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. 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 Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Cooking issues! Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues. Whoa, coming to your funky! Coming to your funky.
What was that, Jack? Oh, that's funny. We should play that real quick. It's like two seconds long. Oh yeah.
Cheese. Oh, cheese, cooking issues. Is that like a new theme song for us? It's for cutting the card. Let me get that one more time now.
We'll bring up the Come on. Uh, come on. Cheese. Sounds like it could have been a Bluetooth song, maybe. Yeah, that's all-style Bluetooth stuff.
Yeah, maybe. Sweet. Uh we joined as uh usual Jack and uh Nastasha the Hammer. However, do we still have a collar on the air? Yeah, I do have a caller.
Why don't we do a show with a caller? Yeah, why don't we do that and then we'll get back to our little uh niceties and pleasantries and what that. Caller, you are on the air. Hi, Dave, how are you? Alright, how are you doing?
Good, thanks. I was wondering, um, how well something like a champion juicer would do for making uh like pistachio paste and kind of nut butters and uh if it works for kind of making desserts for something like that. Well, I as it so happens, Nastasia and I have a lot of experience using the champion juicer for exactly that task. Uh so the first thing you did, do you own one already? Sorry?
Do you already own a champion juicer? No, I'm I'm thinking about getting one, and I think that would kind of be the uh a kind of tipping point that would make me go out and get one. Yeah, it works well. Here's the deal it heats it up. So if you're one of these believers that everything has to say hyper cold as you're doing it, that ain't gonna happen because there's a lot of friction generated in inside of the champion.
But uh but Saz, how many, how many like how many zillion pounds of nuts have we put through champion juicers before? So many. I think we had an event, right? For one, and we well huge amount of people. We went through that that kick where I was doing all nut milks in the centrifuge and I was making nut butters uh and spinning and making nut oils.
Remember that? Yeah. And we were just making like we would have to make like like a gallon of of uh of uh uh of like uh uh what was it, cashew no pecan oil that we would go then? We would go through all those tins of pecans from uh those nuts. Oh my god.
So the short story is it works. Um you might need to add uh like you might need to grind it a couple of times. What we used to do is we used to we used to put it through the champion for the first pass, and then we would put it into a uh into a stone grinder to get it down like hyper fine, like commercial peanut butter fine. Um but yeah, sucker works. It also grinds cocoa nibs quite well for the for the initial grind, you're gonna need to put it into like a stone mill to get it down to actual chocolate grind stuff.
Uh the one uh thing that uh you gotta watch out for is after you grind the second five pounds in a row without stopping, the um it it heats up rather severely and uh champion juicer will heat itself up to the point where it melts the uh it melts the safety interlocks and that the motor is hot enough to boil water. So I mean uh yeah, you should give at least the ones that I've used. So you should give it a rest before it asks for it, because it's not gonna ask for a rest. It's just gonna keep on going until a until I don't know, until a fire starts or something. Do you ever have one of those things actually kick out on you?
I don't know that it has a thermal stuff. Remember that time that we put all the towels in the water and put on the back and it was like a sauna because it was like boiling the water off of the towels. Um another thing is is that uh every professional chef who buys a champion juicer, and there are many, uh, instantly loses the blind plate. So the bottom of the champion juicer either has a mesh screen that you use for juices or a blind plate that you're supposed to use for things like frozen bananas if you're a believer in that sort of thing. Or nuts.
And so you don't want to you don't want to lose that. But uh yeah, it works. Oh, I think we might have lost it. I heard a click clack. Anyways, uh he heard most of what was important anyway, right?
He got it. He he got it. He's got that. Anyway, so uh now for the intro and pleasantry. So later than normal had a flat tire today.
Flat tire on the Williamsburg Bridge, which I love. Going up, but here's it was kind of a miracle, like the my bike wanted me to be late, but he didn't want me to be too late because I no longer carry with me the stuff to fix flat tires. I should just start carrying that. The patch is so small. It's just, I don't know, somehow like I started swatching bags back and forth, and so then I I just don't have the bike repair kit with me anymore.
But I do have a pump on me, thank Christ. Thank God I mean I mean thank goodness. Uh bleep bleep bleep bleep. Uh so I'm going up to Williamsburg, right? But still too late to turn back, because you know you can't get a taxi in my neighborhood like anywhere near as noon.
So I hear you know that noise? Mm-hmm. And so I'm like, oh crap. So I looked down, sure enough, my front tires going, and uh, but some miracle it stopped deflating before I was down on the rim. So I was like, what am I gonna do?
So I just pumped it up to like two-thirds of its rated pressure, and I slowly leaked all the way here. I made it all the way here with a slow leak. I even passed some dingleberry on a freaking like mini moped thing. Styles wants to beat you so for those of you that live in New York City, like there's these dudes riding around these uh it's almost always dudes, right? It's only delivery people, which are mostly mostly dudes, yeah.
And they're on these damned electric bikes, and it's like they're not electric though, that's just like an attachment, right? Well, they they like someone somewhere designed, they took a normal bike that a crappy normal bike and they bolted a battery pack and like a little motor to it. So yeah, they mean like they're they're designed to be that way. Okay-ish. But every delivery you've seen these jack, right?
I have, yeah. What are your thoughts on I don't really I don't know. They're like cars. He's like Jack's like, I own one. But uh no, we all know that Jack doesn't drive bikes because he drives cars.
That's right. As we all know, they're mutually exclusive. Captain Sustainability, Jack Inslee over there. That's me. Yeah.
Uh by the way, when we come out of commercial break, we should hear the uh cheese song again because it'll be like that, huh? Did you write the cheese song? I didn't, no. Who wrote the cheese song? Uh I'll find out, but Diane Stempel is the uh the host who who brought us that song.
I think it was a friend of hers. Cheese. I do have a caller whenever we're Oh, yeah, caller, you're on the air. Hey, how's it going? Dave Nastasha and Jack.
Nice. Love you guys' music. It's the best, always, man. Especially now that we have a cheese song. Cheese.
I didn't get to hear that one today, but in the reruns. Anyways, it's uh Antoine from Bulk Rook Tone just calling back. Oh, hey, hang on. We were talking about we were talking about health and bartending. Exactly, yeah.
And how they may not be related or mutually exclusive. Exactly. Uh yeah, I had a few questions this week. Um one of them was your thoughts and comments about this uh potential ban on raw milk cheeses. What do you mean?
I mean uh oh, uh they are they trying to ban uh even older than sixty days? Yeah. Oh that's their uh I was banned. My girlfriend works at Whole Foods for the uh specialty department, and they were saying recently that that they want to ban all raw milk cheeses even over 60 days. Yeah, I saw some like uh blips and bleeps about that a couple of months ago on one of the cheese blogs.
Like it was like pushed to my Twitter account. Somebody was like, Oh my cheese, and then I haven't heard anything about it since Jack. Have you guys talked about this at all in any of the cheese programs we have? I will I'll shoot them a line and ask. I mean, what make i if anyone were to actually push something through like that, I mean, I think that's a that's absolutely preposterous.
I mean, it's just ridiculous. It's an absurdity. I mean, what do you know what the proposed reason for it is? I mean, as as far as I've heard, I mean, it's it's been a huge game of telephone for me because one person heard from another person, but as far as I know, they want to ban any cheeses that are raw milk cheeses. So your air forward Parmesan Parmigiano Reggiano Barmagiano Region is made with raw milk, is it not?
It is, right? Exactly, yeah. I mean it's a it's preposterous. I mean uh the current regulation I think is even uh too obviously too stringent. Um I did hear some rumblings about it but I don't know.
I mean if someone's proposing it's an absolute absurdity. I mean my feeling was from the get go and you know I s I spoke years ago to some uh food safety people about it. I mean you gotta remember the way food safety I don't know I don't think this is a food safety concern. I mean I don't know when the last time somebody got poisoned from Parmigiano Reggiano is oh wait I know when it was it was never because it's never happened. But the um the issue is is that uh food safety people write laws because um for instance you're allowed to have sushi even though it goes through procedures you're allowed to have steak tartare or rare steak because the assumption is is that when you order that you know the risks that you're taking on and what the raw milk stuff with cheeses is because the they you know uh they they figure that the average consumer wants everything to be as safe as like a hyper pasteurized like American cheese product is right and that and that the customers don't know that they might be assuming a uh uh uh a risk of pathogens that they don't they're not aware of if they consume a raw milk cheese that's young that's their theory anyway and so my feeling was like put a label on it.
I'm allowed to I'm allowed to smoke, you know, so like why can't I have a ra a raw milk cheese as long as it says on it like like raw milk may kill you. The same way that like you know, when you serve someone a raw egg at a restaurant, you say, This is a raw egg, this might kill you, and if that scares you, please order something else, you know. Uh I mean I always thought that was a better kind of a I mean like I think people would buy it more if it had a big parental advisory, do not eat will kill you label on it. I mean, think of how much more of that they'd sell, you know. Totally, you know.
Uh so yeah, so I I'll look into it because uh I remember I heard some rumblings and then I it totally fell. But Jack, are you gonna you're gonna write a note to yourself to follow up with this? I'm writing a note to myself to come up with the parental advisory food line, because I think that'll that'll really work out. I mean it works for music, right? Yeah, I mean like sells a lot of music, right?
Yeah. I mean, I mean, look it, I mean, a lot of that early stuff would have sold without the label because it was like so over the top, you know, like and NWA and stuff. I mean, that stuff was so over the top that you know it didn't really require a label for kids to know. Yeah, Tipper Gore didn't need to come out and tell me that that stuff was kind of like a little bit over the top. But uh, you know, some of this stuff, the milder stuff with the parental guidance of you know, you go to the store and you're like, which one of these things is gonna piss my parents off the most, and you just search out for the labels.
Could be the same thing with cheese, you know. Same thing with like the hot peppers. There's tr you heard about this Trinidad Scorpion pepper that's like like one and a half times hotter than the Naga Joloki pepper. What's the point in that? Does anyone know what the point is?
Are you a hot pepper eater? I love all anything that makes me hurt, I love the most. Have you tried the Trinidad Scorpion? No, no, I haven't. Yeah, so like it's there's a whole like you know what you know what I'm talking about, though.
It's like a vicious, evil looking little pepper. Paul Adams from Proper Science has some, but he had some dry, but like have you tried the ghost pepper? As far as I can discern, the ghost pepper has no good taste to it. It's not like a habanero. Well, if you use it like like a little bit of it in a big pot of something, I think that's how it works best.
Because I love Sri Lankan food, and apparently they use ghost peppers. Yeah, but why not just use more of a pepper with more flavor? By the way, two dudes sitting at the table outside of the studio here pounding shots. Just really shots away, dude. Like uh, well, it's it's you know, it's 5 p.m.
somewhere. These guys are you know banging these things back like they're in Europe. It's like they got transported from Europe. They are in European. It is August.
Yeah, and they probably like we're being we're being overrun with Europeans with excess money in their pockets. Please come here and burn your money in New York City and add to our tourism business. We need it. Am I right, Jack? Yes.
Yeah. Uh any other things? Because I gotta look that one up. Yeah, uh, I also I sent you a tweet uh last week that I uh have issues with drinking coffee. I love the taste of it, but uh I didn't know what it was.
I I isolated by having just caffeine by itself. Yeah, I told you. I told you to have the no dose, right? Yeah, I uh I can handle that, so I don't know. I can usually handle high acid things, but I don't know what it is in coffee that might be getting at me.
And you try and you tried decaf coffee and decaf coffee does it to you as well, right? I haven't tried decaf coffee because I never saw the point. Yeah, well, no, but you try it just as a test, the same way that there's not that much of a point in no dose, because I mean that gives me a spinning headache. But like what you here's what you do you try the you try the decaffeinated coffee. So then so if decaffeinated coffee is fine and caffeinated coffee is not, then it you know it could it has to be it's not the caffeine because you've tested that, so it's something else that's washed away in the process, and so then you would have to test to see whether or not supercritical CO2 decaffeinated coffee works, but the water decaffeinated coffee doesn't, you have to do some tests.
Now, if decaf uh my suspicion is is that decaf coffee I'll do it to you the same way that uh caffeinated coffee uh will. And you say it's a stomachache, right? And this is regular this is a regular coffee, not espresso, right? Uh I've done both. Right.
So when you say stomach ache, do you mean you need to go to the bathroom really quickly? Like it gets your motor running or do you mean just like a stomach ache? No, no. I mean it does both. It but uh going to the bathroom is fine.
That that's a desired effect. That's why that's one of the reasons why I drink the coffee in the morning. Yes, but go ahead. But no I get uh an actual like stomach aching afterwards like usually three or four years afterwards. Two or four what?
Like three to four hours afterwards. I was like what? Uh the uh I mean that's that's a long memory like I had a cup of coffee three years ago and man I stomach hurts now. That's some serious post hoc ergo propter hoc right there. Um but the uh well so the thing is is there's a lot of stuff in coffee and maybe one of the maybe it's not the actual pH maybe it's one of the um you know maybe one of the particular organic acids in the coffee like like upsets you somehow could you know it could could be something other than just because your stomach's acid enough as it is you know so it I I don't know I'll look into um I'll look into um Jack write this down Jack can you keep a list and then send me like the day before I can look up some of that I'm actually gonna do this.
Alright cool. Um I'll try to look up uh because I have like a bunch of books on this subject on coffee about uh things in it that might cause uh stomach aches you know I'll look up uh Andrea Ily's book the um espresso the chemistry of quality and look up the list and see whether there's anything like I can find and peruse the scientific literature. But you've done the first step, which is uh you've tested uh no does and I hate that stuff. Did you did you used to take the I did you ever take that stuff in college, Sas? The no-dos?
I you know, I think Is that like five-hour energy shot, same kind of thing? Well it gets around the middle middleman. It's just straight caffeine at a pill. You know what I mean? It's like you know, it doesn't have any of this like fake, like, you know, oh it's gonna blah blah blah.
It's just like here's caffeine to freaking like slam your system open. But I used to just pound, pound, pound mountain dues. That's what I would do. Diet do. I would just pound mountain you know, diet mountain dew because I used to pull all nighters like once at least once a week.
You know what I mean? At least, because I didn't do any work until it was too late. You know what I mean? Uh anyways. Uh so yeah, so I'm gonna try I'll look into it and next week uh we'll try to get back.
Jack's gonna send me this stuff, but try that decaf thing and see whether or not that hooks you up, all right? Yeah, for sure. And then um next week, I'm uh I'm sorry, not next week, next month. I'm gonna try to go to uh WD50 because I just heard the recent bad news that they're closing. So something ends, something new will begin.
Although I don't think he's planned it yet exactly what he's gonna do. But I mean, I wouldn't expect uh I wouldn't expect him to be down to one restaurant for too long, you know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. Uh but I'm definitely gonna try to head there. I don't know how hard it is to get a reservation.
I don't know, I haven't looked, but I bet hard. I'm gonna go once again before it closes, but I bet you it ain't so easy. Yeah. You know, I'm gonna try to do that pretty hard, and then I'm definitely gonna check out the newest, coolest great bar Poker and Back. Yeah, sweet.
Well, let us know. Let us know before you before you go, and if I'm not around, hopefully I'm around. If not, uh tell us how it was. Sure it will. Thank you very much.
Alright, have a good one. Uh Jack, you want to take our quick uh commercial and come back and blast through the rest of cooking issues? Uh that sounds like a plan. Alrighty, brother. 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 complé 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.
Wow. You like that meditation music? See, I have much more on the give me the other cheese song in contradistinction to uh Steve Jenkins' cheese song. Yeah, I hear you. Hey, Nastasia, this will bother you.
You know the the guy's name that made that song on the break? No. Jerome L O L. Like laughing out loud? Correct.
Oh, you also got a gift. I did? Yeah. What is Dave got a gift? Oh, it is.
Alright, we'll look at it in a minute. Let me let me blast through some questions because we never got any questions. Stas is gonna unpack this, which he didn't already do, so I don't know what it is. Oh, because you have so much problem opening my packages normally. Stas opens letters much like my much like my son does by just like flapping it open to see whether money falls out.
That's how she all. Yeah, I learned it from watching you. Okay, uh seriously, let's get some questions. So, uh, I had a question in that says, hello. Uh, I think Dave missed my question.
Um, because uh apparently like I got it in a this in a Twitter format. This is from uh uh Rodney Guthman, and uh he's like he started he's like he started like off on a tangent and forgot my question. So we're not gonna do any tangents. So don't talk to me about this the this gift until I finish this. Anyway, uh the question we read last week was is it possible to uh buy cream and then dump water into it to make milk at home so as to save on weight and stuff like this?
And answer, no, for two reasons. Here are the two reasons why. And also, did I answer the I won't go off on this tangent, but did I answer the uh beer ice cream question a while ago, or did I also tangent fly off on that? We'll do that real quick too. Okay, so here's why.
So uh when you have yourself some uh some whole milk, when I say whole milk, I don't mean whole milk like in a in a store. I mean like you get your milk out of a cow, right? What you have is is you have a a a water phase with uh fat droplets in it, right? When you let it sit, the fat droplets rise to the top, and you have your your quick cream enriched stuff at the top and you have your milk at the bottom. However, the water phase is relatively similar throughout, right?
You with me here, Stas? Water phase relatively similar throughout. She's not paying attention, she's looking at the gift, which is good because she has to describe it to me in a minute. Uh so anywho, the here's what happens. When you're taking cream and then you water it down with water, you're watering it down with water and you're not watering it down with uh milk proteins and all of that other uh good stuff, whey proteins, all this other great nonsense, right?
Uh and everything else that's in the in the water phase of the milk. Like you could water cream down with skim milk, but then that that that that misses the point because you haven't gotten I mean then you have to still carry the uh the the skim milk home with you, so you're not saving anything. You could water it down with powdered skim milk, and that would save you some weight, but you're gonna have that like off flavor that comes from powdered skim milk. Powdered skin milk, believe it or not, tastes even if you ever tasted it, tastes even worse. I thought you were the one that like, we didn't have a TV.
We had to glue together two automobiles. What? No. Anyway, skin milk is uh powdered skin milk. It's good as a as an ingredient in things like uh like English muffins, but not so much to drink.
Uh Jack, you ever had the powdered skin milk? No way. It's nasty. Sounds horrible. Yeah, I mean, look, it's something you drink because you can't necessarily afford to have the like real milk around or like you know, you before parmelot came out and you have it in your cupboard for 8,000 years or whatever.
Anywho, uh, so you could do something like that, but again, that that stuff's nasty. Here's the second reason why you shouldn't do it. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the cream that you purchase in a supermarket has been ultra high temperature pasteurized. And the reason for this is cream doesn't sell nearly as quickly as milk sells, and cream doesn't get used nearly as quick quickly as milk does, even once it gets home. And so they assume, they mean the dairy weasels, assume that the cream is gonna be on the shelf for a long, long time, and so it has a much longer window shell of shelf life that's required for it.
And so they pasteurize it to a much higher temperature for for a higher time so that they can assure that they kill enough of the stuff in there such that it lasts a lot longer, but that makes more of a cook taste. And if you can ever go find yourself some I mean raw, forget it, but if you can ever go find yourself some regular pasteurized even cream as opposed and do a side-by-side of that with ultra-high pasteurized uh cream, like it is a world of freaking difference, like almost as much difference as there is between, let's say, regular milk and parmelot. Although you know a bunch of Europeans like that box milk. You ever hang out with the the Swiss Swiss weasels that you hang out with? But they like it over there, right?
Some people actually enjoy that crap. Well, it's with the weasels today. I don't know. Weasels, they're like ferrets, you know. Like uh, you know, you remember Giuliani, we ever talked about that in the show, how Giuliani hated ferrets, and so he made them illegal because he's like, and then he got in arguments with people on his radio show.
This guy called in and was like, You're why do you hate the ferret lovers? You ever heard this? Go like yeah, do a search for the the radio episode where Giuliani literally berates a constituent, by the way, a New York City resident, who says, you know, why do you what do you have against ferrets? Because Giuliani, towards the end of his career here, like really kind of went off of his nut in terms of like arresting homeless people, doing all sorts of things. I mean, I was forward a lot of the quality of life stuff here, but like then he's like, you know what?
One of the big problems in New York is people keeping ferrets, ferrets. They should be illegal. And so he made it, he like made him push through like ferrets relegal. He's like, Sir, you raise weasels, they're weasels. And he starts screaming at this guy about how his ferrets are weasels.
But like, why does Giuliani care whether some other dude has a a weasel or a ferret? I don't know. It's weird. But anyway, cheese weasels, dairy weasels. Uh so that was my answer on that.
Now on the beer ice cream, because Jack, I didn't talk about the beer ice cream, right? Sorry, no. Yeah, so somebody uh a couple weeks ago asked about making beer ice cream, and I do have any thoughts on it. Yeah, I like beer and dairy things. Here's the dealy deal.
Beer doesn't have a lot of uh alcohol in it anyway, so you're probably gonna be uh okay on the alcohol level, but beer has a lot of water in it. So if you want to get rid of some of the alcohol, and you want to get rid uh because you know, alcohol will soften your your recipe uh, you know, versus what it normally was. So if you want it a little softer, then leave the alcohol and if you don't. But what you need to do is get rid of some of that water. So what you want I would boil uh I would boil the beer off a little bit.
I would also make sure that you choose a fairly non hoppy beer. And this is the same thing like when we do um when I do cocktails like the with beer, uh, most often I'm choosing very low hop beers, uh, so that they don't interfere too much with uh the flavor. So I would choose like a low hop, uh low hop like beer. Like, don't go get like dogfish heads, like you know, 120 minute IPA to do this stuff. Uh you know, we do like uh like Abbeys and Saisons and stuff like this, like low like low mellow stuff, and boil off some of the water and then add enough milk powder to it, back to milk powder, add enough milk powder to it, or boil some milk and add it to it such that your level of milk stays the same in your recipe.
So typically I would add like liter cream or five hundred mils cream, five hundred mils milk, uh 170 grams of sugar, and uh ten egg yolks and uh salt, right? Plus flavoring. So, you know, if you wanted to take that entire half liter and have it be beer, that's a lot of beer. But you know, I would I would uh boil some of the water out of the beer, uh, take it down and then milk powder it up to the same level as it would be if you used uh half a liter of milk, stir it into your cream, pasteurize, and go. Yeah?
Yep. Yeah. Okay. Uh so uh what's the what's the presence now? Uh this is from Dorothy from Health Glen.com.
Oh, yeah. I remember she wrote a question in a while back. It's been a while though. Nice. She's a farmer from Minnesota and she gave you some syrups.
Oh, nice. What do we got here? We got some a rasuberry tarragon shrub and what else? Uh smoked cherry shrub stas. You'll have to drink this one.
Unless it's cooked. Is it cooked? I'm sure it's cooked. Okay, I'll try it. I'll try it and if I fall down.
Oh, tonight? All right. Well, we'll uh this isn't poisoned, so you can well, not poison from normal people, but as you know, I'm allergic to cherries. Yeah. But but if it's cooked, it should be all right.
Then we got some some some lime some li ginger lime cordial, and what's the jelly? It's uh lime and green tea marmalade. Marmalade. Do you what do you think about people who say it? Marmalade.
You like that or no? You ever watch cheese and chong movies? No. No? Jack, you ever watch cheese and chong movies?
Yeah, but I don't remember. Eggs and bacon marmalade. You ever see the one where the they they whatever. No, you would think that people would still watch, you know, Cheech, very smart guy. You know, Chong sent to jail for no apparent reason because someone used his name to sell drug paraphylay.
He had to go to jail for it. Ridiculous. What's wrong with us in this country? Okay. Uh some more questions.
Um I know you guys like to focus on what makes food delicious, but my question is more at the opposite end of the spectrum. It's this why are the pizza crusts from all the major pizza delivery chains so relentlessly disgusting? I know that sounds harsh, but if you know how to make pizza dough and have an even basic oven, uh, it's actually kind of hard to make uh pizza disgusting, and yet in my opinion, the big chains managed to make a pizza that's mostly pretty inedible. Certainly to anyone that knows what pizza should taste like, do the big chains face some special challenges in making our cooking pizza that are not obvious. Thanks for your uh advice on this, Simon from Cambridge.
Well, um, I worked at Domino's uh when I was in college, and everyone knows that Domino's pizza is, as you say, relentlessly disgusting. Except for, you know, like and like like no offense to the Papa John's Corporation. I love Papa John's. No, I detest Papa John's. My kids love it.
My like my kids think that well, Dax doesn't, but Booker thinks that Papa John's is like the highest quality pizza in the world. In fact, he can he likes it better than any other pizza that you can get. I don't know why. I don't know why. I think it's to make me angry, to make me like very, very angry.
But I can tell you why Domino's pizza was bad. Domino's pizza was bad. First of all, the sauce was bad because it contained a lot of sugar. It was l low quality stuff. And uh and the ingredients were crappy and had been sliced up in a factory like 18 years before they were put on the pizza.
The beside that, what the cr the crust, the way the crust was made in this, and I'm sure it's the same in all these chain situations, is the dough is not made in-house. It's made somewhere else uh and then retarded and then um put on pallets and left to proof. And so even had they used a good dough um they you know like trying to get it when it was at the optimal level of proof like you you just never you never would and then I'm pretty sure that they weren't using very good uh flour right and and also I just think they're cheap. I just think they're cheap. They don't want to like go through the time.
I mean you would think that they could go through the time to do like an actual long leavening process. Like you know when you're when I make pizza dough it's like a 24 hour kind of a of a thing, right? You know, twenty at least 24 hours before start and I let it go a long time and make it and then a lot of the people I know who make good pizza this is the way they do the crust. But uh and you would think that Domino's knows 24 hours in advance like how long it's going to take for them to you know how many pizzas they're gonna make tomorrow roughly and so that they could they could do a long rise dough if they wanted to. I don't know.
But the other thing is is their ovens really do suck. Uh Domino's uh can Domino's uses a conveyor oven and their conveyor ovens don't run at an extremely um they don't run at a temperature conducive to making good pizza and uh the way that the heat delivery in them is is provided is not conducive to making a good pizza and so consequently they do not make a good pizza and I think the average thing in most chains uh is is that they like uh kind of a breadier style and that I think that's also difficult to do. I actually misread your question this morning I thought you said why frozen pizza is so crappy. So I was going to get into that but maybe if someone else cares about frozen pizza being crappy we can get into that because I gotta get some more questions before we get kicked off of the air. Am I right stuff?
Yep. By the way, did uh we hear anything from uh I didn't see anything. Okay. So here we go. We got a question, or not a question so much as a as a statement based on last week.
I asked for vegetarian uses for the um mergen circulators. So Eddie Shepherd, you know, who wrote the vegetarian cookbook and his uh his uh a vegetarian cookbook. Uh it's uh www.vegiechef.co.uk is uh his website. So he wrote in blah ba-buh ba-bum bum bum. Uh Eddie Shepard writing from the UK.
Enjoy the show. Uh and heard uh Martin from Sweden's question at the end of last week's episode regarding Sous-Vide low temperature vegetarian cooking. Um I know you prompted the excellent Michael Natkin to write in, which will be great. I'm a big fan of his blog and chef steps, of course. As another vegetarian chef myself working a lot with Sous-Vide, I thought I might be able to add some helpful suggestions as well.
Firstly, uh the application of poach eggs and ice cream, etc. are of course well documented, fantastic vegetarian uses of sous vide. And for making lemon lime curd or any other flavor curd you fancy, it's also very handy. Fancy sounds like a very English word, right? Fancy, but cat fancy, even though that's not English.
Do you like that magazine? Cat fancy? Yeah, I know you would. Uh and Dave uh already went through a lot of the benefits of cooking a range of fruits and vegetables sous-vide for uh flavor, precision, texture, as well as the benefits of making dashi in the water of ass. What do you think about vegetables instead of vegetables?
Why would you say vegetables? I don't know. Alice liked the word vegetable. What do you buy you, Jack? Neh.
Uh then I also use CV for a number of other applications covered below. Low temp halloumi. We talked about Halloumi on the show before, right? Halloumi, the cheese from Cyprus that can be grilled. Halloumi good cheese.
They actually literally, that was their advertisement. They're like, it's Halloomigood cheese. I'm like, really? That's what you got. That's what you got.
So Halloumi Halloumi Cheese, similar to queso parfrier, similar to a bunch of things. It's a it's a it's a cheese that's made uh without acidifying the curd. So it's a directly rent uh rennet coagulated, and apparently having the relatively neutral pH of a non-acid, uh non-acidified cheese uh prevents uh it from melting uh substantially. I know it does because I've used it, and then also they cook they they make like a ricotta style thing out of the way when they're done by acidifying it, and then they cook the uh the cheese, curds, pressed cheese curds in the way, which solidifies them even more, and then you get your halloumi cheese or your frying cheese, which you can slice and then you can grill, and it doesn't melt, but then and it gets it's squeaky, but then when it cools off, it's nasty squeaky. Anyways, uh I like halloumi, I like all I like queso parfrier, I like all that stuff.
Anyway, so uh Eddie Shepard writes in and says, Halloumi cooked at 64 Celsius for for 1.5 hours with butter, fresh mint and lemon zest is delicious and benefits from infused flavors well as having a lovely soft texture. I haven't been able to achieve by any other cooking method. It can also be pre-seared to get the lovely browned flavors. Um he also wrote uh for transglutaminase use for uh the vegetables. I use sous vide for some vegetarian applications of transglutaminase, including a pressed mushroom technique, uh, which uh Michael and Chef Step took inspiration from as well for their own technique for these are like mushrooms and or like kind of mushroom blocks instead of meat.
And so I'll I'll just tell you what what he what they do. They uh he Eddie slices and dehydrates uh the vegetable, which the mushrooms, which is porous, and then uh makes a slurry of soy protein isolate uh and um flavor and then mixes in transglutaminase and presses it flat and then a block and then and then cooks it off later. Let's it sit for four hours and puts it off later. Now the interesting thing is is that he uses an extraordinarily high percentage of transglutaminase in this, five percent. So it's an typical typical meat style thing, it's like one percent.
Uh and this is like five. So it must need a lot to bond it together to uh to you know his satisfaction. Chef Steps uses uh instead of soy protein, uses sodium caseinate, and then uh uses three three and a quarter percent transcontaminase or thereabouts in their prep. They also used ground mushrooms instead of mushroom slices and make more of a burger. Uh but those look good.
They look good. Um and Eddie also says he uses uh Sou vide making his uh Halloumi uh at home because uh that's how you're not supposed to boil the way that you put it in, you're supposed to keep it like uh he keeps it at 90 C, which is about right. I think it's 195 Fahrenheit is how much they cook it. So he says it takes a lot less diligence than the normal thing, it doesn't get scorching. Uh he also uses it for uh putting white chocolate in a uh in a vacuum bag and cooking it at uh 90 C for like uh 24 hours and it gets like a dulce lay shape brown.
You know, you've ever seen those things like the like the white chocolate that I actually make taste good by cooking it for a long time. No, no, I haven't seen it, plus I don't want to talk about it. Um anyway. Um, and also he says that uh he ordered a TS uh 8000 Burnsmatic TS8000, which is the one we use on the Searzol in the UK through the eBay, costing $60 total, which is more or less what he would cost to get a Rottenburger. But the question is, and I'd love to hear back from you, Eddie, is do the propane tanks in the UK fit, or do you have to make a special adapter?
Uh anyway, I hope that's some some help. And if you do across to the ULK when your book launches, try to get up north as well. There's lots of great food and cocktails happening in the Manchester. And if you've not visited before, it's a great city. I have not.
Have you, Stas? No. Uh okay. And so uh they're gonna kick they're gonna kick us off. So I have like oh no, I have like five like five four minutes, right?
Four minutes. I have like four minutes. And I just want to give a shout out to Co. Miles for supporting the network. Oh, I love Co.
Miles. Yeah, he's the man. Co. Miles is a good man. Thank you for supporting Co Miles.
He supported us with the uh Mars Cuisine book, which I really enjoy. He's uh great guy. And and some interesting stories, which I will not share. But uh, well, he he shared with me when he took the Sous V class, I think it was Sue Vide, uh, some like some funky stories. Anyways, um okay, so we're ripping through.
Uh this is Sam from Guysville. Where's Guysville? Anyway. Uh for a chamber vacuum sealer, is getting water oil on the inside of a vacuum bag where the ceiling element presses affect its sealing ability, thanks, Sam from Guysville. Yes and no.
A small amount of liquid is not going to hurt too much because the temperature is such that it'll boil it off and then seal fine. However, large amounts of liquid can cause problems. Also, uh, if your liquid has any crap in it, like spices or whatnot, this can inhibit the seal because it's physically a particle and it prevents the bags from touching it together. So I've had many things go wrong. Where am I from?
Wrong. I've had many things go wrong when you have stuff like pepper or stuff get in spices. Uh I've also had a problem with lots and lots of uh liquid there because I I don't know why. I guess when as it's boiling out, it creates a little channels and stuff, but a small amount of liquid's not going to be too much of a problem, so don't worry about it. Um and then finally, although I think I I know I missed one.
I missed one. I'm uh I'll tell you who I missed. I'll tell you who I missed because I'll get you next week. Uh and we'll get to the Twitter questions next week. Next week we're starting a section.
What's it called, uh, Jack? What? The section of things you haven't answered? No, the set well, we have that, but we're gonna have Nastas and I'm gonna be on time next week. Uh uh, yeah, next week because I'm on I'm not around the week after that.
No, is it Nastasha reading the tweets? What did you say I was gonna go? Oh, yeah, we gotta re I I gotta come up with a name for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We gotta we gotta do uh I'm not gonna be able to answer uh Brandon Johnson's questions on carbonation.
Uh but I'll get that next time. And we have another question on one on um well, I'll do the bag and box because I can do that in two minutes. So there's also a carbonation quite uh uh question why it burns from Bush Week Brooklyn writes in about bagging box syrup. Hey Dave, uh Jack and Nastasia, I was wondering if you've had experiment uh experimented with making your own bag and box soda concentrates for use in a commercial beverage system. I'm really interested in experimenting with a frozen carbonated beverage machine for cocktails, and since these machines are under pressure, i.e.
they don't have a hopper you can pour a mix into. I think the only way to get my ingredients inside would be through the concentrate line. I've never used a bag and box system before. Do the syrup pumps just pull the liquid out, or is there some sort of magic going on with the bags? I could theoretically just cut off the BIB container and stick it into a container of my drink ingredients.
What sort of ingredient ratios we'd be looking for to do a carbed alcoholic slushy concentrate. Okay, it's a good question. Yeah, bag and box, they just have a uh usually a pump. The pumps that are manufactured typically by SureFlo here, they're run off of carbon dioxide, and they pull the uh liquid from the bag. You need to make sure you get rid of the air in the bag because that can mess with the bricks, and then they push it through an orifice that's set for a certain pressure, and that's how they meter out the uh syrup into a typical Wunderbar uh bar gun.
Um and then you adjust with a little screw exactly what the bricks is. So I'm assuming that there's a similar sort of mechanism uh going on in one of these machines, although I've never used it. Now, here's the here's the story. Here's what you need to look at. When you're looking to make a carbon uh when you're looking to make an alcoholic slushie, right?
The first thing you need to shoot for is the right alcohol level. The right alcohol level is between about 14 and 14.4% alcohol by volume. Don't go any higher than that, or you're not going to get it very slushy. And if you go too much lower than that, it's gonna get pretty hard in the machine, right? You're gonna look for roughly eight bricks, so around eight percent sugar.
So do your calculations uh based on that. Now, to go any other way, you're gonna have to calculate eight bricks means eight percent sugar by weight. So in a you know, if you weigh uh a liter uh or weigh a kilogram of uh product, then you know, roughly eight uh eighty grams of it should be sugar. Anyway, um here's what I'll give you here here's a uh typical typical soda like is a roughly a five to one ratio, so five parts water, one part syrup, which is a total of six parts. Okay.
So six parts, let's say we're gonna do six ounces out of thirty mil ounce, because I use thirty millimetric ounces, right? That's 180 milliliters. I'm just doing this calculation for you. You're gonna have to go back and do your own. So one ounce of that syrup, right, is about 30 milliliters.
And at a if you're gonna use a simple syrup like a bar syrup, which is about 50 bricks, that's 1.23 grams per milliliter, which is the density of a 50 bricks uh syrup. One ounce of that's gonna weigh 36.9 grams. Uh, and then so remember it's 50 bricks, so half of that weight, half of that 36.9 grams is gonna be sugar. That's 18.5 uh 45 grams. So soda made with a fifty with a 50 bricks syrup, which is one to one simple syrup, will have a bricks of uh and a parts, five parts soda to one part, uh one part syrup, will have a bricks of 10.25 or slightly less sweet than the Coca-Cola, and use those rough things to make your own bricks calculations, and we'll get back next week with cooking issues.
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