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Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold your host of Cookie Issues coming to you live from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez, and who do we have in the studio today? We got Jack and Joe in the booth right now. How you guys doing?
We're doing great. Yeah, how you doing, Stas? Good. Great. Calling your questions to 7184972128.
That's 7184972128. And I'm back on food, people. Yeah, the lemonade diet is over, and God, that sucks. Man, it's just the worst. It it's like freaking terrible.
Like, so my wife, I complained about it last week, so I'm only gonna complain a little bit about it this week, right? But my wife was like, you know, uh, she was surprised, you know, because here's the thing. Like Nastasha you don't probably don't know me, right? But uh one of the things Nastasha hates about me is that uh she says I'm kind of like an animal, I'm kind of a machine, because I really just don't I don't care kind of like I don't know, it's things don't phase me, like pain, punishment, things like that, right? Yeah, hunger.
Yeah, hunger. So getting through it wasn't like uh like uh difficult from a willpower standpoint. It just sucked, and what sucked about it was is there was no point in it at all. You didn't learn anything about you don't look different either. No, no, no, no, no.
People are like, did you lose weight? I don't know, I didn't weigh myself beforehand. Why? Because this like it has no no meaning. And and all I realize is that you can, in fact, walk around with a sugar high for seven consecutive days without falling over.
I think we should just do a new uh diet stars this uh Stas will do this one. How about Stas. You want to go on the Sour Patch Kids diet? No. All you eat is uh just sour patch kids and wine.
Not at the same time. No, no. Like breakfast is sour patch kids, lunch is champagne, dinner is sour patch kids. No. You could do it for two days?
Yeah, probably two days. Yeah, you want to No, I don't want to do that. Maybe in the winter. Yeah, 'cause like minus the wine, like that's people are like, can you give a wine for seven yeah co of course. You know, you like your body is just this like physical thing that's there.
You know what I mean? Like who cares? Whether you're you know, right? Anyway, whatever. It was an irritant and I'm glad it's over.
So you learned nothing about yourself through that. Uh no. No. No. I learned that I mean I I really don't like the idea of detoxing.
I think it really doesn't make sense. I mean it is true you get rid of caffeine as I said last week, you know, and yeah, you know, your body is mildly dependent on caffeine if you consume it the quantities I did. And by the way, uh first thing I did when I woke up on my by the way, I broke my lemonade fast with uh falafel, I made falafel because a couple people have asked about it on the show and I hadn't made it in a long time. So I made uh falafel kind of a combination between Joe Nathan's recipe, you know, the famous uh writer on on um Jewish and Jewish American cooking, cooking in general, I guess, and uh this lady called uh the Shiksa Shiksa Kitchen. Anyway, uh who's uh a convert to Judaism actually, and you know, no one no one's a better zealot than a convert to anything.
So looked at her recipe and uh looked at uh Joe Nathan's recipe, made some good falafels. Fried them all up in the fryer. Did you talk on the show last week about how people should just get sick and throw up? Uh did we talk about that? I don't think so.
Well, uh, so the theory is this uh like so here's my f feeling, right? If what you really want to do is purge your body of everything, right? Uh like the best for me was the time I had that horrible gastrointestinal disease, right? And I I lost a ton of weight there because your body is like working overtime to try and fight this horrible disease that you have, and you're flushing your system of everything, and you can't take anything in, but your body doesn't go into horror shutdown mode because your brain is telling you not to eat or drink anything because it just shoots right out of you. So your metabolism stays fast and you're not taking any calories.
That's the genius thing. You know, that's that's what we need to do. That relates to my other business idea. Now, someone out there, please feel this. Here's the idea.
Ready for this? We're gonna get samples of contaminated water from around the world, right? And we're going to ship them to people who who live in places that don't have any sort of parasites in their water. And then you're gonna drink that water like maybe like two, three weeks. By the way, I'm not serious, this is satire.
Like two or three weeks before uh you go on a vacation to that country to that country, right? And then you have all of your horrible gastrointestinal problems at home in the comfort of your own home. You know, on the comfort of your own toilet, right? You know, I I'm I know some people that you know, Stas that could have used the comfort of their own toilet when they had some horrible GI problems on a trip last year. And they uh uh think about it.
And then um I mean, like, look, nothing's worse than going to an unfamiliar country where you don't speak the language and needing a toilet within 10 seconds, right? Yeah. I mean, that's rough even here in the States or wherever you live. Wherever you live, doesn't matter where you live, like you know your own toilet. You know what I mean?
Anyway, my point is is uh is that this would be uh a decent business. But you know, but stuff, all kidding aside, people used to take tapeworm pills. Really? Yeah. What years?
A long time ago. Really dumb. Really, really stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid stuff. But and then another thing, another million dollar business for you. Ready for this one?
There's this part. You didn't give the name of that business. Well, so like it was actually I was speaking to someone who is from uh India when when I when I came up with the idea, and because they were saying you don't want to go to Delhi and get this. You here's what you get when you drink the water there. They call it uh and this is from a native, so please don't don't write into me.
But uh Delibelli, which is the sweet name. So that was gonna be the name of the business, Delibelli. It sounds so friendly, doesn't it? Yes. Sounds awesome.
Anyways, so I was speaking to a doctor over the weekend, and we have another million dollar idea. Check this out. How much do you think like you know, some sort of rich Manhattan folk person would pay for this? Uh here's what we do. We give you you come into the clinic, it's a one-day super detox, right?
You come into the clinic, you drink this thing called a fasso soda. Fasso soda is like heavily phosphate salt laden uh soda, you have to chug it and literally it rolls through you like a freaking steam train and sprays out the other end, lickety split, cleans you out. One shot. So you do that. We also flush you from the other side just for good measure.
Then get here's the good part, Stas. Total dialysis. Right on the spot. Bam! Bam!
Oh my god. Oh my god. They would pay whatever. Yeah, whatever. $10,000.
Whatever. Show up, detox in a day. You know, we'll do your nails at the same time. You know what I mean? Little manicure.
We can get that Chinese lady we use to do their hair too. Oh, dude, you're giving away the secret. I didn't say where. You know, only the smart people know that that they should go to the like any place that has a Chinatown. If you go to the Chinese hair salon, this is a new this is in the States.
I don't know what it's like around the world because I don't I don't get my hair cut around the world. But the best head massages in the world for almost nothing. Yeah. Right, Sus? Yeah.
Eight dollars. Yeah, don't give away, don't give away all our secrets. We'll only give away the cooking secrets. Alright, now two actual cooking questions. First of all, before we get to cooking questions, I would like to say we have this in from uh Aaron Will.
Very uh, and uh we love this guy. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm gonna just gonna read his note, right? To uh Nastasha et Ali, which I like. I like I know some people named Ali.
Anyway, I want to say congratulations to everyone. This is by the way about the Kickstarter, the uh puffing gun. Oh, we should talk about the puffing gun later if we have time about what we puffed. Yeah, that was awesome, by the way. Oh my god, you like that first of all, like those things exploding.
How how like loud and impressive is that explosion stuff. You know what? Give me a minute. Now I have a video on my phone, I'll patch it through to the board. Maybe it'll uh come through on radio.
Uh sweet. All right, cool. Um, so this is about the puffing gun thing. I would like to say congratulations to everyone who is involved in the project on reaching the goal. Thank you very kindly for the invitation to the Mofad Puff Party.
You see, because Aaron Will is a backer of our Kickstarter. Uh it makes me incredibly proud to be a part of something I so strongly believe in. I truly believe in the long-term applications and massive positive ramifications that such an entity can and most likely will create. In all honesty, I am poor I am a poor yet passionate cook out here in Oregon, but um only because the momentary circumstances allowed for the expenditure, I was able to donate my entire paycheck this last month to the Mofad Kickstarter. You hear that people?
Entire paycheck. As such, along with scheduling and staffing issues, I have no feasible way to monetarily fund a trip to join the festivities to follow this month on the 13th, because we're having a big puffing party on the 13th of August. I would, however, hate to see my invitation ticket and spot on the fire marshal's max person limit list to the event to go to waste. If there is any possible way to auction off or resell my ticket to again benefit the Mofad so that someone else could enjoy the experience, I would greatly appreciate it. Again, I truly regret I cannot join the amazing group of like-minded persons that is sure to converge for the event.
I hope to hear from you soon and that you all have an amazing time at the event, Aaron Will from Scratch Restaurant in Lake Aswego, Oregon. By the way, everyone go out and patronize the uh Scratch restaurant out there in Lake Aswego, Oregon. And also he says, P.S. Uh, if Dave and everyone wants to come out to the pair repository, still the invitation stands. I'd I I'd love to go, but it's right around now, and I got s we have so much stuff going on this fall.
It's like the worst fall ever in terms of stuff. Um but uh maybe if I finish my book while the pears are still on the on the vine, I can go. Stas has this look on her face like I want to stab your eye out. That's a look. But anyway, uh Aaron, listen.
Thanks. This is uh it was um we're we're very touched over here. Yes. Well, we should have someone get his ticket. Yeah, we'll think we'll think of something nice to do for you.
Yeah. As opposed to the ticket. Okay. Well, we got a caller. Uh oh.
But maybe before we take the call caller, we'll play this little clip of the puffing gun. Okay. We'll see how it sounds. All right, hold fire. Woo!
I guess it's better when you're looking at the video. Yeah, probably. Caller's on the line. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey man, how you doing?
Uh, this is uh Christian from Detroit. How are you, dude? Hey, doing all right. So got a question for you. I know you like to cook uh some weird things and whatnot.
Um was trying to uh make some mayonnaise this weekend with turkey eggs and made mayonnaise uh a hundred times and never had a problem. I was curious if different game eggs start to uh make creating mayonnaise difficult or or different. Huh, that's interesting. So you say you have done turkey eggs without a problem? No, I've never done turkey eggs uh before.
I've done you know, regular eggs and made mayonnaise of the hundred times. But I'm wondering if like wild game eggs or something like that has a like different protein comp uh makeup or something like that. Well they would yeah, I mean that that's a cool question. They I've never had a turkey egg. Do you actually have a stock of turkey eggs there?
I have a stock of turkeys which then produce the turkey eggs, so it's uh it's a good relationship. How do they taste as opposed to a chicken egg or duck egg or something? They're super custardy. So you know how a duck egg gets a little rich? This is like kind of custardy with and it's a little bit thicker, as you kind of would expect from like a bigger bird.
It's uh but it's super delicious, especially on top of like pasta and whatnot. Huh. And so and do they have you put them in a circulator? Do they cook at roughly the same uh temperatures? I haven't put them in a circulator, so I I couldn't tell you that one.
I would love to know that. So the well, the short answer is I don't know. But uh with regard to mayonnaise, but I do know that the different birds do have different protein fractions in their eggs and that they respond differently to certain treatments. For instance, uh, you know, one of the things that I have experimented with uh different um egg varieties uh is treating them with uh lye. Harold McGee and I used to do uh an alkaline egg where you soak it in lye and salt solution and then you cook it, and then even after you cook it, the egg uh remains translucent, right?
And so and then and then McGee and Nils and I used to you used to substitute that out. Uh instead, you know, loot fisk is the lye is the lye uh cured fish. So what we would do is use the egg as a loot fisk thing and then just s serve an actual smoked trout next to it along with some so it was good. Um but the um but the point is is that the uh duck eggs, chicken eggs, and quail eggs all responded differently to the treatment because the protein uh makeup is slightly different. So duck eggs responded really well to that treatment, uh, you know, uh, and uh so did quail, but uh chicken eggs were much more difficult to get to work with that because the proteins tended to fall apart more when they were treated with the lye, so they didn't gel up as nicely.
So I I know from that experience um that uh that yet yes the protein fractions are slightly different. Now, you know, mayonnaise is mostly concerned with the emulsification properties of the yolk, and I would assume that uh you know be because the yolk has so much more uh emulsification power in it than is necessary to make any sort of reasonable quantity of mayonnaise that unless there's some real unforeseen thing in a turkey egg that I can't, you know, fathom that uh there's no reason why it wouldn't f function um the same way in something like a mayonnaise. Is that make sense? Yeah, so maybe I just stink. Well well I mean like I have to uh yeah, I have to uh keep playing with it, but it was really weird.
I mean, no matter how much, you know, like a little bit of acid or the little bit of water, I just I couldn't get it to come together, so I'll have to mean you couldn't get it to you couldn't get it to start the emulsion? No. Yeah, I mean I've never researched the turkey. That's a really interesting question. You I I I'm trying to think of like what it could be that would not allow it to happen, but I you know, I can't.
But but so you so in other words, like you sit there, you make it with a chicken egg, no problem, and then you make it with the turkey egg and it's big problems. Yeah, it's it's super weird, and then you know, it like I've tried everything, like I let it sit in the fridge, let everything separate, pulled the yolks back out, tried to slowly add it back in, tried the cold method, tried room temp method, could not get it to come together. So I'll have to keep playing with it and see. Maybe there's something in it that's it's maybe there's something I've I've no I have no clue. But but maybe someone out there knows.
You know? Maybe I'll send you some turkey eggs and then we'll have to Oh, that'll be awesome. We'll play with it. That would be awesome. Also, like uh I wonder whether have you tried um so one way to find out whether there's something in the turkey egg that's shafting you is to m do like one to one turkey egg with uh chicken egg and see whether or not you can make that work.
Right? Yeah. I mean maybe there maybe there's some sort of crazy inhibitor, but I again like I just feel that like something just weird might be something weird might be going on, you know? Yeah, I I agree. I mean it it seemed weird to me.
I couldn't imagine that the emulsification would be that weird, but I or that different rather, but yeah, it was it's pretty strange. Huh. Yeah, well that's very interesting. So uh uh I would encourage you to keep us posted because I want to hear how this works out, or get us some turkey eggs and we'll mess around. Well we will make mayonnaise out of them.
Yes. Or and you can you can put them in the suit and see see how they do. No, yeah, it does. I want a sixty two. So you need to do is you need to do like you do the range.
So it's gonna set somewhere. I mean, obviously, you know, if you cook with a circulator, you know, ch uh chicken eggs set between 60, so they're runny of sixty two and they're set at sixty four Celsius. Yep. And so like, you know, I usually just run like that range to see whether like how things are relative to relative to the chicken, which is, you know, of course, the standard standard egg. Right.
Standard egg. Yeah. Cool. Alright, awesome. So I look for I look forward to the turkey and we'll uh we'll post back.
Yeah, sounds good. Thanks, man. Thank you. Alright. So what were we talking about beforehand?
We were talking about popping gun. Yeah, but no, there's something else. Something else we were talking about. I can't remember. Okay.
Uh Ryan writes in uh at cooking issues. How does the pressure pickle technique burst the vacuoles make sense with the chamber, but I'm a little confused with this. Referring to uh the the pressure uh rapid pressure pickling technique I put up on the cooking issues blog uh the other week uh and I think I described it last week on the air right how that works like you so they the idea is is that normally when you're infusing a liquid into a solid use a vacuum machine you suffer the air out using the vacuum machine you have it in a liquid air comes back in air s air smashes the liquid into where the air pockets used to be in the thing and you infuse it. So the problem with doing that in ISI is is that when you release the pressure uh all of the stuff that you infuse in boils back out again and you get almost like a net zero in terms of infusion. It doesn't look infused the way an awesome like you know vacuum infused thing looks so I solve that by putting the um products in Ziploc bags inside the ISI so that the soluble gas, CO2 or N2O doesn't get into the uh product and therefore won't boil out as violently.
So the question here is uh how does that uh burst the actual um air holes well I don't think in other words, like I think what what here's what I think is happening uh in in in this technique. In a vacuum, when you're using a vacuum machine to inject a liquid into into an air hole, what you're doing is you're removing almost all of the partial pressure of air on the inside of the air holes on the uh the pores on the inside of your liquid, right uh inside your solid. When uh when the air comes back in, you have a maximum uh external pressure of 60 of uh six sorry 15 roughly PSI pounds per square inch, forcing the liquid into those things. In an ISI, you're talking about sixty uh or more uh pounds per square inch, at least 60, 70, depending on how much you put in pounds per square inch pushing on it. And that is enough to crush uh air bubbles down to almost nothing.
So you've forced the liquid into it, right? Now you're not forcing anything solution like soluble uh gases in there. You're just making those air bubbles tiny and forcing liquid in. When you release it, right, those bubbles expand and leave your product, let's say cucumber, right? And take with it some of the liquid.
But they also, as they're leaving, they keep on then leaking out because you've made pathways for the liquid to get to them during the compress during the compression phase. The second time you hit it, right? This is why you pause for five minutes. The second time you hit it with a charger, you reinject that liquid into those uh into those uh gaps, right? And the second time you release it, very little gets sprayed back out, and so you have uh fundamentally uh an infused product.
That's why you need to hit it twice with that. I hope that makes sense. That makes any sense? Mm-hmm. All right, cool.
Uh all right. Uh let me see. Uh we have a bunch of you want to hit all the circulator crap now? Cell circulator, John? Or can you talk about what you what you emailed uh Barack Obama?
What? Oh, you know, do you guys look I look, I look. This is great. What? Dave answers no emails that of course if you send me an email, I'm not gonna answer it.
Have I answered an email for you ever, Jack? We've never had one email interaction, though. Yeah, no, no. Nah. And I've known you for how many years?
Like three or four years. Yeah, yeah. No, no emails. No, no. I hate email as a thing.
But but uh the the uh Obama machine emails emails me like three times a day. The formula. Like the, but they change the names to each person. So it'll say hi Dave. Yeah, where'd this come up?
What made you think it is? I was looking for his. Oh, you were looking for the questions I need. Yeah, so like anyway, so like I he's like I only respond to Barack and Michelle Obama's emails. And I never get responsible.
Oh, beyond Beyonce was on behalf of Barack Obama. Oh man. I was like, Beyonce, you never write anymore. So anyway, yesterday or two days ago was Barack's birthday. Right, yeah, happy birthday.
So what did you say? I was like, uh uh what did I say? I was like, oh a happy uh happy birthday, brother. Next time we go out, the beers are on me. No response.
No response. Anyway, I'm like, I personally am like uh I'm uh not a fan of the fake personal. You know what I mean? And he asked for money a couple weeks ago, and you told him I have this mopad thing that I have to give. Yeah, the fake personal emails are hilarious.
It's like I love it when an ATM machine thanks me as though it's not a machine. Yeah, ridiculous. No one made you think of that. All right. Let's take a really quick break.
All right, uh coming back with cooking issues. This special program was brought to you by TechServe, New York's premier authorized Apple reseller and service provider, serving creative professionals at all levels from individual customers to Fortune 100 companies. TechServe has built a solid reputation in their expertise in technology, sales, and service. Visit them on the web at TechServe.com or in New York City at 119 West 23rd Street. Learn more about their in-store classes and incredible insider program.
Make stuff happen. We back? We're back. We're back. Uh Bob in Portland writes in regarding the uh egg uh the egg cracking uh thing we had uh last week.
By the way, you know, like someone like walked up to me a pastry chef that's everyone has an egg cracking thing. So uh Bob writes, hey Dave, Nastasha, and friends. What's up, friends? Hey. Hey.
Uh here's my nearly foolproof egg cracking tip. I hold the egg in the palm of one hand and begin wrapping it with the knuckle of the other hand, like I'm knocking on the door, gently at first and gradually increasing until the egg cracks. I then insert my thumbs and spread the shell apart. No egg white on the side of the bowl or the countertop, Bob in Portland. And uh, you know, it's me the you know the pastry chef was saying, you know, you get the the the tap very gently on the table at the at the at the widest part of the egg and put your finger in, open it so like let me tell you something.
Uh I am a freaking gorilla monster in the kitchen. Like if I spent more and it's people are like just to give you an idea, like of kind of like my way I am in in the thing, like uh I just I like to do everything extremely quickly. Right, Stasja shaking your head like like I can't like I can't like uh sp I should spend each time and give every egg the the respect it deserves as I crack it, but like, you know, I just crack the hell out of those eggs really quickly. You know what I mean? The only time I really pay any attention is when I'm separating eggs out.
And even then, I don't pay that much attention. And so for instance, when I'm crack when I'm separating eggs out, because I'm gonna like make like a Zabayon or I'm gonna make like a meringue or something like this, right? I never crack the damn yolks. You know what I mean? Like when I throw them into the pot, sometimes I crack them, but I don't really care.
You know what I mean? I never crack eggs when I uh egg yolks when I'm making fried eggs, right? Do you think you have that problem? And I'm a I'm a freaking gorilla. You know what I mean?
Like I'm I'm the worst person in the world. And so she was this patriot saying that like that's typical for someone who like hangs out with savory people all the time. That you know, like you know, you just crack the crap out of stuff and put it put it through a strainer to make sure that there's no pieces of shells in. She's like, you're a bad person. Who was that?
I forget who looked. But uh true though. Bad person. Bad person. Uh at least with regard to that.
Right. Um okay, now we got a whole bunch of stuff. We're having some sort of like circulator uh extravagance, all sorts of stuff coming in on circulators, right? Because we had a circulator question last week on the Seattle Food Geek thing, right? So first, before before we do circulators, Dave, are you coming to the party on Sunday?
Sunday? Yeah. I don't know. It might come I don't know. I actually I think I'm away this Sunday.
Ah. But should we announce the party? Are there still tickets? There are still tickets. Sunday!
Sunday, Sunday! That's what I was looking for. Yeah, it's not it's not monster trucks though, right? What do we have? There will be there will be monster trucks.
Holy crap, monster trucks? I'm confirming it right now. Oh my god. Are we gonna do this thing at Yonkers Raceway? Where are we gonna do this?
That's basically where the party is, yeah. No, it's in the back garden of Robert's. It'll be awesome. Whole hog roast, uh, cocktails, etc. etc.
So if you email us now and you confirm that you found out about the party by listening to the show, I'll give you a special discount code. Just uh ask for me. Yeah, what kind of discount they're gonna get? Uh, you know, it's flexible, flexible discount. Ooh, I like the flex discount.
Yeah. Yeah. So info at heritage radio network.org. And uh if you're not in New York, get a raffle ticket, win a trip to Seattle. Yeah.
By the way, I don't know whether you guys know this, which I'm sure you do. Like this radio station here, this is a 501c3 kind of an operation. And uh, you know, Jack, Joe, Eddie, these guys all need to, you know, Aaron, who comes on every once in a while. These guys all need to like eat, they need to purchase food. You know what I mean?
Like the we need uh we need to keep this place on the air. So it helps to uh it it it helps to uh go to these events, and guess what? It's a win-win because you're gonna have a good time, and we get to keep uh providing programming. Am I right about this? Yeah, we can get coffee in the morning.
It really helps. Yeah, please, these guys need their coffee in the morning. I think I've got Piper on the line. Ooh, Piper. Uh so Piper, let me uh Hello Piper.
Hey Dave. So uh Alvin Schultz, uh who uh did uh some time at Booker and Dax the bar, uh hanging out, figuring out the stuff, uh, and also uh longtime listener here, had a question for you looking for food recommendations. Uh you you went to like uh Ho Chi Minh, right? Oh, that's what I was telling you. Oh, you didn't?
Where do you uh yeah, you want to win? So never mind. So you don't have any recommendations for Alvin, huh? Well t well, where where'd you go good in Hunoi? In case he makes it up.
Uh uh street food, honestly. You know what you know. You know where he is? He's in he's in Puquet, and I want everyone like when I was when I was and S the exact same thing. You know how we pronounced it when we were adolescents, right?
Anyway, so wait, so what'd you have there? Street food. He didn't go to any restaurants? Uh no. He said he was missing in his hotel room.
What? Yeah. Because it was too hot to go outside. How hot was it? Is this true, Piper, that you spent all of your time in your hotel room and only went out after dark to get street food?
No, I spent from noon till like two in the hotel room. It was too hot. Man. Stas is shaking her head and and making the Piper your busted face, which is another face that none of you will ever get to see. Alright, well, I I apologize for making you call in when you have no useful recommendations for uh Alvin.
Sorry about that. That's my favorite call in the history of the show. Alright. Sorry, Piper. You know what?
This is why I love Piper, because you can call Piper up and like say something like that, like, you know, I don't know. Do that, and he's he's fine. Pipe inside he's crying. Oh, Piper, good man. Piper's a good man.
Okay. Alvin also writes in, do you have any info on the history of pachuga style mezcals? Uh no. But except for the fact that, you know, I've always told the same story that uh that they put basically in the distillation flask so that it kind of uh it it reflux uh distills on uh a piece of meat. So different places would use different kinds of meat, so pachuga obviously used the chicken breast, but other people threw other kinds of meat into the kind of vapor chamber above where the uh mezcal was distilling, and that's where that comes from.
But as to why you would do that, only God knows. I don't know this story. But you know, I know some people uh from uh Del Mague and some others, so like you know, uh Ryan Fitzgerald and all these guys. I can next time I speak to them, Alvin, I'll I'll get some uh some history uh on that stuff for you. All right.
Uh and Alvin's last question. Uh what does Rhodovap Collection Flask what? What does Rhodovap Collection Flask boil late in the run? How to fix? What does that mean, Stas?
You figure out what that means. Oh. Why does it? No, no, no. What what collects?
Alvin, I gotta say, I don't exact what? It's like a riddle. It is a riddle. It's a complete riddle. Hey, by the way, uh one last non-cooking related thing.
So I have I I I need um the next drink that I come up with at the bar that we don't have a name for. You ready for this one? So Tristan Willie is, you know, one of the bar manager at uh Booker Index. It's his last name is Willie, right? So here's my favorite tongue twister.
I'm gonna name the next drink this, ready? Willie's real rear wheel. Say that. Willie's real rear wheel. Wow.
You can't say it, it's impossible. So I'm gonna have that be the name of the drink. No, no, I saw it. So tongue twisters, because you know I have kids, and so we're doing tongue twisters. I looked it up.
Willie's real rear wheel. And so I'm gonna write that just as the drink name, and it doesn't look imposing. Write it. It looks completely harmless. Can't be can't be said.
And so like customers are gonna be like really we're too and they're on their third Willie's. Anyway, so that's my next plan. Okay. Uh back to cooking related questions. So uh circulators.
Uh okay. Matt writes in, hey Nastashian crew, I'm working on a new product that will hopefully make Sous V cooking not just cheaper, but also better than current immersion circulator technology. Ooh, coming on coming on strong against the uh against uh our boy P Preston and our uh our boy uh Wee Pop Soupy Pot. AKA Supapipot from NomiCoo. Okay.
Uh my question for you guys is what would you like to see improved about current immersion circulators? Are there any pain points or missing features you can think of? Also, where can I send a demo unit once I get one? As I'd love to get your feedback. Well, uh, the address for Booker and Dax Equipment Corporation, if anyone ever wants to send us free stuff, uh, is 54 Eldridge Street storefront.
Yes. One New York, New York 1000 2. Uh so anyway, uh, so I don't know, like that's a good question. Like, uh, what's a hassle about about circulators? I mean, there's a lot that's kind of a hassle about them.
But there's a lot that's great about them as well. I mean, probably the power be nicer to have more power sometimes. I don't know. I mean, I'm so used to them, so used to what's cleaning them could be a little easier, right, Stas? I hate cleaning them out.
You hate well, you Stas never cleans it out. She doesn't give a rat's ass. You have one at home. What? The new one is easier to clean than the old one.
What, the plastic one? Yeah. Yeah, because it's got less parts, but it's it's more it's harder to clean in some ways because there's just more parts that you can't see whether they're dirty because they're inside the machine as opposed to the stainless, which got filthy. But uh anyway, it's a good question. Better know.
Uh I'd like to hear from people out there what they don't like about their circulators and what they think need to be changed. Regarding also circulators, uh, we had up a Seattle food geek did a circulator build. So uh Chris Hale wrote in regarding Seattle Food Geek circulator build. By the way, for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, very quickly, the circulators, the thing that allows you to keep uh water and sometimes other liquids at very constant temperatures. Absolutely necessary to do low temperature cooking, which is the greatest innovation in cooking in the last 200 years, in my opinion.
Seattle Food Geek circulator build. I followed that build and shopping list and had good results, but bending acrylic sucks because we were talking about the box enclosure last week for the uh circulators. Drilling it is frustrating and cutting it as impossible. Then it is hard to clean, not very durable, and looks like crap after a few months. If you don't have a laser C and CNC machine handy, and nobody does but Seattle Food Geek, don't use acrylic.
I busted up my acrylic box last week and installed the whole thing in a black ABS. ABS is a kind of plastic that people use, but you know, remember ABS can't uh get too too hot. Uh ABS project uh project box from Radio Shack. For this project, I recommend at least four inches tall by eight inches deep. I put mine in a six by four by three, and I spent most of the weekend rewiring it because the space was too cramped.
Then there was one time I plugged it in and welded my AC supply line to the relay, but I'm sure you're smart enough to keep the metal backing of the relay away from the power connections. By the way, one note on this I notice a lot of these DIY things use relays. I hate I hate mechanical relays for this application. Spend the extra three bucks and get everyone, listen to me. Spend the extra three bucks and get a solid state relay.
I hate that click, click, click, click that relays make. And I also hate the fact that they have mechanical things in them that can fail because of arcing when things go bad. So just get yourself a solid state relay. They have an infinite lifetime, basically, compared to uh solid state relay. They're never gonna go south on you unless you fry them out.
And uh they don't go click. Hate the click. Alright, so back back back to uh Chris's point here. Um but I'm sure you're smart enough to keep the metal backing of the relay away from the power connections. Anyway, uh once you drill a hole in ABS, you can use a file or hacksaw blade to make the hole whatever shape and size you need.
It won't crack and it's easy to clean. With some properly sized grommets, the holes for the power cord and circulator pump will be vaportight. It's a good word vaportight. That'd be a good band, right? Yeah.
Vaportight. Uh, which was never possible with the acrylic rig. As for the clamp to hold it on the edge of your pan, acrylic is unsuitable for that too. That's true, that will crack. Uh, try a piece of sheet metal or half of a sturdy plastic box held to the project box with screws.
Then attach a couple of spring clamps. They're so much faster than some screws, thumb screws, even if they aren't as versatile. Uh, as far as what kind of container you can use them on. Good luck and happy circulating from Chris Hale. And also, uh Criptamp writes in for your question last week.
I use an aluminum bar bent with hands over a steel railing, not acrylic, uh, for uh mounting this the uh heater on. In fact, he has no housing at all, so he put the uh electronics for it on the on the outside, just attached by wires over on the other side of the thing. I will say, cryotamp or cryptamp, that uh your situation not exactly OSHA friendly because it looks like I could get zapped pretty good if I didn't pay attention, but I'm sure it will work. And when I made my own circulators and didn't care about getting zapped, I did get zapped all the time. Let's say, look.
Oh, is Piper giving us crap for calling him out? He hasn't mailed the torch yet. Um, whatever. Okay, uh we have in from uh Joe Blow. Joe Blow says, People say cooking squid or octopus either needs to be cooked for very long or very quickly.
Nothing in between. Why? What's the science behind this? And I gotta say, uh it's another one of those things that I just uh you know, it's just you take it for granted that you, you know, you don't know. And here's the other thing.
I read a bunch of scientific papers on uh squid uh and octopus, and uh most of the work on that stuff was done uh in the 80s, um uh and you know, around then in the mid 80s, and the people who were doing it had the typical problem of a lot of scientists when they're doing these kinds of papers, they just they didn't cook it properly. So there's no no one no one did the right experiment from a uh science paper standpoint saying like what exactly is going on in the muscles between a short cook, uh the medium, and the long cook, the toughness in between. However, you can kind of deduce based on uh what's going on that um what's happening. So the interesting thing is squid and octopus uh muscle is very different from uh vertebrate muscles, right? So, first of all, uh it there's uh the the protein compositions are different.
So there's much more uh myofibrillar protein, in other words, the actual muscle fiber protein uh in um in squid muscle, as opposed to the sarcoplasmic proteins, which are the ones kind of surrounding and in the cells that aren't the myofibral uh proteins. So those are the ones that actually cause the contraction. This is because squids some strong contraction that sucker, so they can go, right? So they have more of those uh myofibrillar proteins that are gonna cause toughness when they denature. Also, they uh they have pro they have uh fibers running in two different directions, around, right, so they can squeeze, and then also radially, so they can bend and do all sorts of stuff.
So they got this this kind of two-direction muscle fiber action going on. Also, the proteins are a little more soluble than they are, so they tend to swell up and bind together and shrink like a mother much more than uh like uh vertebrate proteins do, or even you know, fish yeah, well they're vertebrates duh. So the so here's what happens. My my feeling is that if you before you totally denature those things and they shrink up, which happens somewhere between 50 and 60 Celsius, uh, before that happens, or it happens really quickly, you're gonna have a tender product that you can get on the rare low side. Then as soon as you shrink those suckers, they're gonna be hard like like rubbery like rocks until you cook the ever-loving snot out of them and break those uh stuff.
They also have a fairly high pro portion of uh connective tissue in them too. That is giant octopus we cooked? That was awesome, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that one of the I said this like a million times, but like uh, you know, we got a giant uh octopus tentacle.
Every octopus tentacle, by the way, tastes a little different because some are more dominant than others, and the octopus tentacle tastes different from the from the tip to the uh to where it attaches to the animal. Uh the tip is a little more, I think, kind of like a little more gummy, a little more like, you know, and I like this stuff kind of in the middle, actually. But anyway, so uh that is what I think is uh going on. Some other interesting things about squid uh and octopus, there's a have a high level of uh pro uh um protein breaking down, protonase uh enzymes in them. And so I would think that prolonged heating, I haven't tested this, but I would think the prolonged heating in the 60-degree range before you ramp it up would also make it very tender.
But here's another interesting paper for you. Uh at least interesting to me. Is how gross is this? You ready for this, Doz? And I'll tell you why it's interesting.
Tenderization of squid, uh Loligo uh vulgaris, which is loligos are uh uh they're uh a genus of squid uh that are mainly kind of uh they live near the bottom of the ocean, right? Lolligos. And uh illex uh coin deal the ilux ones are the are the more fast swimming kind of ocean-e squids, um, with bromelain, which is a uh pro you know protein tenderizer, right? And you ready for this one? Bovine spleen lysosomal enriched extract.
How'd you like to sprinkle that all over your squid? Gross. Gross. But the but here's the here's the really interesting thing that I had never uh thought of before, and um something maybe for you guys to think about is usually when you're thinking about what's happening with protein extracts, uh what you're what you're thinking about is um that things get mushy, right? Because you're breaking down the structure of the proteins.
And for something like meat, when you break it down, that's good because it tenderizes, but usually in fish it makes it mushy. But things don't necessarily break down in kind of uh a very uniform way. So both of those things, the bovine spleen lysosome extract and the uh and the bromelane are protease enzymes, but the bromeline, and you can look at the in this paper, it's very interesting. The bromaline, when you treat it with it, makes the squid mushy, and people don't like it. It's more tender, whereas uh the the lysosome, this the spleen, the bovine spleen extract, uh tenderizes it in such a way that it just reduces the shear force the same in all of the parameters of the tasting of the squid.
So it reduces springiness by the same amount that it reduces hardness all the way around. It just makes it more tender, but still keeps the same textural properties of squid. So it looks like there's a whole world out there of uh protein breaking down of protein, you know, protonase enzymes out there that we could use to make things more tender without making them mushy, which is something I had never thought of before. Another interesting thing about uh endogenous, meaning inside of the tissue already, uh squid enzymes, is that they are active at alkaline pHs. So soaking in acidity you'd think would make the stuff harder, and there are some research that says that it does.
And another thing is is that treating squid with phosphate salts as a brine beforehand and salt in general, the phosphate salts, which I think they don't give a reason for it, but I think it's because it makes it more basic, more alkaline, will help the enzymes more rapidly break down the protein. So phosphate treatments of squid that take it into the slightly uh uh alkaline, like 7.4 range instead of like the slightly um uh acidic range, maybe help the squid get a little softer. Uh and wait, we have time for one time, one more thing. Yeah. Gun.
I thought I can talk about one more thing before you can get that thing today now. What thing? Oh, yeah, it's does I'm gonna pound some lunch. So I'm gonna have a giant calzone for for lunch. I'm just gonna eat this whole calzone just by myself.
I read this uh crazy paper on uh you ever notice how people uh when they write papers on uh on frying things, they always uh want to reduce the oil in things. That's all everyone ever cares about when they write papers on frying, they want to reduce the oil. So check this out. So when you're making um industrially, when you're making fried things uh for freezing, what you do is is you make your product, you throw in a bunch of gums and all this stuff, and then you f you pre-fry your product, right? And then after you pre-fry it to set the batter, then uh you freeze it, and then when you re-fry it, you cook the batter all the way through, right?
Mm-hmm. Make sense? Okay. So um so it's a well-known fact that if you add methyl cellulose to batters, you decrease the oil absorption of the batters because methylcellulose and you know hydroxypropomethylcellos, they have the interesting pro uh property that when they gel when they heat up. Okay.
So what's happening is uh you is in water, uh it a hot water, it forms a gel. And this is why it's used in pie filling so that the pie filling doesn't boil out of crust. It's used in barbecue sauces to increase adhesion when they're on the grill and being heated. It's used to make uh those noodles that set when you spray them into soups in in kind of modern cooking, and uh, you know, dumplings that don't bother, you know, the f all those kinds of things, methylcellulose. So, well known fact that if you put it into batters, it decreases oil absorption.
These guys dope the hell out of it. They've patented this, believe this or not, in two thousand I didn't know if you could patent stuff like this in two thousand and two. What they do is they make a really loose uh batter thing and then they boil their freaking chicken nuggets like dumplings with methylcellulose in it, then give you this kind of boiled nugget which you then fry later. Doesn't that sound weird? Yeah.
Gross, huh? But I kinda wanna try it and see what happens. These kind of boiled methyl cell batter dumplings and then fried. But I don't really see the advantage because I don't really believe that I want to decrease the amount of oil that's in uh my fried foods. Do you mean like you've had my fried foods?
They're good. Do you feel that you need to reduce the amount of oil in it? No. No. See, I see like oil is organoleptically delicious.
And so like the trick is you don't want your suc stuff to be greasy, but that doesn't mean that you necessarily want to reduce the oil that's on the inside of it. Lunacy. Alright, so the gun. So uh it's a puffing gun, you know, uh as I've said many times, I'll say one more time. Uh what what it is is uh is it's a chamber that you fill with kind of whatever you want, and then you it has the stuff that you fill it with has uh a water content somewhere between twelve and sixteen percent water.
You uh seal it tight, you heat it with uh about two hundred thousand BTUs of uh gas flame, you spin it so that it doesn't scorch anywhere, and it heats up to like three hundred and seventy degrees Fahrenheit and like a hundred and fifty to hundred and eighty Psi, and then you hit you hit the sucker with a giant stick, the door flies open, the stuff explodes uh in in puffs because the the water that's inside instantly turns to a steam paper. Well, so we were testing it because uh we had a bunch of people suggesting what we should test, and things that you would expect to work well, like rice, did work well. Although I couldn't taste it when we were making them last week. I tasted them this this week and they were kind of soft, right? I think we need to do some post-dehydration.
Were they soft when we were puffing them? Yeah. So we just need to do some post-dehydration before we serve them. They add a little bit of crunch to them. Yeah, but if you're gonna store them for any length of time, they need to be.
Yeah, okay. So we did sushi rice, delicious. I'm told. Actually, I tasted it. It tastes good, but the texture wasn't right when I had it.
Red basmati rice puffed very well. Popcorn's amazing because they puff into balls, which is pretty cool. Uh buckwheat was kind could be good, wasn't good when we did it, but could theoretically be good, right? Lentils. Okay, so then we tried uh so all the stuff that should have worked work.
Now, we have not had any luck with uh with I'm sorry, folks, to we have not had any luck with our weird and alternative stuff yet, right? So first thing we put we do, we were like, how about some red lentils? Red lentils, red lentils, right? Because Peter's like, I love red lentils, I love them. So, like, you know, he doesn't talk like that.
Mike kind of does. But anyway, so then like we load the sucker up with red lentils, and uh we heat it up, and I'm standing up there, and I hit it, and uh and we're up at like 160 PSI. Instantly, the entire heritage uh Heritage Foods USA warehouse is filled with lentil dust. The entire place is coated with burnt red lentil dust. The entire place smells like burnt red lentil dust.
My like my clothes were covered in in red lentil dust, everything was just red lentil dust. And I was like, I thought it was just a little bit, and I'm like, where is it? Every single lentil had been vaporized. Is that true, Stas? Yeah, that's crazy.
So I don't know how you did it that day on your cleanse when everyone eating, puffing things. Yeah, yeah, I know. Like, it's time to eat lunch, guys. Yeah, yeah, I know. Yeah, everyone's like stuffing their face.
I'm sitting there working, like not eating anything, working like a demon. Yeah, on top of this like flaming gun. I'm sweating, I'm sweating, not eating anything, and then I can't get other people to like work because they're shoving sandwiches in their face. Lunchtime, Dave. I'm like, well, you know, it goes back to what Stas always says.
I'm an animal. Machine. Machine. Mule. Pack mule.
Machine. Idiot. Anyway. So uh then so we had this problem with uh we originally planned on the puffing gun to have glass uh around it, right? And then uh on our first Kickstarter test when we exploded our plexigl plexi, we're like, maybe we should switch to Lexan.
You know, maybe not a good idea to throw shards of glass into into into people's eyes during a thing. So then we put Lexan up and we realized that it steams up almost instantly and you can't see through it. So then we're like, okay, so we're gonna test a screen, right? So we go to Home Depot and we put uh like a literally like a window screen up, and then then after we put up the window screen, we decide to test chickpeas and soybeans, right? Let me tell you something.
Not only did that that not work, but the chickpeas and soybeans blasted through the netting and like hit us. Made holes. Made holes through the netting and hit us like like like like buckshot, like babies, right? So anyway, so we have no luck with chickpeas. We have no luck with soybeans, although I feel that we could get it right.
We did pasta. When pasta comes out of the puffing gun, as opposed to pasta that you you know puff using the traditional chef's technique of puffing pasta. Uh, when you puff it in the gun, it looks like describe it, Stas. It's like gnarled. Some sort of like weird asteroid, like gnarled craziness, deformed thing.
It's like it's like imagine it's puffing like in like a 300 mile an hour wind. You know why? Because it's puffing in a 300 mile an hour wind. You know what I mean? It's like this pasta, it's like, you know, what what even shape were those?
Were those like penne or something? Uh Chicilli, I think. We did like a couple, yeah. We had one with their lines in it, though. Yeah, we did it if we see it.
But imagine like that's puffing and flying out of the gun at a zillion miles an hour, and it just has this warped freakish look to it. It was weird. What do you think of that stuff? The taste. What the look of it?
The look was weird. Yeah, weird. Some people liked it because it looks like pasta chicha. Uh I want to do chicken skins and things like that. Anyway, so uh we will let you know as we test it out.
Uh what it's not next week, it's the week after the puff party, right? It's Tuesday. Next Tuesday is a puff party? Yeah. So I'll report back from the morning of the puff party next week.
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