Today's program has been brought to you by the International Culinary Center. Offering courses that range from classic French techniques in culinary pastry and bread baking to Italian studies to management. From culinary technology to food writing, from cake making to wine tasting. For more information, visit International Culinary Center dot com. I'm Damon Bolti, host of the Speakeasy.
You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming together from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined as usual with Nastasha the Hammer Lopez, Jack in the booth, but today, special guest, Mark Ladner from Del Posto Restaurant in the studio today.
How are you doing, Mark? Pretty well, Dave. Listen, he's here actually to push his Kickstarter. However, since we have him trapped here, call in all of your Mark Ladner related questions to 718 497-2128. That's 718-497-2128.
That's the last of my energy. I biked here today, gentle peoples. And let me tell you something. It is hot as hell out there right now. Although, Nastasha, I broke my usual rule of uh not biking the wrong way down the street, just to avoid that one street with the cement.
What always happens when I bike here is I bike down, I forget the name of it. It's like Johnson or White or something like that. There's a giant cement factory on it, and I inhale cement dust on the way here every day. I come, and that's why I'm like, I'm in the first section. That's why I could do the intro, because I went the wrong way down the street.
Uh hey Mark, how you doing? I'm doing well, dude. So uh before we get into the uh general cooking issues related uh questions, uh why don't you uh tell us a little bit about your Kickstarter? Well, um, yeah, so we have I think uh this is three days left on our Kickstarter campaign. We're trying to raise some money to do a uh pop-up for a quick service gluten-free pasta bowl concept, and we're hoping to visit some uh northeastern college campuses in the fall, uh hopefully most of the month of October.
And we're looking for some donations to get this truck so we can uh make some visits and get some people excited about gluten-free pasta. Okay, a couple of things. Let's just break this down a couple of things at a time, okay. Let's forget the gluten-free for one minute. Yes, dude.
Pasta bowl, right? Now explain the idea, the the genesis of the idea and why it's a necessary uh thing to have Italian style pasta done for lack of a better word, ramen style. In our speed, ramen speed, not style taste-wise, ramen speed. Well, um in my uh extensive uh experience traveling um the US and a lot of Italy, I've never really found a precedent for quick service Italian style pasta, and I found that to be uh frustrating and disappointing. Um when, for example, you and I, Dave, went to Tokyo, and uh the hammer as well.
The hammer was there too. Um we we had a lot of examples of really great fast food that was ramen that was a nourishing meal as well as a quick uh snack, and there's no precedent for that in America. Um obviously you've seen there has been quite a bit of uh momentum in the ramen um space as of late. Sure. Um with m Momofuku, for example.
Um but there is no sort of precedent for for pasta done that way, and I don't really understand why. Now is it is more of a mental problem or a technical problem or both? No, it's mental. It's purely mental. I don't think there's any technical problems at all.
Because you're dealing with uh fresh fresh pasta. It's gonna be fresh style pastas, not dried style pastas, right? Are you gonna parcook? It's dried pasta. Straight dried?
It's made from fresh but it's dry. So but semi so in other words has to cook quickly though, right? Or are you gonna cooks quickly. Like how many so it's not like fully dry. It's not fully dried then.
Or is it like air dried but it's porous so it picks up the water really quickly not to give away too much. Cooked and then dried. Okay, so it rehydrates like super fast. Yeah. And uh explain to us the gluten free.
Um well this uh the gluten free aspect uh started for two reasons. One because we s found obviously um dealing with dietary restriction and preference in the restaurant that it was becoming an increasing trend. Uh we're currently at probably around thirty percent of our guests prefer gluten-free, the gluten-free lifestyle today, whether it will remain that way is obviously in question. But um we realized with so many people uh demanding gluten-free uh pasta that we would need to have two inventories a gluten and a non-glu gluten. If you're mixing the two then you can't have a certified non-gluten so you're not really doing much of a service to the gluten free people.
Plus you need different boiling water. Right exactly and and some say different machines depending upon whether you want to be certified or not. So we decided to focus all our energy on just making the absolute best gluten free pasta, which I feel is as good as regular gluten pasta at this point. Well, I know you're a big side-by-side tasting uh fellow, as am I, and you've done many side by sides at at your restaurant Del Post and what and what are the results uh been? Um It's hard to say.
I mean, it's non-gluten, so um it has a lot to do with the saucing, you know. Um if you have a delicious, flavorful sauce, it's harder to uh taste the difference. Um so I'm going primarily for texture. And you feel you get the cup of it. I feel that I've been able to um uh simulate an al dente texture, which is very unusual in gluten-free pasta because there's no gluten.
And currently you're you're using the uh the cup for cup. I'm currently using cup for cup. I like it a lot. But in volume, it's not it's it's it's it's affordable in volume. Considering what you considering the amount that goes per serving, you're saying it's reasonable.
Absolutely. Now, uh by the way, for those of you that don't see here's the thing that maybe people don't know. Maybe they've never been to Del Posto, maybe they don't realize kind of what uh like a bonker's lunatic you are for pasta texture. Yes. But uh, you know, uh I mean, unlike Nastasha who will eat like uh pasta freaking sludge soup, if it's handed to her uh cooked by students, she still will eat like a a paste, a a pureed, a uh a rebolito of pasta, uh you might say, uh that's just her style.
I don't know. But like Mark. That's not entirely true. No, she prefers it done. She prefers it done properly.
She will eat slop. Slop pasta. If you were to cook pasta to the point that I was gonna dehydrate it and puff it, she would still eat it as a cooked pasta if I threw some crappy marnara on it. That's just gross. It's wrong.
It's just wrong. But I love it about her because it shows that she has some inherent like weird crap that you couldn't predict because she does appreciate like nicely cooked pasta. You on the other hand, Mark, detest poorly cooked pasta. I do detest poorly cooked pasta. So one thing I can guarantee, uh, if you were to stop by uh this uh this this quick serve pasta concept is that you will uh appreciate the texture that Mark is able to get.
Now here's another thing. Who's this who's this non a chick? Who's that? I'm kidding. You say it's non a style, right?
What does that mean? Oh no no no no, no, no, no, no. It's our matriarchal uh avatar. Yeah, if you will. And so apparently she knows how to make the the pot do you like her style of pizza that they now sell in New York or not?
And and whose grandmother makes that kind of pizza anyways. I I don't know. One other thing I just wanted to say really quickly, Dave, is that um it's important to mention that I would probably consider myself to be a better pasta cooker than a pasta maker, and I think a lot of people underestimate the importance of the cooking aspect of pasta. Yeah. That's how that texture is achieved.
Are you uh are you a believer in the uh undercook even more and then hot sauce, put it together, let it soak? Yes. Isn't everyone who knows who Yeah, but I don't use the water, I don't believe in that technique. No, you use the you make the sauce a little thinner, right? Or what?
Yeah, I make the sauce center, but I I don't use the pasta water because I oversalt my water. So I just use tap water. Yeah, what's up, oversalt? That's right. Well, because you can't you can't once you reduce salty water, it becomes an edible.
So and then if you're combining it with other really salty things like rendered cured pork product or uh sheep's milk cheeses that are aged and things like that, it becomes compounded to the point where you can't I've never uh eat it. You know the uh the commercial uh pasta cookers that are like redone fryers with this dark skimmer on the top? You use those things? Yes. How do you keep the salt level constant that you have to keep tasting it?
And that's it's really not a big deal, but yes, you have to keep tasting it. Yeah. Alright. I've never I've never really used one. They suck.
Really? Yeah. Is there a better system out there? There is not. Yeah, it's really it's it's uh it's really frustrating.
They've been uh decreasing the quality of steel uh a little bit every year over the past fifteen years to the point where if you get one to last three months, it's a miracle. Really? It's that bad. Does it go at the weld joints or where does it go? Or does it just start throwing rust into the water or what?
Um yeah, it's the joints. They're they they blow out. Or or it's just it's just really cheap fabricated steel, and also um they'll actually tell you that uh they prefer that you don't use salt. That's a good one, right? Why not just say that why not just say that you prefer that you not cook pasta in the pasta cooker?
That would be easier. You know what I think it is? A lot of times, any time there is um one of the problems with stainless steel, 304 and 316, which I think they mainly make these things out of 304 and 316, is that if there's any non-stainless uh stuff in it, it will migrate and shaft the stainless. So if they use any non-stainless stuff in it at all, this is like if you look up it for people if you care about this stuff, like look up the dangers of using non-stainless screws in stainless fabrication when it's exposed to corrosive environments. And there is no other environment as corrosive as well, there are, but I mean no cooking environment as corrosive as hot salted water.
Yeah, exactly. You know, so I don't know whether it's maybe like even just cooks using non stainless, but like you know how those fake stainless racks, when you throw them in an immersion circulator, they rust out in like a day. Yep. Yeah, we've had you know five thousand dollar machines that have pitted out and in in three days. I wonder whether it's the rack inserts they're shafting it.
Like whether it's just poor quality. I mean, there's something in there is shafting it. Like if they use the real stuff, it should last longer than that. In the past it has. They've just they've just chose to use cheaper and cheaper steel.
Right. Yeah, but I wonder whether it's the I wonder if they cheaped out on one particular thing, it's ruining everything. Like maybe they're maybe they're saving, because I'm having this problem manufacturing uh in China now. Maybe it's maybe they're saving a nickel and costing you five grand. Yeah.
You know what I mean? No, no, no. It seems like it could be true. It's like for five thousand bucks, I'll give you this pasta cooker's gonna last for a month and a half. For five thousand and two dollars, it'll last for three years.
You know what I'm saying? So one last thing, one last thing before we just start that uh dealing with regular questions. Uh so like let's say I was to go on the website and and and donate some money. Yes. Yes.
Well, you could get everything from we've been working, Dave, on an instant pasta bowl, because this pasta that we've created can actually be cooked in one minute. So um, as I know you are a huge fan of microwave cooking, I also am a proponent of uh of the magic of the microwave. Yeah, people just haven't thought enough about it. Um so this this pasta's actually cooked in a microwave. You mean the like you mean the one that you're gonna the instant one?
Both. And you're gonna and so if I pay are you gonna send me some of this stuff? Is that how okay? So then listen here. Are you it's only for ten bucks, Dave?
That's a freaking bargain. You should charge uh uh more or like let people buy. Here's the problem with Kickstarters. Can someone go buy a case of this crap and give you a hundred bucks instead? Absolutely not.
Freaking Kickstarter. Uh you know that. I know Dave, how many kicks are campaigns? Ah, hey, hey, yo, well, my point is is that like why don't they let you consider like a 10 box of this stuff like a different skew from like or uh hey, hey, if it was a different flavor, you could do it. We're also selling uh kilo bag.
Sweet. Of the instant stuff? On the on the on the now, I'm not saying, but you know what I've always wanted to own? I've always wanted to own one of those things that can seal the top of a bowl or a cup with a little thing. Yeah.
Do you have that? Are you gonna get the or are you gonna bottom it? I don't know where to get one. I'm I I mean I've I've gone to the packaging fairs. I don't know how much they cost, but wouldn't that be sick if you had the little you could literally make the my kids love hearty chicken?
They don't like the the actual Asian versions, but the the really crappy hardy chicken noodle one, because it doesn't have any vegetables, that's why. They love that that fake that fake soup stuff there. It's good stuff. They have new ones that are like perforated secondary skin lids so you can like drain out the the cooking water, which is pretty cool. Sauce, is that your favorite new word?
Skin lid? She's got the look, she's got the lip. I think. I will go cook at your house for a phenomenal fee. How much does that cost?
How much stuff? Five grand, I think. Five grand. And and how many people will you cook for? Twelve.
Twelve? Ten or twelve. Oh do the math. What is that? It's a lot.
No, I mean it's not that much. How much is that? Well, it would be five hundred dollars. Let me put it in. It's roughly the cost of going to Del Posto.
We bring all the food and some nice bottles of Chianti. It's it's look it's roughly the cost uh for you to go out to have a dinner at Del Posto, and instead, Mark Latin will come to your house, which is sure to impress your buddies. Yeah. It would impress my buddies. And we could we could we could enjoy some gluten free pasta or some gluten pasta.
Yeah, we can cook that too. Are you gonna make any will you make any of your like famous like billion layer lasagna code? Sure, why not? Love that stuff. Is the billion layer lasagna working?
Is it working in no uh in a no gluten form very well? It does very well. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's good on a stick too, Dave, which I figured you'd appreciate.
You could probably eat it on your bike. Well, geez, if you're gonna put it on a stick, do you s di well you chill it, skewer it? Exactly. And then uh, but then the question is, can you make it such that you I mean, will it stick together enough once it's re-turned? No.
So we gotta coat it with something and then fry it. We prefer to serve it cold with hot sauce. Mmm, cold with hot sauce. That sounds like some sort of like a revenge-based like metaphor. Stas will figure that out, I'm sure.
In the Queen of Revenge. Alright, okay, so let's look at some questions. You've got a live caller. Oh, live caller. Live caller, you're on the air.
Hello, hello, Dave. I uh I have a question for you. I recently bought some uh carbon steel pans. Okay. Uh and I I seasoned them what I thought was properly at the time, but I think I used a little bit too much oil.
I was wondering if you knew a good way to kind of set them back to factory without, and I prefer not to use anything like uh electrolysis. Okay. So uh the way to tell if you have too much oil when you're seasoning it, is you'll have A, you'll have drip marks on the inside, like little bumps, and you'll have kind of a stickiness in the uh in the bottom of the pan, right, Mark? Yes. Is that is that is that what you're noticing?
Yeah. How hot does your oven get? Do you have a self-clean? Do you have a self-clean cycle in your oven? Uh I uh I'm using pans in a professional setting, so.
Oh. I mean, if you have someone with access to a self-cleaning oven, just remove any any any plastic handles and throw the pans in on self-clean, and it'll incinerate all of the stuff that's on it, and then you're starting from scratch. Um the the I mean you can do it, you can do it on your s on like a commercial range top. The problem is, is it's really gonna smoke out the kitchen, and you have uh uh a real you're like unless you're really careful with it, you're gonna warp the bottom of your pan. Uh neither of which is things you want.
You want you much prefer the even heat of an oven, but a standard commercial oven in runaway is only going to get up to about 550, and you need to get you need to get over six and six, I would say six fifty-six and change to burn that stuff off. If you have access to like a wood fired oven, you can do that, or if you have access to like a real pizza, you know, oven, you that'll probably get hot enough to burn the sucker off. Um what do you think, Mark? Oh, I do have access to a wood fire oven. Oh, yeah, cool.
Then fire the hell out of it. Like fire the ever loving hell out of it. Then brush the stuff to the sides, throw the pan in, and uh just you know, stand back, let the smoke, it'll it'll smoke off. Uh it might take it a while. You you can tell because it'll look like steel again.
It'll never look fresh. It's gonna look kind of black, but it won't have the coating on it, and then just I would like I would like just give it a scotch bright-y and then uh and then re-season, but you know, obviously be careful about not dripping too much oil in it next time. You know what I usually do? I usually put the oil uh I put a little in the bottom, I run it around, and then I quickly just take a uh uh like a pa the problem with paper towels, I use them, but is they can throw lint into it and leave little linty jobbies in the thing, so you have to be kind of careful. They make specific kind of like brushes and things like this.
If you get like the crepe making people have like oiling pads that don't throw lint off, but then I just wipe it around the pan, like let it drip, wipe it off to get the excess out, and then throw it in the oven. I do that like five, six times, and then uh it builds up enough of a coat so that you can build from there, you know. Do you have a better thing other than paper towels, Mark, to use for that? I mean, I mean, I do, but it sucks. Issues like um like kitchen side towels or white balls.
I like white balls. What's a which is the witches of white balls? Is that the Japanese sport towel? What is that? Yeah, I believe it is.
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, those Japanese sushi sport towels. They're so expensive, man. Yeah, they're good. Yeah, but like the only issue with paper to side towels and paper towels, hey, you know, you could probably you you'd ruin it, and so the the front of house is gonna get pissed, but you could use a polishing cloth. They would hate you.
Those work great. Yeah, they would hate you though. But whatever. I mean, the thing is if you throw it away, you can blame the front of house for having lost it, right? I'm kidding.
Don't do that to your front of house. Anyway, uh let's go on to a question. We have a question. Uh oh, is that good? Is that good?
You happy with that? Let us know how it works. Perfect. Thank you very much. Alright, cool.
Uh okay. Alex in Toronto wrote in. Uh, and we'll take this question and then we'll go to a break. Uh a few weeks ago, I sent in a question about fond. I think you'll like this one, Mark.
Not not f like fond, like fond of you, like fond in the bottom of a pan when you're making the meat. Uh, and uh one about an upcoming event you mentioned. I was wondering if you had chosen not to answer, or maybe it got lost in the shuffle of the last few weeks. Uh I totally understand if this sort of thing is limited interest. But if it did simply get forgotten, here are the questions I sent before.
Alex, we do not ignore questions. If we missed it, it means we missed it. So please, anyone, if they send a question and we don't get to it, it means it got lost in the shuffle. Like maybe it got put on my iPad and then like I didn't see it because I didn't bold face it or whatever. But no, we don't we don't ever purposely have we ever purposely ignored a question?
No. No. No, no. We take anything. Wow.
Just like remember, like my grandma. Just like my grandma. That's his most famous, I think, saying back at the uh SCI about uh our intern uh Cliff Gilbert. Now we're gonna do an hour. Anyway, okay.
Uh let's take the second one first. Uh last week you started talking about an upcoming trip to Toronto. I'm a huge fan of cooking issues, and on the one occasion I was able to go, I love Booker and Dax. Will this Toronto event be something that is possible for a regular schlub like myself to get tickets to? Best Alex.
Well, uh being a schlub myself, I will be there. Uh but what am I doing? I'm actually tending bar in uh which which which restaurant over there. Um you're gonna look it up like I remember your first. I don't why would I why would the people on the air want to know about my flights?
I thought it was a personal thing. No, it was not a personal thing. Right at it. Okay, we'll look it up and we'll figure it out. But I believe that uh, you know, anyone in the restaurant that night uh can order cocktails that I will theoretically be making.
That's on the 10th. On the 10th. And then the other thing is uh there's a Toronto Film Festival, and I'm going to be discussing the relative merits or demerits of soil. And you're gonna say fire in a movie theater. Check this out, people.
Did I mention this on air already? Okay. So they want me to do a Sears all demonstration in a movie theater. Let me repeat this. They want me to do a Searsol demonstration involving torches and fire in a movie theater.
Now, I like fire more than the next guy. In fact, yesterday, my wife Jen was like, Dave, you're a freaking pyro. Like the theme that runs through your whole life is that you're a freaking pyro. From the time you're a kid. Whatever.
I'm building more rockets with Dax. I got like a I got like a five foot rocket called G Force that uses a G scale motor and flight, you know, huge, like crazy. The last time I made one, we had a problem with the ejection charge, and the thing burrowed like a foot into the ground. Would have gone through any car that hit crazy. Anyway, so so she's like, You're a pyro, you're you're imprinting the pyro on the children, whatever.
So I'm just saying, I like fire. Uh uh, I'm a cook. I think most cooks like fire. Mark? Love it.
Yeah, you love it, right? If you didn't like fire and you were a cook, that's kind of like a doctor who's a full afraid of blood. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean questionable character.
Yeah. It's like yeah, go into raw food then. You could be you could be a raw food preparationist if you if you don't like the fire. Anywho, uh I think it's unwise to do a fire demo in a movie theater. It's like the classic that you don't yell fire in a crowded theater.
You know what the corollary to that is, math people? You don't make a fire in a crowded movie theater. You know? I'm gonna cry fire. I'm gonna make the I'm gonna turn on the series all and then go, fire!
Just kidding. No, I mean it's a ridiculous idea. Uh, you know what? Thank God it's not my movie theater. And you know what?
Anyone in Canada listening, are your rules different in Canada? Are you allowed to light fires in movie theaters in Canada? Maybe. Where I come from, movie theaters are made like a fabric and crap, and like, you know, like it's easy to have people get jammed in the doors and trampled to death. So we tend not to light fires in movie theaters here in this country.
You said the movie was soiling green, right? And that your demo is based off Soylent Green. Are you saying I'm supposed to cook people? Did you see that there's a we talked about this already on air that there's a a person marketing something called Soylent? Yeah, no, you were supposed to do something with it, remember?
No, that was a different Soylent. Oh, okay. So this this soylent, like that one was the one that's supposed to like that like a uh television personality who shall remain nameless, said, Will you do something with this product soylent, which was meant to uh kind of simulate milt, as the guy said, the milt. For those of you that are up on your uh fish fish bodily product terminology. I won't say the other, I won't say the human analogy on the air, but uh so I guess that would be made from proto people.
But this soylent is uh how far can we stretch that? But the this soylent is literally the this this person who's an engineering person says, Don't you hate how you spend all this time wondering what you're gonna eat and whether or not you're gonna enjoy it? Why not just take all the enjoyment out? Here's all of the nutrients you need that they currently know about mixed into a paste that you can squeeze into your mouth or drink. Takes two minutes and you can prepare a week's worth of meals and you could just drink it on the go.
You don't no longer have to worry about like whether you enjoy your life. More time for kickboxing and other crap that makes you not live any longer. You know what I mean? Let's say you if look look, when you're looking I love kickboxing, I love kickboxing, I think it's really awesome. Because it was on the it was on the damn uh like video for it.
Like they show this person who's like here's the thing about overly healthy people, right? Like, I think like crazy kung fu people that can do amazing stuff are freaking amazing. Like I love that they exist, I love it that they exist. But like the idea that we all need to be like hyper-cut, hyper fit, like somehow that's part of what it means to be like an acty, active, healthy, like urban person in today's environment. I think it's just it's just gross.
It's it's it's it's like instead of like your car expense of every other joy in life. Expense of every other joy in life, and at considerable actual monetary expense. It's like it's it's the current version of having a really sweet car. And I think in a way, it's just as gross as like I think like being fit and healthy is awesome. I think like the hyper fit, healthy, polished thing, it's just it's it's another like modern craziness, no?
Mm-hmm. Espe especially if it means that you're not, if you're if you're eating this. Here's a note to here's how you can tell whether you fall on the right side or the wrong side of like health. If you're buying soylent, you're on the wrong side. You know what I'm saying?
Like, that's it. That's the marker right there. If you if you are purchasing uh soylent because you spend too much of your time enjoying your life and not enough time uh uh with more kickboxing, problems. So did you want to know your plates? Uh no, I don't.
I want to know. I mean, eventually, but not right now. Okay, so the second question Alex had was uh hang tight on the second question. I have an enthusiastic caller on the line right now. All right, caller, you were on the air.
Hi, uh this is Matt from Milwaukee. I have a question about making an alcoholic squat eat. Okay. So we purchased uh uh our restaurant operates four nights a week, and then on Fridays and Saturdays, starting at eleven thirty, we kind of switch it to an underground ramen shop and just flying ramen and beers and stuff. We thought it'd be awesome to buy a slushy machine and make boozy flushies.
Uh and we were just wondering is there any special formulation that we're gonna have to do to make certain cocktails in this flushy mode? I know Parsons, chicken and fish in Chicago does Negroni fleshies, and that was when we learned of that, we were like, oh, light bulb. Okay. Oh, nice, nice uh nice uh despicable me reference. I appreciate that.
Uh the uh so here's the trick. Negronies are the the reason why, first of all, as we all know, Negronies are delicious and hugely popular in uh in the food service sector for the past um you know long time and recently have become kind of popularly popular in like kind of general general uh issue. But uh one of the amazing things about Negroni, one of the reasons you see it in so many different guises, is that that sucker is bulletproof. So it's it's good uh too cold. It's not really it's the one thing it's not good, is it's not really good too warm, but it's good too cold, it's good uh over diluted, it's good uh carbonated.
Very few drinks are as malleable as the uh Negronias, which is why it lends itself to a lot of things. Um so it's not a surprise that someone uh made a good tasting Negroni in a slushy format. It's a little trickier when you're dealing with um with other uh products. What you have to realize is that a slushy is in general going to be more diluted than uh a regular cocktail. So the first mistake people make with it with a s with a slushy based um with a slushy based drink is uh getting the alcohol level too high.
You need to pull the uh alcohol level uh uh lower. Also, Negroni is interesting because it doesn't contain other than the acidity from the vermouth, there's not um a lot of added acidity unless you're adding juices, and so you don't have to worry as much about the uh acid balance in uh in a negroni that's watered down as you do in a um in a cocktail that contains acidity, for instance, a margarita. When you're gonna dilute and chill something more than normal, what you need to do is slightly reduce the acidity and slightly increase the uh the ratios, sugar. In general, so so I'm not saying make it sweeter on a volume basis, because you don't want to do that, but I'm saying you're gonna want to uh uh decrease the acid to sugar ratio slightly. Uh and you'll you'll notice this as you dilute uh drinks down, drinks that um uh you you'll you'll you'll you'll know it, you'll just notice this.
That uh that that that's the way your kind of palate works. For a general guideline, I would look up uh I I have a published uh blender drink that works in a slushy machine that's done using a freezer in the New York Times magazine a couple months ago called the Italiana Stalliana, which is a take on a Harvey Wallbanger. And that that recipe is tweaked to work uh either in a fridge or in a uh in a slushy machine. And if you follow those ratios of liquid to alcohol, you should be in the right range. And uh, you know, I you know, if I had it with me, I don't have it with me.
I have a bunch of recipes with those specs, and actually I have the percentages in my cocktail book, which is coming out in November. Uh liquid intelligence from WW Norton. Uh, but so those have the specs. But I would start right around there. Does that make sense?
Yes, it does. Thanks. Thanks. We're uh we're always it has like cute slots in it. So we're always gonna have like a Wisconsin old fashioned in one of them with the brandy.
And then the other one, we actually want to have like stuff from around town and and cocktail guys from around town come by and do like whatever the hell they want for a week and just kind of have that as like a special mark. So one of the one of the things in my cocktail book that is kind of uh you know, relatively new for the cocktail books, as far as I can tell, is uh I have a chapter in it called Cocktail Calculus. And in cocktail calculus, what what I've done is I've uh looked at uh you know the standard ingredients that we use in our battery de cocktail. And uh I've knocked I've like I've broken them down by percentage acidity and percentage sugar, uh, and then looked at uh like alcohol, sugar, and dilution uh numbers for something like uh I think like uh I forget what it was, like 50 or 60 kind of classic cocktails, and then all of the recipes that I've ever created. And what I noticed stunningly is that uh the ranges for different styles of cocktail are fairly limited in terms of their uh acid to sugar ratios, and then in terms of how those acid to sugar ratios mix with um mix with ethanol levels for various styles of drinks.
And so now you can calculate all the stuff. So if you look up the numbers that are in uh that Italiano Stellano and you try to hit those numbers for sugar, and you know if you if you email me in a question and I can get you the actual numbers, you're looking for percentage ethanol, percentage sugar, percentage acid, I could talk about it next week. But that's ostensibly one of the interesting things about my cocktail book is this kind of new system where you're just looking at overall sugar acid and um ethanol percentages for different styles of drinks. But I have those numbers for blender drinks, and what I do for carbonated drinks at the bar is literally when I'm developing it, I just have those numbers and I just move the ingredients around until I hit the proper numbers and then it's a go from there. Excellent.
That's exact that's exactly what we're kind of looking for. Just to see if we could just formulate something like a sorbet. So if someone tells us like a day out, like, hey, will this work in the machine, then we can then we can do that to be ready for go time instead of wasting a bunch of hammer time without having a good product. All right, well, I'll give you some of the numbers if you email in a question, but you still have to go out and buy my book, deal. Uh absolutely.
You're gonna have like eight guys with this restaurant by your button. Cool, thanks. We're big we're big fans. I've been a listener since day one. Oh, I appreciate it.
Well, you know, I I am uh uh I cannot believe that people have listened to us for that long, but thank you so much. I appreciate it. Louise is still there? No. No, he's gone.
All right. Uh, we're gonna come to a break, come back with more uh cooking issues. Hi, I'm Damon Bolti, host of the Speakeasy. This summer, Heritage Radio Network is turning five years old. Since our launch in 2009, we've continued to bring you food and culture content like no one else.
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Welcome back to Cooking Issues. You still have time to call any questions to Mark Ladner at 7184972128. That's 7184972128. But before we get back to Alex's question about fund. Yeah.
And you have some other fundraiser you want to talk about. Why don't you uh describe it? Well, it's our five did you know it's our five-year anniversary this summer? I did not. Five years.
Five, five, five, five, four. We've been on it for what, four? Yeah. Three? Four?
It's been a long time. Yeah. Somewhere in that range. So what do we got for five years? So we're doing a summer fundraiser, and John Riper, thank you for donating.
And we hope the other Cooking Issues listeners might consider supporting the network for all of the programming we offer for free. And we are listener supported, nonprofit organizations, so any amount helps. It's HeritageRadio Network.org. And you can click the donate button. Jack, let me ask you a question.
Yeah. So, this programming on this show here, we provide this for what? How much do we charge for this? Zero. Wait, but is it free for us to make this?
Oh, it's not free for us to make, no. It's free for you to listen to. Wait, so there are costs that come along with uh running an internet radio station. So like all this stuff, this is not free yet. We do not charge for the product.
Correct. So this is a bad business model. It's a kind business model. Right. Yeah.
So in other words, what you guys out there need to do is support our bad business model by giving poor Jack some money so that he can by the way, uh Jack, the intro music today, was that was that you with like the kind of almost newsy ding needling in the back? No, no, the only people who hear that are the ones tuning in live. That was before the actual show started, and those are friends of the network who also give us music for free. So, you know. Yeah, oh, by the way, Jack, the not you, Jack, Jack the uh bar back at uh Booker and Dax, who's also in the NYU food program.
You know what? You know what he saw the other day uh talking about a friend of ours. He saw big ups in concert, Joe's band. He said, Joe, you know, Joe, also, you know, engineer here, wasn't it here? Uh, those of you that listen uh back in the day, uh, or when you were on uh the break, said he was an amazing frontman.
Said it was an awesome show. He's unreal. He's really, really good. Maybe we should all go see a big up show sometime. You remember Carlos?
Yeah. He's in big ups also. Yeah? Mm-hmm. Nice.
Well, apparently big ups to big ups. Yeah. I but like I heard that Joe like like strangles himself with the mic cord. He does, yeah, it's true. He like rips his face apart on stage.
It's insane. He likes stares at the ground sullenly for a minute, then wraps the mic cord around himself, chokes himself, and then goes crazy or something like this. You would never guess if you met the guy. No, he seems like a nice fellow. He's insane on stage.
So he's not like Alien Jorgensen. He doesn't cut himself, does he? No. Yeah. Well, I hope not, because Alien Jorgensen, I mean, God love him.
I can't believe he's still alive. But uh, not from cutting himself, but just all the freaking heroin. You know what I mean? So much heroin. I mean, I like old ministry.
You like old ministry, Mark and Jack or Styles? Yeah, right. Jesus built my hot rod. Not the version on the album, which I think is not as good, but the version on the EP that had the giant uh motor on the front of it, was a song that's gotten me through many problems in my life, many late nights. Jesus built my car.
You know that song, Jack? I don't. Oh my goodness! He can't play it either, because we need to get off those eight. Do you think we can get Alien Jorgensen?
You know who sings the uh lyrics on that is the guy from um the butthole surfers. Yeah. Anyways. That is a good song. And now it's going through my head, so I don't know if I'm gonna be able to answer these questions.
Uh I mean to talk about edible schools. Oh yeah, Stas. You know, our good friends at Edible School Yard, before we go back into the question. And then we'll just go do questions like rapid fire on the way out. So uh, you know, our good friends at the Edible Schoolyard who, you know, they just they just help kids like you know grow things and understand where their food comes from and make them appreciate things like you know, fresh vegetables.
I mean, really terrible idea, right? It's terrible. Terrible, terrible idea. Anyway, great. Uh so uh they are having a uh a fundraising event as well, and so Stas, why don't you talk about it?
It's to uh benefit their a new school in Harlem or a new edible schoolyard in in Harlem, and uh it'll if you donate, you'll go toward vital infrastructure improvements. So they have one where it's in Brooklyn, right? The current one? Yeah. So this one's going to be a good one.
So they they want to do one in Harlem, and people, this is a good project to support. Where do they go? Crowdrise.com. I think just look for Edible Schoolyard within it. Edible School Year of CrowdRise.
My son, uh actually Booker is no longer gonna be uh his school's no longer gonna be up in Harlem, but he's he's uh going um uh downtown next year. But he's been going to school in Harlem for the past six six years or so, and like you know, like a lot of the schools up there, they could use this sort of program. It'd be really helpful, useful, awesome, and uh worthwhile for your extra nickels. Now, you can't get Mark Ladner to come cook for you in that. But how do they get to uh before we before we don't forget, we didn't say where the Kickstarter is to find your thing.
You can go to www.pastaflyer.com. Pastaflyer.com. You also get to hear the voice of Phil Bravo, right? Yeah. Phil Bravo.
Phil Bravo. The mean cameo. Yeah, but giant D bag for not coming and announcing on our show. Mean I'm just gonna say huge D-bag. That's why we couldn't get them personal car service or something.
This is such a D bag. I don't know what that is. It doesn't work for free, Dave. Well, it doesn't work at all. Hey, how many times has has Phil mooched like liquor and or food off of some event that we've been a part of?
Tons. Yeah, think about it. Don't have enough fingers for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No one has enough fingers.
Even if you had a genetic genetic anomaly and you were born with like quadruple fingers, you wouldn't have enough fingers and toes to make up for the number of times Phil has mooched food and booze off of us. And like, you know, I'm just saying, all I wanted in return was a little bit of his sweet, sweet, thorough Ravencroft esque voice, uh doing his Tony the Tiger action. You've not lived until you've heard Phil Bravo do uh a sad Tony the Tiger, saying they're great in a really mopey voice. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, you know, Mark, you have quite a sonorous resonant voice, but even you would have to admit Phil Bravo has like the takes the cake. He's like a satin kerchief, uh Phil Bravo. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, back to Alex's question before I get kicked off the air.
Uh a few weeks ago I sent in a question about fond. I was wondering uh uh I was let's get to the question. I make many recipes from Cooks Illustrated which rely on searing meat to create a fond, which is then used as a base for a sauce or a gravy. Do you like the word gravy styles? Mezzometsa?
Okay. Uh what about you know, Mark, I know that you're not from there, but like you know, you hang out in Rhode Island, right? Sure. Are they like Boston where they call sauce gravy when it's on macaroni real times? With do they call it macaroni and gravy like they do in Boston?
Sure. Really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, in Boston, they get that one.
Well, you're in New Haven, Dave. Do they do that? I didn't hang out with uh real like a t Italian Americans there. Uh I used to go to a place actually called the Marcagana Club, which was real, but I didn't talk to the cooks. It was all cops, nuns, dirty linoleum floor, and soap operas.
And it was like you had to have a key, and you went in and it was just like the weird, like the weird like salad bar, and you know, it's like the whole real deal. And you know, but you know what they say about people from Marque to better to have a death in the family than a Mark Jana at the door. You know what I'm saying? Yeah? Yeah, nice.
Anyway, no offense to people from Marque. Anyway, so the uh uh you know, tax collectors. Anyways, um uh I make many recipes from Cooks Illustrated, which rely on serum meat to create a font, which is then used as a base for a sauce or gravy. I was wondering if you could give me some tips about how to do this more effectively and efficiently. I sometimes have trouble getting a font to form at all, and often it takes a long time to form when I do succeed.
It does take a long time. I mean that's the idea. If it I mean there's no way you can't not have it take a long time because the idea is to create those those brown bits without burning it. I mean, there's no You need some BTUs too. I mean you can't do it.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Anyway, let's so uh when I do succeed, uh much longer than the recipe descriptions would indicate. Maybe underpowered stove. Yeah. Um I'd say so.
Yeah. Also, it seems that the delicious brown particles that are created end up suspended in the oil, much of which much beats discarded to avoid making the recipe greasy. Uh I think a lot of people use too much oil when they're trying to do something like this anyway. I mean, like it think about it this way. Well, we'll get into it.
It seems to me that several other uh several factors affect this process, including the amount of oil in the pan, yes. The temperature of the pan when the meat hits the metal, maybe more like the amount of heat you can deliver to it, really. You know what I mean? Um how high the element is turned, and probably oh element is turned. See, I'm thinking now that you have an electric range, which I've never had a good result with an electric range, right?
Have you marked? I mean induction, yes, but like like a regular like electric when whenever anyone says whenever anyone says the uh element is turned makes me think they have one of those old school electric ranges, which of they're like they have bad. I mean, I don't I mean look, you can work with it. You who like those things? Jane's beard.
Weird, right? Also, Jane's beard did not like fresh sardines, liked canned sardines, which I also like, but they're not the same product. Why would you even compare them? They're not the same. Anyway.
Um probably the temperature and the dryness of the meat itself. What are the optimal conditions for creating a delicious myard tastic fond? And what is my best bet for doing so, either quickly or uh efficiently in the home kitchen. Okay, so uh here's the thing. What do you think Mark Mark, you I think like a lot of people, they put they're gonna put too much oil in the pan, right?
I completely agree with that. Yeah. You want a little bit so that you get good contact, but you don't want some think about it this way. No fond develops on the inside of your deep fry pan. And the reason is is because the meat is not sticking to the side of your deep fryer.
If the meat don't stick, then you must it quit or whatever, however the uh OJ reference for it works. If the meat don't stick, there's no fond, which is why you can't create a good fond in a nonstick pan. Agree with me here, Mark? Yes, that's true. So a little bit of oil in there and you drop the meat in and and don't move it, let it sit, develop the color.
Stuff needs to stick to the pan. Stuff don't stick, remember the OJ, there's no font. You know what I'm saying? Uh I think the other thing is is that usually when I'm doing it, uh I'm doing a bunch of meat in the pan and like and and in the same pan, and the first couple of pieces aren't ever as good as like the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, you know, when you're when you're doing multi, let's say you're doing a braise and you're doing the first couple are never gonna be uh as uh as good. Um I'm not I mean it needs to be hot enough to create uh the it needs to be hot enough to actually create the myard products that stick to the thing so in that sense if you overcrowd your pan and it never gets up to those temperatures then you're just gonna be you know steaming your meat and you're not gonna get a good fond but I mean I'm I'm also not one of these people who like puts like one little piece in and then because if if you underfill your pan then you're gonna burn the fond on the edges that have already been created.
So it's a it's a this is why like you need to start out hot once it's actually in steering mode you can torque back on it a little bit. And if you overcrowd your pan you you're not going to create a fond at all and if you undercrowd your pan you're gonna get burning of the especially around the edges of the pan if your flame is if you have a flame, if it's licking up or over on the sides. And burnt fond is nasty fond, am I right? That is true. Yeah.
So uh I always do it in this order I do uh meat first then uh then the onion product right do you always do the same way onions yeah but like after the meat right first then and then you can increase the oil a little bit and do the onions. If but if you're doing a meat only if you don't have that much oil you're not gonna get that problem with uh losing it all all the particles in the oil and and the second thing is is that don't scrape your pan when you're doing this stuff because you're trying to get the stuff to stick to the pan. So you shouldn't have too much stuff floating in the in the oil right or no? Yeah I think the main problem is using too much oil. The the main purpose of the the fat is just so that the meat doesn't stick.
Yeah yeah and I've never thought about uh I've never thought about I always salt beforehand when I'm doing these because it's always in braces, but do you think that affects it at all? The salting? I mean, I think it would pull protein to the it would pull protein to the surface and maybe get more protonaceous stuff onto the pan, which is going to make more fun. But I don't know for sure. Maybe someone out there knows.
What about cold? Do you do temper your meat or do you start it cold like right out of the refrigerator? I mean, it's interesting. I've never done a side-by-side, uh, but um, I mean, you and I both know that usually what happens is is you get the stuff out, you're doing your pre prep work, and then you sear on it. So it's never fridge cold by the time it gets into the pan, because I'm never that if I'm gonna be searing it, unless I'm doing low temp work, which sometimes I am, but I'm doing low temp work, then I'm very careful about keeping it cold while I'm doing my initial sear.
But if I'm doing a standard braise, I mean that stuff warms up. I don't even give a crap because I know I'm in fact I you know, like I'm throwing them in and out of the same buckets where I'm like seared, you know, the seared versus unseared stuff because it just doesn't freaking matter to me. Are you the same way or no? No, I keep it separate. You keep it totally separate?
Yeah. Even though you're gonna braise the hell out of it? Compartmentalized it. I know. Well, you know what?
That's the difference between like an actual pro and someone who came at being uh a semi-pro from the back end. You know what I mean? This is why people yell at me. So uh I'm told that I have to uh get the hell off of the air. So I have some questions.
Um I have one uh some interesting stuff actually uh about um soy, how to how to get a soy sauce flavor without soy that I'm gonna get to uh next week. Uh some low temperature bags, and also uh I have one uh maybe I can do I have like 30 seconds? Not really. Uh all right, so uh I'll also get to the uh care for non stick pans, how to clean them out. Hint Scotchbrite makes a non-scratch version that you can use in your Teflon in your uh nonstick pants.
And about Teflon in general next week on cooking Issues. Thanks to 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 anytime at info at heritageradio network.org.
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