Peter, why don't we talk about the state of the MoFad Kickstarter before we get into questions?
So, those of you that don't know and are listening to this, MoFAD, the Museum of Food and Drink, has a Kickstarter up now called Boom, where we're trying to get our puffing gun. Puffing gun is the old way they used to make puff cereals by heating uh grains uh up to uh well not tremendous, but high pressures and temperatures, about 180 psi. Then releasing that pressure suddenly and having all the moisture inside instantly evaporate and bang, puff the cere puff the grains very uniformly. But apparently it works on things other than grains that we're gonna try out things like penta chips, things like uh pepper corns. Um anyway, we have a Kickstarter going to try and raise the funds in a crowdsourced manner to uh go about an actual exhibit that we can travel around with.
Uh the Kickstarter now, we need about 80 grand to do it, and uh right now we're about 34 grand. So, what I need everyone to do is not just because I know a lot of our listeners have already donated, but I need uh people to go and find their friends and relatives and other people, uh like mind individuals, to come on the Kickstarter and back it. And it's not just to give away your money and you get nothing. We're talking awesome t shirts, awesome tote bags, uh parties. I mean, if you have a lot of cash jangling around in your pocket, uh, we'll make a custom cereal for you.
But the idea here is that um we want to crowdsource this to show that we have a broad level of support. So it's very important that you go and you find people to go and back us if they just want a t-shirt or anything else but uh that's my feeling about it. We have about ten days left on the Kickstarter so we need to get into high gear now after the holidays are over. Peter, what are your thoughts on it? Peter by the way Peter Kim is the uh executive director of the Museum of Food and Drink, uh the the leader uh of the project I guess.
So Peter go ahead. Yeah so first of all if you want to check out our Kickstarter you can go to boom.mofad.org. That's B O O O M dot Mofadmo F A D dot org. Uh yeah I think Dave really you did a great job encapsulating it. I mean we're really excited about this Kickstarter.
It's not just about kickstarting uh one exhibit but it's actually about kickstarting the whole museum. You know the plan for Mofad right now is to challenge the traditional museum model and actually create a mobile pop-up museum uh and this will be our first exhibit and so you know as Dave said what we're trying to do is drum up a lot of public support and I think this will open up a lot of doors for us and help us get you know propel us towards our ultimate goal of opening up a brick and mortar museum filled with exhibits like this. So we really, really need your help. I mean this is like a it's hard to overstate this but it's a labor of love. We have a lot of volunteers working on this.
Uh I was working until like 3 a.m last night woke up at five this morning got right back up to work on it. Um we're pushing hard on this because we believe in this uh we really think it's the time is right to create a food museum that you know encourages people and inspires people to think a lot about uh you know the the choices that they make and and how uh how food connects to the world around us. Right. Let me stress most museums, but most museums start, right? They start with uh one of two things either a large collection or a very rich person, right?
Very few museums are trying to start uh the way we're trying to start, which is as an idea, uh you know, and then getting the funding from uh a broad range of support that wasn't already present. And so that's why I think it's very important that everyone go out and find their find their buddies. And by the way, just because you don't live in New York City, don't think we aren't gonna bring the puffing gun to a neighborhood near you at some point. The idea is uh after we get it funded and we test out uh the the gun in New York to do a traveling road show to uh to other areas of the country. Uh we probably can't take it internationally at this point, but uh we are taking it to other parts of the country.
True or false, Peter. Uh absolutely true. And uh I wouldn't actually rule out international just yet, but uh, you know, after the puffing gun, we have just you know, you know how Dave's brain works. We've got about a million and a half ideas for the next pop-up exhibits. And uh after we create a few of these, you know, we're gonna be able to take those wherever we can drive them.
And that's that's really exciting that we're not gonna have to uh just be uh stuck in one place. Yeah, and you should go and check out our video anyway. We have an incredible cavalcade of uh awesome, smart and famous people uh chilling out for us on the uh on the video. So go go check it out. Um anyway, we'll probably harp on that a couple more times.
Yeah, so uh boom.mofad.org, B O O M dot Mofadmo F A D.org. All right, let me hit a few of the questions we have in here. Uh one, hey cookie Issues crew, I'm trying to help my pops impart Thai basil into his cooking. Fresh uh and finishing applications aren't doing the trick for him. I've read that you can freeze Thai basil and break it up before laying it under a protein that you are cooking.
He also wanted to explore getting a mortar and pestle to release the oils or infuse cooking oil with it. Can you speak to the scientific aspect of working with more delicate herbs from Maximum Flavor? Thanks so much. Billy Rose Patterson, the manager of Alamo Draft House Cinema and Yonkers. I haven't been to Yonkers in a long time.
Trive through Yonkers because it's on the way to my mom's house who lives up uh north of the city, but uh haven't stopped by the Yonkers in a long time. Peter, you uh you ever hang out in Yonkers? I've never been, always been fascinated by the name though. Well, Yonkers, we know Yonkers, aside from being kind of the first city on the on the you know, on the left-hand side as you travel north, uh up up there. Uh and the childhood home of uh one of my sculpture mentors, John Kessler.
Uh, you know, we always heard like you know, Yonkers Raceway, that's where like I think the monster trucks trucks used to go. So, like when you remember when I used to growing up listening to Monster Monster Monster Trucks. Those guys were all in Yonkers, but no one ever took me to go see them. Sad, right? Sad.
Have you ever seen a demolition derby, Dave? I have not been to a demolition derby, but I've always wanted to go to a demolition derby, and I've also always wanted to go to a figure eight racing competition. You know, figure eight racing? Mm-hmm. Yeah, where they like they race in a figure eight and they smash in the middle.
Amazing stuff. I mean, crazy. I can't believe they did it. Anyway, whatever. That's that's now we're cut.
You know, they do that now. They have figure eight racing with school buses. Were you aware of this? No. Oh my god.
Yeah. Uh sick, dude. It's like like decommissioned school buses, and uh, they probably fill the S sides of it with concrete and stuff so they can keep going for a long time. And then the school buses are going as fast as they can around this tiny figure eight track without flipping over and then occasionally smashing into each other. I mean, I can't think of much cooler than that.
Except for maybe MOFAD's puffing guns. Uh nice. Boom. All right. So the issue with Thai basil, uh, and I think you're hitting the nail on the head.
Thai basil is an extremely fragile herb. Now, Thai basil, for those of you that don't use it, is uh it's akin to uh, you know, kind of the globe Italian basil, it's more common here in the US, but it has um has i it's I I like it quite a lot. It's it's not really used for the same applications. It has a bit of an anise note, but if you're not a f uh a friend of anise flavored things, don't let that put you off. It's not like overpowering or like a pastice kind of thing, but it has a definite anise flavored note.
Uh and it's what we use at the bar for our Thai basil dacqueries. I like it uh a lot. I think it's very good, by the way, in uh drink applications. But the problem with Thai basil, uh, even as opposed to regular globe basil, which is the Italian one that we you know are more used to, uh, is extremely fragile. It goes uh it goes off very, very quickly.
And the p by that I mean it turns black and the enzymes in it are very uh very fast, almost as fast as as they are in in mint, turning the leaves kind of black. And so it's difficult to do things with them uh and have them stay fresh for as long uh as you would with uh with um something like even with regular basil, which turns black very quickly as well. So the you know, the problem is is that anything that you're gonna do with it, for instance freezing it, if you freeze tie basil, when it thaws, as soon as it's odds, it'll turn black because the freezing is going to rupture the cells in in the or rupture some of the cells with ice crystals, and then when it thaws out, polyphenol oxidase uh enzymes in it will instantly go to work and turn the sucker swampy and black. So if if you were going to do something like one one thing you can do is to um you can dr you know, I've never dried Thai basil, so I'm kind of talking out of the out of the wrong side of my body at this point. But uh I'm sure you could dry it in the same way that they dry herbs, perhaps in the microwave, I've never tried it.
Or and it's not so good, but if you were going to freeze it, you could blanch them. The problem is if you blanch them, which kills the enzymes, you definitely change the flavor and you lose a lot of that freshness. If you freeze them very quickly and then never let them thaw again and then blend them in to something that doesn't have a lot of oxygen, you might be able to get around uh get around the problem of of it browning. But it really is uh just a kind of a delicate um a delicate herb that kind of needs a little bit of care to work. Now you can cook with it, it's fine.
But if you want that fresh, I mean it's great. I shouldn't say fine, it's great. You ever cook with it or Peter, you ever cook with Thai basil? No. All the time, I love it.
Yeah, right. I mean you can you can cook with it, like you can cook with any basil, but if you want that fresh flavor, it's very hard to do anything to that's why we go through all the trouble of freezing with liquid nitrogen and and you know, blending it with alcohol, which kills uh kills the polyphenol oxidase. Now, like I say, if you freeze it, then if you're going to um if you're going to uh blend it into something of sauce and water pester petrol and oil, you might want to sprinkle a little ascorbic acid on it before you do that to try and inhibit the browning that's going to happen almost instantly as it thaws out. Uh or you you might try uh muddling it with a little bit of super high proof ethanol to keep it green uh before you uh incorporate the oil and whatnot. But just remember, if it freezes and then thaws, as soon as it thaws out, it's gonna turn black, unless you prevent it by blanching, which kills the not kills the fresh flavor, but alters it, or um or hit it with some sort of antioxidant, or something that uh inactivates the enzymes like high proof ethanol, something like that.
Does that make sense, guys? Yep. Yeah. Alright, cool. Uh Dave Nastasha Jo Jack et al.
which I guess includes Peter today. Uh I purchased a small deep fryer late last year and regrettably haven't used it that much. It is regrettable to have a deep fat fryer and not use it. Although I will say that small deep fryers are nowhere near as awesome. I mean, like they're not even in the same league of awesome as uh as commercial deep fat fryers.
However, the summer after I graduated from college, I did only three things. I watched daytime TV, including Regis and Kelly, all the way through up to General Hospital soap operas. I watched the whole the whole thing. Uh and uh worked on my 76 Bonnetville, which required a lot of Bonjour work and spray painting it gold and whatnot. And I uh deep fried uh French fries and uh habanero chili rheenos in my uh little deep deep fryer fried addicts.
So they do work. Anyway, uh I purchased a small deep fryer late last year and regretably haven't used it that much. Four months ago I left the oil in it last time I used it after skimming out the solids. And you gotta be careful, you want to cover it so you you know light doesn't get to it. And um the problem, one of the problems with small fryers and storing oil in them for long periods of time, is that they have a a poor surface area to volume ratio, and so it's the surface area of oxygen uh transfer to volume that's gonna uh determine how fast uh the oil oxidizes and goes ran starting.
So they're not really ideal in that sense because they have a fairly large surface area. Anyways, uh okay, so after skimming the solids, three months ago I spooned in some solidified bacon fat, thinking it was a clever way to store it, uh, and I would deep fry something and get a great smoky bacon flavor in the next week or so. Three months later, the bacon fat and oil are still in the deep fryer. Question. Is it okay to fry chicken with this oil bacon fat combo for the fourth of July or not?
Well, I'm a little late to help you on that, but anyway. Uh I understand possible rancidity of bacon bits from baking grease could create a flavor issue, but if I bring it up to three fifty, are there any potential health issues with trying some fried bread uh to check for rancidity. Uh thanks, Tommy Bishop, YFL VA. Uh I don't uh Y Phil VA I don't think it's uh I c I can't think of any major health problems. But the issue with bacon grease in general, I mean I save it, but it goes off pretty quickly because remember there's a lot of salt in uh bacon and the salt is uh you know it's really going to um increase the rate, especially because bacon grease is usually heated to a very high temperature when you're cooking the bacon so you're starting to break down the fats there.
You have salt in it which is starting to break down the fats. And so in general bacon grease isn't your most stable of uh fats. Uh that said, you know it's not going to kill you to eat it. It's just a question of is it still going to taste good, right? What do you think guys think that's uh anyone anyone any thoughts?
Okay. So uh but uh your question is already done this or hasn't done it so what do you say? I guess we could just ask the person who asked the question because they probably tried it. Well but again Tom you know Tommy is uh is pointing out my favorite test for frying oils is putting a a cube of bread into them, frying them and then tasting the bread to see whether or not it has a uh you know whether it tastes like crap because bread's very neutral bread absorbs a lot of oil and then you can get a real feel for kind of what's going on with the uh with the bread. So that's a good way of doing it.
Uh but uh yeah it's not I mean it's not gonna kill you. I mean there are probably people who say that the the you know the free fatty acids aren't good for it and all that other stuff, but I don't know that I'm a real believer in it. I haven't seen any data that says that you know you're gonna substantially shorten your lifespan by uh having a little bit of uh bacon grease that's gone a little bit over the hill. You know? Hey Dave, what's the what's the lifespan of the oil in your massive fryer?
Very long. So if you so uh oil, there's a couple of things like so. I have a 35-pound deep fryer that takes about six gallons of oil, uh about five and a half, six gallons of oil. And uh it's stored very in a very tall format. Uh and additionally, you know, because deep fryers are tall and have a fairly small surface area for how deep they are.
And the other thing about uh, and so that right there for storage is uh kind of ideal. The other great thing about um commercial deep fryers that use the tubes called tube fryers, is that uh the oil at the bottom stays relatively cool, and uh also particles that come off of your food as you're frying sink to the bottom into relatively cooler oil instead of in traditional stovetop frying where the particles hit the bottom of the pan, which is the hottest part of the pan. Right. In addition, the surface area of heating in a tube fryer is so high that uh it doesn't overheat the oil too much because um it has such a large surface area for transfer. So it keeps the oil at a much more stable temperature, and stability of temperature is much better for uh for oil stability over time.
You don't overheat it to get to the temperature you're gonna cook, and therefore that greatly enhances the uh the length of time the oil lasts. It has a smaller surface area on top, so that greatly increases the length of time that it will last. And uh the burnt particles are kept at the bottom while you're fine, which greatly increases. So, all in all, uh just much, much, much, much, much, much better. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Um okay. So uh hey Dave Nastasha et al. from Timothy. Uh I came across this video of a guy making crepes in Kowloon Walled City.
I think it's pronounced Kowloon, it's in Hong Kong. Uh any idea what's going on? It's a YouTube video. Now I had no idea what Kowloon walled city is. Have you guys heard of this before I looked it up.
Have you guys heard of this? No. No. No. So Kowloon Wall City when um when the uh the British uh I don't really even know how they uh got Hong Kong in the first place through some form of coercion or whatnot, but when they gained control of Hong Kong uh in the early uh in the early 1800s or early mid eighteen hundreds, uh China maintained control of certain areas of Hong Kong including uh parts of uh Towhoon where they had a fort so they could see what the Brits were gonna were gonna do.
Uh in the late 1800s when the Brits uh I guess decided to uh alter the deal as Darth Vader would say uh they uh they took over control of Kowloon uh the walled city of the fort and then didn't do much with it and it stayed relatively lawless. It also stayed relatively unpopulated until after World War II uh and uh the fall of uh mainland China it also had it had a big influx during the Japanese occupation in um in World War II and then after World War II after the you know the the uh communist takeover of mainland China it just got swamped with people and still maintained no laws so until the and then it just got kind of crazier and crazier until at one point in this little six acre place 30,000 people were living with no law and like literally no law except the triads, which you know are the the the kind of their mafia over there. And so uh it was just insane. If you see pictures of it, it's like no light made it down into the bottom of it because people would just build kind of illegal walkways, people would bring in illegal electricity. It was so crazy.
It was like free for all, like Mad Max kind of thing. What do you say? Or like five points. Yeah, right. Kind of like five kind of like five points, and much like five points, which was uh incredibly vilified in the press at the time, uh, the vast majority of people who uh five points was the big gang area in uh downtown in New York uh in the uh eighteen hundreds, much like that, uh the majority of people who lived there were just living kind of normal lives and not you know, and just trying to to you know make a living and do whatever they needed to do.
Um so anyways, the um I need to move again because now there is a leaf blower. Uh so anyways, what what happened uh is that they kicked everyone out uh and then they tore the whole thing down. The same thing they did to the five points, actually. So it's it's almost an exact analog to five points. But there's a uh German documentary of it that was done prior to when they tore it down in the nineties and they evicted everyone, I guess, in the late eighties.
And in that video, uh you can see people just going about their daily business, like making noodles and making the what it isn't really crepes, which is what's pointed out in the video, but uh spring roll wrappers. And spring roll wrappers have a very interesting manufacturer technique because what you do instead of making a standard crepe dough, so in a standard crepe dough, you do a very high hydration dough, uh like one to one hydration of uh liquid to flour, you let it rest and hydrate and let all the air bubbles come out, and then you pour it on a very hot griddle uh with oil. You put oil down the griddle, you pour it down a very hot griddle, and you use a little kind of what looks like a spatula rake. I forget what the term in Fran French is, it's like it's like rap play or something like that. Peter will help me out because his French is much better than mine.
Uh and you you s swirl it around into a crepe, you let the bottom cook and you flip it. Spring roll, uh, by contrast, is a much uh less hydrated dough. It's I mean, I don't really know what they use, but it looks like maybe 75% hydration or maybe a little higher, and it sticks it sticks to your hand. And you need it to build up the gluten, use a high gluten flour. You need it to build up the gluten, and then you let it rest it for an hour or so before you use it to let it hydrate, and then you get a fairly low temperature griddle, right?
And I don't yeah, I don't think you want to oil it. I'm not sure. I don't think you want to oil it. But then you grab the dough in your hand, and you have this lump of sticky dough in your hand, and you mash it onto the griddle and you wipe it around in like a wax on, wax off movement. For those of you that have seen karate kid, uh, and then you pull the dough off, and just a thin layer sticks on your griddle.
Uh, and then after a couple moments, it dries out because it's very thin, and after it dries out, it self-releases from the griddle in the same way that uh in the same way that rice uh will release off the side of a pan if you let it dry overnight. But you don't want it to turn brown, so it's you're not browning it, right? So it's very low temperature, probably somewhere in the 200 Fahrenheit in that range, and he's making spring roll wrapper after spring roll wrapper. But it's a pretty cool technique. Um I don't think that's right.
I can't remember whether I've ever tried it. If I have tried it, it would have been decades ago. But it is a cool technique. You ever tried that, either of you guys? No.
Nope. You like yourself spring roll? Yeah. Loving my spring rolls. Yeah, everyone likes a spring roll, right?
I like spring rolls wrapped in lettuce. The combo is good for me. Uh that's more of a lettuce roll, isn't it? Well, it's a roll within a roll. Oh, you mean you like an actual spring roll with the wrapper and then wrap again in lettuce?
Yeah. Is that because of the whole like, you know, Korean thing? You re you have to wrap everything in lettuce, you're not happy? I can pretty much take anything, wrap it in lettuce and and love it. But I really like I really like the contrast of the crispy spring roll and then with the fresh lettuce.
It's makes me happy. So in order, do you would prefer but oh wait, well, you like a fried spring roll or you like 'em like still kind of you like 'em fried, like egg roll style, fried hard, and then wrapped in lettuce, or you like 'em soft wrapped in lettuce. In that case, fried. Fried, then wrapped in lettuce. Yep.
You should do you should do a uh you should fry it, you should fry it, then wrap it in an unfried one and then wrap it in lettuce. See how many layers you can go. By the way, this might be a a a good point to to bring this up. Uh I don't know if we brought it up before, but I'll see whether Nastasha and uh Peter and uh like the guys in the booth agree with me. I hate raps.
Uh man, I hate raps. For as much as I hate like uh spring roll, as much as I love tortillas of almost any variety, although I do prefer corn for most applications, man wraps suck. They really are bad. Everyone needs to walk around and then every once in a while, like think about the fact that wraps are so popular here in the US and they're really just they're just viciously bad. They're horribly, horribly bad.
I mean, you if you think about this. Uh you're taking an undercooked flour tortilla, which if you were gonna do any reasonable kind of cooking, you would reheat on a griddle to kind of make it taste more cooked, right? And then serve it right away in some sort of cooked thing. And instead, you're wrapping it with a bunch of other dense, wet crap, right? And then wrapping it in such a way almost invariably that you have too much uh kind of flowery mess on one section and not enough in another, and serving to someone as though something they should eat.
Have we discussed this before, Nastasha on the air? I think so. Have we? Well, it kind of bears repeating. Peter, we've never discussed it before.
What do you think? Am I am I off base here with my with my rap hatred? No, my my soul just crumbled away a little bit, just imagining biting into one of those cold, mealy, crumbly tortilla things. Like it's yeah. Not so so somewhere at some point, right?
And I can't remember when the rap thing happened, but I remember before there were raps, right? So like, you know, when I was a little boy, we didn't get raps. That didn't happen, right? That was not that was not on the rest. So some point between the late 70s and the mid-90s, some person who hates food, some person who absolutely detests all that is good in life, came up with this kind of horrible rancid idea and has perpetrated it on hundreds of millions of us.
Because we've all been served one of these nonsense wraps before. And I think, you know, right after you back the Mofad Kickstarter, go tell a friend not to buy wraps. You know what I'm saying? I will say this. You know, a lot of times, uh so back when I was working as an attorney, you know, we'd have these business meetings, right?
And there'd be catered food. And I'll be honest, a lot of times I opted for the wrap over the sandwich simply because I didn't want to make a mess and it was just easier to eat. I still didn't like it. I still prefer a sandwich. I don't necessarily think that this was an uh a crime against humanity as as you're suggesting, but you know.
It's there is something to be said about how it keeps your hands clean. Alright, well, okay, so let's let's go on this for a second. That's true. However, here's here's the thing. Most a a poorly made sandwich, right, is still better than a well-made wrap, right?
And but the problem is is that there it's very hard to actually construct a sandwich for best taste and also best eatability. You know what I mean? So most people they'll overstuff the hell out of their sandwich, and then it tastes good because the fillings almost always taste good, but it's completely uneatable in a kind of a friendly or not friendly, but the public or business environment because the stuff's gonna be falling all over your plate all the time. The flip side is people that manufacture sandwiches for either maximum eatability or their maximum crazy hairbrained idea of health, right? Like those guys, when they when they make the sandwich, it's like horribly dry.
And all like a dry sandwich makes me almost as sad, maybe in some situations more sad, because it could be so much better with a simple addition of the condiment like mayonnaise or oil, as a wrap. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. I think that's how sad is a dry sandwich. How sad are these two things?
A dry sandwich or an undersalted sandwich, where they like someone made the chicken salad and they didn't put enough salt in the chicken salad, and it's also a little too dry, and they pack it on that like horribly bad, badly made wheat bread that they think is good for you, but it's not because it tastes bad. And there's like the bread the bread to fill in combo is just way off. I mean, I I think the solution really for this is to have tea sandwiches at all business meetings. I love tea sandwiches. These sandwiches are good.
Yeah. But I think you know the other issue with bad sandwiches, i you know, there's so much bad like so much of the kind of things that are put out for people to eat are horrible. I mean, I don't know what got me into this mood, but here's another one for you. When you wrap a breadstick with uh with ham, right, you gotta realize that uh especially the thin breadsticks, like their ability to stay crisp is extremely minimal because any amount of water at all uh migrates out of that ham into that breadstick. And now you have like a mealy gooey breadstick, and then you have to try and extricate this ham from around it.
And it and i I should it's another pro people need to think about moisture migration and putting different products together. Uh they're gonna sit around for a long time when they're worrying about catering things like business lunches. What are your thoughts on the breadsticks and ham? Just moisture migration uh ignorance. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean otherwise. I mean, I don't think I would describe it that way myself. I mean, I I agree with you in spirit, you know.
I'm I'm right there with you. Just perhaps the uh the uh magnitude is uh it's you're further out there than me. Well, I also noticed that uh what you're telling me is that at the business meeting you're too much of a sissy to take the sandwich that you like and instead taking the rep. Oh, the hate's being directed this way now. Yeah.
Yes, yes. Well, you know, i if you ever come work, anyone who's listening, if they ever come work with us, you gotta realize there's gonna be a certain amount of hate down getting thrown around at all times. We just can't we can't help a little bit of the friendly hate down uh here uh at either at MoFad uh or Booker Index or Cooking Issues. Anyway, uh we got it take a uh commercial break? Sure.
Oh wait, here's a big coming out. This one is called Fish Is Fish Is Vodka by the Meatballers on cooking issues, this is Chris Young, co-author of Modernist Cuisine. Together with photographer Ryan Matthew Smith and Chef Grant Krille, we've created something exciting and new at Chefsteps.com. Each day in our kitchen at Seattle's Pike Place Market, we're working on new recipes, as well as updating classic ones that we love. And we're always looking for new techniques that make the impossible possible.
At ChefSteps.com, we publish it all online with detailed step-by-step demonstrations, as well as explanations of the science that answers the why behind the how in the kitchen. And through our forum, you can engage with our team as well as a friendly community of curious cooks from around the world. If you're interested in becoming a better cook, if you want more from the creative team behind modernist cuisine, and if, like us, you're a fan of Dave Arnold in cooking issues, then we think there's a lot you'll like. And the best part, Chef Steps.com is entirely free to learn. And welcome back to the Issues.
Here today with Peter Kim. Head of Mofad, Nastasha, and the engineering crew. Calling your questions, she's awesome time. Calling your questions to 714972128 to 718497-2128. So we have this one in uh comment really from uh Andrea Perotti from the uh UK.
And this one, uh Peter, you weren't gonna want to listen to it. It has to do with uh Mofad. I'm a longtime reader of the blog and listener of the show. My girlfriend and I have followed uh the recent Mofad development and are very excited about this project, especially the puffing gun exhibit. I'm a nutrition science student currently working at Kellogg's as a junior nutritionist on our UK team.
I'm sure you guys won't need it, but if you'd uh if you'd like any information or any help of any kind, I'd be happy to contribute any way I can. I'm not a huge manufacturing expert, but I work closely with the RD team, and I'll be happy to let any inform give you any information should you need it. So I guess we know who knows, who knows what we need, right, Peter? Oh, yeah, that would be fantastic. Yeah.
Fantastic. So, yeah, you should definitely contact us uh at info at mofad.org, and uh we'll definitely get in touch with you. Here's the best part. Best of luck in obtaining the full amount for the puffing gun. We recently made a small donation, but are spreading the word to all of our family and friends.
So Andrea's doing exactly the right thing, which is spreading the word to all the family and friends. Maybe we have a caller. Uh, we have a caller. Caller, you're on. Oops.
Can you guys hear? I can't I can't I can't hear what's going on. Caller. Hello. Hi.
Howdy. Hello? Hi. Hello. Caller.
Hello. Hi. Howdy do you what's your question? Hi. Sorry, uh Susan you can hear me.
Um I'm calling about uh long time listener love the show. Um calling about thickening yogurt. I'm wondering I want to like take yogurt and add pure fruit puree to it, but it loses a lot of its viscosity. And I'm wondering if I can use something like agar or carrageenan to thicken it so that I can like form canals with spoon. Well you can thicken uh yogurt with carragen.
It's done all the time. The issue is is that uh you know carragena needs to be heated uh you know pretty hot almost all the way up to uh the boil for it to really get um to to get active now what you can do is uh heat heat the carrageenin in and I would use so kappa carragenin is uh stiff and brittle uh and it doesn't reform after it's broken whereas iota carrageenin is much more kind of uh stretchy uh and it also reforms gel so a lot of times people will use a mix of kappa and uh iota for things like thickening yogurt uh and you you you can use a very small amount because carragena is very s synergistic with um uh with uh dairy systems um and so i mean i think a lot of the times people would probably add the stuff before the thickening because they can then heat it but without heating the yogurt up to a certain to a high temperature but what you could do is over um you know heat the yogurt slightly and then oh it'll kill the culture so and then over uh you know overdose dose some actual straight milk and then stir that in let it gel and then set up further alternatively you know you could take a live yogurt uh make like a firmer iota and then you know stir it in uh just before it sets when it's warm but not too hot and then let it set like that and then let it culture up a little more and you should be able to get a uh a gel. The other thing though is if you really want to thicken it up just hang it. You know like uh put put it into like uh you know uh uh natural fine cheesecloth not the wretched they sell in the supermarket and let moisture drip out of the yogurt for a good long time and uh you'll you'll drip out a bunch of the moisture and it'll thicken up quite a bit and then you won't have as much of a problem when you mix the fruit fruit purees back into it because uh it'll you'll just be taking it back to where it once was right okay. Um how much keratean do you typically use for say like X amount of something like yogurt.
You could you said you use small amounts, right? What do you say? You you generally typically use like very little right. Yeah. Well so I mean uh in a dairy systems carotene is roughly uh five times more powerful than it is in water-based systems.
I mean the numbers get a little dicey when you get down to those kind of very low percentages, but you can in general use like on the order of uh two grams per kilo something in that range and get a pretty uh decent gel with with them. Um Piper Christensen uh who works with us at Booker and DAX uh did a stint at uh working R D at CP Kelco who does a lot of the good carrageenas. So what we'll have him do, uh he's in Vietnam right now, but when he gets back from Vietnam I'll just ask him for a good yogurt thickening recipe and have him tweet it out and I'll retweet it for it on our cooking issues tweet Twitter feed before uh next week's show. Awesome. That would be amazing.
Thanks I love the show. Love everyone there. Keep up the good work. Thanks so much. Thanks for calling in.
Yeah no worries. So all right. So Andrea uh made a comment uh back from uh the the person who works at Kellogg's in the UK uh and this is the apropos part also for Peter uh the nutrition show uh the nutrition coverage on the show is limited but always very interesting and usually aligned with my personal opinions. There are not so many shows, programs or print media publications that really value evidence-based nutrition like you do. I really do enjoy listening.
Well Andrea I have a treat for you that you can talk about a little bit which is the museum we've mentioned this on the air the museum is going to be uh doing a series of food fora uh I guess that's a plural for forum uh where we get uh uh experts in different fields uh food related fields on opposite sides of uh different issues including uh nutrition questions things like the soda ban in New York uh and kind of what the evidence is on whether or not that's even a useful thing or a good thing uh things like what other what other subjects we got to tackle Peter? Uh looking at the marketing of snack foods also uh GMO seeds and basically I take any any controversial food issue where you've got a lot of really strong opinions out there, you know, bringing all these people together for a uh for a discussion and to allow people to see the different points of view and come to their own conclusions. Right. So, you know, what we hope is that you know, this is going to be uh a bastion of kind of no BS straight footing. We're gonna get people from different sides of the debate who are all smart, no idiots, uh, and get them together, moderate them, and try to have some actual interesting food discussion.
A lot of it's gonna be centered about around nutrition just because that's such an important topic today. There's just so much misinformation uh out there. Uh because you know, almost all the information that you get presented is presented by someone who has an axe to grind. Don't you think so, Peter? Yeah, I agree.
Yeah. I mean, we have a I have an axe to grind too, but my axe to grind is that everyone else has an axe to grind, but I guess that is that is its own axe, right? Is that a meta axe? Yeah, meta-axe. I'd say either an axe to grind or a commercial interest.
Yeah, or or some combination. Yeah. Some combination thereof. Okay. Vivian Mack writes in uh question for the show.
Uh she writes on Twitter actually. Uh, why do some uh age uh egg whites when they make macro, what's the difference? Uh what's the effect of age, egg whites on foam, uh drainage, and volume? Well, I looked at an article called Hen Age and Ape Storage Time for Egg Albumin Foaming by Marianne Hammer Surge. Dave, you have another caller.
Oh, yeah, okay, okay. Caller, you're on the air. Uh yeah, Dave. Um I'll be brief here since we run out of time. Falafel.
Um having repeated falafel disasters, it either instantly burns or just is completely disintegrates in the oil. Yes, that is true. Uh uh I that there's nothing more depressing than uh there's nothing more depressing than making the falafel ball and then sticking it into the oil, having it completely dissolved, and then form a layer of burnt crap on the bottom of your fryer. Check, check, check. Yes.
Yeah. It happens to me all the time. And I did went research a good recipe, and I had my falafels uh down. But I'm hesitant to uh just like over the air, give a bunch of things because I want to remember exactly uh how balance them. I think one of my main problems was I early on is I really like uh I really like uh tahini flavor a lot, and so I think I put a lot of it into the chickpea mix that I put in, and so I think the oil and plus I didn't add a lot of external binder to it, and they just blew apart.
Um then I moved to try to chill the batter first in the you know par freeze a little bit so that they'd uh hold well before that crust set up, and I went through a whole bunch of rigamaroles, but I'm gonna try to figure out exactly what I did, and if Natasha can write a note, I'll uh try to talk about it at the next week's uh program when I have uh a little more time to regather my thoughts on it. But but that you're correct. There's nothing more depressing, well, a few things more depressing than watching your falafel balls fall apart in the fryer and sink to the bottom. Yes. Um thank you very much.
All right, so we'll we'll uh we'll deal with that guy next week. All right, so back to the importance of hen age and egg storage time uh from 2000. And I was reading the abstract. The firm and infraction of egg albumin had different foaming properties. Uh so and it, I'll give you the upshot.
The thin white foams more, i.e. I eat has more overrun, can take more area to it. But the thick white produces a more stable foam, right? So you can't uh the the you can't win. And so the more you age things, the more the uh egg whites, uh more of the thick white is converted into uh thin white.
But also the the foaming properties of it depend on the age of the hen when the hen lays the egg, and that's something you can't control anyway. So really uh there is no way uh there's no way to win. Uh there's another article if you want, you can go look at uh that deals with uh the problem of meringue specifically. It's called the effect of sugar, citric acid, and egg white types on the microstructural mechanical properties of meringues, which came out relatively recently, but uh I think all of this stuff is kind of point. The best thing I read about it was uh on a website called Macaron Myth Mythbusters, uh uh on the blog www.uhbravepart.com.
By the way, we're not talking about macaroons here, we're talking about the the French meringue-based cookies with the jelly in between, which I freaking love. Do you guys like those things? Uh no, not really. What the what the hell? You don't like those either.
What do you not like about those? Peter, you like those things, right? Sorry, man. You don't like Well, actually, I don't uh it's been so long since I've had one. But I'm not I don't have much of a sweet tooth.
The hell's wrong with you people. Why don't you like it, Stas? Is it because it reminds you of how delicious a biscuit is? No, I uh same as Peter. Like I haven't had it in a long time, so it's not like I care that much about them.
So maybe that's the thing. I just don't care. So it's not that you don't like them, it's just you don't care about them. But if someone put in front of you, you're not you're having no thanks. No, I'll eat it.
Yeah, all right, well, you guys are freaking over those. I think they're delicious. Anyway, uh so uh Brave Tart, and I don't know who it is, uh sh uh did a series of tests. And uh here's what Braveheart writes, which I really like. Uh every day I changed a single variable across multiple batches.
And Brave I was making them professionally uh for somebody uh you know for for several months was doing you every day was pumping out these things and so had a lot of opportunity to test and said uh changed feel variable across multiple batches generally three in order by results. I also tested variables by their absence. For example, I listened to Huey Lewis in the news every time I made macaron the macaron turned out fabulous. Then I made a few batches without the power of love because these all uh and then these also turned out beautifully so I can at least conclude that Huey Lewis didn't play an essential role in the matter of making macarons I think that's kind of a great test you know maybe it was the Huey Lewis. And Bra Brave here is Brave Tart rather here is uh what they're what what you know what Braveheart's basic tart is basically saying is that uh a lot of these things that people take for granted or take f as rules making them like you have to uh age your egg whites first or you have to um or you have to dry out them after you pipe them before you cook them aren't necessarily dried in stone.
And Brave Tart's point, and I can't keep saying their name because I don't know if it's a he or she, but uh Brave Tart's point is basically that if you have proper technique and you know what a proper meringue looks like and the proper egg white foam looks like then you can get that egg white foam. You can get a proper result, right? Uh if your technique is good, whether you dry it uh after you uh after you pipe it or you don't because that's basically controlling uh moisture a lot of the techniques that are used are controlling the moisture content of the uh batter before it's piped so drying controls the spread of the macaron and the and and and the moisture content by letting some moisture flash off ditto with the aging the egg whites and by the way back to Vivian Mac's question aging the egg whites can mean uh several things it can mean using aged egg whites i.e uh what or aged eggs that is eggs that are older had and therefore also have a higher pH and more thin white uh and also possibly more protein density because some uh water's evaporated it could also mean uh uh cracking the eggs out in advance uh and then letting moisture flash off the top of the egg white to also increase protein density either one of those things could be meant by aging I'm not sure which one you mean uh or which one anyone means when they're talking about it but the the the big point here is that uh all of the variables about the age of the egg whites can just be swamped and drowned out if you just perfect uh your actual technique so I would go read uh Brave Tart's macaroon section uh macaron section rather uh and see what they said. So uh very quickly because I know I am running out of time because I have to make it to my Uncle Luke's hundredth birthday you don't want to be late to a hundredth birthday party am I right? Right.
We need a hundred so last time I saw Uncle Luke he was ninety-eight and he's he's still clipping along saw him yesterday you know just just in case but uh but yeah never been to a hundredth birthday oldest relative I've ever had you have anyone that's uh close to a hundred no family ever no not at all yeah yeah he's down here in Florida living the kind of dehydrated Florida life, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Uh okay. So uh Scott from Guelph, you know we love Guelph.
Never been, but like I always say, awesome uh university up there, Democrats writes in uh saw an interesting link uh about the polymerization uh the polymerization of oils and the for those of you that want to look at it as a patent link is EP 244066 A1 uh and says Dave was talking about Japanese being able to get oil products uh thought this might be relevant. Now we were talking before about this Japanese product a couple people wrote in about uh that you could uh add to uh oil in the pan it solidifies it so you could throw it away as a block which is kind of cool uh but this is is kind of a a cool technique then we should talk about it more next week where they're actually using um not methyl cellulose like we use in normal cooking ethyl cellulose uh and the the deal with ethyl cellulose as opposed to methyl cellulose is ethyl cellulose is not soluble in water it's not a hydrocolum soluble in oil but it's in it's and although it's not a hydrocolloid it's not soluble in water uh it it's it is exactly analogous to hydrocolloids in water but so you disperse ethyl cellulose in oil heat it up to a much higher temperature than you do uh most water based cells 140 uh Celsius uh it dissolves in cools and forms a gel where the liquid phase is actually liquid oil and not liquid water uh experimenting with them but it's uh pretty cool and they have a lot of um potential uses in being able to uh replace uh trans fats. Anyway, okay. Question before uh before we gotta go. Uh your Jack got a question for the show and something for you to laugh at.
This is from Dane and Siska. Uh and I'll first give you the one that they sent me to laugh at of uh the uh they you know he knows uh that uh we enjoy uh funk and hip hop and all this kind of stuff so and I was not aware of this website but sent us a link to uh it's called Gizoogle and basically they take they take any it's like Google but they they somehow use Google Translate's uh uh functionality and they translate any they translate anything into smooth bugs kind of like you know shit language. So they sent us a link to uh cooking issues uh heritage radio cooking issues uh splash page done in uh in chisel language and it is a an interesting it's fun to do search uh as long as you're you know as long as you're not offended by uh people dropping a lot of F bombs it is back to these quick questions he has two questions next week because I don't understand it. Questions are w number one, Western sauce W a TF. I've never heard of Western sauce you ever heard of Western sauce or Peter?
No. I have no idea what that is. I don't for Western uh North Carolina versus East North Carolina barbecue sauce in which case I'm gonna see WTF who wants that Western North Carolina barbecue sauce. No offense Lexington North Carolina because I'll tell you something the Eastern North Carolina barbecue sauce which is vinegar and red pepper only way to be and you know I think now anyone that lives you know kind of in the Piedmont area of uh North Carolina and likes to add a little bit of tomato in the otherwise delicious pulled pork barbecue uh with uh with kind of too police and such, but uh it you know there's kind of like there's a right and a wrong there, and I believe Eastern North Carolina sauce is right. Uh about to think that's what they're referring to.
Probably gonna get in trouble for that smoke. Uh shame there. Oh, and by the way, uh, you know how a couple weeks ago I came out against barbecue sauce because in general I'm against it. You remember that stuff? Yeah.
Do you know who Dr. Gable Williams is? You're sort of fading out and then. Oh, do you know who Dr. Gable Williams is?
No. Gunger Gable Williams was the most famous animal trainer like the freaking brothers ever had. And he's been down here, and I had a chance to taste his steak sauce, and I have to say it was pretty good. Check out Gunter Gable Williams' steak sauce. You take uh you take scotch.
You taste a bunch of onions, and then you throw in a bunch of scotch, and then you throw in a bunch of Worcestershire sauce, and then uh and that and then you throw in a little bit a little bit of brown sugar and uh a little bit of mustard and a little bit of Worcestershire sauce, and that and I have to say actually like that's pretty good. That's more of a zoo. That's a yeast sweet barbecue sauce and more of a jus. Anyway, um, so it looks like uh looks like it's all the good stuff we got, it does. Yeah.
Alright, we're out. I'm gonna uh report on my Uncle Luke's hundredth birthday when I come back to these looking issues and remember to back Kickstarter by the. Yeah, Dave, one more plug. One more plug, man. So yeah, we'd really appreciate you guys' support.
Uh means a lot to us. Uh really needs to help. So uh and we need to raise the money we need for the exhibit by July twenty. If we don't get the support we need, this is really just not gonna happen. So please get on to boom that mofed.org.
Uh thank you. Do it, do it now, do it. Do it. 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.
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