Today's program has been brought to you by Fairway Market, like no other market, a New York City institution that sells the best local, national, and international artisan foods for prices that can't be beat. For more information, visit Fairway Market.com. 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. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from Bushwick Brooklyn at Roberta's Pizzeria on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly twelve to roughly one o'clock. Sas, how you doing? Good. You like that better? Don't care.
Don't care? No. We didn't get any new submissions for songs, Jack? Jack? I know.
Jack and Joe in the in the engineering booth, both, by the way, accomplished musicians. Whoa, oh well. There it is. The call's been open. So I mean, let's put it at the top of the show here.
Maybe maybe people pay attention more. We need a new theme song. Listen, we like what we got. We want to keep all the theme songs. We want some more.
Yeah, I mean, so what what were you what were you thinking? I was thinking maybe like a so we have like cocktail jazz, like that, you know, the Vicious Vicious vodka kind of re redo, right? The Ficious Fishes vodka. That's you know from the cocktail jazz kind of, you know, theory of operation, like Amos Millburn, that kind of stuff. And then, you know, we have uh kind of a uh a hardcore y version, right?
Right? Yep. So so what do we what do we make? We don't have country. We don't have a twangy country theme.
We could use that. We could use maybe like uh a hip hop beat theme. Oh hell yeah. Right? Oh yeah.
Yeah. Oh, oh hell yes. Oh yeah. But it had to be good hip hop. I know.
Either good hip hop or like dumb in a really good way. Right. Like uh Lonely Island, good dumb, you know what I mean? Or like or like actually good dumb. Or actually good.
Which is so hard, man. It's so hard to get hip hop that's like most hip hop's in between, you know what I mean? It's t it's tough. What about like a club a club theme song? Mean like uh like like what era?
Like uh like house, like eighties house. Yeah? Or like or like nineties like like nineties ass and stuff like James Brown is dead, like who's that? That was LA style. Remember LA style?
I don't. James Brown is dead. We could do something like that. But the uh problem with them is that they came out with that song when James Brown was still alive. What we really need is like a Hall and Oates type theme.
Oh stino, that would be amazing. I you know, Stas at any given moment, Stas and I might just break into a Holland Oat song at any given any given second, it might happen. You know what I mean? Maybe instead of playing break songs, you guys can just sing Holland Oates songs on the break. All right, it's a that's not allowed, right?
With your Well, I don't know. It's also a little known fact that I kind of uh I ha I have singing to rets in that I uh kind of involuntarily insert curse words into the middle of songs as I sing them. Mostly the C word. No, I never use in songs? Yeah I use the F bomb in songs.
You're a d you're just you almost just cursed. It was close. Anyway, it's uh it's a bad habit. I'm trying to trying to break it. Uh but you know, that's that's uh that's what it is.
But if someone's gonna do country, like uh I mean personally, Stas doesn't like country. You know why, Jack and Joe? Why? Because uh because she doesn't like stories. No, it's just a swear to God, Stas, am I lying about that?
It's only since I started working with you. Because you taught like you'll play he'll play a country song. The same country song over and over, and he'll be like, Can you believe that he left his wife or his dog? And I mean, why would he do that? And same, same breakdown.
He analyzes these songs. Same songs. First of all, like is that not true? I think some of these songs merit attention. They merit deep reading.
Merits attention. What? That's not true. That's not true. I hope someone's writing a story theme song for us right now.
I hope so too. Look, and you know what? You know, Stas didn't grow up watching TV, so like, you know, we're good. Oh, yeah? How do you not like a story song if you grew up watching Gilligan's Island?
Gilligan's Island. Look, here look, okay, so analyze it. So this is not country. Yes, because it's like the same analyzation every single time. Analysis, not even a word.
Not even a word. Analysis every single time. Not even a word. How can I trust anything you say if you bust out non-words on me? You know?
But like like s certain injustices, Jack and Joe, like they they hit me, so I have to mention them every time. So not country, but TV themed songs. You familiar with the Gilligan's Island theme song? Oh, of course. Yeah.
You're familiar with the first season of Gilligan's Island? Um probably. I used to watch a lot of reruns as a child of Gilligan's Island. Right, Gilligan was like one of my best friends growing up. I watched that stuff constantly.
Yeah, I bought a Gilligan hat because I liked him so much. Nice, nice. But anyway, so the first season was in black and white, right? And their song, which we all know, you know, at the end, The Millionaire and His Wife, the movie star, the Professor and Mary Ann, you know, here on Gilligan's Isle, right? Right?
We all know this. The original season it was uh was Gilligan, the Skipper Two, The Millionaire, and his wife, the movie star, and the rest. And the rest and the rest? The rest? There's only two of them.
Two people. Yeah, yeah, like the time it takes you to say the professor and Mary Ann, you could have just said, you know, and the rest, it's like the same thing. They changed it. They changed it, but I mean, I don't know. It just seems like crappy.
Everyone knows Marianne's the hot one. So why didn't she get on it? You know what I mean? Anyways. I like story songs.
I like to think about the stories and songs and why people made particular choices. You know? I like Merle Haggard. Um, how do we get on this? It's all because of the theme song.
Alright, okay. So, uh calling your questions to 7184972128. That's 7184972128 P.S. Someone, I'm gonna I'm not gonna go into the full rant because I you know what, uh, my my veins will purst uh burst. I was up uh uh last night uh quite late writing.
So uh Mike uh uh F Stradi uh what Mike, you got a name I can't I can't you know I can't pronounce names, Mike. Mike Fratiadis. That's kind of a nice name. Estradiadis. I hope I got that right.
Uh says, hey Dave, I was wondering about MSG. Is it safe? What's with all the gloomy posts about it? Mike, Mike, how do you do this to me? How do you make me go back and listen to old shows?
No, it starts. That's that's an absurd heritage what I say and look for MSG specific shows. Um then it's not a Mary you rant. It's not really. Okay, I'm not gonna go into the full rant, Mike.
Let me just say it tell you this. I'll give you a couple brief bullet points to use against people uh who talk about MSG. Uh most arguments against MSG either rely on a number of really turdbasket studies about um the actual purported effects on people, and then there's a lot of hoo ha hocum bad science about um excitatory uh neurotoxins uh because if you it turns out if you inject a lot you know msg into your brain it's not a good idea don't inject anything into your brain by the way uh but you know uh there's a bunch of research that neonatal primates can get brain damage if you give them large amounts of msg um you know without anything else and it's because uh you know um it can cross the blood brain barrier in primates but not in in in humans in fact your body produces msg your body produces msg uh not msg but it's because it's not monosodium but it produces um uh it produces glutamic acid in your in your head it's used as a as a uh um neurotransmitter it's then converted to glutamine and transported back across your blood brain barrier to be extremed so you're a net producer of it uh there's no credible decent evidence uh that it's uh bad for you um you don't consume enough of it for it to cause your blood levels to spike in any way unless you were to eat it pure and a large amount of it uh and the only decent studies done are uh double blind uh control studies where the actual MSG was administered in gel caps uh that couldn't possibly be detected by taste and all of those show that there's uh no problem and yet despite all this Nastasha continues to believe that she it has some sort of reaction to it. True or false does nope I just don't eat it anymore. What kind of a what kind of a coarse crap is that trying to get out of uh of of saying you're I just don't need it.
I eat it in your snacks. We don't use MSG in the snacks for consumption. We use it in our tests. Oh you only use it in tests. No brains.
No brains. Stas, no brains. No, we use it like I use uh MSG. Piper when he was with us, uh brought a lot of MSG. We we did it to test snacks.
Because what you do is when you're testing snacks out, you want to test how much kind of umami punch you need to add to the snacks in order to get kind of the flavor level where you want. And then the the hard part is is that to sell snacks to people, because people are irrational about this, you have to have them be MSG free. So then you have to go back and you have to punch that umami the same amount without using MSG. So typically, if you don't want it to taste like um uh combu or dashi, you uh you add things like uh yeast extracts or you know other broken down uh protein uh products. Anyways.
So there you have it, Mike. My non rant version of uh MSG. But I I'm sure that Jack uh can find when I went off on it before. Oh, yeah, that was like the unplugged. Uh well, you mean because I was so loud you had to like Yeah, last time you were really getting in.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, so I think you can't you can't do the same thing. But this is what I want to go off on. Someone has to explain this to me. Are you guys shoppers uh at Subway, the uh the store that sells uh submarine sandwiches with that bread with that that's really bad.
Yeah, but do you go? My kids I haven't been in years. I told you my kids love it, right? Because they get to customize their sandwich. I told you that.
They tell you their new, their new craziness, the new thing. Oh, sriracha. Oh, they have sriracha? No, I didn't know that. I mean, everyone's got sriracha.
You know, there's a sriracha, there's a sriracha uh documentary, but I haven't seen it yet because you have to buy it. So I have to buy it, and look, it's like a half-inch documentary on a sriracha, and they interview the guy, and he's like, Everybody loves my product. I can't help it. If people stop loving my product, maybe I'll stop making it. But everybody loves it.
But he doesn't have that accent. Great story. Yeah, it is. It's a good story, right? Uh and uh one of the uh PAs gets his eye sprayed with Sriracha and in the outtakes, which is hilarious.
Uh but anyway, no, not a sriracha. So here's what happens. I guarantee you'cause I know how ideation stuff happens in these corporations, because you know, we've done it a couple of times for people, so they're like, they're like, listen, guys, this is like this is the subway, the the boardroom or whatever. They're sitting around the ideation room. They're like, hey, hey guys, listen.
Uh we want to sell pizza, but really we're a sandwich company, right? So we don't really have the, you know, we don't really have the wherewithal to sell pizza to people, right? Because we're a sandwich shop, yeah? So we have to like show, we have to demonstrate something's wrong with a regular pizza or some point of difference so that people will buy our subway style pizzas instead of a real pizza that they could get across the street, right? Right?
Okay, so guys, come on. Uh, what's wrong with pizzas? Wait, what do you got? Hey, Larry, what what do you got? Uh I don't know, man.
Too greasy. Yeah, it's a good one. Too greasy, too greasy. Hey, half, half. What do you got?
Pizzas are too three-dimensional, boss. They're too three-dimensional. That's it. We're gonna make a flat pizza. So swear to swear to God, Subway has a new product called flat pizza because they perceived that the problem with pizzas is that they're too three-dimensional and need to be flattened out.
What kind of dope were those dudes smoking when they came up with that idea? Who thinks that a problem with pizza is that it's too freaking flat? And by the way, the image that they have on their freaking advertisements is like a deep dish freaking thing. It's the least flat pizza. You know, they have no mechanism to actually make a flat pizza.
They can't make like a cracker crust. They can't do what is this fire bake style. F what does that even mean? What does that mean? It has no meaning for me.
Flat pizza. And it doesn't trip off the tongue. It's the worst word for a product. And people, they're millions of dollars involved in this decision. Like, like many dozens, hundreds of people had to had look what kind of ogre runs that company such that no one underneath was like, boss, this idea sucks the royal root.
This makes no freaking sense, boss. No one checked them on that. It's Ilios, though, basically. I don't even know what's an Ilios. Oh, you don't know what that is?
The frozen flat pizzas? But what do you mean flat? Pizzas are by their nature flat. There's like it was like, I'm not like, oh, oh, uh, you know what? I'm so sick of these kind of like three-dimensional globe-shaped puzzle pizzas that I've been getting recently at the local pizzeria.
The thing about flat pizza is that it's the same amount of syllables as flat pizza. It doesn't save you any time. The name is bad. Yeah, but you know what? They're like, hey, boss, we can't trademark flat pizza.
Because it's just the word flat and the word pizza, and everybody already knows pizza is flat. Well, we can trademark flat pizza. This is genius. The more I think about it. But you know what?
How is it that people make millions of dollars doing this? Like, how is this how is this like how how is this possible? I don't re I don't understand it. Someone explained to me an actual valid marketing scheme behind this. Like, I I like, as uh was it with Barnum said that no one uh no one uh lost money uh underestimating the stupidity of the American public?
Is that what that Barnum? I don't agree with that. I agree that we're a good uh natured people and that we can be uh reasoned with prove him wrong. Don't buy a flat pizza. Maybe maybe it tastes delicious.
In which case, I don't know. But uh Jack doesn't think Jack doesn't like their product, so he doesn't think it tastes delicious. Yeah, I like their cookies. Oh, you like their cookies? Why the cookies?
I don't know. You have the option to get like chips or a cookie with your sandwich, and I I've enjoyed those cookies. Yeah? They're kind of like uh gooey. Yeah?
Yeah. You never had you never had a Subway cookie sauce? You ever had a subway sandwich? Mm-hmm. Yeah?
Yeah. Yeah. I had I had one literally the other day because uh my kids are like, we're gonna go to Subway, Dad. I'm like, uh great. Okay.
Uh Timothy Helmuth uh writes in uh uh regarding apricots. Hello, Dave Nastasha et al. I've been drawing a lot of delicious sun-dried apricots lately, the really sour ones, so presumably the Blenheims, right? Because those are the ones you get that are sour. Uh, and got to thinking they'd make a great flavor for a soda.
They probably would. Any tips on how to extract the flavor of the apricots, ideally without using alcohol. I hope to share the finished product with some teetotalers. I'd love to hear your thoughts, practical or otherwise. Thanks, Timothy.
Okay, listen. Uh so the the main question obviously is do you have a centrifuge, right? So let's just assume you don't have a centrifuge. You're gonna want to go to modernistpantry.com, modernistpantry.com, and get yourself some uh pectanex ultra spl if you don't already have it. And you because what we're gonna do is we're going to break down the pectin in the apricot.
If you don't, it's gonna be uh like a nightmare. Also, apricots take a long time to rehydrate. I think you remember there was a caller who called in before because they were doing prunes and apricots in in a bag and the apricots wouldn't hydrate and the prunes would. It takes a while. And my experience has been making alcoholic products with apricots in a centrifuge that I literally have to blend it, spin it, and then blend it again and spin it again to get like the full flavor of the apricot out just because it's so resistant sometimes to rehydration.
So what I would do is I would mix uh the apricots like um like uh maybe start with like four to one in water, so like 100 to 400. You might have to go a little more. You might have to go 100 apricots, 500 water. Uh get warm water, right? It could even be it can be make it warm.
I take that back, make it warm. Uh, you know, like uh body temp or thereabouts. Add some enzyme, uh add like more than I would normally add. Add like four grams per liter of pectinex ultra SPL and blend the hell out of it. So what you're doing here is that the pectinx is going to start breaking down the uh internal uh, you know, the the the actual structure of the apricot and allow you to extract more of the flavor.
It's also going to break down some of the soluble pectin. You don't want to cook it beforehand because then it makes it more resistant. My feeling is I don't have improved it, but I think it makes it more resistant to the uh pectinx. So you're gonna be breaking down the products. Then you're gonna want to strain that, right, through through like a like a fine strainer.
Don't go sheen, don't go um uh what's it what's what the word I'm looking for? Yeah, coffee filter on it yet, because it's just gonna be frustrating. Then re blend the pulp that's left with um pectinex again and uh and some more water and let it sit for a while to really break down and blend it again, let it break down, strain it out, then put that sucker through a coffee filter, and it should uh you should be able to get a product that's clear enough to make uh a soda out of. If not, you could probably let it settle overnight. Once you've added the pectin X and strained it out, you should be able to let it settle overnight uh and then rack uh the stuff uh off the top.
But I mean, I know I've done it with center fusions and it's delicious, but it's just your yields aren't very high on those apricots uh unless you do unless you do that second re-wetting, which which I call remouillage after the French stock technique of rewetting the bones. Yeah? Rewriting the bones. Should we take a break? Sure.
Take a commercial break, come right back with cooking issues. Hi, I'm Steve Jenkins from Fairway Markets. I've devoted my idiot career to the old ways, the old recipes, the old tools, the old geography of where serious foods come from for centuries. And I've strived to make these wonderful things available to New Yorkers for 37 years. So it's a feta complet for us to support Heritage Radio Network.
And I hope you will too, and I hope you'll keep tuning in. For more information, please visit Fairway Market.com. Hey guys. We on? Yeah.
Hey guys, what what's Steve Jenkins? He sounds like some voiceover actor. That's because he was a voiceover actor. Come on. I'm serious.
For real. For real. He spent some time doing voiceover work. Maybe I don't know. I'll have to look up his like his credits.
Maybe you heard him somewhere. Or maybe it's just like that voice is like, you know, the man's got a golden voice. Golden. Does he do a cheese show for you guys? We profiled him on Evolutionaries, which is that really awesome thing we do where we do like radio documentaries on people's lives and tell their stories.
He was episode number one, so I recommend that. I remember that time, and in fact, he used to get really, really angry, really angry, whenever someone in the media would point out that New York City mean like virulently angry when people in the media would point out that cheesemongers in uh New York were bringing in illegal cheeses because he didn't want the tap to stop flowing. You know what I mean? So he was nervous about it and he was like, Can't can't you just shut up and like let me bring in the cheese, you know what I'm saying? That was in the old days.
So he doesn't do that anymore. He's too uh too big, been too uh too out it or what I can't speak to that. Uh I don't know. Yeah, yeah. But apparently everything was fake back before him.
Like even when they were selling things, they called Canabare or whatever. It wasn't actually that some Right. Well, you know, look that that I mean it's hard for it's hard for people to remember unless they unless they you know think back to it. So I first started shopping for with you know at Fairway for his cheese stuff in uh I don't know, like the early nineties or mid n mid nineties, I guess, when they moved the fairway uh when they first created the uptown fairway over in Harlem, where my studio was at the time. And uh yeah, it was like a revelation 'cause I you know you've been shopping at places that you thought like had decent cheeses for years, like Zaybars and um, you know, those kind of joints, and then uh they they really they really upped the game.
You know, it's like people uh I get people forget it was kind of um a groundbreaking place to to buy cheese. I didn't live down near uh, you know, the downtown cheese shop, so my expo my early exposure to that that kind of level of cheese stuff was uptown at the uh at the fairway. So, yeah, kudos. But he's not like the voice is not quite, it's not Casey Caseum, it's like it's a mix like where is it? It's like in the voiceover world.
I gotta figure out where it is. Anyway. Uh and you're gonna look up his uh his credits. Yeah, I'll see if I can find I can dig it. We'll see.
Yeah. All right. Uh Paul writes in regarding benzuit. So we're on preservatives and uh and other stuff today, right? Mm-hmm.
Sodium benzoit. Uh it's a good word, isn't it? I would like to hear Alec Baldwin say benzoit. I bet he'd be awesome at it. Uh hi all.
I've just been listening to episode 149. Yes, I'm a few weeks behind. You were answering a question about stabilizing fruit juices, uh, and I think I understood that Piper uses benzoate. Piper. I think that Piper uses benzoate to prevent microbial growth.
I don't recommend doing this because a few years ago it was shown that benzoit can convert to benzene over time. Benzene nasty, by the way, in case you guys don't remember your chemistry. Uh can convert to benzene over time, especially in acidic environments, and especially in the presence of vitamin C. I think Piper was aware of that. I don't know how much benzoid he used in this, whatever.
Uh, I know this because I was working at the time at a company that produces food supplements, including a berry extract. And due to regulatory changes, we had to change the preservative that we were using. I was researching alternatives and came across this issue. If my memory serves me correctly, I'm sure it does. The major soft drink manufacturers removed benzoit from their products when this problem was identified.
I did some accelerated tests incubating at warm temperatures and found that benzene did in fact form when we added benzoit to the product, the berry product they were making. Uh in the end, we chose sorbate, uh which uh uh chose sorbate, which also avoided the problem that a small proportion of people can taste benzoit. I recommend that benzuid not be used in fruit juice applications, or if it is used, that you send samples away for testing so you can determine if benzene does form over the duration that you keep your products. Keep up the great work, Paul. Thanks.
I love that kind of follow-up. So that's good information. People can take, you know, it's good stuff. Um we got a Sam writes in, hey Stas. He says, hey Nastasha, because that's what you should say.
Uh thanks for answering my questions on the radio show. I now have a request. Dave uh is an undoubted ninja of kitchen ergonomics. I don't know about that. Uh, and layout.
Could you see if he will post an in-depth photo tour of his home kitchen? Thanks, Sam. It's not quite done yet, Sam. When I actually get my uh when I get my oven customized, maybe when I get my oven customized. You like my new kitchen better.
Yeah. It's really clean. Yeah, but it's like it's galley. Yeah. But all my equipment's new.
That's why you like it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Won't be new for long.
I'm sure I'll ruin it. Alright, so Sam, when once I get it done, uh I'll do that. We're getting so I'm still still changing it. Um not quite. It's not quite photo ready yet.
Uh Brian writes in from San Diego about Koji, which has been uh the topic that I've been remiss in uh getting the information on we've had a lot about. Hey cooking issues crew, long time listener. I don't have a question, but was listening to your show and also wondering about how to make uh aspergillus. I can never pronounce it uh like orizia, you know, the right, the rice based one, the one that they use for Koji, aspergillus spores to make koji. Uh in case the Mama Fu uh Fuku uh whoa, really?
I can't say Mamafuku now. In case the Momofuku people don't get back to you, Dave, I found a couple of resources on the web, which you may or may not already know about. It seems publicly available information on this topic is scarce. Uh one is uh um uh Taylor Taylor made uh aka.org uh growing koji for home brewing sake. Uh and the other one is of course well known the Nordicfoodlab.org, their blog uh and their thing Koji history and process.
And the Nordic Food Lab, for all of you that don't know, is a great resource. Like, you know, they they do a great job. They they document everything they do, and they're very open source about information, they don't hide information, and they do a lot of work with uh Koji and they publish it. So I actually went to the uh tab you sent me and it it's uh it's it's good. And of course, uh Shirtleaf, who, you know, as we anyone who's heard me say knows that I learned uh you know most of what I know about tofu from uh shirtleaf, even though he uh you know basically called me a jerk for asking whether I could use edamame to make uh tofu.
He was like, Why would you do that? Are you you you're evil? He thinks I'm an evil well, in the one phone conversation you had with me, he basically he intimated that he wouldn't want to uh have dinner with me and that he uh thought I was a bad human being. I mean, he didn't come out and say it like that, but that's just a vibe I got over the phone. You know what I mean?
He's like, why is this Eastern son of a whatever? He doesn't say he doesn't talk that way. He's like all peace and love and whatever. Uh but anyway, uh his website, WWF.soyinfocenter.com uh books forward slash one five four history of koji um is there. But I looked up uh an interesting article um because the the issue is this look, everyone knows you can make koji you can buy the you can buy the you know the koji can the seeds for it and and do it.
The question we had a while back was how do you know if it's safe? And the problem is is that uh some strains of uh aspergillus, right? Um like flavis and whatnot can produce uh aflatoxin. And aflatoxin, you know, for those of you that you know pay attention to this sort of thing, you want to stay away from because even minute quantities, it's one of those no known safe kind of exposure things because minute quantities can be like viciously carcinogenic. And so this is why we screen things like peanuts, which can grow aflatoxin for um you know, for for the growth of it and and whatnot.
So the the question is, why uh don't people get poisoned all the time from um things that are done made with koji because they're all done with different uh aspargilla strains? And how is it that you can select for the safe ones uh in i in an in a non in a in a in a either home, wild or pre you know industrial setting, how do you choose to and make sure that you only get the ones that don't produce aflatoxin? So there's a and a lot of people have taken done studies and shown that the um that aflatoxin uh is not present in products commercially that are produced with uh koji molds, right? So thing, you know, soy's and misos and things like that. And then a couple of ones have shown that that miso uh miso itself is not hospitable for uh the production of aflatoxin, but it's aged for a long time.
So the question you want to know is how can I guarantee that the mold that I'm growing right now on my koji is safe to use right now, not necessarily in an aged product, uh not necessarily in in a secondary product, but how do I guarantee that it's safe in all points of its uh existence? And it's an interesting problem. And as of 2001, which is the last article uh that I have on it, uh they hadn't really a hundred percent solved it, but the the most interesting article I saw on it was called uh aflatoxin genes uh and the uh aflatoxinogenic potential. That's a good word, right? Aflot I can't say I gotta try that twice.
Afflatoxidogen, whatever, of Koji molds by um oh my god, I can't read my writing on it, what the uh person's name was. Uh broke, it was a it was the last name, B R Oh no, Vanderbroke, Vanderbrooke, P. Vanderbroke, uh, 2001. Uh, and it was interesting. So, what they said was is look, they analyzed a bunch of um strains of aspergillus that they found in various products that have been produced, some uh kind of artisanal wild fermentation types and some commercial types.
They found in uh that it in that they found some uh strains of normal asperg aspargillus oaks. I can't pronounce that. I can't I don't know why it's got a mental block on it, I can't do it. Uh that actually had the genes encoded in them to uh some of the genes encoded in them to that to produce aflatoxin, but did not in fact produce aflatoxin, which is difficult if you want to make a rapid assay to make sure that there's no aflatoxin in it, right? Uh they also found um certain uh aspergillus flavus uh uh molds in there that that were aflatoxin producing strains, but they didn't find any aflatoxin.
Now, the Nordic uh food lab has a couple of points on this where they say, look at uh, you know, the the um aflatoxin when it's produced, those strains that produce that tend to inhibit yeast growth. And so people that are doing things like brewing sake, where you have a lot of alcohol involved, over time uh the only aspergillus strains that don't produce aflatoxin are selected out, and so that's how the safety goes. But we're not talking about that because we're not talking about maintaining a culture for you know generations. We're talking about uh a wild thing and how to prove it's safe. So here's what's interesting.
These guys said, look, we we we made a bunch of koji and uh it didn't produce uh aflatoxin, right? So they said, okay, uh, I'm gonna take a uh a strain of aspergillus that's known to produce aflatoxin, like one that we bought specifically to produce aflatoxin. And they because they their their thing was, well, maybe this because like uh koji fermentation is solid state fermentation under very particular circumstances for fairly short periods of time. So they said, okay, look it. We're gonna put the uh we're gonna we're gonna put this known aflatoxin generator into uh typical koji production, and lo and behold, it produced m like zero almost like hyper trace amounts of aflatoxin.
So they're like, hey, that's pretty safe. So they're like, well, maybe it's something about the the actual substrate that they're we're growing it on that's stopping it produced. So instead of running it for 24 hours, they ran it for like a week or something like this. And after a week of incubation or a week and a half, then there were measurable and meaningful amounts of aflatoxin present. So uh their conclusion, which I think is interesting, is that uh m these strains that can produce aflatoxin take longer to start producing the aflatoxin in the solid state fermentation that we do in Koji, uh take longer to produce the aflatoxin than typically they would have to produce it w when you're making the koji.
So if you're gonna use a wild fermentation of Koji, then I wouldn't let that aspect of the fermentation go on longer than you know, like you know, the day or so it it takes to do it. Uh and I would read that article because it made for interesting reading, but that's the closest I could get for an answer on how can you guarantee without having uh you know uh a a microbiology lab present, how can you guarantee the safety of any given wild uh koju that you're making? Do you think that's a good final answer on that? I think that's great. You don't care.
Whatever. Uh you you know what you know you know that you need that feedback. And you know what you guys you know what you guys don't get? You don't get the look on Stas's face. It's like it's like uh someday I'll be able to describe it.
She's like, Yeah, great. Uh I know you need the feedback. Yeah, so it was great. Kyle Kleeburg, I like that name Kleeberg. Kleberg, because I like Stan Freeberg.
Have you ever heard of Stan Freeberg? No. No comedian? No. From the 50s.
He was an advertising guy, like uh kind of I guess pre-mad maybe pre-madmen, yeah, pre-madmen era advertising guy who uh he did a bunch of radio shows. Anyway. For those of you who are uh history of advertising buffs and like uh 50s comedians, Stan Freeberg's the man. Anyway, uh Kyle Kleeburg says, Hey there, I've got a question for the cooking issues. Our restaurant recently acquired 100 pounds, 100 pounds of high quality spot prawns, and it just so spot prawns.
You like spot prawns? You ever have that? It's West Coast, but it's northern. You never hang out up there, right? Like BC and all that stuff.
Uh they're supposedly good. Like I, you know, we don't get them here. You know, like at least I don't get them here. Uh, of high quality spot prawns, and as it just so happens about two-thirds of them were carrying eggs. Well, discussing a plan, my chef in his infinite wisdom took a ninth pan full of roe and tossed it into the vita prep with a healthy dose of neutral oil to make shrimp oil.
As you can imagine, we ended up with about six cups of shrimp aioli. Yes, because it has eggs. They will emulsify the hell out of stuff. Anyways, uh, so I came to you guys with questions hoping you can help me write this. First, would the eggs of prawns be called roe or coral?
And secondly, is there a way to purposely break this emotion? Break this emotion. Take these broken wings and learn to fly again. Yeah, that learn to live so free. Yeah, the deal is that.
No. Is that learn to flag and learn to live so free? Really? I think so. No, no, that's different.
It's different. Jack will know. Jack or Joe will know. Anyway. And second, is there a way to purposely break this emulsion and turn it back to an oil of some sort while maintaining the flavor of the raw eggs?
If this is a lost cause, I still think uh I still have some reserve to make the compound butter, which I hope will be a better plan. However, if I've learned a thing from listening to cooking issues, it's the things are not always as simple as they seem. Thanks, Kyle Kleberg, uh the police in uh I what's ID I wondered. Washington, I understand. Maybe Idaho.
Really? Like on the border? Really? I don't know. Uh okay, so listen, first of all, when you say carrying eggs, I'm presuming you meaning on the outside on their swimmerettes.
Uh so here's the deal. So decapod uh you know, crustaceans, the way that they the way that they do their the way that they do their business. First of all, interesting, spot prawns. Uh if you want a little uh thing about uh spot prawns, and I got some of this information from it. W W dot organicocean.com.
It's brought pawn, and I can't remember because it's been a long, long time since I've done my uh I me I I I went through a kick where I read a lot of lobster biology stuff because I was thinking about writing an article for the New York Times and they they they wanted me to prove that uh whether or not lobsters could feel pain. I was like, I can't I can't do that. That's not possible. Anyway, uh so I can't remember whether lobsters do this, but uh spa prawns are cool because uh they're big and delicious, apparently, but they uh they change sex. Then they become females, then they do their eggs, and then and that this when they're changing their sex, they're called trannies.
How awesome is that? That's what it says according to the website. Anyway, um so anyway, in decapod crustaceans, when the females are gonna lay the eggs. Typically, when you have uh a lobster and you have what's called the coral. Do you like that?
The red stuff when it's cooked out? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh when you have the coral as opposed to the tamale, which is like kind of the guts. Do you like the tamale?
But you like the coral. Okay. Uh good to know. Uh so I don't really like uh okay, you uh I'll lay it out on you. I'm not a huge fan of the tamale, like I can eat a little bit of it, but I don't want to pound that stuff.
You know what I mean? You know? No. Anyways, so uh the coral is the eggs on the inside of the lobster, right? No one, at least not on this coast, eats the and a when I say when you when you say that the shrimps are carrying eggs, I think you mean on the outside of the shrimp, right?
So what happens is is uh the lobster, or in this case the shrimp, passes the egg from the inside of its body to the outside, and as it gets passed to the outside, that's when it gets fertilized, and then it glues it to the underside of its body. So when you get a lobster out, a female lobster out of the uh out of the water, you look at the bottom of, yeah, no, lobsters stay females. They stay freaking females. They don't do this weird tranny stuff. Anyways, uh what am I thinking?
So they turn it over and they're called buried, right? They're not like buried like in the ground, like not like gravad locks lobster, but like buried like knots berry farm. And uh, because they put the eggs all on the underside of their body. Now, lobster folk, when they get uh buried lobsters, are supposed to uh throw them back, like notch the tail and throw them back because they know that's a producing female, right? And you want to leave the producing females in the water so that they make more lobsters because that's your bread and butter, right?
You know? So you so you never get buried, you get females, but you never get ones that are buried because they throw them back. So um so, anyways, so I wouldn't I would not call it coral because as far as I know, coral is only when it's on the inside of the animal. And since these have made it to the outside and are fertilized, right, presumably they I don't know whether the fertilization makes them change uh flavor or texture or what. I have no idea because I uh you know I don't have uh any uh experience with it.
But uh interesting, uh, these guys at Organic Ocean said don't uh they said some spot prawns are brought in from the United States where they are caught sooner, smaller, and often buried, i.e. before spawning and with eggs attached. Uh one Asian grocer is selling live uh British Columbia spot prawns, which uh would have to have been for the United States. The BC season opens later when the prawns have grown to full size and are about to die naturally. So buyer beware.
So organic ocean believes that you uh they that you know they I I guess they lay eggs and then and then uh and then they croak, right? Because it says uh they say that while BC spot prawns are hermaphroditic, born as males, the female sex organs on their tails become more pronounced at about two years of age, at which point they refer to as transitioning prawns or trannies, uh, with the final two years of their four-year lifespan sent as females. So they do their spawning and then and then they're ready to ready to die, so you should take it afterwards. So that's just on whether to call it coral or whether they call it um roe. I would call it row or eggs.
Now, on the breaking of it, you've you have very few people who want to break uh this kind of uh egg emulsion, and uh I wasn't able to find anything offhand that would break it. The only easy thing that I thought you could you could do two things. One, you can add so much oil to it that it um that it breaks, right? Because that's one way to break a mayonnaise is to is to ext is to stop adding water and to just add enough oil, like you know, 95%, so that you actually start breaking the emulsion and you get oil coalescence. That should work, but the problem with that is you will be adding so much uh uh oil to it that you probably won't have the flavor transfer.
The other thing, and you might have already tried this, um, is you might it because you said I I don't know whether I read it, but you know, you intimated that you didn't want to heat it because you didn't want to change the flavor, right? Didn't he say that? Did he say that? Yeah. Um I would uh freeze it.
I would freeze it and then thaw it and then freeze it and then thaw it and then freeze it and you thaw. Each time you freeze thaw, you should be destabilizing um that emulsion. And hopefully, after one or two freeze uh thaw cycles, because you haven't added any stabilizers other than the stabilizers naturally present in the uh prawn eggs, hopefully uh uh it'll break, and then you'll be able to get uh, you know, and if you have a centrifuge, obviously I would freeze thaw and then try the centrifuge. But that that should work. And the and you know, I would stop it from I would not let it get exposed to oxygen while you're doing all that freestyling.
Uh, but you know, so like put it in a vac bag or in a zippy and then freeze thaw a couple times and see whether it works. But if you try it, please uh send me the answer because I want to know whether whether it worked, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh okay, Kurt writes in.
Hello, everybody. Uh I've just recently become head bartender of a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right next to the MIT campus. The building complex that we are in hosts the Cambridge Science Festival every year. I bet you that's a pretty good science festival. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and has asked if we would like to be a part of it. I've been using a handful of modern techniques behind the bar, pectin X slash agar clarification, carbonation, EC infusions, uh, and the like.
I added the at the like, it wasn't in there. Uh so the chef decided I'd be the best candidate for the job. I made an off the cuff comment about how cool it would be to have a rotovap and centrifuge to play around with for this presentation. And a day later I got an email uh asking exactly what I needed for equipment. These guys have a lot of lab connections.
I've attached the email I've received with some questions about equipment. Also, also, I'll be giving a presentation to 75 to 100 people, which I've not done before, and was wondering if you might have any general advice on giving demos to an audience like that. I clearly plan on ignoring that gem of advice that Thomas Keller gave you last week where he called me an idiot. Uh thanks, Kurt. Okay.
Uh and uh the attached questions are uh regarding the centrifugion rotovap, uh I have a few ideas on who to ask, but a few questions for you. What size centrifuge? Do you need tubes? What size rotovap? I assume you need a vacuum for the rotovap.
And what about the cleanliness of a rotovap? Um typically the flasks are used are clean in a glass cleaner and autoclay, but is this okay for food? Uh especially if they've previously been used with dangerous chemicals, um, etc. etc. Okay, so look it.
So a lot depends. Uh let's start with the centrifuge. Let's start with the presentation, right? When you're gonna do a technique, uh when you're gonna do a demo for a lot of people with modern techniques, people like to see rotovaps run, right? Stas, we've done that a bunch of times.
That's very true. Yeah, they like to see it run. Here's the issue. If you aren't really good at running a rotovap, uh you it's gonna take you a while to set the sucker up, and it's gonna take you when you're first setting up a roadovap, assuming you haven't played with one before, uh, and you put food products in, it's gonna boil over. I'm just telling you that right now.
It's gonna boil over. And uh that's a nightmare. And let me tell you from experience, you don't want to boil over in front of a big audience because it makes you feel really stupid, right? Right? The other thing that happens is when you're talking during a demo, here's what people don't like.
They don't like to sit and have you sit there and stare at the machine for like half an hour while it's distilling, right? So you're gonna have to bring someone with you that after you, you know, wave your hands over it and do the magical touches on it and everything like that and get the sucker running, right? And during that time when you get the sucker running, you can't be talking or doing anything because you're gonna have to make sure the sucker doesn't boil over on you unless, you know, unless you don't want to do a good job. Right. There's always that, right?
But uh then you don't want to sit there staring at it, so someone's someone's gotta run it. The other problem with a rotor app is is that rotov apps uh take a long time to produce appreciable amounts of product. So what I would do is choose a product in a roadov app that you can make that uh you can give relatively small tastes of, like really small, like less like quarter ounce, like little skim shot coats, like really strong flavored stuff that you can give small amounts of. I would stay away and and you're gonna want to make them beforehand. So even though things like fresh herbs are the best things to do in roto vap, or one of the best things to do in a roadovap, you don't want to do that because then you can't make that sucker the night before, which brings me to my next point.
Never demonstrate a rotor app that you haven't fired up before and run for at least a couple of hours. You're gonna need this rotov app well in advance so that you can A make the product that you're gonna hand out at the event, and B get the hang of using it, right? You're also gonna need a vacuum pump, obviously. You're gonna want as good a vacuum pump as you want. The chem folks don't need a particularly good vacuum pump because they're not worried about getting good recovery of flavor, right?
Ideally, what you would like to have is a bunch of liquid nitrogen and a uh and a cold finger, right? Because otherwise you're gonna need a chiller. Because chem folks, they're like, well, just chill it with tap water. Just chill it with tap water. No, that's crap.
That's crap flavor. You just that's that's not that's not right. You can't just chill your condenser with uh tap water and expect to get a decent flavor out of it because then first of all, you're gonna need to run your bath at 60 degrees Celsius, right? 140. So like why bother?
Then you're you're dealing with we're dealing with 60, then you're dealing with 40 and change as the temperature of your uh of the actual product in there that's being distilled, and you're dealing with 20 degrees, give or take, is the temperature of the tap water that you're running off of circulating through your condenser, and you have a very small temperature difference between your product like and your uh and and and your uh what's it called? Your your chiller. I like to have like very large temperature differences, right? And I like to keep my stuff as cold as possible. So like when I'm running a condenser, a regular condenser, I run it, I'm doing alcohol, which is illegal, but hey, at like minus twenty degrees Celsius, um, and you need a chiller for that.
And then and then when you when you bring a chiller into the into the fact, you can run a rotor vap with a water bath and a vacuum pump off of a single socket. You can't reliably run a rotovap with uh a chiller off of one socket. I've seen them blow in demos all the time. All the time. Here's another thing.
People are gonna so so I if you can't get the liquid nitrogen, get it. If not, get a chiller or find something that you can do hotter and it's not gonna hurt it like chocolate, you know, like like cocoa nibs or something like that, but they they they boil over. Another thing get the biggest freaking distillation flask that you can get, right? They now everyone's always gonna be like, here's a liter flask, and they're gonna give you one with the tiny little freaking uh what's what's the thing I'm looking for? Um holding up tiny, what's this what's this word, Stas?
Neck. Neck, tiny neck. Uh and and the problem is it's hard to load stuff in and out of it, and they tend to boil over more violently with the thing when they boil over. So you want a big as a flask as possible. Never fill it more than a quarterful, especially when you're learning, otherwise you're gonna have boilover problems, right?
Get the biggest around, it's called vapor duct, which is how they the actual vapor gets transferred into the condenser area. The biggest one uh you can. They chem folks always mess up, they always give you the small thing. Why? Because they're very rarely doing rotary evaporation in quantity, they're doing it for uh more like for analysis, and so it's not they don't they don't deal usually in the in like kind of this large style quantities that we're dealing with.
Um, are some of the recommendations. They also like there's inherent problems with most roto vaps in that the stuff that's being distilled down isn't getting chilled properly, so you're gonna want to chill the receiver uh so that you don't redistill off of it too many times. Um on centrifuges, you know, i it if if they're gonna let you use one, uh yeah, get new buckets. I mean, uh I almost exclusively use three-liter bench top centrifuges, uh swinging bucket centrifuges, and they're great for cocktails, great, along with pectanex. Um, but you know, if you if they have a 500mm fixed liter rotor that you know has uh you know uh uh those the tubes in it and a handle f you know, you just do a couple more spins in those.
They usually do higher G's anyway, and some of those things, you know, I wouldn't use it for everyday restaurant service, but for a demo, you can get a couple extra spins out of it. I once uh in Columbia did a demo for a hundred more than a hundred people using uh that tiny two hundred dollar centrifuge we got on Amazon. I just had to sit there for four hours spinning, you know, tiny tube after tiny tube. So you can get uh an any of that uh you know that you that you need. Um oh so for size on the rotovap, the size itself of the rotovap's not so important.
You want a three liter uh flask uh and probably like a like a one liter receiver. Uh if you can get a uh um an LN um a cold finger condenser for it uh do that. On the cleaning I'd be a little careful. I don't know what kind of chem presumably the people who have it know what kind of chemicals have been put into it. If you can get new glassware get new glassware.
Um there there can be some persistent nasties that get into uh into stuff especially well anyway but I mean they they try to make them nice 'cause they're glass and they're you know non absorptive things like Teflon and what whatnot but you know be be cautious. The other thing is is uh try to get um certain brands of rotary evaporator are horrible. Uh you know I use uh Bukey Hideolf is good. Uh you want to get glassware that's coated in uh plastic. It's called plast glass.
And when you look at it you can see that it's got a coating on it because it's a little bit wavy. Uh and uh if it doesn't have that you need to wear safety goggles at all times because uh if it's really clear looking glass it means it hasn't been coated and uh those could implode at any minute and send shards of glass flying around uh into your into your eyes. Which uh doesn't make uh for a good demo. Turns out it makes for a for a bad demo. Uh but whenever you're doing technology, be sure to have your products done beforehand because I've had anything and everything go wrong on stage, right?
And so luckily, because everybody knows that I'm kind of uh discombobulated and disorganized anyway, I can just kind of smile and shake my head and it all seems to go away, at least most of the time, right, Stas? True. True. But that only works if you have the product beforehand to make sure that uh no one's leaving empty-handed. I'm also uh whenever anyone's uh demonstrating new techniques, and for any of you out there, uh, and uh hopefully you all do, you know, use uh some of these um new techniques, when you go demonstrate them.
Uh I really believe that you should hand out tastes of things whenever possible from what you're doing. And uh the reason is it's really easy to get a piece of fancy equipment and put it up on stage and have people be like, wow, that's really that's cool, that's awesome. Uh but what the the real challenge is is showing people that they're not just like weird science tricks or gimmicks, that they actually can produce delicious products. And so you know it's uh I I've always been a fan of uh handing people things to taste at the demos to prove that what you're showing them on stage isn't just some BS that you're doing for a gimmick. And that's that cooking issues.
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