Today's program is brought to you by Brooklyn Slate Company, a manufacturer of slate cheese boards, coasters, and other fine items. For more information, visit Brooklynslate.com. You are listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadio Network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from a birthday's pizzeria every Tuesday on the Heritage Radio Network from Tuesday from Tuesday. Well to Tuesday. From roughly 12 to roughly 1245. She is out. I don't know where she is right now.
But we do have in the studio with us today Piper Piper Piper Christianson, right? Yep. Yeah. Uh and we are joined in the studio by and maybe maybe Stas left because Joe is in the uh engineering booth today and not Jack. And there's this, you know, new beef that Stas started last week with between you know her.
I heard about this beef. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I didn't realize, but you know, it's okay.
We'll have like a East West Coast rap battle thing go on or something like that. Something, yeah, something like that. But yeah, you know, so anyways, don't have Jack. We do have uh a newcomer in the engineering booth. Evan, how you doing, Evan?
Great, how are you? Doing all right. It's it's like so uh this is first time uh to cooking issue show, right? I believe so. All right, calling your questions to 718 497-2128.
That's 718497-2128. With any of your cooking related questions, we'll be here to answer your questions for the next 45 minutes or so. Uh okay. Uh this in from Tony uh Harrian uh from the uh mixing bar in Brazil. Um, you know, don't dealt with him over the years.
I've never been to his bar because I've never been to Brazil. I'd like to go to Brazil. You been? No. We should do that.
Yeah, but I mean, like they have like the great, like some of the greatest fruit in the world in Brazil. I have you know I have whole textbooks on the crazy different fruits of Brazil. In fact, I believe it's called it's not called Crazy Fruits Brazil, but it's called Fruits of Brazil. And it's it's got a kind of a weird, but I really love it because it's got a weird kind of like light blue cover, and all the pictures of the fruit are on this like weird grid system that's like light blue and like they're all crazy colors, and some things they look like fruits. I mean, like honestly, they're like they're it's you know, like uh if you were gonna come up with like an alien movie, you would look for the fruits in uh this Fruits of Brazil uh book.
And then the thing I really like about the book, love it about it, I mean, is that uh it's very hard to get actually. You can get it at the fruit and spice park in their gift shop in South Dade, and there's a couple of Hawaiian fruit uh tree suppliers that sell it. Uh but the uh it wasn't on the Amazon when I checked. Strange. Anyways, uh what's awesome is is that it has a section in the back called exotic fruits.
And you know what's in there, Piper? Stripper fruits? Uh no, no, uh, the apple. Oh. Because in Brazil, that that crap's exotic.
They're like, an apple? Wow. Apple. I think what they mean by exotic is not from Brazil. Right.
Although now I have a stripper fruit going to When you were a kid, were you well, you were you're younger, a lot younger, confused by the fact that Striper, which sounds like stripper, is a Christian band. I don't know the band. No, no, no. Too young. Joe, you Joe, you with me on this?
You know the history of rock anyway? Not the history of Christian rock, I don't think. I'm pretty sure Striper is a is a is a Christian heavy metal band. Now you'll miss someone will look it up for me. Uh okay, this in from Tony.
Uh hello, uh, Heritage Radio Network and Cooking Issues team. Hope all is well. I had a couple of questions for Dave about non-alcoholic cocktails for the next show. Uh Piper, you can chime in here too. Dave, what is your opinion about the importance of non-alcoholic drinks on bar menus?
In your view, what makes a great alcohol free drink and what just doesn't work? Can you give a few examples of interesting drinks that worked for you in the past at events or at Booker Index, either high or low tech? And what are a few solutions that you try to use to mimic slash substitute for the taste or flavor kick of booze in a non-alcoholic drink? Here's an example from Darcy O'Neal. So Darcy O'Neill is the author of uh the book Fix the Pumps and is kind of the, you know, I would say, you know, one of the leaders in the kind of soda soda jerk, soda pump uh uh what's it called, um, resurgence in the past couple of years.
And he's a chemist by trade. Uh he has uh uh an excellent blog called The Art of the Drink, which you should look up. And uh Fix the Pumps is kind of like the classic small work, I mean, small, in other words, it's not long, you can read it quickly. Uh, on not small in terms of small and importance, because I think it was extremely influential, uh, on um kind of reviving old soda fountain stuff. And uh so consequently, you know, he spends a lot of time because you know the soda fountain movement went hand in hand kind of with the temperance movement, and people wanted to go out and do things and kind of have fun, uh, you know, in an era where they weren't legally allowed to go pound booze.
Uh and so, you know, the the the golden age of the soda fountain is kind of the golden age of the non alcoholic uh mocktail kind of a situation, right? Uh so anyway, so I highly recommend that you go buy Fix the Pumps if you haven't already purchased it. Um and he has an interesting post uh that's pointing to just all you need to look up is cognac oil. And what it is is it's the steam distilled like wine leaves, I guess, from the fermentation that they do. And so and Darcy says that it's kind of like a really good uh thing to add to non-alcoholic cocktails to give some or non-mocktails or whatever.
It's really kind of a bad name, mocktail. I always hated saying I don't like saying mocktail. I don't like I don't like the term. I don't like that you're being mocked for not having the alcohol. It also implies that it's kind of an UrsaT drink.
Yeah. Yeah. It it implies its own BS nature. It's bad. It's like it's like not a good term.
Someone needs to come out. I mean, the per first person I'm sure who said mocktail was like, Mocktail, I'm so smart. Like a piper, who's the king of puns, by the way. I don't know if he's gonna bust any of these puns out uh during the show, but you know, Piper, kind of king of puns, uh you know, that's you know, that's that's beneath you, right? Yeah, that's a little pedestrian.
Yeah, mocktail. But I'm guaranteeing the first person who thought of it thought they were a freaking genius, and now it is de facto the term for a non-alcoholic cocktail. Because non-alcoholic cocktail sounds dumb too. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. They're still cocktails. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, are they?
I mean, shrimp cocktails, still cocktail. Oh, good point. The shrimp cocktail. I haven't thought of a shrimp cocktail. Uh, by the way, uh, you know, no offense to the shrimp cocktail.
The shrimp cocktail holds a certain um kind of you know feeling, but the crappy, crappy peat pe you know, pre-packed shrimp cocktail, like horseradish ketchup mix like of crappy shrimp plastered into a parfait glass, is weak. Like I would much prefer to have a very you know, nicely made cocktail sauce and then dip a well-cooked chilled shrimp into it rather than have it all kind of pre-glombed into a into a into a crappy glass. Am I wrong? No, I agree. Yeah.
Alright, so again, shrimp cocktail maybe doesn't deserve the title either. And just letting the shrimp defrost on the plate. The cooked shrimp. Oh, you hate that. I hate that.
What do you what about when you bite into it and you have that little bit of graininess because it wasn't fully thawed? What about the one where they thought in too much water and it inflates with uh with uh fresh water and then starts dripping everywhere. Yeah, it bleaves everywhere. Is that your favorite? I like it with eggnog, I guess.
Oh, Piper referencing the fact that Nastasha and I do not like his eggnog. Uh yeah, yeah. Uh okay. So Nastash Nastasha back back in the studio, but still but dealing with whatever the the aftershocks were of the telephone call she had to deal with. Uh uh here, there's a mic over on that side.
How are you doing, Stas? Fine. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah?
Everything okay? Yes, relatively. Yes. Yeah, nice and sweet. I like I liking everything okay.
So here is Darcy's uh recipe uh for aromatic cognac syrup. Five ounces of dealcoholized, it's it's a weird word, right? Dealcoholized. Dealcoholized white wine. I like I like to pronounce the extra H.
I don't know why. When I when it's wine, white wine. I like to add the I don't know why. Because I'm stupid. I think that's why.
Uh four tablespoons of wine jelly, uh, four tablespoons sugar, seven drops cognac oil, which you can get on the Amazon, by the way. I don't know the quality or not. Uh three drops of chamomile essential oil, three drops uh green peppercorn essential oil, and two teaspoons glycerin for texture. So Darcy in his poster he talks about cognac ale, and I recommend looking into it. Is it you know it's all about trying to mimic the mouthfeel, uh, the aromas that make you think that there's alcohol in there, and then uh some of the biting bracing nature.
Now I haven't gone that far into it. I mean uh Nastasha will remember we did a we used to we were doing a skull project with uh Nils Norrin years ago. We gotta we gotta start that up again. Yeah. I'm not gonna do that in my cocktail book, but Stas Stas thinks that when I mean start something up that I mean like today.
This is a this is the people out there, this is the classic stuff that uh this is the reason why I yell at Nastasha on air sometimes, and it makes me look like a bad guy. Because she'll sit here and make an uh face like I'm uh like a taskmaster ogre saying that we should maybe at some point revisit starting an incredibly fun project. So, yeah, so that makes me the jerk. Anyway, uh so the yeah, big jerk. Yeah, yeah, fun, big jerk.
Anyway, so uh skull project, and uh we had some the idea of the Skull Project is is that you know we we take pictures of people doing this uh Scandinavian ritual of the skull where they do a cheers uh with uh Aka Vit, or any Schnapps, any drink drink really, they do the shot, and you look in someone's eyes, you take the drink, and then you look back. And so we did these triptych pictures and it was fun. It was a fun project. Uh but we had some people we wanted to skull who uh didn't drink alcohol, and so then one of our problems was well, how do we mimic that? And our m our mimicked ones were kind of bad.
We wanted them to taste like aqua vite, so it was caraway infusions. Uh and then to make that like kind of like ah doing a shot of Aquavite, we added menthol to it, like menthol crystals. Remember a couple years ago when everyone was puttment menthol crystals in everyone? Yeah. Everything?
We were we were some of those people's menthol everywhere. Man, the people who took that shot, they made that kind of menthol face. You know, that menthol face. I don't know. I didn't like it.
But uh so when when we're designing uh in fact we don't have but Piper and I have done some non-alcoholic drinks that we want to put on the on the menu. There's a couple of things that you need for a non-alcoholic drink. Uh it can't be as sweet as soda. If it's as sweet as a soda, uh people tend to feel that they're getting a soda. Um sodas are generally in the range of about 10% sugar by weight, around 10 bricks, somewhere between nine and a half and twelve, right?
Twelve's like a toothache, but if it there's a lot of bitterness and flavors going on, it can be that high. Um so uh what you need to sometimes do is tone back the sweetness because most cocktails uh like they are in fact less sweet than that if they're carbonated. Now a non-carbonated cocktail can be that sweet, but it's counteracted by the fact that there's uh alcohol in it, which is going to cut some of the sensation of the sweetness. Um so the issue is is you want to do things on the dry side. That's why tonic water is so fantastic because the quinine in tonic water cuts the sweetness perception.
Tonic water is typically a little less sweet than than it's on the less sweet side of uh of mixers anyway, rocking around 9.5% sugar by weight, 9.5 bricks for all you techno techno freaks out there. Uh so I think adding bitterness back. Uh the other thing is if you can make something incredibly fresh, even if it would necess kind of be conceived of as a soda, if it doesn't feel like a soda because it's entirely new and different from anything anyone's had before, and you can dial back the sweetness a little bit. I'll give you an example. Piper and I uh clarified some uh watermelon juice um a while back, and uh we made a very kind of light and then we added lime to it, uh and with the peel in it, the peel adds the kind of the essential oils of a fresh peel, which takes it less out of the soda realm and into kind of the cocktail and did a carbonated watermelon soda that would have been good as a um as a non-alcoholic drink.
We I make a strawberry soda with freshly clarified strawberry juice that it has a huge punchy flavors, but it's not overly sweet. No one would confuse that for a you know a commercially made soda, and so they would appreciate that the care and time have been made in, you know, put into it for um for it to be kind of registered as something that's like a uh worthy of the the same feelings as an alcoholic drink. The other thing is if you if you can tolerate small amounts of alcohol, like if if you're doing it just because you don't want to drink and drive, then you know you can add all kinds of bitters uh which have alcohol in it uh to like we make uh hops bitters, a hops tincture actually, that you can add that adds like the real feeling that you're having kind of a beery thing to it without having a uh a beer. If you are it if you if you don't want anything at all alcoholic that makes it a little more difficult, then you can only do things like bittering agents and spices and not actual bitters and tinctures that are made with ethanol. But I mean, it's only if you're being very strict because the actual amount of alcohol you're consumed is less than you would consume from eating, for instance, anything that are fermented.
Um what do you think? Anything else, Piper, that I'm missing here? Well, I don't really drink soda, but I like sand bitter. So would there be a way to like it? Well, that's because the bitterness syrup.
Yeah, well, that's the thing. I mean, so like, you know, like uh so it's the bitter base of compari uh with uh it's a it's the bittering agent. You know what you do is is if you have the sweetness there and you add bitter to it, and all of a sudden it becomes more adult, and you know, it's a bitter lemon's a good one. It's kind of like a uh, you know, it's kind of like tonic but with uh more oils dispersed in it, so it's cloudy, but it's got bitterness and it's more grown up. It's slightly less sweet, it would be more grown up.
Uh yeah, so anything like that, like a sand bitters or you know, make would be uh kind of a good, I think a good choice. Yeah. Uh also if you just want a light, more lightly alcoholic drink, then go carbonate yourself some comparian soda, because that is delicious. All right. Uh next question.
Oh, by the way, uh if you're looking for cooling things other than menthol, we haven't done a lot of experiments, but you're gonna want with if you actually want to simulate alcohol, you're gonna need to s to stimulate the trigeminal uh senses, kind of. And I am not a fan of uh Sichuan buttons or things like that to do it, but there are like sugar alcohols that can be somewhat cooling on the palate that you might want to use, and uh things like cubebs have a cooling effect. There's also like you know, certain herbs like tarragon can have kind of trigeminal sense kind of uh but you you want to mess with that stuff back there to give people the sense that there's something's going going on. Yeah, okay. Um Eddie Shepherd writes in he has a new vegetarian uh book that he uh that on uh on the iTunes.
And uh do you have the uh title of it, Stas? I don't have the title of it. No. I don't have the title of it. Oh, here it is.
Uh it is a new digital cookbook on the iTunes called Vibrant Vegetarian. So I'll check that out. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. Uh see what's see what's going on. Vibrant a vegetarian.
I am I'm a fan of alliteration. Piper, do you like alliteration? Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Everyone likes alliteration.
Do you know that in the old days, uh, you know, before um, you know, English was polluted by the Norman conquest in 1066, uh, you know, English poetry, old English poetry, was a strictly alliterative and non-rhyming uh you know thing based on a kind of a very complex structure of meter and alliteration, like old school Beowulf is you it's it it's completely unintelligible, but it makes you pine for the days when alliteration was kind of the way to go, and we still have that sense of alliteration in our language. That's why rap in Amer in English sounds so awesome, you know, especially American English with all kind of our flat our flat pronunciation of everything. That's why rap is so amazing here in America, and when you ship it, I mean, no offense to MC Solar, but I mean, you know, French French no offense to French rap, but you know, you're not, you know. Anyone with me here? I agree.
Yeah, all right. What about you, Joe? You you with me on this? Can't say I really listen to much French rap. Yeah.
Maybe uh you can make me a mixtape or something. Uh yeah, look, look, like, you know, MC Solar Galactica, it's all it's all good, but whatever. It's not as cool. It's not that it's not as cool. It's like alliteration.
It's like it's why bail will sound so awesome. Like, what we got a day and I and you got a diagram. You know, it's like very visceral. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like anyway.
Okay. Uh I I think that's the first line available. If I can't remember, it's been it's been twenty-five years. Okay. Uh I don't know what the hell else.
How'd I get on that? Oh, vibrant vegetarian. Oh, here we go. Uh the question I wanted to ask is about dry ice. I use dry ice for a number of culinary applications.
For fast freezing, carrying aroma, etc. I also don't currently have access to liquid nitrogen. Pity. Pity. Pity.
But in the UK, it's not all that easy to get hold of dry ice. It isn't widely uh available, so generally you have to order it in reasonably large amounts, at least 10 kilograms at a time. That's uh 22 pounds for you US folks out there. Uh, which is inconvenient and quite expensive. Get this Piper.
80 bucks for 10 kilograms. 80 bucks. 80 pounds or 80 bucks. He says bucks. I'm sure he I'm sure if he's in the UK, he has a little key set for pounds, so he could do it.
He must have done the conversion for us. Yeah, that's nice. Thanks. Nice. Uh especially if you are cooking for small numbers of people at a time.
I wondered if you had any experience with producing your own dry ice for culinary uses. I've seen online that some equipment is available for making dry ice. These basically seem to be simple things which attach to CO2 tanks. Do you think these might be a good route for making small amounts of dry ice around a kilogram at a time in a more affordable and convenient way? Also, do you think something like these bits of equipment could uh be made at home rather than bought?
I know Dave is both very handy with this kind of DIY stuff, and also self-proclaimed cheapskate, so I'm hoping he'll have some tips on this. All the best, Eddie Shepard. Okay. So what you're looking for here yes I have, yes, I have done this. You're looking for something that works on something called the Joule Thompson effect.
And the Joule Thompson effect fundamentally is that most gases will uh most real gases when they expand you know rapidly and don't uh give off don't have the time to give off heat to the environment will chill. Uh and in fact um it's so much so that you can convert uh CO2 at room temperature to uh dry ice because remember dry ice doesn't want to exist as a liquid in at atmospheric temperatures uh at atmospheric pressures rather doesn't want to exist as a liquid okay so uh here here here's how here's how it works. Now there are plenty of people on the internet who say that you can make dry ice by taking a CO2 fire extinguisher and putting a bag over it and then squeezing the trigger for a while and then chilling the stuff off and you probably can make some dry ice this way. However this is extremely inefficient process right so that what the what what the items are what you need first of all is a siphon tank. So in the US they're sold as 50 pound CO2 cylinders with a siphon.
And what that means is there's a tube extending from the top of the tank all the way down to the bottom so that the pressure on the top from the gas is forcing the uh liquid through the tube and you're actually spraying until it depressurizes you're spraying liquor up liquor liquid CO2 out of the uh out of the tank. So that's the first thing you need is a siphon tank. Siphon tanks are also good if you're gonna fill a lot of your own CO2 tanks. Uh you know, it's good to have a siphon tank because it's easier to fill out of a siphon tank, trust me. Uh the other thing you're gonna want to do is well then then the the commercial ones, you screw a brass valve on it that can handle the high pressures, right?
And then that brass valve is designed to more efficiently uh expand the CO2 and convert the maximum possible amount of it into dry ice. There's then a sack attached to that which allows the extra uh gas to shoot out and then collects the dry ice as a snow in that sack. Now there's various, you know, and that's the cheapest one. That's like a hundred bucks that one. And then there's various kind of levels above that that you and you can make it yourself from the valve once you own the valve, and you possibly could make the valve yourself, but I don't know.
I don't want to I haven't done it, so I don't want to get into it. But then they they kind of route it through a wooden box or a plastic box, and then the dry ice impacts into the box and compresses itself into a brick, and then you can make a brick that way. I'm sure that once you have the the Jewel Thompson valve scenario thing that you could modify it from a sack collector, because the snow is kind of a pain in the butt, it goes away quickly, to a brick maker. Now, here's the downside. This is an inherently uh inefficient procedure.
So uh first of all, uh you know, if you look frigid mat from Bell Art in the US makes uh these makers, and they caution you that it's re you're really only converting the liquid. Once once you're out of liquid, you're not really converting that much more uh into dry ice. And the amount of liquid in your tank is not the same as the weight. So at atmospheric uh a normal cylinder uh at you know at um regular room temperature, only like two-thirds of that or a little more, 70% of that is probably liquid, and the rest is is a form of compressed gas on top. So already out of a 50-pound cylinder, your yield is down to you know 70% of that.
Now, take into that that on your on a usage base usage basis, the best you're ever going to get is about 45, 46% of the weight of the CO2 that you spray out of it as dry ice. So that's of that 70, less than 50% of it's gonna turn into dry ice, right? The other thing is sucker's loud. Let me put this, let me say this again. Sucker is not quiet.
You know what I mean? Because you're you're opening a tank and spraying it out as fast as you can. It's loud. I mean, you've done that before, Piper. It's loud.
Yeah, it's loud. It's loud. It's irritating. You don't want to do it at a bar. No.
Or in your living room at night. No, it feels dangerous. Yeah, it's no, it's not the fun. Anyway, I mean it is fun, but it's not fun for other people who don't think that kind of thing is fun. Um and certain ones are much less efficient than others.
So the thing is you gotta figure out how much is it gonna cost. Usually on a 50-pound cylinder, you don't buy it, you rent it. And so you have a rental fee on the cylinder, and then let's say it's a 50-pound cylinder, uh, let's say that 70, let's say you get a third of 70 is like what's 70 divided by three piperts like 20, like 25%. Let's let's say you get 25%. So a quarter of 50 pounds, you're gonna get like 12, 12 and a half pounds of uh dry ice out of a 50-pound cylinder.
So then the question is how much are you paying for the cylinder? If you're if you're paying the good news about the cylinder is is that you could keep it there for eight years, not eight years because you need to rehydro test, but you could keep it there forever and then make the dry ice when you need it, and there's no sublimation of the dry ice when you know you make it when you need it. So there's no loss that way, but you have to figure out like what your overall cost would be to buy more than you need, have it sublimate, use it, and then have it go away, versus, you know, you know you're gonna get 12 pounds of of uh CO2 out of this tank and uh this dry ice out of this tank, and then is it cost effective? And I just don't know. I haven't done the math in a while, but uh I remember when I when I broke my uh dry ice maker I didn't buy another one if that's any indication.
Uh and but you know of course I had liquid nitrogen so there's not as much m need. Here's another thing. If you have a walk in free uh uh fridge uh you should before you make the dry ice the colder your cylinder is the higher the yield you're gonna get out of it because the more uh of the product will be liquid. Yeah yeah you have a caller. Oh caller you're on the air.
Uh hey Dave uh Dan Seattle two questions. Well actually one's a comment. Um you were talking about fish sauce last weekend. Yep. Have you ever had the uh red boat fish sauce that became available from Vietnam in like the last 18 months or so?
Yeah I like it a lot. Okay. I mean I think it's much better than anything else out there that deserved one. Yeah no here's the problem and it thank you for calling in and the reason is is because the taste test that I had done was before that stuff was available and then so when I thought taste test I just went back into my mind to the old taste test and it wasn't in that lineup because it wasn't available yet. But yeah that stuff's excellent.
Alright I was just curious about that. Um and then um my actual question I made the full modernist uh chicken soccer week or three ago and it came out fantastic but it took me a hundred years to actually fry all the ground chicken for the amount of stock I was making. Because I actu I actually deep fried it was my interpretation of what the recipe says to do. Yeah that's a I forget who originally I mean uh I remember Wiley told me uh that about that, and that was a protocol based on some for that's like a ten-year or twelve-year old protocol from someone out of Europe grinding and deep frying, but I forget who originally came up with the I forget who originally came up with the idea, but yeah, okay, go ahead. Okay, so it came out fantastic, but on a home stove, and I've got a pretty good home stove, the time to actually deep fry several pounds of ground chicken, I mean it went on forever.
If it if I put the ground chicken, if I spread it flat on a sheet pan in the oven, can I get somewhat close to the same effect? And how much oil and time and uh your first guess at time and temp? Yeah, well I wouldn't I wouldn't sp spread it flat so much. I think like the whole uh the the benefit of the deep fry on the grind is that you're getting maximum surface area of stuff that's browned. Uh and so I would kind of leave it fluff as fluffy as you can.
Uh and then I would put them on uh on like as many pans as you can fit in your oven and just pan them in. Uh and I would do like whatever you know you don't want you the the trick is you don't want to scorch it. So I would I would probably do somewhere in the range of 375, 400 Fahrenheit. Sorry, Europe, I turned my oven in Fahrenheit. Uh but like uh somewhere in that range and let the let the stuff roast off like you would a normal bone.
I don't think it's gonna require that much higher. Although you probably could go higher because it's so small that I mean the grind, but I I would still stick in that range just because I don't think it's gonna be necessarily beneficial to crank it to 500 or 550, and there's no reason to go lower. So I would I would be somewhere in that 375 to 425 range. If you have a convection, that'll help blow some of the moisture off and get it browning faster. Um but I would definitely leave it kind of fluffed up because the whole concept of that recipe is to uh is to get browning on the maximum possible surface area of uh of product.
I will give that a shot on my next go. Thank you very much. And uh do me a favor, tweet me in at at cooking Issues and t tell me how it worked. I will, I will. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Bye. Hey, hey, you want you guys want to go to our first commercial break? We're gonna come back for the first commercial break. Calling questions 27184972128 Cooking Issues.
Like what you hear so far? Support the network and become a member. Membership helps us bring you the best food radio in the world and gives you access to thousands of dollars in discounts at the sustainably minded businesses that support us. To become a member, visit Heritage Radio Network.org today. Slate quarry in upstate New York in the spring of 2009.
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And we're back! I like the Brooklyn Slate people. We actually accidentally shafted them. They donated a bunch of stuff to the museum a couple of years ago, and then we had to tell them that that you know we didn't have our 501c3 status in order, so we love them and thank them and are sorry about that. I think we told them they're invited to any event that they want to.
Yeah. They're good people. They make they make they make good good. I like slate. Slate is a good product.
Yeah. I mean, of course, Piper thinks so he's from Vermont. Uh Vermont. It's the New Hampshire of next door. Whoa.
I don't know whether you guys know this. People who people who like, you know, aren't from the Northeast of the United States might not know that you'd think that Vermont and New Hampshire, which are basically identical structures, like flipped and then stuck next to each other, like they look identical to each other, just kind of flipped end for end and glued together. That these guys they don't like each other so much. It's kind of like it's kind of like they don't like each other. We're from different parts of Pangaea.
It's not it's not the same place at all. I mean, like physically that they look the same, just flipped. Right? I mean, Vermont looks like an upside-down New Hampshire. Yeah.
Or vice versa. Right. Yeah, and they're both literally right next to each other. Right. Like a doppelganger.
Yeah, but New Hampshire has no laws. Seat laws. They have no seatbelt. You don't have to have insurance in New Hampshire, you know that? I didn't know.
I don't live free or die, right? Yeah, live free or or die. Turns out that whether or not you live free, you eventually will die. Uh anyway. Uh interesting.
Michael Nakin writes in, uh, he was enjoying the farm to toilet uh discussion we had yesterday last week. And he goes, Dave, love the c uh tissue cleansing through bowel management rant. You exceeded my fondest expectations. Well, well, well, thank you. Uh Nastasha and Piper.
This is regarding their uh overindulgence in Jerusalem artichokes last week. Uh, which, you know, if case you, you know, well, of course, you know, if you didn't hear last week, Jerusalem artichokes contain uh a very, very large quantity of a non-digestible polysaccharide called inulin. And uh when you eat a large quantity of inulin, you you have painful bloating tooting phenomena going on for a good long time. And I I was laughing because had they just read The Curious Cook, they would have known this beforehand, and both Piper and Nastasha for lunch decided to just inulin themselves like straight up the wazoo. Anyway, so uh Michael writes in, uh Nasasha and Piper, may I suggest you read Undaunted Courage?
Uh, if I'm remembering it right, Lewis and Clark had to overwint in uh overwinton, overwinter with uh uh Mondan Indians for two years in a row in the frigid Minnesota winters. They were stuck inside the teepee's for months at a time, and guess what? The main source of food was? Yep, Jerusalem artichokes. Can you imagine the aroma?
Compared to that, the two of you are probably like a field of daisies. So you can tell Dave to quit his whining. Michael Nakin. Nice. Nice.
He's a good guy. Yeah, yeah, that's a good guy. Good guy. Strong. Uh another thing before we go any further, uh, we are going to announce that Booker and Dax is going to have the Kickstarter launch for the Sears All.
Sears all Sears All on Black Friday. That's right. For those of you that aren't from the United States, Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving when everybody is supposed to go out and consume like wild people here in the U.S. for the Christmas season. And we have decided to put our Kickstarter on air for the Sears All on Black Friday.
You want you guys want to talk about this a little bit? Yeah, well, we're launching at uh actually midnight on Thanksgiving. Well, it's not Thanksgiving anymore, if it's midnight. Piper's the guy that came in. Maybe this is a Vermont thing.
He's like, So midnight is that is that AM or PM? I'm like, it's A, it's the next freaking day. It's the next freaking day. Mom listens to the show. Uh I'm sure your mom knows that it's the next day.
I'm just breaking on you. Anyway, whenever I say anything, Piper's like my mom listens to the show. That's that's what he always says, what? It's still gonna feel like Thanksgiving at midnight on I agree. I agree.
You know, as far as the human body is concerned, it's not the next day till you wake up. That's why if you pull in all nighter you'd like your calendar gets messed. Yeah. Yeah. Meanwhile, though uh from from a feeling standpoint, you're right.
Regardless, we're launching it on midnight on Black Friday. Yeah. So the uh so anyway, and we're gonna have it up. We haven't decided yet whether we're gonna run it uh to Jan 1 or whether we're gonna kill it on uh the 26th of December. Have we decided?
Twenty fourth was what we're gonna say. Midnight on Christmas. Why would you do that? I don't know. No, I said we should have it run through.
Okay. Anyway, it'll be on Kickstarter. So here's what here's what the here's the story with it. So, you know, for those of you that uh, you know, I don't know, uh don't know. Uh here's the problem.
When you're at home, uh often you don't have access to very, very high intensity heat source to do things like finish low temperature meats or any anything like that. So normally a lot what a lot of people do, which I think is a horrible idea, is they use a torch. And when you use a torch, you create all sorts of off flavors in uh in the food that they're we call it we call it uh torch taste. Torch taste. Torch taste.
And it smells like uh products of combustion, and indeed uh, you know, Ariel at UC Davis did some GC mass spec for us and showed that in fact you are creating kind of secondary compounds from the super high intensity high uh heat flame from a torch uh that cause these kind of off flavors. So we developed and have a patent pending on this little device that turns uh the heat from a torch into a three-inch uh like infrared uh radiant or not radiant infrared broiler kind of uh that you can hold in your hand. Uh and so it makes kind of very quick work of that. It's also you know, reheat pizzas, whatever, do whatever you want. Uh melt, you know, gr Piper likes to grill cheese with it.
I like to finish steaks. It does great work on scallops. It's the only way I would ever cook foie gras ever again. I would never cook foie gras any other way ever. It's actually a higher heat intensity than uh a salamander, it's more similar to a deck broiler.
Um but anyway, so we're gonna launch this guy, and I also like it because like let's say it in a restaurant, it's not really for like very like heavy duty use in a restaurant because it's small and you have to hold it while you're working. We're we you know, years we have a patent on the on the technology, so like we could build a huge one that would be like the world's most insane uh, you know, grill if we wanted to, but that's down the line. Anyway, but in a restaurant, like if something comes out and it's not totally finished right, you could finish it, like you know, spot finish things, or if you're on Gaudranger and you have like one particular thing you want to do, you don't want to like ha be near a hotline, you can finish something right there. Or if you're doing catering events, or you know, you're out at a picnic and you want to, you know, just have something you can carry around and just put like a nice flame on some kind of smaller things. It's kind of a good tool for that, right?
Yeah. Do you agree? Um, you know, and I like it better for things I don't like it, like it's first of all, it's more powerful than a heat gun. Like the t it it plu literally plugs on a torch. So it's converting a torch to this other thing, and you could take it off and use your torch as normal, or you can put this on and and use it like a Searzole.
Um I like it better than it's more powerful than something like a heat gun. Torch you don't want to use because it makes bad taste. Heat gun would be okay, but heat gun is much more kind of focused and smaller, and uh it's not as not as powerful. And the big thing I don't like about the heat gun is got a t uh got a cord on it. I hate having to have cords on stuff when I'm using it in in a kitchen.
It's really irritating. Uh anyway, so we're gonna kick start that thing. And have we agreed on the on the kind of what we think it's we should not talk about price or anything like that, right? Not yet. Still hammering it out.
Because the the deal is is that we need uh pretty good insurance uh for this. So we have the insurance and we're gonna have to go um and get it manufactured. Right now, Piper and I go down into the basement of Booker and Dak's lab and weld all these suckers by hand. And uh we don't intend to do that. No.
We want to have the best product made that we can. So we're still working on figuring that out. But yeah, so anyway, so we hope you all come by it. Uh and this you won't have to tweet me anymore and ask me when we're finally going to kickstart it because we're we're gonna do it. You can see it on Al Jazeero America.
I don't even know was it on that? Was it actually on yeah? Did it look okay? Did you see that? I haven't seen it yet.
Yeah. Anyway, okay. Oh, and we started a uh Twitter for the Booker Index Lab. Oh yeah, what is it? At Booker Index Lab.
And we'll be uh posting some photos of the Sears all and the stuff we do there. Ooh, follow antics. Follow, follow, follow, follow the follow the at Booker Index Lab. Follow us. Yeah.
Uh what are you saying? What's going on? Hey, so Dave, I have a I have a question in that's uh basically what does the trans fat ban mean for the mass marketers of things like sweets and candy and all everything that has lots of trans fats in them. Uh it'll probably just make it a little more expensive. You can remove trans fats, like there's uh you know, like you can go into the store right now and buy trans fat free Crisco.
Uh it's just uh probably it's probably gonna be a uh cost increase. I mean I would say that's uh that's about it. There's no in other words, the transness of the fat doesn't uh change the functionality of the fat. The transness of the so it's what w the the deal is is that um when you um you know when you r remake and break double bonds, you can do it in in a in a way where uh where they the depending on cis and trans has to do with what side of uh of a you know a double bond they the substituted chains are on, cis meaning it's on the same side, and trans meaning it's on the opposite side. Uh and so um the cisness or transness doesn't affect really things like the temperature at which the fat melts or anything like that.
Uh it affects more the um it affects more how your body reacts to it. And so the it's in the manufacturing of fats that they produce um you know of uh things like Crisco and other shorties that they produce these trans fats. So all you have to do is then get rid of the trans fats or do another process to isomerize them to trans. And so all I can foresee really is a price uh maybe a a price increment and not a functionality increment. Does that make sense?
Yeah it makes completely sense. Okay. Um got a question in from we talk enough about the uh Sears all there. Mm-hmm that's good. What about what is it called Booker and Dax Lab?
At Booker Indax Lab. At Booker Index Lab who runs that you run that Piper? We co-run it the hammer and Piper. So if you need if you don't want to if like you look Nastash's Twitter handle is hammer uh at hammer BDX. I don't think she ever looks at it.
I do. Yeah. Every day. Yeah. And and Piper I think has Piper BDX or something like this, right?
Yeah, not getting a lot of action these days. No. Nice. Alright. But anyway, uh follow those guys and for all the what's a who's anyway.
Uh Alex writes in hello Dave Hammer and the revolving cast of others. Jack or whomever else there may be there this day. Oh what's up, whomever? Joe. Oh hello.
Yeah. Uh excellent show your efforts are greatly appreciated. I've convinced my wife that a kitchen update is a good idea. Strong. Uh I am stealthily trying to put some more precise slash modern tools into the plan.
We have a six burner gas range and I want to expand my options. My wife is reluctant to give up the storage or the counter space, but she is open to a flat top perhaps even a 24 inch accu steam griddle if I can find one in good shape. Uh accu steam griddle for those of you that don't know is a is like a sandwich layer stainless steel griddle that has water on the inside and it has an extremely fast recovery rate. Everyone that has it in a short order situation loves it because the recovery rate is almost instant and everybody respects them and thinks they're great. The only downside of them is that uh they they can fail because they're a pressure vessel and need repair, and repair on an accu steam is expensive.
So if you talk to people who don't make, you know, people other griddle suppliers, and you're like, what about accu steam? They're like, oh yeah, yeah, it's it's great. The only thing that we can say is that it might break, and then you're at SOL. Anyway, that's just my my two my two cents, but they are good products. Uh while they look fun, uh, and then can release my uh inner short order cook, that's the AccuStream.
I don't know how much use it would get in a world where uh a fry pan or two will usually do. You know what? Another good thing to get any sort of like the problem with most griddles is they don't have a super, they're not really high heat enough and they and they don't heat up quickly enough. In my house, I have a uh an actual gas fire, the electric ones are garbage. A gas-fired uh crampus crepe maker, which is how wide is this, 18 inches my hands?
24. Yeah, it's somewhere between 18 and 24 inches, uh cast iron top. Heats up to if I need it to 615, can throttle down to um you know, down to uh low enough temperature to do pancakes and even lower, and it's super fast and it's fairly compact and it's on the counter, gas fired. This thing is awesome. They're hard to find here in the US, but next time you're in France, they're not that expensive in France.
And you can get them here in the US, they just cost twice as much as they should. Anyway, uh I do not know how much I would get to use a griddle where a fry pan or two would usually do. Instead, I want to push, I'll tell you what's good on that uh crepe maker is uh razor clams. Oh, razor clams, plancha style. Razor clams.
Uh instead, I want to push for a 20 to 35 pound uh tube deep fryer. I've been okay with frying on the range top, though the small batches and consistently adjusting the temperature, recover them, and then not overheat them can be a pain. So a better solution is sought. I've heard you mention that to become a master of the fry, you need a real fryer. True.
True. My wife's concern is the safety, maintenance, slash cleaning requirements, and how big it should be to be useful. Assuming I use a quality fry oil, and you should get commercial fry oil, by the way, uh commercial. Uh what kind of life can I expect out of the oil? How often is it filtered or replaced?
How should it be stored? Besides a type K fire extinguisher, are there any other safety precautions you recommend? Any features I should seek? Any other advice on whether or not a fryer is a good idea? Thank you, keep up with good work.
Well, look, from a cooking standpoint, there's no question that a deep fryer is a good idea. It's unquestionable. From a cooking standpoint, let me put it this way there is no question. Um lasts in a home environment for a tremendously long time. Uh if you, you know, you f you fit filter it regularly.
Uh I just keep it in the fryer and cover it completely so that it's not exposed to air or light so that you're not getting light-based oxidation or a lot of oxygen uh oxidation on the top of it, and it lasts for a long, long time. And you can just test it uh in between fries with a with like a piece of bread to taste to see whether the oil is starting to get that cardboardy rancid taste. But because you're using a tube fryer and all the stuff sinks to the bottom, it's gonna last a long time. Get it, you know, a stainless steel uh pot and you're good. Like the old the iron ones aren't as good for keeping anyway.
Here's the thing, your wife is 100% right. These are completely uh not necessarily safe in a home environment, they're not rated for a home environment, and let me put it this way this might uh void your homeowner's uh insurance. If you have a fire based on having a deep fat fryer in your house, a commercial deep fat fryer in your house, your uh homeowner's insurance might be void. Let me say that again. Your homeowner's insurance might be void.
Uh also if you're not set up to battle a fire from a fryer or you don't know how to use a fryer or you're gonna freak out if there's a fire, this is a dangerous proposition. I I will point you at these YouTube things. Look up Mythbusters water on oil fire, right? And uh they have awesome slow-mo images of them dumping a cup of oil into uh an oil fire and showing what happens. This is by the way, why you don't ever have a deep fryer next to a stove, because you might spill oil into something, and then what happens is is that the water instantly vaporizes, and if oil is let's say you're when you're using a fryer, you should never leave it ever.
But you should never leave it unattended because you can see if it's starting to go over over hot on you. If it goes over hot, if in other words a thermostat breaks and it goes into runaway, thermal runaway, once the oil auto ignites, and then if something like water hits it after it's auto ignited, then you're misting it if the water hitting it will cause tiny oil droplets to be at you know sprayed into the atmosphere like a f like a like a like an aerosol. That aerosol will ignite into a fireball, right? Here's the other problem about fire extinguishing an oil fire. If you fire extinguish an oil fire on, if you have oil that just spills out of the fryer and hits a heating element and ignites, sure, then you can uh you can hit it with a with a type K fire extinguisher, and it's not gonna be a big problem.
If you have thermal runaway and your entire batch, 30 pounds of oil, is at auto ignition temperature, and you spray it, what you're doing is you're spraying oil with the with the with the extinguisher, you're spraying oil at its auto ignition temperature all over your kitchen, where it will then again ignite as soon as you release the uh fire extinguisher, unless you have enough fire extinguishing power to uh like kill it completely and cool it down, which is why they have ansel systems and in an Ansel system, the goop that they spray out of your ancil system uh especially saponifies the fat so that it doesn't uh reignite after it stops, and it puts a suppression blanket on top of your fryer for like twenty seconds please look up pyrochem kitchen night two fire test demonstration and for an extremely uh boring uh i they're boring but you go through them and Ansel R-102 suppression system versus dry chemical extinguisher on YouTube especially that second one Ansel R102 suppression system versus dry chem extinguisher and you can they it's really boring go to the interesting parts you can see a firefighter spraying a dry chemical extinguisher on uh on a on a thermal runaway auto ignition oil temperature fire from a fryer and the disastrous results contained also for a good laugh look up William Shatner turkey fry because William Shatner has a safe he's like I love fried turkey it's the taste it's my taste I love it I fried turkeys but then he has like the safety thing where they show like an entire like garage melting down from uh someone putting uh uh a poorly thawed and or too much oil in it. So check that stuff out. Um but anyway, yes from a cooking standpoint they're the best. Amazing fair? Fair.
Fair okay um caller you're on the air. Hey Dave it's Nathan from Richmond. Hey how you doing? Good man um I've been reading this book called uh Pulmonary Reactions by Simon Clownfield. Maybe you've read it before.
Uh I don't have do you have that Piper? No. Nope, go ahead. Okay. So he's talking about turkey and he wants to cook his turkey at a a relatively low temperature um 96 C for a long time in the oven.
Right. But initially he rinse the bird with hydrogen peroxide, and I've never heard of anyone doing this. Huh? I wondered. Why does he bleach the turkey?
Because he says he's gonna cook it at a low temp, so he wants to completely remove the chance of any like uh bacterial growth. Especially bauxulism, since uh hydrogen peroxide will break down into oxygen and help help keep botulism from growing. Alright, Piper, like all right. Like tweet me the tweet me the name of the book and the protocol. I'm gonna look that sucker up and we'll talk about it.
We still have time before Thanksgiving next week, right? Cool, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I'll look that up. Hydrogen peroxide on the bird.
You heard of that, Piper? Is it a is it a base? Hype peroxide? I'd say it's an oxidizer. It just kills things.
It's a it doesn't work based on acidity, it works based on like literally like ripping things apart. Yeah. Have you ever poured hydrogen peroxide on your on a cut, Piper? They don't have that up in Vermont. Spit.
Ah, nice, nice. Yeah, so we'll uh I'll I'll look that up and and uh and we'll we'll we'll try to see if we can figure out what's going on. I mean, I would prep I would prefer to use kind of a slightly nitrated salt and get that cured taste rather than use a uh hydro peroxide. But I don't know, I'll go buy some hydrogen peroxide, we'll dump it on at I don't know if I have time because we're working on the Kickstarter, but I'll I'll definitely at least research it. Piper will have me research it and we'll get back to you next week.
Okay, awesome. Thanks, Dave. Alright, thank you. Um Toronto writes in Dear Cooking Issues team, uh, any uh recipes involving powder gelatin, consistently ask that first be hydrated, then heat it up. Two questions.
As long as there's enough water, won't the gelatin hydrate as it heats up anyway? And two, to what temperature uh must one heat the mixture in order to melt the said gelatin? And thanks and keep up the good work, Alex in Toronto. Actually, they don't tell you to add uh to the cold water to hydrate it. They're they're putting you in to swell it so that it can disperse easily before you hydrate it.
What they're worried about is that you add the gelatin powder to a hot liquid and it forms clumps that then take a lot longer to dissolve. The reason that doesn't happen in jello powder is because there's so much sugar separating the gelatin that uh it easily disperses in uh hot water, okay? Um but the blooming, as it's called, is not a hydration. Any hydrocolloid uh that you use, and gelatin, even though it's a protein is classified as a hydrocolloid, is usually a two-step process. Disperse, which is what you're doing with the blooming process, getting them swollen but yet not glued together, uh, and then hydration by heating.
And uh gelatin hydrates what, like what 140, something like that? Fahrenheit? Somewhere like that? It's pretty low. Something like that.
I just do it by eye. I've never actually measured it, and probably depends on the gelatin. I just do it by eye. Yeah. Anyway, there that's your answer.
Uh Patrick uh Patrick writes in on ham. Dear cooking issues, gang. I'm thinking of trying to cure ham in a location upstate New York whose low and sometimes high temperatures dip below the freezing point for one quarter to one third of the year. This excludes a completely ambient curing and aging process, but I'm thinking of providing just enough heat to keep the temperature above freezing to do a semi ambient ham and then let it age for a long time, at least over two summers, where the temperatures are still still relatively mild. I don't have a desire to produce a facsimile of another place's ham, but instead want to do something that stands on its own.
Do you think in general this is an okay idea? Or is it that simply not a good idea to do a semi ambient ham, most likely unsmoked, outside of the traditional ham belt climate zone you described before? Completely ambient seems out of the question. Also, are there any detailed references in English you would suggest for ham cure uh curing? I have a copy of Fidel Tolders' dry cured meat on the way, and Paul Bertoli's cooking by hand has a really good description of his own prosciutto method.
Not looking to replicate other processes, but make a country ham that tastes like its own unique climate and geography. All the best, Patrick. Okay, listen, look this up. Uh dry curing Virginia style ham, Virginia Cooperative Extension by Norman Marriott. It's about Virginia ham, but it talks about the general procedure, how to pick out a ham properly for curing, uh although, you know, I don't necessarily agree with all of his trimming procedures, but it goes into salt levels and things like this.
And he actually is an advocate of the bag style cure. And it's probably good for curing small amounts of ham rather than the box cure where you're layering lots of hams on top of each other. The bag cure, you add the specific amount of salt you need to the particular ham, wrap it, and then you know you overhaul it a couple of times, but it's you know uh easier to get to get right. I think that you have a good idea. I don't think it's gonna be a problem uh as long as you keep it from freezing if you have it in a semi-controlled place.
And you've got to remember a lot of the smoked hams uh that you know we have you know over time come from more northerly places where freezing is a possibility, and so things were hung near fires to keep them from uh freezing, among other things. Uh and so I think that should that should work great. And I'm looking, you know, I'd I'd love to try an upstate New York style ham semi-ambient semi-ambient ham. Yeah, but remember, your your aging temperatures, like the reason that the country hams, my feeling is taste the way they do, southern country hams is the very high humidity, uh high uh temperatures that they experience in the summertime. Uh and most of your aging, uh most of the kind of funkiness from aging is going to happen during uh the uh summertims.
Okay, uh last week we had in uh a caller asking about sodium ferrocyanide in salt. Uh and uh Elliot Papanell wrote in with the uh with the uh actual sheet from Morton saying that there can indeed be there. But it's not gonna hurt you. First of all, sodium ferrocyanide, it's not 2%. It's uh 20 milligrams per kilo of salt is the maximum allowable amount in uh in the European standards anyway, which is like oh, I have to do the math, but it's like 0.0002% uh of of uh sodium uh ferrocyanide.
And sodium uh ferrocyanide, ferrocyanide is a si is a bunch of cyanides glued around a an iron uh atom, and the iron bonds so well with the cyanide that it takes an acid stronger than stomach acid to release hydrogen cyanide gas. And so sodium ferrocyanide is relatively non-uh toxic. You need to consume a whole bunch of it for uh for it to hurt you, and there is not, and it's you know, and there's not that much of it in there anyway, but indeed it is there. So it's remember it's not two percent, it's 20 milligrams per kilo, which is very very, very low. Um Chris uh Chris Kohler uh writes in uh well is pronounced it's written like collar, like holler, like Chris Kala, but it's co but it's Kohler.
Anyway, uh two questions pertaining to bread and proofing dough. I've been making Levan style bread for about six months now and continually amazed with how long it lasts. Uh last being quantified in days without drying out, molding, or showing significant drops in quality. My first assumption was uh that this bread is 77% hydrated and that uh that's playing a role in lasting longer. I recently did a uh side-by-side of 77% Levain bread and 77 per hydrated no-need bread with commercial yeast and a traditional kneaded bread at 77% hydration with commercial yeast.
All three breads were made in a standard country style loaf. The bread made with the Levan was a clear winner and lasted a week with a slow decline in quality. The kneaded bread lasted for four days, and then no-knead bread was shot after two. Any thoughts on what's going on? And uh as a follow-up, I recently got a wood-fired oven and I'm trying to convert a mini fridge into a proofing chamber so I can hold pizza dough at 65 Fahrenheit for extended uh periods of time.
I can't imagine this being too difficult, but the scope of my scientific knowledge is i in the world of medicine, not engineering. Thusly, I'm often intimidated by the smallest electrical projects. Thanks for the help, Chris uh Kohler. Uh, so uh as far as uh the first thing, yes, a sourdough technique, especially on whole grain breads like Levan's, it uh is has a um a radical uh effect in a positive way on the staling properties of um of doughs. I point you to this article in uh food microbiology from 2007 called The Impact of Sourdough on the texture of bread.
And uh there's a couple things going on. Uh the acidity from a sourdough starting is uh causing directly causing some of the anti-staling uh things by uh how it uh affects the way enzymes are breaking down starches during the fermentation process, and also probably due to their effect on the gluten in general, which they say can affect staling, although I'm not exactly sure how, I'd have to go reread the whole article. The other thing is is that the lactic acid bacteria uh that are growing in a sourdough starter make their own extracellular cellular polysaccharides, which can lead towards uh can lead towards anti-staling effects and also break down other things like proteins and other things that are more present in uh whole grain breads. And so a sourdough plus a whole grain bread is probably vastly superior from a staling technology, but uh just go read the impact of sourdough on the texture of bread. Um I went to go look for uh my copy of the bread builders, which I think also, even though it might be out of date, is a very good book on that style of bread, but it's already been packed because I'm moving very soon.
Um anyway, I hope that helps. Uh John writes in, and I guess this will have to be our last one, right? Because we're getting we're getting kicked off the air in a second. Uh John writes in, uh Hey Dave, Nastasha and the crew. I had a question about ginkgo, specifically the evil female tree.
For a while, my wife and I have had a ginkgo on our block and did collect the seeds for a brief moment to dry out the seeds for a Chinese dish we wanted to try, but unfortunately, soon after the process of separating the softer flesh of the seed from the inner seed, we found during the process that the fruits contain uh you're I can't pronounce it, I can't pronounce anything, ureusurol, the stuff from from uh well from from uh poison ivy. Uh urecial. I can't pronounce it. Anyway, uh contains that uh which made for very unpleasant few days following. That tree is long gone, but I do see a lot of the trees dropping their stink seeds around New York City uh now, and was wondering if I was brave or crazy enough to brave the stench and collect them again.
Is there a way to neutralize uh the uh the you know the dermatologically uh impaired product, which I will not try to pronounce again, before trying to get the seeds to avoid getting poison oak side effects again. While the fresh seeds were good, I am not sure the risk or effort involved is better than the ones you pick up in a Chinatown, aside from knowing their origin and processing uh and processing them yourself compared to the industrial variety. Thanks. Hope all is well, John. Okay, look.
So, in fact, uh look, uh urichurol, however you pronounce it, is actually that technical thing is only from that family, the Anacardius anacardacy, which is like mangoes and poison ivy and and and whatever. I looked this up and I didn't know that this is in ginkgo, and again, my my book on uh poison ivy problems, which I have a couple actually, but they're already because I'm fascinated with trees and put stuff now, uh, have been uh packed away already for the moose, so I couldn't go look look that up. But it turns out that ginkgo uh has a related uh compound in it um that can cause dermatitis, but doesn't necessarily cause it for everyone. So, in other words, some people who were because I'm highly allergic to poison ivy, but I've smashed ginkgo seeds this year, in fact, and haven't gotten any any problems. Here's the other problem.
Something you mentioned. First of all, ginkgos are unrelated to any other living extant tree. They are they're they are kind of they're alone in their group. They're usually classified with the conifers, but they're kind of like a living fossil. And they're only really wild in China, but they were brought over and extensively cultivated in other places, including here in New York City.
Trees are either male or female, unlike many trees which have male and female parts on the same tree. And the female trees produce stinky, stinky, stinky, stinky ginkgo nuts, which is why most people who cultivate them only cultivate the males. But you can here in New York City, I can verify this from my own personal experience. Fine, in fact, there's one right outside of MoFat Offices. There's a female tree that was dropping its nuts.
These nuts. And and uh you pick it up, and it's not really a seed anywho. But you break it and it you smell homeless. Uh and you can't wash the homeless smell after because of the intense concentration of butyric acid on it. Now, I did not know that it also contained an irritant, but in fact it it does.
Uh and so uh I will uh did I write it down? I there's a I will try to look more into whether or not there's any way to actually stop yourself other than gloves. Uh I mean gloves, right? Gloves. But I I don't think of any I haven't found anything that specifically inactivates it.
I was reading an article on the uh preventing of occupationally related contact dermatitis, but and that came up when I searched for ginkgo, but I wasn't able to find the specific ginkgo reference that kind of had to work around it. But man, if you can brave that stench, first of all, the fact that you put that stuff on your hands with the smell because it's so hard to wash out of your hands. I was sitting there washing for like so long to get the stink out. Uh there are things called barrier creams that uh are given to forest rangers and people who trek out that are supposed to stop uh poison ivy from penetrating the skin, and maybe that would work here. But man, I mean, I would collect and then you know, maybe they use some sort of fermentation to get the pulp off instead of pulping it by hand.
I will look it up. I will look it up uh and tell you, John, because it's I'm kind of curious about it. Oh, it's too late in the season for us to collect ginkgo. Can you imagine if I brought all those ginkgo nuts back to the lab and was stinking up that lab with butyric acid, like smelling like vomity vomit, vomit, vomity vomit. I can't imagine what that would be like.
I think it's I think there's other stinky stuff in there because it smells worse than just vomit. It's like vomit plus not wash. It's like unwashed vomit. It's like it's like it's like you didn't wash for a week, you spent your first 20 bucks on the cheapest liquor you could get, drank it and then puked it on yourself, and then just fell asleep dozing in the hot sun. That's what it smells like to me.
Anyway, uh we'll look it up and we'll get back to you 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.org.
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