Today's show was brought to you by molecular recipes.com, the world's number one source for modernist recipes, techniques, ingredients, and tools. Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carboni from Beer Sessions Radio. 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. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network from Robertus Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Every Tuesday from about 12, super late this time, 12 15, to about, I don't know, what when when do they kick us off the uh air? 12 45. But then no, they really kick it at 1250. Stas' mic's not on?
Now she is. Oh no, it's all right, nice. Uh joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? Fine.
Uh I see you've retired your Christmas hat, which I'm very sad about. Yeah. Nastasia has perhaps the greatest Christmas hat of all times. All times. Like it is like wearing a knit Christmas tree on her head.
It's pretty sick. You don't think it's hipster, do you? Uh, you know, if nothing you wear could possibly be hipster because, you know, then it would be like matter antimatter coming together, and you know, you would dissolve in a burst of energy and light, you know. Uh but this is quite a tall hat you got, and it's kind of line stars. The one she has right now or the Christmas hat.
I think the one now is potentially borderline. I know, but it's warm. It's got a pretty sick pom pom on top. It's like you've executed some sort of small fluffy animal and just directly put it on top of your hat. You know the thing about the pom pom is it doesn't actually add any warmth to your hat.
Yeah, I wonder what the history of it is. Oh, here's Stas coming down the street. I can tell by the Pom Pom. Maybe. Maybe.
Uh in the booth, we have uh who we got over there. We got Jack and White over there in the engineering booth. We're here. Hey, why do me a favor? Uh figure out who it was that wrote in about the Ty Basil, because uh I can't remember, so I want to give them a shout out for their awesome idea.
And joined in the studio with Heritage Radio's new intern for the next couple of months. What is it? Devlin? Declan. Declan.
Declan. Nice. Hey Declan, how are you doing? I'm pretty good. And tell you why don't you tell people where you're from?
I'm from uh Brooklyn, New York. I'm from Park Slope. Yeah, but what do you do? You're here as part of something with uh with your high school, right? Uh yeah, we um for the second semester of our senior year, we do an internship instead of like regular classes.
So I'm doing this. Yeah? Nice, nice. They didn't let me do that when I was in high school. No.
That that that when I was in high school, you know what you did? You stayed in school. Yeah. Although seniors were allowed to leave. I didn't have a car, so I didn't.
Because I wasn't that kid with a car, even though I did come from the land where, you know, everyone had outdies with dancing bears on the back. Uh you know, I was not one of those. I mean, I wish I was one of those kids. But anyway, so uh so how do you get into this intern thing? What do you uh a little bit of nepotism?
My sister works for Robertas, so she kind of got me the the gig here. So yeah. You're a senior in high school, right? Uh huh. Let me teach you something very freaking early in life.
Okay. Nepotism is like everyone's like, oh yeah, I want to do it all on my own. I don't want any help. That's crap. Take whatever help you can get from whoever you can get from wherever you can get it.
Every almost everyone that you've heard stories of, uh you know, like later in life were like, I started with nothing and I built it all myself without help. It's all lies and crap. Like if you look into what most people like do, they have some freaking help, you know? Yeah. So don't worry about the nepotism.
Do not be ashamed. Like, here's the thing. Like, once you get in a position of uh, I don't know, are you gonna be a wealth and power? Is that what you're gonna shooting for in life? Uh I don't know about that.
But whatever, let's say you were. Like, once you're there, then you can say, okay, maybe I shouldn't maybe I shouldn't dole out the nepotism to someone who is unworthy. Right. You know what I mean? Like that's the res that's the responsibility.
Once you have the crap to dole out, then you have a responsibility. When you don't have anything, you have no responsibility not to accept the generosity of others. Just saying. What do you think, Stas? I did it all myself.
I do it all myself. I started from nothing. A lowly Stanford grad. Uh Jack, what do you think? Uh I agree, and I also just want to add that I'm doing a little research here.
It seems like pom poms are pretty much pointless and decorative. In some cultures and religions, they denote like the rank, you know, by color. Uh so where's the black pom pom rank? Yeah, I don't know. She's she's been listening to the uh to the the city is mine.
She's like, uh not the city is mine, what's it? Oh, what's the one? All black everything. Oh my god, my brain is erased. My all my rap knowledge has been erased.
Anyways, uh, I have a question in from Matt in Chicago. Dear cooking issues folk, I have a bit of a challenge for you. I'm writing on behalf of my daughter. She's doing her fifth grade science fair and her project says about acids and bases. We have the acids down.
She's dissolving uh an eggshell, a whole egg, in one container of vinegar, and setting the egg whites in another. Can you recommend some cool food-based experiments she can do with bases? I thought about pretzels or alkaline noodles, but didn't think either would be interactive enough. Also, she can't really cook anything on site. Thoughts.
Uh Matt from Chicago. P. S. She's a big fan of the show. I wish my kids were big fans of the show.
Uh actually, I I I don't because like sometimes I'll mention stuff like Dax is already mad at me because I mentioned uh what was it? I mentioned something he did that. Oh, the burning eyes. Oh, my eyes! Yeah, yeah, what was that?
The whole the wasabi oil. Yeah. Nah, sad. Uh she's a big fan of the show and wants to come in, so call in some time. Unfortunately, she's in school when you guys are live.
Maybe I'll have her whole class in one Tuesday. LOL. Yeah, that'd be fun, actually. Where's the class? I wonder.
866 708. Where's 708? We'll find out. Yeah. Um I've done school presentations with liquid nitrogen.
That stuff's fun. Like, I've done it to it's like Illinois. Ill and yeah, I'm not gonna mean where we have plenty of what, Illinois? Maybe we'll have something there. I don't know.
I'm gonna do so. Anyway, whatever. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about acids and bases. Now listen, you're doing eggs.
Hey Stas, I can hear you crinkling your mint like from a mile of freaking away. You guys hear that online? This is what Stas thinks about. Mints, mints, mints. I found it in my pocket.
Yeah, alright. All right. Well, we took a car ride. We were doing a uh demonstration with uh Mario Batali at his son's high school, in fact, where we demoed, among other things, liquid nitrogen and dragon's beer, two kind of fun demos to do in front of people. And the Limo driver, what was his name again?
Like Arturo or something like this. He had like a bunch of mints, so Stas is like, he didn't ask me whether my seat was comfortable. So she takes and scoops, scoops all of the mints into her pockets like Atomic Fireballs. Atomic fireballs and mints. She like looked, she like her pockets were like all chipmunked out with this dude's mints just because and the sad thing is, Jack, is that the dude did ask her how her seat was.
He totally did. Whatever. Okay. You are in luck, my friend. Or I should say your daughter is in luck, because if you want to stick this entire thing with eggs, a really fantastic uh base demo is um doing uh lie soaked eggs.
I hope you have a couple of days to do this. I believe that if cooking issues hasn't been entirely turned into one giant Cialis ad by now by the freaking hackers, right? Uh I believe I put the recipe up there because it's something we used to do with Harold McGee, where we would take eggs. Now, interestingly, one of the interesting things about it is that uh it works differently on quail eggs, uh chicken eggs, and and uh duck eggs. I've never tried a uh you know, a Rhea egg or an emu egg or an ostrich egg, but uh it works differently on the three normally available eggs that uh that I can get.
And uh I forget the exact percentages, but it's high. It's somewhere in the in the you have to get some food grade lye. Uh don't lick it. Uh and uh or don't let anyone near who doesn't know what's going on. And be careful when you're following the rules on um on lye because uh it's very exothermic, and so you just have to you know follow the rules mixing lye.
But it's something high, it's in a couple of percent lye. There's a lot of lye. And salt, a lot of salt, I think it's like five percent salt. And you soak the eggs in it for I forget, but it's like a week or something like this. And uh what happens is is then when you cook them, the the base has denatured the proteins to the extent that and you can, you know, cook them, you know, uh just with regular boiling water, even you could bring a pot of hot water and cook them up because it doesn't take a lot.
They've denatured the proteins to the extent that they will still set, but they are completely uh translucent. You can like look through them, and there's pictures on the on the blog of this. And you can eat them, they're funky, they taste a bit like Lutfisk, you know, uh, which is another good uh basic thing. Uh it's a s shame she can't cook uh on site because I think pretzels is actually a fantastic demo just doing the pretzels, because you can do the boil in um regular water and then the boil in basic water, and you can see the huge difference in um browning between them. And when you taste one and then the other, you get a very, very clear sense of what the basicity does to uh to the taste, right?
I mean, if you taste a pretzel that's been boiled in regular water, it's just like like a like a bagel in a pretzel shape. And if you do it uh the other way, it's well, it's pretzel. You know what I mean? So um I think it's interesting. But look into that egg thing.
You used to that that was a cool demo, right? People like that demo because it's weird because you can see through the egg, and you're already doing a lot of work with eggs here. So maybe it's uh, you know, what do you think? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh especially if you can't cook.
So most of the myard things are gonna be out like my art. I mean, the things with base that you have are right, you have the uh alkaline noodles, you can show the stuff turning yellow, you know, if you get the right stuff. That's interesting. You have uh acceleration of umard, uh, and you have you have also like uh increase uh in um uh pectin breakdowns, right? So you could do like a mushy test by adding base to something like beans, adding too much base to something like beans, and then uh shifting it acidic and showing how they're har cooking them side by side, but you can't really do cooking.
Um and then the other one is just um protein destruction, or if you don't want to do straight food, you could do saponification, you could make soap, you know. But again, that also is gonna take some cooking. Anyway, uh hopefully some of these things are of interest to you. But remember, when you're playing around with hardcore bases, especially lye, uh you're gonna want to be super duper careful. You know what my favorite acid thing with food is, even though it's not food related.
You ever you ever done sulfuric acid and sugar? Do they do that for you in science class? No. It's sweet. Like the sugar just gets completely uh turned to carbon, but it happens so quickly that it forms a column of uh carbon coming out of the yeah.
I've seen videos of that. That stuff is really, really cool. Sweet. Yeah, it's not food related in the sense that you can't eat it afterwards, but it does start with food. Starts with food.
Um speaking of uh speaking of fats and uh saponification, uh Brian from uh Mipples, that would be Minneapolis, Mipples, uh writes in Does anyone in Minneapolis like take umbrage at like people calling it mipples? I mean, I guess they wouldn't. I guess not. Mipples. Okay.
Uh proving that no good deed goes unpunished. I have a second question for you. You responded very thoughtfully to my question about chia seeds a few weeks ago. Stas. Give me your chia seed face.
Your your chia seed drink face. Yeah. Anyway, I want to solidify canola oil for disposal after using it for deep frying. Uh I'm a bad person. I do it in a Dutch oven on the stovetop, not a commercial fryer like Dave.
By the way, my commercial fryer at home right now is not fired up because my hood is currently not operating uh well enough to use my deep fryer. So I have been reduced to frying on the stove like a chump. But what that means is I'm frying uh I'm frying things that don't need um that are not going to abuse the oil too much and that don't need very stable uh temperatures to work. And it don't like so French fries, you don't want the stuff to get too low or you get too much oil oil absorption, right? Uh chicken, obviously you want to do a good job of frying.
But like the easiest things in the world to fry, potato chips and tortilla chips, because you want those suckers. Hey, you know, anyone that disagrees with me, feel free to write in. But those suckers are saturated with uh with oil. They're just saturated. You know what I mean?
And all you're really doing with like really what you're doing with that is you're using the oil as a dehydration technique to boil the liquids out of your stuff. So tortilla chips and potato chips, you can start from a cold pot of oil if you want, heat it up till it's boiling, let it boil until it suckers crisp, and then just not brown it. So at home, when I'm using a crappy fryer for uh, you know, crappy Dutch oven for that, like I well, I don't use a Dutch oven. I actually use a pasta pot with a colander in it so I can pull and drain. And, you know, I just heat it till it goes, mellow, turn it off in between batches, and it's good to go.
I mean, I ain't frying chicken like that though, because I mean I'm not that much of a chump. Anyway. Uh the only product that I can find that supposedly solidifies things like canola oil is a Japanese product called Kentomeda Tempuru. By the way, remember we were given a package of that uh after the show. I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.
In a couple of weeks, hopefully I'll have a chance. I've been busy, but hopefully I have a chance to play with it and see what's going on. Um there's a post you can look to uh on Chopsticks NY. Uh I've only found one online seller and it's crazy expensive. $89 for 50 packets.
What is that per packet, Sus? Come on, man. Hey, you're in high school. Give me some math. 89.50, do it right now.
Do it, do it, do it. 20 20 grams each. Uh, and that was on uh Japan Goods Finder. You got it yet? 89 bucks, 50.
Come on. I do. Come on. Come on. All right.
Uh reports say that this powder is derived from seaweed. This makes me wonder can something like carry gene in solidify oil? I don't think so. Or is something else available from Modernist Pantry, modernistpatry.com. Um anyway, so then after this, he writes in, by the way, I answered my own question about the oil solidifiers when I found some at a local Asian grocery store.
It's hydroxysteric acid, almost certainly with some bulking agent not listed in the ingredient list. I've attached pictures on the front and back of the package, and it looks like you heat the oil to 80 C, then stir in this stuff, and then it thickens as it cools down to 40 C. Uh I used one 18 gram packet and about two quarts of oil, and it got very thick but not quite solid. I guess I need to use more. I still have two questions about it.
It's still Brian from Mipples asking questions about solidifying oil. Any idea about the proper oil to acid ratio to get solidified? No. I can't read uh Japanese and neither can I. Um, but I could find someone that reads Japanese.
I have plenty of people that can read Japanese. You know, I should take the package to them and see. I'll I'll do that. I'll I'll try to. You know what the thing is?
If I throw the if I throw it in my backpack, then I'll just have it there, and then when I meet, you know, one of my friends who speaks Japanese, I'll look at them and say, why do I need someone who speaks Japanese? Oh, Catameric Impuls, and then I'll get the stuff out anyway. Um then uh finally I found one chemical supplier that sells smallest quantities of hydroxysteric acid, TCI America, which sells 25 grams for 18 bucks. Uh the product I got was um uh was 180 grams for eight bucks, so it can't be pure hydroxysteric acid based on TCI's pricing. Well, there's this is where this is where I disagree with you, my friend.
Uh I looked on TCI's website a couple of points before we go on to the next thing. I looked at TCI's website, and while they do in fact sell 25 grams for 18, you got by the way, you got that 8950 thing? Come on, you're not even looking at I'm looking at you're not even doing the math anymore. I can't, man. Oh man.
Man. Putting all this pressure on you. Jeez. All right. So while they do in fact sell 25 grams for uh 18 US dollars, they sell five hundred grams for thirty-nine dollars.
It's a dollar seventy-eight. Yes, Doss. I know my head. Yeah, but resourcefulness. She didn't even bring her phone out for that.
She did. She did. She has hid it from me. She's so used to hiding the phone from you. Trying to make it look good.
Yeah. So now so anyway, so but you can buy 500 grams off the same website for only $39, proving to you one thing that you should know in advance. Any chemical site that will sell to you is going to rip you off major time just for repackaging it. They're selling uh an order of magnitude more. In fact, an order of magnitude times two of the product for a mere twice as much.
So uh you're just paying for the small quantities there. Another thing I might add, I did a little poking around uh on this uh stuff, which uh I'm not gonna attempt to say without looking at it. Hydroxysteric acid. Uh and the thickening power of it depends a lot on uh what salt it is, right? So remember it's a f it's a it's a it's a fatty, it's an acid, right?
And it's usually sold in a salt format. And the lithium salts of it, various lithium salts of it, are what uh is used to make lith grease, like you know, like very thick uh lithium grease. And so who knows whether or not like basically you're making lith grease in your in your house with this, in which case maybe this stuff would be a good lubricant. Don't know. Do I know?
I don't know. But I could try to look more into it uh if I remember, although odds are I won't because odds are I'll forget. Odds are I'll forget. But maybe one of you out there knows and you can tell me. Caller, you're on the air.
Uh yeah, I had a quick question. Um, what would be your death row meal if you could only have one meal, either for you or well, hopefully for you, Sasha and Jack. What would be your last meal on earth and how would you cook it? All right. Uh well, I'll go I'll go a little bit first before I say, like, I don't know that I'd be hungry.
You know what I mean? I'd be so freaking anxious that I don't know that I'd be that I agree. That hungry. And here's another thing: like uh if I was in prison on death row, right? I've heard that they don't really like put the energy into it that you would want.
You'd be like, you know, you'd be like, all right, I mean, like, you you'd be tempted to bust out all the stuff that you never got to eat, right? Be like, uh, what I would like is I would like uh I would like an ordalon side by side with uh you know a bubble ink, which is like the rice bird, which is traditional, it's illegal to take them now, but like I want one fatted as it flies down uh and eats the newly planted rice crop in uh South Carolina on its way down to South America. And I would like a similar passerine migratory bird from China, uh, you know, the uh paddy swallows that they have over there. I would like them all at roughly at similar points in their migration, similarly fattened, so I can do a side-by-side comparison on my way out. Like that's what I would want.
You know who would end up doing the work for that would be me. You'd end up, oh man. Yeah. You know, strangely, I think I've said this on the air, but the bobble ink, but after uh 1919, I think was the migratory bird act where you're no longer allowed to shoot birds unless you're specifically allowed to shoot them, right? So they was protected, uh, and it's been protected for a long time, uh, obviously since 1919, but all you know, almost a hundred years.
But uh you know what kills them now? Like they get killed in by the bushel. You know, but you know by what? They're a ground nesting bird. They get killed by lawnmowers up in the northeast on golf courses.
Because the bird's like, what a great place for a nest. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, maybe maybe the question is not so much death real, but like if you had one meal, what would it, what would be your if you could only have one more meal, what would be that?
You know, maybe minus the death part. Minus the death. Yeah, well, mm, it would be a boring life afterwards with the no food. But I think I would still do some sort of crazy comparison of stuff I couldn't otherwise do. I wouldn't necessarily go for the comfort food because there's no comfort to be had.
You know, you're gonna have the round. You're gonna have you're gonna well, even if it's not, you're like, hey, boah, it's the last meal you're ever gonna have. Oh, whoa, I want to learn something, you know. And that was Francois Mitterrand's last meal, minus the bobble ink, and my because you know, he's such a freaking French chauvinist Mitterrand that he was like, uh I think it was Mitterrand. He's just like uh it wasn't de Gaulle, it was Mitterrand.
And he was, you know, he's like, uh, I only want the French one. Anyway, but uh so Stas, what would you have? Uh I think I would do caviar with sour cream pringles and champagne. Wow. You like you like your caviar on a Pringle?
Pound it out, Stas. Caviar on a freaking Pringle. I thought she'd be like Bleenies. No. And she's like, I want my caviar and Pringle.
By the way, you know how we're like uh we're discussing giving arms to Ukraine? This guy was this guy from the Ukraine. I loved it. He's instead of saying night vision goggles on the news yesterday, he's like, night night vision googles. Night vision googles.
I'm like, I want some night vision Google. That would be sick. That's a sick internet search. Night vision Google. Jack, what do you got?
Mine's weird, but it would be like the best, best, best bread and butter. Yeah. And that'd be it. Bread and butter is some delicious. We got Peter Kim and Peter, what would your last meal be?
I'll give you about 13 seconds to think about it because I'm learning. Fried chicken. What kind of fried chicken, dude? That's like saying I would like to have, I don't know, food. Like what kind of fried chicken?
Like what style? Do you equate fried chicken with food? I'm saying there's a wide range of fried chickens, my man. So what style of fried chicken? Or would you like a panoply of styles of fried chicken?
Look at me. What kind of you think? Oh. By the way, those of you that might not know, uh, Kim isn't like Kim is is a Korean name. Peter Kim from the Museum of Food and Drink says he wants Korean fried chicken.
But since he's pulling the race card on me, I'm gonna make you say it with the accent. Could he and put I couldn't do it? There you go. Nice. Nice.
Nice. Not really nice, but there you have it. Anyway, uh, caller, I hope that answered your question. Yeah, I'm just glad to hear like Natasha actually would like something, and she gave such a good answer with Pringles and Caviar. That's just awful.
Yeah, well, that's classic Nastasia, high and low for you. Like that's classic Stas. Uh, I did not even know that she I actually did know you were a fan of the Pringles because they're basically a potato paste. It's a weird product, the Pringle. But she has a big she has that weird, like, like smile plus revolt.
You know when kids like like get themselves into something they know they shouldn't do, but they love it. That's the look Stas has on her face when she talks about Pringles. It's good stuff. I would have expected Nastasia to do something more like, you know, a baked potato bar or like twice as baked potato. Have you ever seen her eat a potato?
Have you ever seen her eat a baked potato? Yes. Really? Yeah. Where?
We had baked potatoes that one time when we went to uh where was it for the Pats game? Uh oh, yeah. I like a baked potato. Remember in the well, you don't. But in the 70s, man, baked potatoes were like boom, baked potatoes everywhere.
Baked potatoes, delicious. Hey, so let's take that quick break now. Oh, quick break. Coming back with some more cooking issues. Hey, what's up, guys?
It's me, Jack, as in Jack from Cooking Issues, as in the guy that's probably been talking on this show. So, here on the break to tell you about molecular recipes.com, which is not only an awesome website and store and resource, but also they support us, which makes them even that much cooler. So I know Dave gives you plenty and plenty of information on the show, but should you need further resource, should you want to get some of the things he's talking about? Molecular recipes.com has recipes, techniques, ingredients, tools, all in the world of this modernist thing we love so much on the show. So, you know, explore the world of foams and spheres and invisible foods and mind-blowing cocktails, all that awesome stuff.
There's a community of over 400,000 chefs, scientists, and food lovers sharing their favorite recipes, tips, and tricks. Cool photos, tools, gadgets. Again, this is everything you'd be into, all in one place. Molecular recipes.com. And just for being a listener of this show, you'll get 10% off any of their popular kits just by using the promo code HERITIAG at checkout.
That's promo code Heritage. So again, check them out. Molecular Recipes.com. Tons of really awesome stuff there. Definitely right up your alley.
And remember to tell them that you love them and that we sent you there, but that you hate the name because you should never call cooking molecular. Am I right? And you know, listen, we've had this conversation before, so I'm not going to belabor the point or beat a horse that's already dead. By the way, do we have that discussion about beating a dead horse? Really interesting.
We did interesting idea. You're trying to get more work out of the horse. Anyway. Um beating a dead horse. Uh so anyway, you can still, I still hate it.
Everyone knows I hate the word molecular, and I'm allowed to say I hate it, even though they're a sponsor. Anyway, Tyler writes in about high pressure cooking. Dear Dave, Nastasha, Jack, Joe. Wow, this is like pulling them all out. Eddie, Carlos, and Indy Jesus.
You're missing some Wyatt, and you're also missing uh you're also missing uh Satan's little helper. Our hipster uh hip hipster, hipster, hipster elf. That name really just keeps going south every time. Yeah, yeah. He's crazy.
But is he is anyway. He changed his look after Christmas, I noticed. He's not quite so elfin anymore. Uh I've recently become interested in high pressure cooking, i.e. above the standard 15 PSI of a pressure cooker.
And the MIARD and Caramelization reactions that occur therein. I thought it would be interesting to see which compounds are created and if it would lead to a super flavorful product. I remember your post on the uh blog about Myard pipe potatoes and was hoping you could expand on what you thought about this process. You seem to come to the conclusion that no matter what the treatment or substrate used, the product was disgusting. My question is do you think that this process by high pressure um produces uniquely different compounds of the two Browning reactions due to the presence of water, or do you think that the acrid smells based purely on the concentration of these compounds?
Also, I've been looking for information on this process in the literature and unable to find anything good. Can you recommend some articles and or books on the subject of high pressure cooking? Love the show, keep up the good work. Thanks, Tyler, uh from UC Davis, uh classic 2016. Um I don't have any scholarly articles on it.
Um, you know, uh from what I do know is that, you know, my art in particular is extremely complicated, and that the uh, you know, the the end products of uh the myard reactions are like you know, a shotgun spray of different um different things, and that uh the the flavor and aroma of them is wildly dependent on uh the temperature, the pressure, uh the can you know the the precursors that are there, uh, and probably also you know what the moisture level is. So basically everything that can that can be a factor is, and that some of the uh things are delicious, like bready and brown and delicious, and some of them are just awful crap. And I don't think that it's merely a uh concentration. I think it's probably um different compounds being produced under different um conditions, but I don't have any scholarly articles to back that up. What I did was I took a pipe and I s I put uh liquid and food, and I did some with without extra liquid, just using their own moisture, and I did potatoes, I did uh a variety of meats, I did some other veg.
I think I might have done beans or something like this, and I sealed them in a uh in a pipe and then I threw the pipe into uh into a deep fryer. Don't do this. Please don't do this. Uh, you know, uh especially uh Matt from Chicago's daughter, please don't do this. And um and so the deep fryer is a way for me to stably get the temperature up without overheating it, right?
Because if I if I was trying to control the pressure some other way, there's a there's a very you know strict relationship between the internal pressure and the temperature on the outside, assuming that it's sealed. So by throwing it in the deep fryer I could get a very constant um uh temperature and pressure on the inside. So I was pulling like 150 psi uh or thereabouts at like 300 and change degrees uh Fahrenheit and then pull it out and the potatoes were completely brown all the way through and were the most putrid potatoes I've ever put in my mouth. Ditto with the meats putrid, putrid, putrid. And someone said, well, maybe it's the maybe you're getting some metals off the pipe.
So I I tried stainless, I tried copper, I tried aluminum, all putrid. Uh I was never able to get any uh kind of good thing that didn't taste incredibly uh awful out of it. Um the only time I've done kind of ultra high pressure cooking, uh so then another like another pressure thing. I've cooked in regular pressure cookers up to about 30 PSI by modifying them. Don't do this, please don't do this.
Uh and then testing um, you know, the the like stock. And uh it turns out that 15 PSI tasted better than like 25 PSI did for stock. So there's definitely uh a shift in the flavor of what's going on as the pressure increases or decreases, and we noticed kind of a uh you know, a spike in the hedonic uh curve um for at least stock around 15 psi or thereabouts and you know worse below and and and not as good above either. Um now that said I have cooked some things at higher pressure. You I did a thing called desk nachos for um uh first week feast and I very unsafely raised the uh pressure inside you did I did that with a sears all or regular torch?
I think I might have but I might have regular torch whatever anyway. I think I might use a regular torch on it. I I took an EC and then shoved a thermometer into it to test to make sure I wasn't getting it too hot, and I did uh beans in there, and I think I was probably pulling something close to 3540 PSI or higher in it, and they tasted good. The beans tasted good. Anyways.
So it's possible to do things at higher pressure, but uh you know I didn't do that in a controlled way, and I would never recommend somebody do what I did for those desk nachos. And the guy next to me, I think wanted to kill us because of like the danger involved. But uh it's not gonna blow. Like they look those EC things are constructed so well. Definitely don't do it with an off market uh whipper.
Anyways, go check it out. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. Alex writes in about Wondra. Hello, Nastasia, Jack, and Dave. You know, let's take this caller real quick.
Oh, caller, you're on the air. Hi, actually, this is Alex who wrote in about Wundra. It's totally different question. All right, what's up? Um first off, thank you so much for the show.
I enjoyed immensely. Oh, thank you. Uh secondly, uh, I get to go to New York for the first time in my life at the end of the month. And everybody that I asked about what to do in New York, where to go in New York, what the you know, not necessarily the greatest hits album, but like the good mixed date compilation. Um they don't really get like food and drink and stuff like that.
So besides Booker and DAX, I don't want to end up at CGI Fridays in Times Square because my mother-in-law likes it a lot. Um where again, not the greatest hits, but what's a good, well-rounded, like things I don't want to miss while I'm there, or that just kind of you should get pizza, you should get a bagel, you should get what? Right. Okay. So where where so where are you from?
Uh Santa Barbara. Okay. And is your mother-in-law coming with you? Not at all. Okay.
Uh okay, well, you're you're in luck that we have Peter Kim here today because uh Peter Kim, as you might know, is the um director, so what is associate? What is it, program, the president, head of the Museum of Food and Drink Emperor? Galactic Emperor. Uh, and he's been actually spending a lot of time. So the thing is like, what do you want to do?
So, you know, Peter could make up and has made up uh lists of you know really interesting trips into, for instance, Queens to do some of like the kind of hardcore ethnic enclaves that we have here that's super interesting. And you know, he could run down uh uh uh you know a list of that stuff, but if you know, or you could try kind of higher higher end New York centric kind of um things for bagels. I mean, look, if you if I were to tell you one bagel place, then like all the other bagel people would shoot me in the face for picking that bagel place. Well, I happen to like it's down in my neighborhood. They just changed hands recently, and their style I noticed changed a little bit the last time I was there, was uh Kosars.
The Kosars is right near me. I like Kosars a lot, and right near Kosars actually are like the pickle guys. You can get the real kind of lower east side uh feeling, but hands down, like without like without any sort of go to Russ and Daughters and and get their um try the northern Norwegian because they let me tell you something. Like if you go out and you get um smoked cured salmon, right? So Nova Lox or it's you know it's equivalent, and you get it pre-packed and you've never had someone hand slice like a super high quality uh version of it, then you haven't you haven't had it.
You know what I mean? Uh and they're it's expensive, but by far and away, Russ and Daughters has the best sliced salmon I've ever had in my life, and they they slice it for you. In particular, I would try their uh if they have the Baltic, I would get the Baltic, but it's very rare to have it there. The Norwegian King is delicious. They're all delicious.
They'll give you a little taste of each one. Uh and their cream cheese, their plain cream cheese is an unstabilized cream cheese. It's a little bit grainy, but I find it doesn't keep, so you're not going to take it home with you, but it's just I think incomparably delicious to any other cream cheese I've had. Uh I don't know who makes their bagels, they're okay. And they also have the older Union style bagels.
Um but Kosar's bagels are good. With a bagel, you want to know, like, am I going for like do you like a doughier like Essa style that's kind of puffier and doughier? Do you like like a harder style or like you know, like a thinner, like a like an H style? Uh I used to like I used to live up near Columbia, you know, uptown, and they had both styles in kind of um, you know, they had an absolute up there and they had uh Columbia bagels, which were kind of like diametrically opposed styles because you know the guys up at Absolute were were from Essa. Um they you know they had apprenticed it all at Essa.
But you should have an S who else does the good bagels now, like Peter, who else is known for bagels? But like Essa style is a style of bagel. But yeah. There's that trendy spot in the Lower East Side. What's it called?
Black seed or something like that. I haven't been. Is it good? I don't I've heard it. I mean it's it's popular.
Anyway, but you know what? If you want tr traditional Russian daughter, we're gonna should go to Russ and Daughters. Uh if you want like an old place old school Italian store uh with super high quality stuff, go to DePalo's on Grand. It's also but you know, budget time at either of these places, unless you go off, you know, off time, like go in the mid-afternoon when there's not a lot of people, otherwise, you're gonna be there for like forever in a day. Um, you know, then if you want to see I mean the problem is there's like so many like places have cropped up, but when I was a kid, like I used to love going to Dean and DeLuca's because you couldn't you just couldn't see it anywhere else, but now you can get this kind of market kind of more often in other places, you know, uh, or like uptowns, you know, Zaybars used to be a Mecca for you know in the in the eighties for people going, but I you know I haven't been in in many years.
What what but then Italy would be good on a quick trip, right? I can't stand the crowds. I'm sure it's like the crowds make me wanna make me want to stab myself uh like repeatedly. Um Dave just generally wants to stab himself repeatedly, so that doesn't mean much. Yeah, and then you know, in the bars, like a bar crawl here, like you can do an intense bar crawl, and I'm like I'm not gonna mention any because then I'll insult the rest.
But uh, you know, uh, you know, but you know, there's like so many uh famous bars, all actually like you can even just stay in the neighborhood of Booker Dicks. Uh McSorley's that's oh McSorle's you can go to go to McSorley's, go to McSorley's uh before the frat douches show up. So go like am I allowed to say that? Yeah, you're not gonna be able to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh but I mean that's not too offensive, right? It's not offensive. All right. Uh, you know, we have kids that listen to the show occasionally. That's right.
Uh so I apologize. Uh maybe we can bleep that on the thing going out. But anyway, so but my point is is that uh you want to go there early, and uh they have the greatest urinals ever. Like, so I detest public restrooms, I hate them uh with a passion, but they're uh they're actually okay. But you get the get the cheese plate, which is basic basically a sleeve of saltines, onions, the world's spiciest mustard.
Don't overdo it. I've actually burnt my tongue on their mustard by over consuming and what's it, raw onions, cheddar, or their liverwurst sandwich, well known. And like two pints, uh it used to be two pints like two bucks or two fifty back when I was in college, but it's probably like three fifty now, and they're not real pints, uh, they're short pints. Uh but you see, I remember once I went in there in the in the early nineties, or maybe like nineteen ninety, right after I turned twenty-one, so uh ninety-two, maybe. Anyway, and I said uh I was like, what do you I was like, what kind of beer do you have?
And he goes, We have mixorleys and more McSorleys because that's all they have. Dark and light. Yeah, dark and light. And they served all through prohibition and no one else no one no one messed with them. So that's old school New York.
Um what else, Peter? What do you got? I mean, in general, as as Dave said, uh I I think my favorite way to eat in the city is really visiting uh the ethnic enclaves. And if there's one train line you had to pick, I'd say the seven train out to Queens. It's pretty amazing what you can find on there.
You can pretty much get off anywhere and you can have you can find everything from uh you know, Thailand, uh, you know, uh food from Thai food, uh Nepali of you know, mainland China, uh, you know, re the like I think the best Korean stuff is also out in flushing. You can find incredible Colombian, Peruvian, uh Venezuelan, it's all on this train and it's it's kind of amazing. And you know, if you look up you can reach out to me actually if you want, but also um uh you know, if you look online, the you know, there are a lot of people who've put together great, you know, like tasting guys. It's got a few good. Yeah, Citzema's a good guy to look at um if you're interested in that.
Um but that's just one slice of it. And I mean, I think that's one of the most incredible things about this city is that you can go and get off a train somewhere and it's just like you know, you're in another country, like you walk into markets and you don't recognize any of the products, you're going into these places, people don't necessarily speak English. And uh yeah, and and then you know it's sort of a hybrid cuisine that's been created in New York City. Right. And if you want to break the bank, you know, uh go go like pick one, like uh pick one of the super high ends to go to because they're they're fun to do, like kind of you know, once like I don't know, go to it depends on what style you want.
Like, you know, you can go to uh you know Mark's place, you know, Del Posto if you want the high end Italian or you know, JG is a great place to go, and then you have like you know, all the awesome oh you go to Contra, which is a really interesting place. That's fad fabulous, like uh and Jeremiah, like who I used to work with, that's their place. Or like, you know, uh Stupak's uh Empeon Casino, Wiley's has Alder, which you can't go to WD anymore, but you can go uh there. Those are all in kind of a concentrated uh neighborhood uh as well. But there's there's a bajillion good places to go.
Um there's also Olive Garden. Oh yeah. Those breadsticks and salad. Did you know that those breadsticks are unlimited? Yes.
Without limit. I know. That's why you have to go. But I have one of those here. It's not the same.
It's not the same. Like an Olive Garden uh in Times Square is incomparable. It's like the the Chevy's freshmex is so much more Chevy in in Times Square. Everything is I'm kidding. Don't ever eat Times.
Don't ever, don't ever, don't ever go. It's not don't ever go. I'm not saying that, but uh you know, remember the the freak economics book basically saying it's impossible to get good food in those kind of locations because it's not possible. It's not doesn't it doesn't make economic sense for them to make good food in those in those locations. Um I'll tell you something that's not so good is and I'm embarrassed to f say it, is that the standard New York City street pretzel is useless.
Yeah, horrible. Yeah, I agree. Like the idea of it is fantastic, and they can be delicious, but they're always just a horrifying mess. Oh, oh, I have to just put this in there because this is probably for me one of my favorite ways to eat in New York is going to Coney Island if you're coming in the summer and getting Nathan's dog and sitting on the beach and eating it. I'll tell you what, Coney Island is awesome in the crazy winter too, because there's no one there but the dude who has no teeth and the one dude dragging his limbs, you know what I mean?
Yeah. But yeah, that's true. But I mean, I think it's I think Coney Island is is one of my favorite destinations in New York City. And you can hit some of the cool Russian neighborhoods outside of that where you can you, you know, there's Uzbek Korean food? For real?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there were uh Koreans that were forcibly moved into Uzbekistan by Stalin, and I guess there they they fused uh Korean cuisine with Uzbeki cuisine. And so there's a restaurant called uh at your mother-in-law's in uh it's uh and it's at uh in Brighton Beach, so near Coney Island. Yeah, you know that it's there's an Italian slang word that translates to your mother-in-law's pillow that's the chestnut sold in the case with the spikes. Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, uh all right, they're gonna kick us off of here. Yeah, we have one more caller. Do you want to try to squeeze it in? It's up to you, brother. I mean Yeah, we can do it.
All right, caller. All right, cool. Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, it's Andy from Chicago. How's it going?
Hey, alright, what's up? Uh not too much. Uh one quick thing. M Wells at the PS1 in uh Long Island City is a great spot for New York dining. Real rich, heavy, good place for lunch or brunch, something like that.
Nice. Good call. Yeah. Yeah. Um anyway, I'm renovating my kitchen.
I was thinking I was thinking about going with a foot pedal faucet, but I've started to see those sort of electronic touch ones. No, no, no. You know, where you just kind of bump them. What what are your thoughts? How hard is it to retrofit?
Do I need to plan for a foot pedal ahead of time? I would I would plan temperature control on both. I would plan. There's a couple different ways you can go with foot pedals. I've never gone with uh a full temperature control.
I've just gone with a dual pedal situation. There are ones where you can set like a mixing valve and then use a single pedal to press the the mix out, and that's probably what I would do in a bathroom. If I was going to put uh which by the way I am, gonna put uh foot pedals in uh the next bathroom that I do, I'll probably just have a central mix and not even have uh the ability to turn it on with your hands because there's no reason to leave a bathroom faucet running. There's just no freaking reason to leave a bathroom faucet running. Unlike a kitchen where you might want to leave it running for like a pot or a pan or something like this.
Um but in a kitchen, typically what you're gonna want to do, uh I would stay away from the electronics. It's just something that can fail, and it's like, you know, you don't want to you ever been at an airport and you put your hand under a thing and you're like, go, go, go, go. You know what I'm saying? I hate that more than anything. I'm like, I just want water now, and then like you know how you pull your hand out, and as soon as you pull your hand out, the freaking thing comes on?
How many times has this happened to you? Yeah. Right, right. Yeah. I hate it.
But I I mean, I'm not talking like uh a sensor one. There's one that kind of works like the old touch lamps where you literally just tap the faucet with your forearm or wrist or something that's not contaminated and turns on. No touch, no touch. Here's what you're gonna do. So what you want to do, are you gonna go deck mounted or wall mounted on the faucet?
Uh probably deck mounted. Deck mounted, okay. If you don't mind stuff that looks a little bit commercial and I don't, is uh go I mean TNS brass makes some nice stuff and I I use I use almost exclusively TNS brass when I buy just because I'm used to using it for a long time. Um and you want a you you they sell some uh faucets and you can look around. You can buy things that are individual.
The key thing is that you need to have separate control over you need to have uh a T that goes into the central uh the spout, right? So the main problem with uh with uh retrofitting a uh foot pedal onto a faucet is that um is that in general it goes directly from the two uh hand valves right into the main spout. But um there there are some that don't. There are some that are just sold separately, right? So you buy the spout and then you buy the mixing valve separately, and in those situations, it's very simple to put a T and then with check valves, because you don't want any back, you know, flushing of stuff, you put the foot pedals on.
Super simple. And that's what I did in my last uh place. I had a faucet and a spout separately, and I just mounted the stuff all all separately. The other alternative is is that um some systems that have sprayers attached to them, you can disassemble the sprayer before the little flap valve that uh sh well actually, can you? Well, the one I have it you can run the both the faucet and the sprayer at the same time, so you don't have to worry about uh whether or not it shuts off the stuff.
And for that one, you just throw a T in between and put the you know put the input uh the output of the uh of the foot pedals directly to it with speedy, you know, with with uh steel, you know, stainless steel braided flex lines and and check valves and you're good to go. And so it's it's all dependent upon buying the right stuff. But if you go through TNS brass, everything's modular with TNS brass. And I don't know whether it's still the case, but KTOM, which is uh somewhere in the south, I think out of Florida, usually has pretty good rates on TNS brass, and they'll get even if they don't carry it, they'll get it for you. It's a pain because you got to call them and get the right part numbers for it.
Uh and but I used to buy all my TNS brass off at eBay because people were doing renovations and then they had extra faucets and then they're free. You know that free, but you know, almost free. Yeah. Cool. All right, I'll check it all out.
Appreciate the advice. All right, thank you. All right, listen. I got a c a lot of questions I didn't get to. Jack, maybe we're gonna have to do another uh catch up, right?
Yeah. Uh like Max from Sweden who wants to know about building his outdoor barbecue, but there's gonna be a lot more on that as I build my own in the coming season. And then the one thing I will do on the way out, because uh it's time sensitive very quickly, is um uh where are you? Ryan writes in uh hey, I managed to score a sweet deal on a 10 kilogram leg of pork yesterday, bone in, skin on, 20 bucks, and then realize I have no idea what to do with it. I'm assuming a brine of some sort is in order, followed by a trip to the oven or barbecue, but again, no idea.
I'd appreciate any tips or advice you can throw my way. Listen, don't bother with anything complicated if you don't have a lot of time. Like I I cook one of those in like in like 13 freaking like well, not 13 seconds, but you just take off the take off the skin, chop it up, throw like hack the meat up into you know relatively small pieces, break the bone at the knuckle pump, throw it in, pressure cook that sucker, make a pork chili, pull it out. You can pull out the skins afterwards because they're all gelatinous, chop them up real fine, chop up the meat real fine, and make a pork chili. Pork chili.
What do you think? Pork chili? Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Pork chili. Owe us your favorite bands, too. Uh, next time, cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradionetwork.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes Store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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