Today's program has been brought to you by Underground Meats, an American producer of handcrafted salami and cured meats in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information, visit shop.undergroundfoodcollective.org or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more. Cooking issues!
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Alberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to 1245 here as usual with the hammer. How you doing? Good. And Jack in the booth, how you doing?
Hey. It's just it's just the it's the old school crew today. It's just uh the Stars and the Jack and the and the me. Nice, right? Stas likes it that way.
No offense to Joe. She just feels like she likes a like old school. Now you're now, Stas, you have a problem with Joe. Oh man. Yeah.
And uh started it. And uh uh interesting, we brought back the uh song by uh Joel Gargano because Joel has a question in today. Uh sensed it. You sensed it, you felt it. Did Stas.
Did Stars tip you off? No, she didn't. Really? Alright. Uh well before I go in, uh call in your questions to 718 497 2128.
That's 718-497-2128. Jack has some good news. Jack, uh, you have good news? Oh, right, yeah. Good news.
Um, I'm see I wouldn't share this kind of personal information on the show, but Nastasia is so happy that I'm leaving Brooklyn. I'm moving to New York City. Woo! Now, uh I I like well here's here's the thing that might interest. It will only actually interest people who are from New York.
Those uh other people just you know bear with us for a second. But so uh a quirk of New Yorkers is that it when you live in when you live outside of New York City and you ask someone from Brooklyn, you know, are you from New York City? They'll say yes. But when you're inside the city, the city is really just Manhattan. Stas back me up on this, right?
Yeah. And so even Jack, long time Brooklyn pusher, you know, not in the you know, not in that sense, but you know, like a booster. That's what I meant. Book Brooklyn booster, moving to Manhattan now admits he's moving to the city. Yeah.
Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. So what's the reason, Jack? Um, an opportunity has come up.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're no longer gonna live in uh Bushwick? I mean, you know, I'll be here a lot, but my home will be the city.
That was my first home anyway when I moved to the city and went to NYU. So nice. Well, welcome back. Welcome back to our side of the river, Jack. This is stuff that only makes sense to like to uh to New Yorkers, though, right, Stas?
People, you know, you know what it pisses people off who don't uh you don't live in New York when uh you go to their city and then they say uh, you know, when when are you going back? You're going I'm going back to the city, and then you give the date that you're going back to New York, and you're like, what do you mean, the city? Like it's a city. Like, like I also live in a city, and you're like, no, no, no. I'm in LA now, I'm going back to the city next week.
You know what I mean? People hate that. Right? Yeah, yeah. My wife used to hate that.
In fact, she mentioned that to me uh when we were going out like 20 years ago. I'm like, what are you talking about? Uh and turns out it's true. I've paid attention. People do get upset.
Anyway, uh back to uh Joel's question. Hey crew. First off, I finally met Harold McGee at the Harvard uh lecture in September that you guys did. I didn't see him there. Did you see him?
No, I didn't. Maybe he was there for a separate lecture. Uh I think I creeped him out. Remember, I was that guy you read to live on the air. This is what Joel said to McGee.
Like imagine McGee standing there and Joel walking up and be like, hey, remember when you read that stuff on the air? And he's like, uh he's like, uh, oh yeah, and I wrote that song about you too. Uh I did get a sweet picture with Harold, uh though, after you smoked out the lecturer. No, so I guess it was the one we were at. Yeah.
I didn't see him. Anyway. Uh I'm sure I'm sure like McGee always just stands there and listens. Like, he probably didn't like wasn't creeped out. Carroll doesn't get creeped out by that kind of stuff.
No. No. Carol has a strong whatever it's called. All right. Uh, here are the questions.
Uh, how is vinegar powder made? And if I were to make my own, what would be the best approach without the flavor becoming muted by ridiculous amounts of endsorbit? Uh, is a tray of vinegar and a dehydrator the answer? Uh okay. So I'll I'll hit that one first.
Uh because it's two questions. No, no. The way vinegar powder is commercially made is uh through uh spray drying. So in spray drying, what you would do is you would mix see the problem with vinegar is vinegar is one of the very few uh you know acids that we eat that is volatile. That's why you can smell it so much.
Uh, you know, when you put your head over a thing of vinegar, it smells like vinegar, whereas you you know, put your head over a thing of lime juice and you're like, smells like lime juice, but it doesn't smell like acid, you know what I mean? Uh, and when you boil vinegar, you get that like aroma above it, you're like, whoa, you know what I'm talking about, but you don't get it with something like lime or lemon or or anything like that. Uh it's because those acids um, you know, boil at a high enough temperature that they're fundamentally non-volatile, whereas acetic acid isn't. So uh anyway, so you spray dry acetic acid uh vinegar by mixing it with uh a carrier, usually maltextrin, and then uh spraying it into a chamber very, you know, very the the higher the better at a high temperature, and as it goes down, the mist goes down in the chamber, it dries out and turns into a powder. Remember, we saw we went to David Michael, the the flavor house, and we saw their spray dryer units.
Pretty cool. Anyway, so that's how they make the the powdered vinegar. Now, powdered vinegar, and you can go on you know, modernist pantry or Lessincture anywhere, Terra Spice, uh Calustians if you're here in the city, and buy uh various different flavors of vinegar powder. Um the problem is that uh, like I say, vinegar itself is non-volatile. I mean, sorry, pfft, exact opposite.
Vinegar is volatile, so the acetic acid is so you have to uh it's not very acidic, so you need to then dope the vinegar the vinegar powder will have the flavor of whatever vinegar was there, uh uh malt, vinegar or you know anything like that, but it's not actually very tart. So you'll need to augment it with uh another acid to really get the tartness of the vinegar back. Now, uh I think you could probably freeze dry vinegar as well. And I don't know whether the acidity is maintained through the freeze-drying process because I don't know the uh I don't know how acetic acid works with sublimation and freeze drying is a sublimation procedure. Um the other thing, and I looked up and people have done it, is you can uh mix um you can make a sauce with vinegar in it and then dehydrate the entire sauce, right?
Because then there's enough structure of other stuff in the sauce that you can dehydrate. And I saw on the internets that somebody did that with like their their favorite buffalo wing sauce. They they poured the buffalo wing sauce in the dehydrator, dehydrator for two days and then powdered it. Uh I mean, I've never done it, but but you could do that. But don't use endsorbit.
Remember, Nsorbit uh is going to be an expensive carrier to use for uh this kind of thing. Ensorbit is a particular type of tapioca maltodextrin that is um made specifically to have very, very uh very low density, and it's used as a bulking agent, and it also is used to make powdered oils. And the reason it works is because the starch helix, right? The inside of the starch helix is relatively hydrophobic, and so fats and oils can go inside of that helix without gumming up the outside of it so that it remains bulky and powdery, but uh the oil is somehow stored on the inside. As soon as you add water, it breaks down and turns to, you know, it turns, you know, it debulks and turns uh like into nothing, which is how the ensorbit powdered oil trick works.
So you can't you can't do it with uh enzorbit, or at least it's not uh, you know, you get a cheaper form of maltodextrin to use as a bulking agent if you're gonna do the dehydration on it. But anyway, I hope that helps. Uh second question uh Joel had was um uh it's always been the kitchen rule to let Cambrosa's stocks cool with the lid off. The school of thought on this is twofold. It will cool faster because there's less insulation, and also the condensation built up on the lid uh if left on could promote bacterial growth.
I hate cooling stocks with no lids because it increases the potential for items to be dropped in them during the cooling process. Not a question about cooling techniques, but I want to know if there's any danger in slapping a lid on hot stock and cooling it in an ice bath, the room temp, and then putting it in the walk-in. Well, okay, I mean, look, it is there any danger. So if the product is way above the temperature that uh of bacteria, right, and the I don't think you're gonna have a problem with the lid. I'm in in terms of uh bacterial contamination.
If you slapped it on it when it was really hot and you know the the vapors coming up would be hot, it would hit it and everything would be okay and you know uh presumably that's not the real problem. The real problem is that it takes forever and a day to cool uh to cool stock uh with a lid on because um eva a huge amount of heat is lost through evaporative cooling. Uh so you know uh if you were to put a lid on on top of uh stock when it's cooling, uh it would super drastically increase the amount of time it takes the stock to get down to room temperature. Because um, you know, the the I mean is evaporative cooling is such a large percentage of of how how the stuff gets away. When you think about it, uh like radiation very low and conduction to the air very low in terms of uh uh way ways to get rid of heat.
Conduction even to ice water through a cambro is not super great because the cambro is not so great at heat transfer, right? Um, you know, a metal, a metal container uh in ice is good. Um, but that as long as there's hot vapor coming off, you're you know, very drastically cooling is setting up a temperature gradient, setting up convection so long as the stock is a thin thing and really increasing the rate at which it cools. So I really think it's all about uh rate of cooling there. Now, if you could guarantee a rate of cooling that's fast enough, then a totally sealed system would be fine, I would guess.
Yeah? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, just as a note, uh, it really is the evaporative cooling. Uh I poured Piper and I ran some tests today.
We did uh a quart container of product, which is not the same as Camber, it's much smaller. We did a quart container of of water with and without a lid, drastically different cooling rates. And then also I poured uh like a teaspoon uh or a little bit of oil on top of of another a third one, and it's the same as putting a lid on it, drastically damp the uh rate because you can't get evaporation off the off the top if there's oil on top. I wonder whether that's why the guys in uh so you know in um you know in Tibet they put uh like uh melted yak butter on top of tea? Yeah, yeah.
Uh I wonder so a lot of it is because I was speaking to this uh guy, I think I mentioned this in it in the show previously, is that I had a little like an actual Sherpa as uh a driver, like his last name was Sherpa, and he was from uh Nepal. I think I talked about it, yeah. But and he was saying that uh the interesting thing about the food there is that if it doesn't have a lot of fat in it, people are like, what's wrong with you? I need uh the fat to survive, you know what I mean, because they need to burn a lot of calories, I guess, when they're up that high. But uh I wonder whether also you get a like wicked evaporative cooling up there because of the low pressures, and I'm wondering whether or not the butter is an insulation effect as well to keep the tea hotter longer.
Yeah, you're like, I don't care. I'm talking to your brother-in-law, so yeah, you're talking to my brother-in-law? Yeah. Right now, while we're doing the radio show. Uh got this in, a note from uh John Riper, friend of the show.
Uh Nastasha, another great show last week. Dave's quick riff on BLTs reminding me of an easy way to make them better. Uh hey, listen, John, don't get me started. BLT, you can make one different. I don't know if you're gonna make it better.
This is that's a tough way to open it. Yeah. I mean, look, in other words, like you can make a different sandwich. It's like here's what I have to say. Like, like, you know, you make a lot of bitters, like for cocktails, and it's like I can make a different, I can make a bitters that I like a lot, but I'm not gonna make a better angostura because how can you be better at being Angostura than Angostura is?
You know what I'm saying? Waiting to see what he's got. Yeah, okay, here we go. Uh junk white bread is of course the way to go. Yeah.
Uh back in the days when it helped to build strong bodies 12 ways, we'd take that's what they used to say uh about the junk white bread. We take uh wonder bread, I guess, right? Uh we'd take two pieces, slather on is wonder bread back yet, by the way. Twinkies are back. Yeah, it's back.
Really? And we did a little news piece on it. So thank God. The deal is So you like Wonder Bread then? That's not that I like it.
It has no, it has nothing to do with whether you like it or not. It's wonder bread. It like it needs to exist. You know what I'm saying? Like when a French person comes to the United States and you wanna and you want to like show them like what it meant to be a kid growing up, you get Welch's grape jelly, peanut butter of your choice.
Mine would be probably Skiffy, Skippy, because although my mom was quite cheesy, she did not choose JIF. Chunky though, right? Really? I like either. But it's an interesting choice.
You're only a chunky man. I'm only chunky. See, here's my feeling. Like, I like chunky, but I think if you want to go full American on someone, you gotta give them, I think you gotta start with the the creamy and move into the chunky. All right.
I don't know, I don't know. And it has to be Welch's grape jelly. Yeah. Right? And so you you get the Wonder Bread, the Welch's grape jelly, and the peanut butter, and then you hand it to them, and it and what you have to say is, and you gotta remember, French people don't like concord grapes, and they don't like peanut butter.
They're they're freaks about it. They don't like either one of those things. And they like good bread. And they love good bread, they hate wonder bread. And so uh, and so you hand them the the the the the this the sandwich, right?
Which is like that's like how many of those did you pound when you're growing up? Oh, too many. Stas, how about you? A lot. A lot, yeah.
Like, and you can't like kids these days, that's not America anymore because a lot of the schools you can't bring peanut butter to anymore. But uh that was that's the sandwich, and and you hand it to them, and what you say to them is, hey look, I don't expect you to like this, but if you don't if you can't wrap your mind around this sandwich, then you can't wrap your mind around America, period. And then you just walk away. You know what I mean? And then they eat it and they're like, this is deadable.
That's not a French accent. That's not even French. Zisi is uh Zizi is a horrible. There you go. That's a little better.
Okay. Uh so anyway. So back to uh back to back back to John. Okay. So back in the days when it helped build uh strong bodies 12 ways, we take two pieces of bread, wonder, slather on some mayo and a couple of tomato slices, add bacon, and then instead of lettuce, you see here's a instead of lettuce, we cook a sunny side up egg in the rendered bacon fat and slide it onto the bacon and tomatoes.
When you want a sandwich that's greater than the sum of the part uh of its parts, this is it. Now, I agree that that might be a good sandwich, maybe even a great sandwich. I don't know that it's gonna be, you know, I think it's just a different sandwich. Jack, what do you think? Yeah, it's that's much better.
That's much more like a bacon, egg and cheese variation. Whoa, like bacon egg. I like the words bacon, egg and cheese are like some of the greatest words in the world. Bacon, egg, and cheese. So it's like a bacon, egg, and cheese with with tomato.
On wonder bread. On wonder bread. Do you like uh speaking of wonder bread? Do you like a grilled cheese sandwich with a tomato on it? Yeah, actually, that's that's always what I get.
Yeah? I do, yeah. I like a tomato. Stas probably hates that. Yeah, I don't like it so much.
Really? Because why? Because it's wet? I just don't like it. But I mean, is it the wetness?
Like, I'm trying to analyze. I don't like the taste of a tomato on grilled cheese. Even like a dried tomato? Right. Don't like it.
Alright. All right. Uh Tom Fisher writes in, dear Dave, Nastasha, Jack, and Joe. Sorry for not updating you last week on the eggnog. Uh, you know, they so we had a question a couple weeks ago about a traditional eggnog that's made and then let to sit for you know several weeks.
We gotta make that soon, Stuz. I know. Yeah, Piper made that weird tiki one. That's terrible. Pipe yeah, I love Piper who works with us, you know.
But uh he puts freaking tiki bitters and everything and he wants to tiki fy everything. He made this eggnog, and he's like, This is really good, right? And Stas and I are both like, no, it's garbage. It's garbage, right? Yeah.
It's garbage. What do you what do you remember what was in it? Uh no. And you know, look. Oh, it's her terrible.
Oh, it looked terrible. Oh my gosh, so bad. Piper's come up with some really good ideas recently, though. Like Piper did a, I think I don't know if we talked about it. We did it at the uh event we did at the uh Center for Discovery.
Sour cream simple syrup, right? Which is like it's that's Piper's like genius invention of the of the recently. Concord grape and vodka. That's that's a good drink. It's good.
We're gonna make that one for uh with uh absolute for Purno Ricardo in a couple of days. That's a good drink. It's a good drink. But the the tiki eggnog, not so much. Although interestingly, I did enlist Piper's help to answer this question.
So let's let's get to it. As you recall, I made a large batch of aged, aged eggnog, but was concerned as it appeared to be very thin about the consistency of whole milk. The recipe calls for it to be aged for a minimum of 21 days. Now, on day 12, the eggnog is thickened slightly to the consistency of heavy cream. I'll check in again next week to let you know how it's going.
But just for the sake of discussion, if it did not thicken on its own, what would I do thanks Tom Fisher? Uh okay. So uh so I I talked to Piper, as you may know, Piper who works with us and who makes terrible tiki flavored eggnog. Uh I worked for CP Kelco, uh, which is the Carrageenan masters for a while. And so um, and right off the bat, you're gonna wanna you you know that that carrageen is gonna be the way to go to really fix uh a milk system up very well because carrageenin has synergistic effects with milk, so you you don't have to use very much of it.
Now there are so I wouldn't use things like Xanthan, even though Xanthan's really easy, it's gonna snot it up real quick. And eggnog's already got textural issues for me. And if you want something creamy and smooth, you don't want any of the you don't want any kind of snot rocket feel to it, right? Stasmos not rocket, hate the snot rocket. So uh you're gonna want uh carragen.
Now there's three different fundamental, well, there's more, but like the three carrageenions you're most likely to come in contact with are kappa carragenin, iota carragenin, and lambda caraghenin. Uh and actually in cooking, you're most often just gonna come up with kappa and iota. Kappa makes hard uh brittle gels. You're not gonna want that in this. Iota makes kind of softer gels and is used in things like yogurts uh to get because it also re the gel resets.
Now you're not looking to gel, you're looking to thicken. And the prime thickening carrageenan, the one that's used in chocolate milk, for instance, lambda carrageenin, or maybe small amounts, small, small, small amounts of iota, tiny amounts of iota. Uh now, Piper told me about the stuff that he used to use uh when he was working for CP Coco, and he stole I maybe bought some, I don't know, stole some. It's called Genuvisco. They have such crappy names, right?
Who wants to put something called Genu Visco into into the into their product? Anyway, Genuvisco CSM2, C like cold, S like soluble, M like milk. So it's cold soluble in milk, so it doesn't need to be heated. And the good news there is you can add it after you've made your product because it does need to be heated. So Genu Visco CSM2, and you're gonna want to use that in the ratio of between 0.1 uh and 0.25%.
So anywhere between uh one gram per liter and uh 2.5 grams per liter. And now the problem is that uh CP Coco has set up a um a thing with Le Sanctuaire in California. So Le Sanctuaire is a distributor of CP Celco products. Uh Piper checked, and uh they don't have the Genu Visco CSM2 on their website. Maybe they can get it for you.
The closest thing that they have is Genu Visco J D S, which you use even lower quantities, point zero.02, so two tenths of a gram per liter. And the problem with that, aside from the usage, is it's mainly iota, and I think you might have I don't think that's cold soluble in milk. So you can probably call CP Coco and get them to send you some as a sample or pester La Sanctuare, and maybe they'll get it for you, but that's how I would uh go. Uh, should we take our first commercial break? We'll come right back after this commercial break with cooking issues.
They use small farms from southwest Wisconsin to source their meat. The animals are raised on pasture for their entire lives by farmers who care about animal welfare. While Underground Meats uses European traditions, they also use ingredients from the upper Midwest to try to create new types of salamis, experimenting with both ingredients and techniques. The salamis are made using heritage breeds, mostly red wattles, tamworts, Berkshires, and Mule Foots. Try their award-winning cured pork shoulder and goat salami.
To learn more and purchase products, visit shop.undergroundfoodcollective.org. Or stop by their butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin. And we're back. Call your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128.
Speaking of underground meats, had a question in uh from uh Brandon uh Hodkins saying, Hello, hammer and the nails. So I'm the nails, I guess. Yeah. Near the hammer. That means you're gonna hit me over the head.
Like you don't already. We had a caller quick if you want to grab that first. Oh yeah? Alright, caller, you're on the air. Hi, David.
This is Johnny Clark from Memphis, Tennessee. How are you doing? Alright, how you doing? I'm doing good. Great.
I I had a question about uh preserving lemon and using Morton's kosher salt with that. Alright. I know what I found was there's like a three percent uh sodium ferrocyanide, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Um sodium chloride, of course. Um when you the sardine and parascyanide hit is uh meat and acid, it forms uh toxic gas.
Well, we're where like uh as far as I know, Morton's kosher salt is one hundred percent sodium chloride. Where that where's that other thing coming from? It's anti-caking. Let me s me let me do a quick uh it would definitely be much less than that amount, but let me let me just check up. In the kosher salt they add an anti-caking.
In Morton's kosher salt they have uh anti-caking agent. Let me look it up here for you real quick. Um I also have another question about um something but go ahead. No yeah yeah look uh ask me another question and I'm uh because you normally like I would think that they would use I mean I've never heard of using uh sodium ferrocyanide as a as a it's it lists that on the package no I I had the uh search through the um Morton the MSDS and it would not it it I found it after a long search that it contains three percent which uh I don't know which makes it affects gluten tolerance so I don't know about that either. No it would have to be much like if they were to put something like that in it would have to be much lower than that.
Um but I'm gonna look I'm definitely gonna look that up in fact the reason I'm pausing as I say this is I am in the process of trying to look it up as we speak. But anyway um what's your what's your second question while we're while we're while we're where we're looking it up. I have uh I'm trying to package uh anaerobically some um cured meats and you know to have to be sliced thin and I've done it just uh in the vacuum machine and they lose color after being sliced anything that could help them maintain color so you're doing a normal cure red native dark right and you're doing a normal cure with uh with uh nitrites vacuum packing it and then slicing it it's uh it is cured and it is brine I'm sorry and um then it is uh smoked and to internal of about 140 by 150 and then it's packaged after it cools. Right. So I mean color fade is a well known problem in cured meats um because of light and I years ago had done some research on how to ameliorate color fading of cured meats.
I mean obviously the the the main thing to do is not to expose them to light. Any nitrite cured meat is going to uh gray out on you if you if you expose it to light. That's why you know when you go to the store and you see the old bacon it's all gray. You know what I mean? Because you lose the color in light but um I'm gonna have to it's been many many years since I've read uh the papers on um any attempts to make the pigmentation in a cured meat light fast.
Um I mean, if you store it in darkness, it shouldn't fade on you at all. But I don't know of a way off the top of my head to preserve the color if you're gonna have it be exposed to light in a retail environment. Now I'm sure there is I remember reading about years ago this is a big problem that uh meat producers have, right? And so I'm sure it's been solved, but I'm gonna have to um I'm gonna have to put that one on the uh I'm gonna have to put that one on the on the on the side do some more research for you and and uh uh and talk about it maybe next week when we come back. Stas, you send an email to yourself for next week's read done.
All right. So I'll do some research because it's something that I read about years ago but I just don't have it on the tip of my uh uh uh head uh tip of my head doesn't make any sense anyway but I like I'm interested I I was able to find that it is used as an anti-caking agent but the pr but the uh it's gonna have to be the back to the sign I think it's gonna have to be at a super low level and I also see that it's added in um what do you mean super low? Uh I mean I I'm gonna have to look up I'm gonna I'm gonna have to look it up. Um E535 sodium ferrocyanide I don't know how much is in there but mom studies it was three percent. It c maybe maybe it's three percent of the anti-caking agent but it can't be three yeah so then the question is how what percentage of the salt is is anti caking agent.
You see what I'm saying? So like uh as I understood yeah it was it was ninety seven and three no it can't possibly three percent of sodi sodium ferrocyanide, which is prussic acid, like I think it's basically the same as prussic acid, would be it would be d death to us. Um has to be I mean especially when it interacts with the acid. Yeah, it's gonna I mean like it's gonna have to be a much much lower uh much much lower percent. Um but I I'll I'll look it up.
I'll look it up and I'll I'll tweet that one out and then I'll also talk about it next week when I come back. Okay, can I uh send you email of any things I find? Yeah, sure. Uh yeah, the best way for me to see it, you can send an email to the the regular radio email uh or just tweet tweet me at at cooking issues, and then I can I'm much faster because I see my tweets pretty much every day. Okay.
And uh email says Which one what do we use now, Stas? Just mine. We use uh what uh Lopez dot Nastasha Gmail.com? Lopez.nastasia at gmail.com. Yeah, shoot shoot it my way, and I I'll definitely take a look at it because uh I'm interested to know how much cyanide they're allowed to put into our salt.
All right. All right, you too. All right, back to Brandon uh Hawkins. He writes uh hammer and the nails. I was wondering if you have any suggestions for a really good salami maker.
Thank you, Brandon from Phoenix, Arizona. Now the question is what do you mean by good salami maker? Now, do you mean like the people that make salami, like a producer of salami? In which case I've never had that, you know. Jack, have you ever had anything from the underground meats collected?
Yeah, it's very good. Hey, thanks for sharing it, brother. Thanks. We'll get you some more. Yeah, yeah.
I've never tasted it. I'm sure it's good. I I'd like to try it. I'd like to try their award winning goat salami. Would you like to try their award winning?
Yeah, I would like that. But no, nothing for us. Anyway, all right. Uh I mean, I like here in New York, I like the Salamaria Bialase guys. I think they're really good.
And uh, I mean, I think they're excellent, in fact. And um, and I love their products. And uh they were they were some of the like early, they were really early in the wave of people in America trying to make actual high quality salumi. So a lot of people who, you know, in in the past decade or so have um started making um salumi owe a lot to them because a lot of people learned uh and a lot of people who like a lot of people who have taught other people have learned from them. And so, you know, they're they're one of the you know, I think one of the people who deserve a lot of credit for what's going on in the in the US today.
I mean, another early an early salami thing, although I haven't had his products was uh Bertoli Cooking by Hand, which is a book we talked about before, had a really interesting section on Salumi in it. Uh I think that's you know that cookbook. I don't know if people read that cookbook. Did people still read that cookbook? Does uh does Mark like that book?
I don't know. I don't know. I thought it was at the time it was a classic. I haven't read it uh in a while. Um uh the uh Chris Chris Casantino, our friend, uh Bocolone makes a good product out of uh San Francisco.
Armandito Batali, Mario's dad. Uh you've had his stuff, right, really? He has a salumi place in uh what's it called? What's that place called? Seattle.
And uh, you know, uh good products. I've had some of his stuff. So a lot of good, but if but if that's not what you mean, maybe you mean uh equipment to make salami, in which case for a curing box, I mean, the cheap way to go, you go to like Auburn Instruments, or anyone get like a PID control for your uh and they have a humidity controller for your uh for your fridge. Or maybe you mean the sausage stuffer. Sausage stuffer, I really don't think there's any need to spend like a boatload of money on a sausage stuffer.
I've used the really expensive ones that are like hundreds and hundreds of dollars for the five-pound press, and then I've used uh the you know eighty nine dollar one from uh Northern Tool or Grizzly or whoever happens to be selling them, like to hunters. And the build quality is maybe a little better on the ones that are really expensive, but they stuff sausages just the same, you know. And so like I wouldn't, I wouldn't, unless you're a pro and you're doing it every day. I mean, it's a little bit harder to sanitize uh the crappy hunters ones because the welds aren't as good, and so it's a little bit more difficult to sanitize, but otherwise I would just stick with the $89 sausage stuffer. What do you think, Stuz?
Sounds good. Answer the question? All right. Never mind. Um interesting thing in from Michael Natin, and this fits in.
This is like this, like three things kind of fit into this uh farm to toilet kind of movement that we're you know dealing with. The uh, or if you have a composting toilet, I guess toilet to farm to toilet, right? That was what we're gonna have like uh Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink was joking that we're gonna do the farm to toilet uh um show. We're not we're not gonna do that. And then I was joking with Jack that we need to start the farm to farm to toilet movement.
But anyway, I think it's started. The farm toilet movement? Yeah. When this morning, just kidding. Yeah, just now farm to toilet.
Okay. But Michael Nakin writes in, our our good friend, uh, and Nastash has bought like eight copies of his book. I did. Like you buy bought it for all your friends? And family, yeah.
Nice. All right. Uh he wrote in and he said, uh, what you know, what do you what do you make of this? And it was this go on Amazon.com and look up by Bernard Jensen, tissue cleaning like tissue, not like blow your nose tissue, but like your bodily tissues. Uh Stas hates the word tissue as it as it pertains to bodily parts, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tissue cleansing through bowel management. Yeah, that's Stas is making the bowel face. Tissue cleansing through bowel management. Uh, and you gotta go, and you know, and Michael's basically it's like like it's like holy crap, take a look at this.
You gotta look at the cover. The cover of this map of this book uh is uh it's like a yin yang thing, right? One halves in color and one halves in black and white, and the center of the yin-yang goes through the back side of like what looks to be a 10-year-old naked boy's butt with like an image of the colon like you might have inside, like like right there at the center of the yin-yang thing. And on the left side, the black and white side, it's all industrial pollution and like airplanes and power plants and factories, and on the right side in color is like all apple trees and sunlight and boids and all sorts of nice stuff, right? And so, right off the bat, just like you look at this picture and you're like, this guy's gonna be uh a nut job.
And so uh the awesome thing about it is you can look at a lot of it in the Amazon look inside thing. And so here is a choice, a choice tidbit. And I appreciate uh, you know, Michael bringing this to my uh attention, because it shows like here's the thing, right? It's like uh it's like any one of a number of like like the master cleanse idiot that we spoke about before that there's all these people who follow these cleansing regimens, and they're written by lunatics who have this idea that one single problem is or one single issue is the reason uh and the solution to all of our problems. And it's part of this really, really pernicious magic bullet thinking.
This this like this this idea, which really, really honestly, dates back, you know, hundreds of years, but in the US, most prevalent since uh, you know Graham and uh and kind of like this uh and and then later the the sanitarian the and the uh the sanitarium movement and the um like the water cure movement and the uh prohibition movement all the temperance movement all of these kind of things stem from this uh like font of evil pernicious thinking that is modern humans have degenerated right and we've we've lost kind of touch with ourselves and our bodies right uh and so we need to get back to that by purging and cleansing ourselves of all these toxins and problems right and today that manifests itself in juice cleanses and other sort of BS detoxifying crap right that you that you hear all about you back in the day it manifests itself with uh eugenics and uh uh mass genocide uh you know what I mean but it's like it's all like the same problems that there's a degeneration of and by the way people are gonna say I'm being hyperbolic but it really comes from the same and if you read if you go back and you read uh where like a lot of these like super crazy things come from they spring from an idea that human beings have uh degenerated and that there is this higher earlier self and it's also unfortunately mixed in if you look at the history of it mixed in with uh good tinges of misogyny there's usually a good dose of anti-Semitism thrown in there like there's all sorts because uh you know back in the uh 1800s and early 1900s, prior to the prior to Nazis, when a lot of the like classic and in quote, but like well-known literature on degeneration was being written that has to go. And in fact, there's a guy, Nordau is the classic author of uh the book Degeneration, which is kind of like the cornerstone of uh semi-modern uh pseudo-scientific thinking on the degeneration of human beings, literally says things like uh literally says things like uh Impressionist painters, this because that's the era he was writing in. Impressionist painters, the reason they paint the way they do is that their eyes have degenerated and they can't see the world like you and I can see it. Like really stupidity on that level. And remember, this is the same time people were going around measuring people's skulls to try and prove that the uh northern European was uh vastly superior based on the geometry of their skull, right?
And their brain cavity, like all of these sorts of things, and that you could tell what a criminal uh was like by the bumps on their on their phrenology. But you know, all of these are part and parcel of this idea that there was this great old thing that we've degenerated to. And the like this current feeling of uh that right now that manifests itself in detoxing, right, has its roots in this same sort of demented uh thinking, right? And it's people just don't connect the dots of where their ideas come from. So here's a quote from uh and it he's not talking about you know eugenics here, although Kellogg, who was one of these guys that you know, the serial guy Kellogg, was a believer in eugenics, as were a lot of these uh uh early, like a lot of these early people.
Crazy. Anyway, here's the quote that I love. The bowel-wise person is a blessing and source of inspiration to family and associates. His cheerful disposition comes from having a vital, toxin-free body made possible by the efficient, regular and cleansing action of a loved and well-cared for bowel. Every person who desires the higher things in life must be aware of proper bowel management, what it is, how it works, and what is required.
In so doing, you will discover many secrets of life. That's a great quote. Yeah. So if you just get your pooper in order, like, you know, all that cancer problem you have, it gone. Anyway, uh, thanks, Michael, for that uh little bit of craziness.
Uh, I appreciate it. I encourage all of you to go look at that crazy cover that that person has. But on the subject of poop, got two good poop stories. One, Nils Noran got back from Bali recently and went to a Kopi Luwak farm. And I hadn't realized, so Kopi Luwak is the coffee that comes uh from uh Indonesia, and what they do is is these uh civets, right?
Which are these uh as they're called civic cats, but they're not cats. And as Piper reminded me this morning, they're weasels, they're weasels, they're weasels. Piper, like Piper is a s is a hater of many animal varieties, hates beavers, they're on in quotes the list, right? Hates weasels of any variety. Anyway, hates rodents too, as we know.
We were threatening to put a woodchuck in a car with him. Remember that? Anyways, do not threaten, or do not even joke with Piper about putting a a woodchuck or any form of rodent in a car that he happens to be in. He's no sense of humor about it, that guy. Anyways, so I didn't realize that Kopi so what happens is these civets they eat the uh they eat the ripest choicest coffee uh cherries, right?
And then uh the bean, it they digest the outer uh hull and they poop out the bean, and then you harvest the pooped out beans, and one, they only eat the ripe ones, which is good because that means you know you're only getting the ripest berries, and two, their digestive system is supposed to do something cool to the to the coffee. And there's been studies on it that show that in fact it is altered in certain ways by going through the digestive system. Anywho's. So they have farms now in Bali, and the one I think that Nils went to is a Bali Polina. And Nils brought back some Copi Luwak for us to roast because it's green coffee, not roasted, which is amazing.
But he brought me back the special one that they don't sell. They had a one lying around. This one, Stas, you saw it, right? No. Have you ever seen it yet?
I have a picture. I'll tweet it out. It's still in log form. Now, I don't know about anyone else listening to this program, but my hat's off to the civet for being able to like create a full-on log after eating all of that coffee. These little suckers are eating just coffee, straight coffee, and like pooping out what looks like um like popcorn ball logs of like coffee beans cemented together with very little else.
And you know that if you and I were to eat that much coffee, like we would be set on spray like indefinitely. There wouldn't be any any log action. So anyway, I'll tweet the picture of that out, and then uh I have to figure out. I don't have that much of it, and so I have to figure out what the best washing and roasting thing is, but we'll we'll run through it. Maybe we'll put some some stuff out.
But I'd never seen it in log form. So that's the second poop story. And for the third poop story in our farm to toilet uh edition of cooking issues, uh yesterday, uh Nastasha and Piper at the lab were making lunch, and I wasn't really paying much attention to what they were making from lunch. And uh as they're eating, as they're halfway through their lunch, I walk over and I notice that they both have giant plates of uh of greens and freaking Jerusalem artichokes, sunchokes, and I'm like, Holy crap. Are you guys for real?
And they're like, what? What? I was like, You really never read The Curious Cook, have you? They're like, Well, yeah, uh parts. I was like, uh you haven't read The Curious Cook, have you?
And they're like, no. Even though literally we have a copy of it in the office waiting for Harold McGee to come back and sign because we're going to uh we're gonna auction that off at the at one of the museum things, right? So uh as McGee points out in The Curious Cook, which is a book you should all go get, uh, sunchokes are the fartiest vegetable in the freaking world. They're like the fartiest vegetable. They are so so they store their carbohydrates in the form of inulin, which is, I believe, uh a complex chain of fructose.
But your body can't digest this stuff, all right? And it contains a bootload of it. It's like almost, I think like it's it's can be as much as like 40% undigestible inulin in these freaking things, right? And so when you pound it, so if you have a couple of pieces of Jerusalem artichoke in a salad, all right, that's not that much like indigestible stuff. But these guys are eating split a pound.
Yeah, you split, you eat a half a pound a piece of completely insoluble freaking inulin fiber, like the fart machines. We're just gonna do it in front of each other. Just gonna just gonna roll with it. Yeah, and I hey people, I was the beneficial beneficiary of all this, but as it says in uh in the introduction to chapter five of uh The Curious Cook, which I'll read from taking the wind out of the sun route. It is strange that among North America's meager handful of contributions to the modern table, two of them should prove to be of such mixed miss mixed blessings.
One is the persimmons, whose delights and shortcomings are described in chapter 9. I'll leave you have to go buy the book. Uh you get it on Bookfinder. McGee republished this sucker. Anyway.
Actually, the snappily crisp tuber of a sunflower. This vegetable does develop a mild flavor reminiscent of artichokes when it's cooked. After centuries of neglect, it's showing up again in the markets and being grown or growing itself in home gardens. Unfortunately, the Jerusalem artichoke surpasses even dry beans in its power to cause flatulence. Not all cookbooks point this out, and those that do offer few preventative tips.
I've tracked down a couple of simple procedures that tone down the Jerusalem artichoke significantly. I also found that the usual explanation for the vegetable's peculiar name was demolished decades ago. There's long been a plausible alternative, and the time has come to dust it off. Well, I won't spoil because you should go read what the gotta go read this section. So I won't spoil about all the history that McGee goes into.
But he says that, and it's interesting because did you know this, Jack? I don't know if you knew this. Uh well known fact though, if you if you know McGee, McGee's career as a food writer started with the beat with the farting bean problem. Did you know that? I did know that because we did an evolutionary's uh life story on him, and that's that's pretty much how it opened.
Yeah, all right. There you go. Fascinating. So McGee is a you know, he's uh he he was at uh Caltech, and then he went to Yale for uh for graduate in uh in literature, I guess, and he's looking to write something. He's right and uh someone asked him about like why do beans make you fart, and so he he researches that, and that that was the genesis of on food and cooking was that.
And then uh and then later in Curious Cook, he tackled the even fartier problem of Jerusalem artichokes. And if Nastasha and Piper had only read that section, they probably would have A, not eaten quite as much of it, and B, they would have followed McGee's suggestions to slice it thinly and boil it for 15 minutes. It's better we found out with each other, because I told Piper you can never make that for a girl for dinner and expect her to stay over. So what if he had done that? So it's good that it happened.
Holy crap. And I asked him whether it was a painful sort of farti, and he said it was a painful sort of farti. Because it blows you up like a balloon. Yeah. Anywho, so slice it thin and uh boil it for like fifteen minutes, McGee says that reduces it, or McGee says cook it for a very long time, like twenty-four hours in a very low oven, it turns black and sweet because the inulin's broken down into fructose and then it's digestible.
I sent McGee a text uh earlier today. Uh I haven't heard back yet, whether or not he's uh ever tested doing the Jerusalem artichoke in a circulator, but I haven't heard back, so we'll see. Farm toilet edition of cooking itches. Um before the show's up too, we were wondering uh at the station if you had to make a cocktail for a Thanksgiving dinner, what would you go with? Me?
You uh And nostassif for that matter. When well what point in the evening am I having it? This would be like uh the the the pre-dinner cocktail. Oh carbonated country. Ah carbonated cocktail.
Pre-dinner? I like something with bubbles. Like uh I mean, I don't want something really heavy that's gonna drag me down. I I I like starting with a carbonated beverage. What about you, Stas?
What would you I mean? She's like champagne, the best cocktail in the world, champagne. Uh but you're thinking about like seasonal stuff. Piper's got that red hot poker uh squash drink, but I wouldn't do that before the Thanksgiving meal. Uh yeah.
I mean, I'd probably go, I'm trying to think of something that would be seasonal at that time. I don't know. What do you think about it for next week? We have two weeks of Thanksgiving. Alright.
Oh, and by the way, speaking of, you still have time to order your heritage turkey from Heritage Meats. Our. What are they? What are what's our relationship to them? I mean, obviously, Patrick Martin's Our Found.
Our founder. So, but the meat company is our founder? Heritage Foods USA founded the radio station. Yeah. So our our founding fathers.
Yeah. There you go. All right. Um, I have something on cocktails I can get to in a minute. But first, uh, I got something in from Robert Lax Esquire.
About the uh about the uh Mr. Softy thing we were talking about last week. Um Dear Dave, uh Nastasha and gang, uh a sincere thank you for the fantastic show, which has introduced me to many great new techniques and has improved my cooking skills and enjoyment immeasurably. That's nice. Now, this is this guy knows what he's talking about because here's what he says.
As a former good humor man, he had a good he was a driver of a good humor truck, which is awesome. As a former good humor man and now an amateur ice cream maker and enthusiastic ice cream eater, I share your interest in Mr. Softy, which I consider to be a fantastic product. Although it is inexpensive and without pretense, it tastes delicious. And I prefer it to many of the more artisanal soft serve offerings now available.
When I drove a good humor truck 25 years ago while I was in college, the sound of the Mr. Softy truck meant I would have to find another neighborhood to pedal my wares that day. Good humor's offerings are simply no competition for the Mr. Softy. Boom.
That's strong. That's a guy's like, I was selling the good humor. And when the Mr. Softy truck came, but here's the problem. I have noticed that the problem of Mr.
Softy product variability. Oh, uh, anyway, as you noted last week, Mr. Softy machines allow for variable overrun and provide a way for unscrupulous Mr. Softie drivers to sometimes provide more air than ice cream. Through some investigation, he's a lawyer.
So he was like investigating this stuff, which I love. He's a fraud lawyer, which is amazing. I love this crap. I discovered that the actual problem of Mr. Softy variability has a different explanation and kind of more sinister.
So he's going around and he was noticing that some ones were really crappy. And it wasn't just that it was lighter, but that the texture was wrong, right? It was a bad texture thing. So he looks up that the he looks up the Mr. Softie's telephone number, right?
And he beats his weight, and as he notes, right? When I remember I told you I went to their to their warehouse, their their supply depot, and they're not used to human beings at all. Like, it's just not what they do. And somehow, like at the time I was, I don't know, I guess in my late 20s or something at the time, they were like, ah, the f and they just let me buy the Mr. Softie mix.
Uh so he similarly, like somehow like waited his uh way through it and got to the president of Mr. Softy, right? And um the guy knew about it. Like, so and like he made it through, I guess, because he was like, listen, I you know, I grew up eating my whole life, I love Mr. Softy.
I even used to be your competitor and I quit because your product is so much better than what I was selling. You know, so he gets through to the president, and the and Mr. Softie knows what the problem is. And here it is. Ready?
The president of Mr. Softy explained to me that the trucks are owned by franchisees, many of whom hire drivers to run them. The franchisees keep track of the cash receipts they expect to receive from those drivers by reference to the amount of Mr. Softie mix that is used. A given amount of mix makes an expected number of servings and an expected range of cash receipts.
The problem, he explained, is that some drivers try to hide cash from their bosses by stretching the Mr. Softy mix by cutting it with plain milk and then pocket the extra cash. The weasels! The result is a substandard product for the consumer, less cash for the franchisee, and less royalty for Mr. Softy.
He didn't elaborate, but he told me that they were taking measures to tackle this problem. Anyway, I thought you would find this interesting. I do, Robert. It's extremely interesting. I detest food fraud in any form, whether it's by messing with the over.
I factually I'd rather them mess with the overrun, because at least then I got a light product and I know that the guy shafted me. If they add milk, then you think, as you did, that Mr. Softy's quality is just going downhill. It's a huge problem. You know what I mean?
And like it's like it's so old school. It's so old school fraud. It's like, you know, watering vodka or or, you know, you know, adultering milk back in the old days. That's like that really pisses me off. That pisses me the hell off.
Uh I don't know how they're gonna fix that, but they should, you know, but I guess they have to change how they're struck. Whatever. Anyway. He also says, it would be great if you could send a shout out to my good friend and your former caller, Steve from Moscow, who turned me on to the show and which uh gives us weekly reason to keep in touch to discuss the wisdom we learn from each podcast. Thanks and best regards, Rob.
Well, thank you. And on the way out, I'll notice this a couple weeks ago, uh, we were talking about eggplants and uh how they are kept uh super blue in Japanese uh pickles. And I got a note in from Jens Genshin who says that they're blue because literally in Japan they put iron eggplants. Eggplants, little eggplant figures. Figures?
Little like eggplants made of iron into the pickling medium when they do it, and that's what causes them to uh stay blue. Thanks, Jen. Jens, rather. Iron eggplants, cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org.
You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network. You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage Underscore Radio. You can email us questions at any time at info at heritage radio network dot org.
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