Today's show was brought to you by molecular recipes.com, the world's number one source for modernist recipes, techniques, ingredients, and tools. Hi, this is Joe Campanelli, the host of In the Drink. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadio Network.org for thousands more. All right, should I uh Happy birthday to you?
Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Dave. Happy birthday to you. Uh very nice. Very, very nice, very nice.
All right, now, before we start, thank you. Uh at what age do I get to say years young instead of years old? Uh I don't know. When you're like 60? Yeah, probably 60.
Yeah, yeah. 44 years young. Alright, so here's the here's the here's the question. Should I should I do this NPR style or should I start this like regular cooking issue style? I think regular cooking issue style, we can take it from the top.
Hello, and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, Committee Live on Roberta Pizzeria in Bush Twig, Brooklyn, every Tuesday on the Heritage Radio Network from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Joined as usual with nostalgia the hammer Lopez. Got Jack in the engineering booth. Calling your questions to 7184, what is it?
7184972128. That's 7184972128. You like that one better than the NPR style? I prefer the MPR style. Hello?
Yeah, really? Yeah, I do. I've heard feedback from listeners that like it's in the live. Because they usually listen in the morning, and so the yelling is like, but wait, maybe it's like you could use it as like your eh. For me, it gets me ready for what's to come, you know?
Hello. Welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, broadcasting live out of the studios in Roberta's Pizza Wea, Bushwick Brooklyn. On the Heritage Radio Network, every Tuesday from roughly twelve to twelve forty-five. Call in your live questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718-497-2128. I like that one. You like that one better? I don't know. I don't know.
We could put it to a vote. Yeah. Write us in, guys. Let us know which one you want. Tweet tweet at Heritage underscore radio.
Yeah, that underscore's kind of a killer, huh? Gotta love the underscore. Is the other one owned by the by the like uh the foundation? Yeah. I don't think so.
That is unrelated to you guys. Yeah. I don't know who the regular Heritage Radio on Twitter is. What? Oh, it's a dead account, the other Heritage Radio.
Well, the the other Heritage Radio, the False Heritage Radio. The other at Heritage Radio Regular has one tweet and it says it's from 2009. It says, I am planning next week's syndicated old time radio show. No other tweets. That's yeah.
Yeah. I was like, I'm uh we have no bottle opener here, and Jack has a oh well. I'm just gonna use your table here. Old school, because I don't have like even like a knife with me, so I don't feel like a as Nastasha would say, you're only half a man because you don't have your knife with you. But uh, you know, I'm of the uh what'd you do for your birthday yesterday?
I worked. I worked, uh I ate leftovers and I fell asleep. You like that? No, I'm sad. I was gonna go out to the bar and hang, but I you know it looked like people were there for you.
No, they weren't they they were there for they were eating dinner at Sun. Anyway. Uh so the point uh, yes. Wait, whatever. Like, you know, birthdays, when you once you, you know, once you're, you know, my age, yeah.
Birthday is fun, it's nice, you know. I cooked a big meal on uh on Sunday, because the birthday's on the Monday. Monday birthday is like, what are you gonna do on a Monday birthday? Everyone's got to work. You know what I'm saying?
Mm-hmm. Anyways. But you got a tandoor. Oh, yeah. So big news for, well, so next week is Easter.
And so uh, of course, what do you when you're gonna cook Easter dinner? What do you do? You buy a tandoor. So I drove to uh plus also I've mentioned before I'm gonna do a big outdoor kitchen, but I've really been uh kind of researching kind of what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna build uh an old school bread oven.
I considered maybe buying a bread oven and then just putting it in, but I think I'm just gonna actually build it from scratch. But the problem is is that when you're pouring the concrete and doing all this, you have like days and days where it's gonna take a long time. It's gonna take probably the better part of this season for me to actually be able to build the bread oven if I'm only working, you know, on you know, every other weekend or something to do it. So it's gonna take a while. So what can I do right now?
I can just get a tandoor. And you can buy for not that much, I mean it's expensive, but not that much money, just a completely built-in tandoor. They build the tandoor liner, uh, you know, with uh whatever hairy crap they put into the clay, the clay they in deli, they put it inside of a stainless steel trash can fundamentally, and then they uh put refractory cement around it, they give you some skewers, a little bread cushion, you hunt non works, right? Yep. With the bread cushion.
So you they give you a little bread cushion, and you're ready to go. So, you know, I'm gonna be doing uh I'm gonna do oh I gotta call Patrick Martin's. I know, you yeah. Listen, peoples, if you need lamb for Easter, which I'm sure you do, there is still time to go to Heritage Meets and and purchase some of their uh lambs. Are you uh familiar with the lamb at Heritage Meet uh Jack?
I know you're just very good. Yeah. Anyways, Tunis lamb, if I'm not mistaken. Really? Yeah.
From from Tunisia, I would guess. Uh probably. Those guys know from lamb. Anyway, so the uh the point being I'm gonna try and uh I'm gonna try and like sneak some lamb from Patrick, and I'm gonna do uh I'm gonna do Mediterranean flavors tandoor cooking. What do you think?
That's good. I like it. Do you like you like kebabs of lamb? Really? Mm-hmm.
You you've had them and don't like them? Yeah. Why? Why? What the hell?
Although I had uh from a food truck last night. Is that is that is that your new uh that sounds called From a Food Truck sounds like a like a novel, like your first novel from a food truck. What's that called? What's what called? Shave it off.
Which version of it? Uh Sharma? Yeah, uh no. It's called something. Zero?
Yeah. Oh it was really good. Donor? No. Uh yeah.
I don't know. So but that's like pulped lamb and other stuff. Yeah, I just don't like like the crusty lamb with all the spices on the outside. Oh my god. You know, you know, Stas, you never cease in finding new ways to culinarily disappoint me.
You don't like the crusty deliciousness on the outside of a lamb kebab? No, I don't. I don't like some of those flavors. What is it? Cumin?
You don't like cumin. You don't like cumin, yeah. Do you not like chili? See, that's remember when you yelled at me for not putting cumin in the chili and you were like it's not chili. It's tomato stew.
Right. That yeah. Until you had the cumin. At which point, well, or be you know, beef stew. It's beef stew.
And a rather crappy beef stew at that, until you add freaking cumin. That is uh that is not cool, Stas. I know. Um okay, so back to the although I now I can't get that out of my head. Oh, cheers.
Um what about the well his classes? What about the um what about the like the Russian version of uh of lamb kebabs? I haven't had that. You would like that because it's not spiced. That's great, yeah.
Well that's what I'm gonna make. Okay. But I'm not gonna be there. Well someday you will come up. Someday you'll come up and we'll get the lamp.
Anyway, this is where we're going off topic. Is that ever happened before that we've gone off topic? Never. It's never happened. Anyway, I'm very excited about the tandoor.
I have to um there's you you're one of the big things when you get a tandoor is it's clay, right? So you like people first you have to pre-fire it. So I gotta do the pre-firing with charcoal. And that stops it from cracking because it remember when we made the fake tandoor for Anthony Cordain. Yes, I do.
And we cracked it because we fired it real hard real fast. We tried to do a pre-fire, but we didn't. We did that stuff back then, and that was less hardcore than what? I mean legally hardcore the legality of what we did was not. No one cares.
Nobody cared. Anyway, so yeah, so you know, and we made that tandoor in what like like a day, less than a day. Less than a day. We did the old school like two flower pot tandoor and we drilled a hole in the bottom for the charcoal thing, put it in a trash can surround it with insulations. And the food was delicious.
But anyway, but now a little more hardcore. So I gotta do a pre-firing of it, and then the the big bone of contention with the tandoors that is that you have to season the inside of it with like with a mixture of like he hasn't used it? Who? The guy. He sells them new.
Oh, okay. I went to his warehouse in New Jersey. You can go to this warehouse in New Jersey and the guy will just hand you a tandoor. Well, it's like 350 pounds, but he'll hand it to you. He has actually a giant warehouse dude who looks like a giant warehouse dude complete with the sweet warehouse dude beard.
And he like picks up the uh the thing and puts it in the back of your station wagon. Anyways, uh yeah, it's out right out there in Jersey, like 20 minutes from New York. You can just go buy it, pick it up. Nice. Yeah.
So I hate to have to say this, but I have a caller on the line who's upset with the way you treated her vegetti. Oh my goodness. Hi Dave. Oh my goodness. I was so embarrassed.
That's the greatest that's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. So Dave, I was listening a couple weeks ago and I heard you were talking badly about the vegetti. Uh just the name the name the name. But you don't trust the noodle the the product no you don't trust the product. You said that noodle the you said that you didn't trust the product we were talking about vegetable noodles and how they're not a noodle it's not a noodle.
Yeah. It's not I think it could be an interesting I think it could be an interesting look I mean I think like shredded like like daikon shreds and strips are delicious. Right? Yeah. Many shredded things shredded or like strips noodles viralized.
Spiralize oh my gosh you know what all right all right uh and so you have a you have a you have a a vested steak in the in the vegetti device or more just a love for it? I have a what? Are you like a part of the Vegetti Corporation or do you just have a just have no I just I got one because I'm you know trying to cut back on the carbs and it changed my life. I mean you can you can use it for everything like um vegetti carbonara, vegetti and meatballs. I mean, it's like wait, did you say vegetti and meatballs?
I mean, it's amazing. You can do vegetti fritters. Yeah. Dave looks like he wants to kill himself. You ever done like sausage and vegetti, sausage in the gravy with the vegetti?
I'm not gonna here's a here here's uh okay. And what's your favorite things to vegettiize? Or spiralize, as you would say. What are your favorite things to uh to spiralize in the vegetti? Oh, well, I pretty much exclusively spiralize zucchini of the green and yellow variety.
But doesn't that just turn around? I've never really done anything else. I don't I think that you know it has to be um a little bit soft. I think that like a potato or a carrot would be a little too much for the spiralizer tea, you know. How how big is the opening to the vegetti?
How big is the opening to it? Like what what size of a veg can you stick into that thing? I mean, like a zucchini size. You could do a cucumber. You could do like a cold cucumber salad.
You can put a cucumber in the vegetti. Okay. All right, all right. All right, hold on. Here's my question then.
Dave, I'm gonna send you one for your birthday. Uh all right. Well, we'll play around with it. We'll play around. And and why don't you experiment with it and then you know, I'll I'll call back in and we can go from there.
That's a fair deal. That's a fair deal. That's a good deal. All right, we'll do. I haven't I haven't busted out a lot of like uh we haven't done a lot of side-by-sides or like you know, culinary tests in the past year or so because I've been you know focused more on bar and the cookbook and everything and the sears all.
But we will definitely reopen our testing, uh our t the testing phase of our career with the vegetti. I look forward to it. Thanks, Claire. Well, thank you. And I'll say that the Cierzal and Vegetti are a great match.
We'll test it for you. When you send it send send your favorite things that you like to do. Bye bye. Bye. Bye.
Oh my God. Okay. Um for those of you that don't know the well I guess you now you know if you listen to the previous conversation you you know what the vegetti does for a living. Oh man. So we were talking about before Tandoors.
Yes. So whenever you're when you when you when you fire Tandoor for the first time you um you you you know protect the uh the clay from later thermal shock right but then you have to put a seasoning on the inside so I'm trying to figure out whose recipe for seasoning you need because uh people mix like like sugar and mustard oil and like eggs and spinach and they rub it all on the inside the theory being that I guess it affects like the patina and whether or not the nauns will stick to it properly and then release properly when they're when they're cooked. But expect me to go on kind of a Tandoor frenzy for the next I'm gonna do I'm gonna probably do Mediterranean style lamb with spices that you might appreciate styles for Easter along with just non after non after non after nan you like non right? Yeah yeah everybody likes non anyone in the engineering booth not like non do I have to get an argument over here come on garlic non's my favorite. Yeah?
Yeah you like the garlic non? Yeah. I like plain. I don't know why I like plain. What about you stuff?
I like plain. I like plain. Yeah in general you like plain. Okay. Oh, I have to recover from that.
Alright, so um last week we had uh we had a question we didn't get to from uh Brian Van Clavern Cla Clavering uh about ham. Uh hey Dave Hammer and the Booth Squad. Oh, I like that booth squad. Yeah, me too. Yeah, Jackie Molecules in the Booth Squad.
Oh man. Yeah, well it's like it's almost like you become like the terror squad, right? Yeah, terror squad. All right. I received my first country ham last week.
A half of a Colonel Bill Newsom's country ham. Colonel Bill Newsom's out of, by the way, I believe it's Princeton, Kentucky, I think is where they're from. But they're uh Nancy Mahaty uh is the is the ham curing uh master there, and she's been doing it for a long time. I think she took over the business. It's got to be like maybe 15, 20 years ago now at least, I think.
I don't know. It's been a long time. I haven't spoken to her in years. But um her hams are are done according to the uh recipe that they've had in the family since their family was in Virginia, you know, hundreds of years ago. And uh they do ambient curing.
So ambient curing meaning they they really only cure one time of year when it starts getting cold out, and then they don't do a refrigerated cure process. They would have they do it in the way that you would have done it before you had refrigeration. So she has, you know, every year she produces a different batch, some of which she saves for long enough to do two and three-year-old age hams, although they all get bought up right now because she has, you know, uh pretty wide cult following following. The thing I like about uh her ham, she also doesn't for what it's worth, uh she does I believe she's a non uh non-nitrite adding uh non-nitrate adding uh person, but I I can't remember. But anyways, I think the interesting thing about her hams in particular is that uh they they I've never been to her cure curing area, but apparently it's near a pretty swampy region, and uh maybe that's why.
But they like at their best, her hams have a particular kind of funky, almost at the back of your mouth, blue cheese kind of a note that I think are indicative of her best hams. And so whenever I taste one of her hams, I like taste to see whether it has that particular note to it. In which case, then I'm you know, I'm like, oh, that's the real deal. Uh and the only other hams I've had that have that blue cheese note are uh is a ham that my wife smuggled back to me from China. Which when we go visit uh production, we can we're gonna go on a hamathon in China.
Can't wait. Cannot wait. Anyway, uh that was none. So I've got a few questions on storing it and slicing it. For storing, I just put it in a brown paper sack and fold up the end tightly inside my kitchen cabinet.
Then I set the ham in a bag on a metal grate trivet. Online, it's mentioned to use cloth or wrap uh or to wrap it in paper, so I figured this is close, but I'm still on the lookout for a cotton bag or something. My house has a California cooler, which is a vented food storage box, which I could use for food storage as well. The conditions inside there uh for the next several months will probably be around 52 to 64 degrees and around 75% average humidity, maybe a bit higher. Whereas the cabinet would be a tad warmer and drier.
Of course, I could always just use the fridge, uh, but the other spaces are more plentiful. Of the options between us, a kitchen cabinet, a California cooler, and a fridge, what would be ideal. And because I got half a ham, there's quite a bit of meat that's already exposed. Is it necessary to cover sliced areas with some sort of fat? I'd prefer not to use lard or shortening with hydrogenated oils if possible.
Why though? I wonder why. Don't know. Why? Don't know.
Alright. Uh so I was wondering if peanut oil or something might be a decent substitute. If not, I do have some leaf lard I can render down if I need to. I'm wondering what the best way to slice is. I've looked at instructions for slicing both country hams and Spanish hams.
Most of what I've seen for country hams look like they instruct you to cut perpendicular, like a spiral cut, uh, or or at least closer to being perpendicular to the bone, which seems to be better for frying or whatnot. I like whatnot's a good one, right? Whatnot. Uh for the Spanish hams, the cuts seem to be closer to being parallel to the bone. If I'm primarily eating it uncooked with very thin slices, what is the best way to cut it?
Thanks. Brian from San Francisco, California A. Okay. Now, let's go in you want to go in reverse order? Let's go in reverse order.
Alright, first of all, how to cut a ham. Now the age old uh this is like this is the heart of the, and I've spent a lot of uh time figuring out whether you should cut a ham uh across the grain, the way that we traditionally eat all hams in in this country. And by that I'm I mean even when they're eaten crudo style. So I'm talking prosciutto, and even the average American slicing a uh Spanish ham is going to slice it um across the grain. Now my feeling, borne out by research that I've done now, like did over 10 years ago, so I have there's probably I'm sure there's been a lot of uh recent sc much more recent scholarship on on this, not that what I was doing was scholarship, but it was for the ham exhibit I did back in 04, was that traditionally meats are uh the hams like this were sliced, if they were going to be eaten in a crude style, were sliced uh the way a Spanish ham was.
And that in that to this day, you know, the uh Italian folks who you know are more artisanal at it doing it, will slice it uh the the long way, that is, uh horizontally, that is with uh you know, with law the grain running along it in a long strip. This does several things. It uh produces a much chewier piece of meat, uh, and it allows you to s uh section the entire length of uh, or not the entire length, but a larger length of the ham in in one in one slide. So it gives you a chewier thing and more textual variation, and also uh let's be honest, most ham s uh hand ham slicing isn't so good, so it it gets like thick and thin and thick and thin and thick and thin. Remember that time we were doing it and you everyone was laughing at each other, everyone was telling how everyone else was a crap hole, and then as soon as you said someone else was doing a good job, then they would break through and mess it up.
That was at the farm. Yeah, it was fun. Anyways. So uh the the point is is that uh the people who like that style like that style. Now, the cross cut that we have now uh really I believe didn't it it never came into vogue in terms of crude ham serving until the invention of the uh meat slicer by uh fellow named uh Van Burkle who of the Burkle meat slicer.
So those those and those, the original ones were completely vertical, the ones that the that you see in the fancier shops with the vertical blade, and actually the original ones were amazingly frightening looking because it was literally a large spinning blade with no guards at all. They're just they're fantastically frightening. You ever seen the pictures of those styles? There's a picture of what looks like a uh you know, a 2015 Brooklynite, i.e. he's got like a huge hipster kind of mustache on them, as standing in front of this machine with oh my god, imagine if we got one of those old ones and like set it up and then like forced hipsters to use it.
Their hands would get cut off like left and right. No blade guards on this thing. They don't use their hands to hold on to the bike fixies anyway, right? Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. The only time I've been heavily damaged in the kitchen was with a meat slicer.
Well, I mean, other than being horribly burnt. But I mean in turt with a knife. And the lie. Yeah, but I mean what I meant to say is the only time I've been really, really badly cut in a kitchen was on the was on a meat slicer. And that was like a m semi-modern one with a bunch of guards on it.
Even like I'm holding my thumb even just thinking about feeding my thumb into the edge of that blade, which is like anyway. Um I've thankfully never, you know, severed huge, you know, anyway, whatever. Um yet, yet. Wow. Uh you don't want to know what Stas just said.
Anyways, the point is uh that the advent of that slicing technology has kind of like led not only to the luncheon meat phenomenon that you have, remember blimpy back in the day? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh fresh slice, blimpy. Do those things still exist?
You still have blimpies? Anyways. Um but led to this idea of cross-cut hams and the ability to slice them uh very, very thin. Uh and all Americans grew up who grew up eating Americans that grew up eating uh prosciutto uh and other crude-style hams grew up eating it this way. And I have to say I like it.
I like a cross-cut ham. Cross-cut ham is five thousand times like I don't know, it's more supple. It hangs like a fabric in your hands, you can put up to your nose, sniff it in a way that you can't, I think the long kind of stiffer strips. Um and I I like it. And it's and it sections a different thing.
Instead of sectioning along the length, it sa except uh it sections whatever particular muscle group you're on right now all the way through. So I like it. Uh but that said, it's a matter of taste. I don't believe, as other people believe, that there's a right answer or wrong answer. I think it's what you want.
If you want that more tender, thinner slice, go cross-cut. If you want to sample all the different uh pieces and you like that textual variation, go uh go horizontal. But I will say it's incredibly difficult to try to make good cross-cut slices by hand. So if you don't have a meat slicer, I would I would slice it more traditionally. Get a like a long, thin uh or straight slicer and and learn to strike a slice uh serrano style.
Make sense? Mm-hmm. Okay. Now, as for uh what was the middle part of the question? The middle part of the question was um quite a bit of meat already exposed.
So the fact of the matter is is that any meat that you leave exposed will uh you you want to keep it in you know not too dry an environment or it's gonna overdry, it's gonna dry out. But any piece of meat that you leave exposed will end up, depending on how long you store it, drying out to the same extent that a um that the face so if you look at a ham like a standard like American country ham, there is a portion of the meat that's exposed, uh, you know, where you severed the leg from the pig, right? The face of the of the ham there where you severed the leg, there's that exposed meat. And eventually any cut surface will approach the same level of desiccation as that face section of meat, which maybe you like, maybe you don't. I would believe that any oil covering would uh help somewhat ameliorate um that problem.
You could probably even literally store it in oil, you know what I mean, with a complete cover of oil, like in a gallon zippy with like oil around it to prevent. I don't know, I've never tried it, but I'm sure that would work. But that said, the old school folks, and in fact, in um mountain in Spanish mountain hams and in Italian Italian actually in Italian hams, right, they'll uh I forget. Do you remember what they mix in with the with the lard? They mix some sort of flour with the lard, but I forget what it is, and paste it over the face.
That's why the face of a prosciutto is that kind of like whitish uh color uh when they're when they're curing it. Um and that prevents um rapid moisture loss through the face, and so what that means is is that is that the the meat will be relatively similar levels of dryness throughout the uh muscle. Whereas if you look at a cross-cut of an American ham, you'll notice that the meat that's closer to the face is substantially darker, substantially drier, has a different texture and different taste, therefore, than the main cushion of the meat, which is up and usually very very much softer. So anyway, and in the old days, yeah, you would rub lard and probably with some other mixture or some crap with it so that it doesn't drip out on you. I don't know.
Uh and that's what uh I remember I think it was Morris uh burger from Burgers uh smokehouse uh in uh Holly, I think I believe they're in Hollywood uh in the Ozarks, but the town's called H I think it's the town's called Hollywood, which would be pretty awesome. Anyway, he used to say that what they would do is they would go out, they would hang their hams on a wire because the the rats in the barn couldn't hold on to a wire, right? So they couldn't climb down a wire to get to the hams, and then they would slather uh lard, they would cut the piece off, they then they would slather it with lard and hang it hang it back up on the wire, and that's the way they would keep their hams out in the barn when he was a kid, and then they would go scrape off, slice another uh frying slice out, and then put the the the lard back on and go, and that's how they would keep it. So that that should work fine. Now as to where you should keep your hams.
I used to hang my hams. There's two there's three, there are several enemies to hams. So the first and uh enemy is over-desiccation. Uh I would guess probably in San Francisco, that's not gonna be too much of a of a problem. Um the other two enemies are um bugs, specifically like things that bore into the the meat, these like little beetles.
Uh I I hate them. I hate them. And you can see like you'll get like little boreholes in your ham where those freaking beetles get in. Now, this is where screening is gonna help you, right? And any sort of uh thing like that is gonna help because once they hit, they'll hit all the hams that you have that have exposed uh meat, right?
So the bag should probably prevent this, like the cloth bag will probably prevent this. Uh some papers and sacks probably prevent this. Uh so you you won't have that problem. The other problem is freaking mites. Now, mites they form like a dusty powder, and you'll notice a dusty powder accumulating under your hams because these mites get there, and I don't think any screen, I'm not sure, but I don't think any screen is gonna prevent you from getting once you have the mites on the ham.
And for me, it was I brought a mighty ham in, mighty ham. I brought a mighty ham in, and then all the rest of my hams got contaminated with the mites. And I spoke to um I spoke to uh uh Sam Edwards from S. Wellis Edwards and Sun, uh a supporter of our network, by the way. Uh, and he was like, Yeah, like unless you have treatments for it, like in your home, you don't typically treat for mites, unless you treat for it, like once you get a mite in once you get mites in there, you're you're you're you're done.
You're gonna have the mites. And and nobody the mites they make that powdery stuff. I mean, I don't know that they hurt the ham, but it's kind of an irritant. So uh storing it in the fridge. The problem with storing it in the fridge wrapped in paper is that uh you'll get some moisture coming up to the surface there, and I've gotten mold on the paper, which is not a big problem, but you have to kind of wash it off.
So I would just kind of hang it out, maybe in your California cooler. I think it should be good. Temperature fluctuation, not bad, it'll just keep aging. You just gotta worry about over-desiccation, uh, which you could probably fix using uh some form of lard spread over the face of the meat or some stuff like this. Yeah?
Yeah, yeah. Let's take a break. Come back with more cooking issues. Uh-oh. Well, we're not?
No. We're not going to a commercial break. Alright. Jackie Molecules not ready with his um uh, 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 molecularecipes.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 resources, should you want to get some of the things he's talking about? Molecular recipes dot 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.
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Molecularecipes.com. Tons of really awesome stuff there. Definitely write up your alley. And we're back. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Did you say invisible foods, Jackie Molecules? Can't see them. Can't see them? How do you know how to shove a food? If you go to the website, you'll see.
There's like invisible raviolis and stuff. Oh, you see, see through. You can I guess it would be see through. Yeah, I mean, in like I'll tell you what, if I could sell invisible food, I'd be a rich man. Look at all the invisible food in front of you right now, Jack.
Pay me. Transparent and see-through. I like that. I like transparent see-through. I as you all know, anyone that's met me knows that I enjoy uh I enjoy some clarified products.
Yeah, some distilled products. Listen, go to the go to their website, check it out, and you know, hopefully you're gonna find something that you desperately need and order it to show that that you know their sponsorship is is worthwhile. Am I right, Jack? Yeah. I'm eating invisible scallops right now, by the way.
Oh my god, how do they taste? Really good, they're seared perfectly. Really? Yep. Yeah.
Even the searing is invisible? Yep. Dang. Dang. You know, remember the first um time someone I remember uh because uh the Rokas, right?
So the you know, Jordy the brother, Roka, who's the pastry chef, or I guess still is at uh El Clark and Roca, um, he was using their rotovap because they were kind of pioneers of rotovap, and he was making all of these perfectly colorless, clear desserts, like with the flavor of X, Y, and Z, like years ago. It's kind of a mind blowing uh mind blowing experiment back in the day. Uh way back in the day. Anyway, okay, uh, questions. Uh Eddie and all writes in about pepper.
Hey, Dave and the crew, I'm in love with the oils produced via the Chef Step technique. So you look up on Chef Steps uh thyme oil. Uh so basically they do uh they bag they vacuum bag and then um cook their uh the time with the oil and other spices at 55 C for Celsius for three hours. Uh okay. So far we go through a ton of time in rosemary oil at my house.
Now thinking about adapting that method for black pepper oil. Obviously, we'll need longer extract time and heat question. And he uh but where would you start on a process for that? Thanks. Uh Eddie, okay.
Well that's a good question. Uh I've never I've never since I haven't done it, right? I'm like I'm not gonna give any l numbers here. What I'm gonna say is I would I would set up uh test batches, small test batches. So the first thing you're gonna uh want to do is I would test a range of uh the short answer is no, I don't have any recommendations.
Here's the long answer. I would set up a bunch of test batches with a different uh kind of grinds of the pepper. Different peppers, first of all. I mean, obviously you know black pepper is not a a kind of unitary thing. You can get like Malabar, you can get telecherry, you can get a you know, a bunch of different uh kinds.
And so even like a trip, if you live here in New York, you can just go to Calustian's uh or even a dual specialty or any of these places and you can buy five or six different kinds of pepper. And we used to do that. Remember we used to have those pepper tastings in time? Did you like that tasting? Yeah, that was fun.
We did it basically on butter with bread, right? Because the butter helped like spread it out, and so so we would just do butter, bread, and pepper. We'd smell it by itself. And in fact, there are stark and huge differences between the different kinds of uh peppers, right? Yep, yeah, yeah.
Even you agreed. Yes. Yeah. The lady who thinks it all ketchups tastes the same. Um the So back to back to this.
So what I would do is I would first uh try to figure out which kind of pepper you want to use, and then I would try uh whole, uh cracked, uh, and fine. And then I would because I've I've done pepper with uh with liquor, right? In fact, I think I have one by black pepper tincture in in the book, and for that I tested a variety of grinds, but I've never done it in and a variety of peppers, but I've never done it in uh oils. That's why you have and then I would test a variety of temperatures uh and then I would see test those temperatures to see which temperature regime you like best in terms of balance, and then after you do uh and I would test like maybe three different temperatures, like low, medium, and high, and then uh and then in between those temperatures I would test probably another two, and then I would test duration of time. So you're gonna have to run a bunch of tests, but in the end you'll be able to get um something that you really like, and then you can tweet us back and t tell us tell us what you like.
But I'll say another thing is that uh I'm reminded years ago, Steingarden called me on the phone, and he's uh Jeffrey Steingarden, you know, like one of my uh you know, culinary writing idols. Um recently. Yeah, or talked to him recently. Anyways, um remember when he was on the show? Yep.
That was fun. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You like him because he's mean to me. Yes, I do.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Um I wonder whether he'd come back on the show. Uh yeah.
Jack, should we get some Steingarden back on the show so? Yeah, man. Love Steingarden. Yeah. All right.
So uh anyway, so he said to me, he says, You are an idiot. Uh like everyone else, you add pepper at the beginning of cooking, whereas it's known via studies that uh that you know, basically the the awesome aroma of pepper volatilizes, you know, within minutes after adding it, and all you're left with is the bitter taste. To which I replied, but Jeffrey, I like that bitter taste. You know what I mean? And so we got gotten an argument.
But what what it leads to is this idea that you can have uh just like hops where you can add kind of a bittering hop and then an aroma hop right you can add pepper at the beginning of a cook for for its bitterness and then at the end for aroma. So with your oil and I do that actually with um when I'm doing uh hop infusions um hop infusions into alcohol I'll do some heated and some cold right you might also experiment with pepper with oil by the way using an EC to try and get a a higher pressure to pressurize stuff into the pepper. But the point being is that you're gonna get different results because pepper oil is extremely volatile. Here's another little wrinkle I read a paper or tried to read a paper I didn't really have time called Thermal properties of black pepper and its volatile oil by type is too small here um Merladar Megwal uh and TK uh Gaswamy 2011 and I was hoping for some like like hardened fast numbers which they didn't give it but it it suffice it to say the one number that did stick out in my head was that um the volatile oils are solid uh below about 38 degrees Celsius and and they in the introduction they mentioned that the grinding even kind of normal grinding can heat pepper up substantially and change the composition of its volatile oils by volatilizing some of them. So uh and they said cryogrinding is one way you might get around it.
So another interesting thing you might do to try to get uh an infusion of flavors that you would get in a whole peppercorn but doing it uh more completely in a ground fashion would be to cryo grind your pepper keeping it below about 40 degrees minus 40 degrees Celsius minus 40 degrees your average fridge does about minus 20 so we're talking about like uh storing it in dry ice for a while and grinding it or using Ln to grind it, but that might give you a different result, which would be a whole interesting kind of thing. So some things you might want to think about is this kind of um, you know, pre-pepper, post pepper, similar to kind of dry hopping, to try to get the uh the the bitterness out of one and the aroma out of another. Another thing you might want to look at is maybe uh doing like a super chilled uh like a cryo grind to see whether that gives you something different versus the normal just playing with temperatures and times. But hopefully this is some food for thought. Yeah?
Yeah? Yeah. Stas is like, yeah, okay, move on. Um, we have a question in from Brooke in uh Tribeca, and Brooke writes it the official style with the capital T, the capital B, and the capital capital C. Do you you ever do that?
No, no. No? No. No? I guess if I live there, maybe I would.
You really yeah. Uh yeah. Yeah? What are your feelings on Tribeca? I don't really like it.
Do you? Uh I mean, back in the day, Tribeca was like, you know, it was the sh it was the shizzy, you know what I mean? Like that's like the artists they couldn't afford to live in the Soho, so they moved down to Tribeca. Now it's like super fancy. My wife used to live in that's where isn't that where easy and Beyonce?
And that's the only reason you like that event, right? Is you can look out on Beyonce's apartment and hopefully she came out once, right? Yeah. And you were like, oh, Beyonce. Right?
Who my brother calls Beyonce or used to. Anyways, uh, love the show. New listener. Quick question about making fresh cheeses, specifically ricotta. What are your thoughts on Ricotta Stas?
I like it. Yeah? Mm-hmm. Oh, all right, fine. No no problems here.
Uh is there any advantage to using a circulator to make something like ricotta versus a quick stove top method? I recently used a ricotta recipe that called for cooking the entire milk cream acid mixture in a bag for one hour at 172 degrees Fahrenheit. That's pretty damn specific. What's that in Celsius? Can you look it up for me, Stas?
That sounds like the kind of thing that someone came up with a Celsius recipe and then just hit convert. What is it? 172. It's good I I bet you it's pretty close to an even five degrees somewhere in Celsius. Let's see what it is.
Wave for it, people. Stas Stas's fingers are f fast like lightning, but you know, the Google in here is not necessarily so fast. Um while she's finding that, I'll continue the question. But traditional stovetop methods seem to call for just a quick simmer before adding the acid to the curdle. Uh well, you know what the thing you didn't tell me, Brooke, is like what would the result.
Celsius? 77 something? No, that's not a good one. So no, that is a real number. 77.
No one would. 77.777. Yeah, okay. But who would choose 77.777? You said 172, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So they must have meant that. But you didn't tell me what the what the results were.
So I don't know whether or not you enjoyed that 172. Uh anyway, whatever. Moving on. But traditional stovetop methods seem to call for just a quick simmer before adding the acid to the curdle. While we're on the topic, what's better?
Whole milk or milk with some heavy cream? Uh, and is there any difference in texture between lemon juice, distilled vinegar, and white wine vinegar? Or is that just a taste preference? Many thanks and congrats on the nomination. Uh Best Brook from Tribeca.
Yeah, the nomination for the beard and one won an IECP. Jane Grigson award. Oh. Yeah. Hey.
Yeah. Should I get another bottle of per second? Uh no, I think we're I think we're all we're all right. Okay. But we but uh yeah, I didn't even know I was up for award.
And uh you didn't even go. You weren't even invited to the event. I was not even, yeah, it's not that I didn't go, Stas. I know. Not invited.
Yeah. Not invited. You know why? No. It's the equivalent of like the carnation thing.
Like I wasn't up for any of the things that had been nominated, right? But but like the judges have like just special judge awards. They're like, meh. Maybe they should have won something. I'll give it to them.
You know what I mean? Let's not invite them. Let's not invite him, though. We won't invite him. Last month you weren't even nominated.
Now you're a winner. I know. Now but that's what I'm saying. I've w I've won. I've won something, so now my you know, my losing streak is over.
That means I have no more my hair has been cut. Like Samson's won because it wasn't a category. But no, actually, against anyone. Uh, excuse me, though. Were you up against anyone?
It's an award. Come on. Not only is it an award, not only is an award, but like it's pretty badass. Jane Grigson was the she's uh was a well known, I believe she's British writer. She died, I think in the nineties or something like this.
And uh, you know, I guess her most famous book here in the States was uh charcuterie. And anyway, she is a fantastic was a fantastic writer, right? And so this um and very influential, in fact, and this uh this award, the Jane Grigson Award, is for you know heavily kind of researched and thought out and like deep deep dives, basically. And I love deep dive. And I, you know, I love her writing, you know, and ha have for decades.
So, you know, super dupe honor to get the Jane Grigson Award, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Anyway. So Stas just wants to do anything to make me feel like it wasn't a it's a it's a great award from the International Association of Collinary Professionals. And I think that's a good one. Do you get a thing on your book? Do I get a thing on my book?
Uh I don't know. I don't know. I don't know whether I'm not, you know, I don't I don't know. I'm not at liberty to say whether I get a sticker on my book or not. Do you know why they put stickers on books?
So they sell more. Oh yeah. Yeah. But I don't know whether they work in Amazon. Like it used to be you would go to uh you would go to a bookstore and you'd see it.
And you'd see a sticker, and you'd be like, Do I want to know what this idiot has to say? Or this idiot. Well, some other idiot gave this idiot an award, so they must know what's up. I feel like when the stickers were on the books of like the books in elementary school, it's the ones you wanted to avoid because they were the long, laborious. The tough reads, yeah.
What, like Caldecott's and those kind of awards? Yeah, you'd be like, oof. I'll tell you what though, for a for a children's book author, especially, like, unless you win some of those big awards, I think it's hard to do numbers because there's so many kids' books out there that you know you need some sort of because parents, when they're buying kids' books, right? There's the big well, am I buying something that's gonna be good for my child's brain? I'll get the one with the with the freaking award.
You know, on it. And I think the same goes for cookbooks. You know, the cookbook has the sticker on it. No, yeah, for sure. You know, the assumption is that there's some useful information in there that's gonna help because it is you know, cooking a recipe out of a book is kind of a it's kind of a for a people who don't cook necessarily every day, it's kind of a big whoop, you know what I mean?
Like they go through the big rigmarole of getting the ingredients and all this other stuff. It's kind of a big you remember back when you used to be like that? Mm-hmm. I remember that. You might you know my first cookbook that I cooked out of that I owned that was given to me.
Uh man, the title of it. The Julia Child's uh not her first one, but the what's it called? The way to cook. Yeah, I used to make so many recipes out of that damn thing. In fact, I still make some of those recipes out of that thing.
Anyways, uh what were we talking about though? Ricotta cheese. How the hell did we get on this guy? I don't know. How the hell does this happen?
So I'm not uh oh, she's she uh thank it was a congratulations on the uh award, that's why. Okay. Uh on the nomination. So I have not made a boat ton of uh acid curdled cheeses, be it you know, ricotta or uh paneer or you know, like a fresco or or things like this. But I'm gonna go I'm gonna go ahead and say that um you know, Kenji at w at Sirius Eves a long time ago did uh a bunch of uh tests on ricotta, and for him he didn't see a kind of a huge difference in uh the in the texture of the ricotta based on the temperature to which it's heated.
So he didn't see uh he didn't see it as being uh a big deal. And in fact, to prevent scorching, he even uh nuked, you know, nuked the stuff and just made sure that it was in the temperature regime uh that he wanted before he uh added um the acid to it. I'm interested in the one that you have where the acid is pre-added and then raised uh to curdle it to see what that is. But my feeling is is that while it's true perhaps that the he didn't get that much of a difference in texture with the different temperatures, it's a known fact that um that the rate of curdling is going to be different at different temperatures, and also holding a curd at an elevated temperature in a liquid for a length of time will continue to exclude water from it, making uh kind of denser, harder curd. So my guess is that that over very short periods of time the temperature might not be that big of a uh deal, but that over longer periods of time the uh temperature will become uh more and more of a big deal.
The other thing that's interesting, and I want I'd like to find if you could send me uh you know, or tweet me out like a link to the recipe that you followed uh in the circulator uh for it. One of the things that is really clear with any sort of gelling mechanism is that the final texture of the gel is very dependent on the conditions present at the time of gelling. So for instance, with alginates, if you use a soft calcium, right, not only does it take longer to set, but the gel will be less firm because the actual uh agglomeration of uh the alginate to it to itself, the the binding of the the alginate to itself, uh not only is it slower, but it produces a different texture. Uh, but that also aging it can increase the texture, but it's never that you know it increases uh make it harder, but it's never going to uh be the same in a slow set situation versus a fast set so the amount of acid you add the speed at which it curdles and the temperature at which it curdles it seems to me are variables that you could probably uh dork with and get um get different results the same goes true for acid the acid that you use um and again I haven't done extensive testing but you know according to you know what what I've read uh you know lemon juice is gonna taste like lemons buttermil substantially more so it's probably gonna affect the texture and it's also going to affect the um it's gonna affect the texture it's also gonna um affect the flavor at those at those kinds of of levels um but remember also is that different things with different acids depending on the rate at which you add them are going to affect the rate of curdling as well so the rate at which you add it is probably also going to have an effect similarly the draining time is gonna they all basically they all have effects in terms of whole milk versus whole milk and cream obviously the more cream you have the more fat you're gonna have so the the the more creamy it's gonna taste right um the other things you might futz with is uh you might want to add some extra calcium to the mix and the formula calcium chloride if you want a harder curve I don't know what you're trying to achieve so please send me a link to the recipe that you did because I'd love to actually try it out because I'm gonna do a bunch of side by sides especially because you know now that I have a Tandoor that I'm gonna go paneer crazy. Do you like paneer?
Mm-hmm. You do? Mm-hmm. Really? Mm-hmm well what the hell Stas and I are going to be doing uh paneer for days and that is the cooking issues thanks for listening to this program on heritage Radio Network.org.
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