Today's program is brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information, visit Heritage Foods USA.com. I'm Damon Bolte, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live from the Heritage Radio Network in reverse pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Calling all of your questions to 718497-2128. That's 718497-2128. Nastasha De Hammer Lopez is currently en route from Chicago at the James Beard Awards, but we are joined in the studio today with Peter Kim, the W president director.
Ugh Galactic Emperor, man, I told you. You are actually the lawyer emeritus. I am the lawyer emeritus, yeah. Yes, of the Museum of Food and Drinks. Basically, you are looking for uh legal counsel to justify all of your nefarious actions.
Not on the air, Peter does. And uh Veronica, who's a new uh intern at the museum and uh hails originally, I guess, from Brazil, but is currently living in Miami. Yes, sir. Yeah, it feels in here like Miami. It feels in this room like we're in Miami.
I'm bringing some sunshine to New York. Yeah, or more of the humidity. And the sulfur stink. That's the other thing people don't realize they've never been to Florida, is the entire place smells of sulfurous groundwater. Or is that just me that believes that?
Can't blame me for it though. Yeah, yeah. No, uh, I don't know. Maybe maybe you did dope all of the entire ground with sulfurous minerals. I don't know.
You know that smell, that Florida water smell when they water the lawns with that Florida water. All too well. Yeah. All too well. Do they have on that side the giant palmetto bugs?
First of all, is everything just built in cleared palmetto like it is over in Sarasota or is it different? Well, I'm actually from North Miami, so I am pretty much in the clear of Palmetto bags, thankfully. Oh, nice, yeah. But they're it they make our cockroaches look like I know. Like, you know, like nothing like weaklings.
I know. Yeah. Uh although we do have the giant water bugs here in New York that are on the lower floors of our buildings only. And they don't congregate in huge packs. I call them travelers because they just kind of you see one, you kill it.
You're not worried about infestation because it came somewhere from the pipes down from the depths where the alligators grow. Also in Portland. Speaking of water bugs, Dave's covered in water right now. All right, but I biked here. And joined uh in the engineering booth with our old pal Jack Insley.
Hey guys. How you doing? I'm pretty good. Good. So have uh we have a bunch of stuff to get to, so I'll just get to it.
Although please do call in your questions to 718-4972128. That's 7184972128. Uh sad news to report. Um most of you who are plugged into the uh food uh internetosphere uh probably already know, but uh Josh Azerski died yesterday. Uh uh, they still haven't figured out uh kind of uh like why why he died, but he was found in his hotel room uh yesterday morning.
He was in Chicago actually for the uh the beard awards. He's only 47, very sad, you know, very very kind of larger than life uh figure. You know, I've worked with him a couple times over the years on on things, so uh you know. Yeah, much respect. Yeah, and uh he actually did a show here for um for a while back in 2009 and 10.
I remember that. Yeah, the Mr. Cutlet Show. Yeah, you know, I could tell some I won't, maybe eventually I could tell some crazy Josh stories. Like he's a crazy he was like a larger than life, a legit kind of larger than life uh individual.
Had a couple of uh uh same early champions as I did, like Jess Jeffrey Steingarden. Um yeah, you know, it's just uh no BS. Crazy. Well, like well, it depends on how you define it, I guess. He's cute, he's like, you know, like his writing was over the top, he was over the top.
Um anyway, he's definitely gonna be missing the food world, so it's a sorry announcement to have to make. Um so rather than go launching into my normal stuff, why don't you talk? We have a museum benefit coming up in uh next week, actually. Yeah, next Wednesday. So we've got the annual Mofed Spring Benefit dinner coming up, and uh well, I'm biased, but I think this is really the most exciting dining event in New York City.
Uh we get uh this is actually a concept that Dave put together. Um and it's with Nastasia and Hammer Lopez. With Nastasia the Hammer Lopez and uh Patrick Martins as Dave wipes the moisture off his face. Um but we get uh we get eight of the best chefs in the country to come together and put together a meal, but it's not just any kind of meal. We do museum themes like uh food of ancient Rome or space food or uh what else have we done, Dave?
We did caveman food, we didn't wily did uh caveman food. Well, speaking of uh James Beard and Winners TV Dinner. Yep, yep, exactly. TV dinner by Michael Anthony, who just won the James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef. We did Ancient Rome with a whole ostrich by another Mark Wedner, just uh best chef New York City, and uh congrats, Mark.
Uh Tosi did uh Chef Christina did uh Space Food. She's uh just one for outstanding pastry chef. So yeah, we have a lot of a lot of big a lot of big uh big people. And uh this you want to give him a rundown of who it is? Yeah, yeah.
So this year we've got a great lineup. We've got Don't miss any or I'll kill you. Yeah, yeah, we've got Aaron Blue Dorn uh from Cafe Balud, we've got Elizabeth Faulkner, we've got uh Alex Cornicelli. She's gonna be doing What Would Jesus eat, which I think is really one of the more exciting topics. Um we've got uh Mad's Refslon, one of the.
No, but we know what he drinks. We know he turns water into wine when the keg is kicked at the wedding. Yeah, exactly. That we know. And then I can then turn wine into pee.
That's my special. Wow, we just got in trouble with a whole chunk of our listeners there. So there you go. Anyway, and then we have Mads Reflon, one of the co-founders of Noma. And now the he's at the helm of Acme.
He's doing weeds of New York. We've got Andy Ricker, your friend, my friend, uh Pac Pac Man, and he's doing rotten, rotten food. And then we've got remember, like we gave him that because like I know for he likes uh doing things like fermented short ribs and stuff like this. So we gave him and the concept here, I'll let you finish so you don't forget anyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marcus Samuelson, and then we've got uh What's his theme again? What's his theme to use? Oh, yeah, he's doing so around the uh the turn of the 19th century, the Emperor Menelik, who is one of the most beloved emperors of Ethiopia, held all these giant public banquets for 10,000 over 10,000 people at a time. And so he's doing a meal that uh is an homage to that. Okay.
Uh then we have uh Bill Telepan. He's taking on the story of a ancient sassanite dish called Sikbaj. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but nobody does. It's old. Yeah, yeah.
Um that title is actually stolen from the language of food, uh, which is uh a book out by uh Jurowski about the his history of certain like a linguistic approach to you know a linguist reads the menu kind of a thing. Yeah. And then and then we've got Bill Yosis, the former executive uh pastry chef at the White House, taking on the topic when the White House burned, because in 1814 the British troops arrived at the White House to burn it down, but they found bizarrely enough a meal laid out for them that was a meal that the pre President Madison and Dolly Madison, the first lady had abandoned in their haste to leave. Of course, they saved the portrait of George Washington. And they say Americans aren't polite.
We left dinner for them. Exactly, exactly. So they ate it, they drank it, then they burned the house down. See, it's the Brits. It's the Brits who caused the problems.
No offense. I'll be in Britain actually next week as well, right after they benefit. I fly out to London. I'm doing uh cocktail demos at Zetter Townhouse. Cheers.
Um again, now you got in trouble with the other half of us. Oh, yeah, there we go. Um my goal is to alienate pretty much everybody. Uh except you. Um and then so anyway, we so tickets.
We've just got a handful of tickets left, and oh yeah, booze by none other than some uh smuck named Dave Arnold. Yep uh also maybe a James Beard award winner. They they will be James Beard Award winning author's cocktails. That's the most precise way to put it. Yeah, uh Perdora card's giving us a liquor for that very good.
We got Pernore Ricard for liquor. We're gonna we're gonna have uh Jeffrey Porter, the wine director at Del Posto, is getting an incredible lineup of wine. We got uh sparkling wine, a champagne, we've got and then we're gonna be. Yeah, yeah, Nastasia will be there in the corner with her bottle of champagne. And then uh we'll have uh a selection of six wines available during the dinner.
Uh this is gonna be essentially a pretty blowout affair at Carnegie Hall, top two floors, rooftop terrace, looking over the city. Now it's expensive. Yes, it is it is expensive, but of course it's to support uh the development of the Museum of Food and Drink, which is itself a worthy cause. But the first time we did this, we were incredibly stupid. We charged 250 dollars, and how much would you have to pay for that meal if you want to go get it?
I mean, there's no price you could pay for it. I mean so now we're charging something that's like you know, we're charging museum style like benefit prices now because we're older and wiser. But I'll tell you something the great thing about all these we'll give them the we'll give you the price in a minute. Before now, how much would you pay? But the thing is three low low installments.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we can do that, frankly. We could do that, we could probably do that, the three low installments. Yeah, we could take the installment plan. Yeah, I'll take the installment anyway.
Anyway, but the point is uh we hopefully also you also get a little uh like you know a spiel and taste about what we're gonna be doing in the museum in the upcoming year uh directly from Peter's uh mouth. Uh but the the way we structure the reason we structure the benefit this way is nine times out of ten, uh you well ten times out of ten, really, unless you only go to uh ten benefits a year and one of them's ours. The uh, you know, they have a chef come in and uh the chefs are, you know, maybe they get a couple of chefs, or maybe they have big tastings, but typically the chef is doing something that is a some version of what you might be able to get at their restaurant. And we do exactly the opposite. It's actually a huge kind of challenge that our chefs uh take on.
It's a huge commitment, which is why we're so grateful to all of the chefs that have done it over the years and the ones that are doing it this year. In fact, uh, I mean, look to see a bunch of them. We uh we invite the chefs who have done it to come just as guests and expect to see some of those heavy hitters there at the at the benefit as well. Um but uh you're gonna get stuff that they don't cook otherwise. And so you can't really ever buy any of this stuff.
You know, it's like it's not something that they would ever do normally. So we're making them get out of their comfort zone. Yeah, so what one night only. I mean, you like you know, like the giant ostrich that Mark did. Anyway, now how much would you pay?
Yes, exactly. So tickets are seven hundred and fifty dollars ahead. Oh shit. And uh I'm kidding. Look, we're we're trying to build a museum here, okay?
So uh so 750 ahead. Uh it is, you know, we do put a lot of love into it, and uh uh tickets are available at benefit.mofed.org. Um I think we've only got like 10 or 11 tickets left, so definitely hop on and get it pronto if you want to go. Um But definitely the secret ingredient here isn't love, it's money. Yes, yes.
Yes, the secret ingredient here is money. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. Um so uh yeah, benefit.mofed.org. Nice. All right.
And Jack, is our Kickstarter still going? It is. We got seven days left. All right, do your plug. Let's get all the plugs out of the way for for Justino's sake.
Yeah. Donate, donate, donate. Seven days left, or this website explodes. Are you gonna are you gonna really just say donate, donate, donate? Yeah.
Donate! Donate, donate! Sunday! Yeah, like that. That's I was just baiting you.
All right, all right. There we go. Anyway, uh, yeah. How close are we, Jack? Uh, we're about $7,000 away.
So you made half the money from last week. Right. And we have seven more days. Yes. People, please.
People, please. People. Come on. Please. Let's do it.
Do you want to be able to have a website so that like the stuff that you call in to 7184972128 actually gets put on a website that works and has new and interesting content? I don't know. Do you? Jackie Molecules is crying some sweet sweet H2O out of his out of his tear ducks, right now. And you're crying some sweet sweet ace to out of your forehead right now.
Dude, uh like enough with the uh like I biked here. Enough. Enough. All right. Uh today is uh Cinco uh DeMaio, and in honor of yesterday, for those of you that uh listen to this or like uh follow the tweet.
When I was in Mexico uh a couple of weeks ago, I bought a nictematic grinder, which allows me to make masa. Uh well, better than the corona, which I detest and better than the Quisart, which I detest for this application. Better than actually, you made the ride next to Ma with me. What a pain in the butt that was. Yeah, that was sucked.
Tasted good. Yeah, outstanding. Yeah. And half of them went in the trash at the end of the day. Um people are the worst.
Do you know something about people, people? They're the worst. Not you, dear listener, but everybody else. That one next to you who's not listening. He's the worst.
Right? Yeah, the worst. Uh or her. Maybe maybe she's the worst. I don't know.
I don't know who's sitting next to you. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways. So uh the issue here is that it's hard to get some really interesting uh corn.
So I observed a lot of uh tortilla, not a lot, but as many as I could while I was working, tortillas being made in Mexico, came up with my grinder, uh, you know, totally re you know, somehow packed it into my bag and got it under the weight limit. Yeah, you ever do that trick when you're putting your bag on the uh on the scale? I put it on the edge. And you and you lift a little bit with the other hand, like you hold it down and you lift a little bit. I I do it on the edge or put my knee up against it.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh what's up, Slickster? You same with me. Yeah.
Because you know what? They don't know how much they don't weigh me. They don't know how much I weigh, they don't have a weight limit on me. Why did they put a weight limit on my bag? It's they're they're jerks.
Yeah, yeah. I'm buying a grinder. Yeah. You know what I mean? The other trick is like normally when I bring something that's a billion pounds, I'll just put it in my in I've I've trained myself over the years to look like I'm carrying a normal weight backpack when I'm in fact carrying like a backpack full of lead bricks.
Right. You know what I mean? And so if you can if you look like you're like ah when you're going through the line, they're like, Oh no, man, we gotta weigh that. But if you just look like you're carrying a bag, you can collapse as soon as you get through security. But like, that dude just has purple arms.
That's normal. He's purple. You know? His face is white as the driven snow and his arms are purple. This is absolutely normal.
Like, you know, gr you know, he had a body transplant from Grimace or something. But but you know, that being as it may, uh the point is is that you I couldn't carry different countries have different rules about what's kosher, so I probably could have gotten the grinder through American TSA, even though I couldn't get the powders through it because they're usually okay with electric motors, as long as it can't be interpreted as a weapon. But I've had electric motors be problems in Colombia, and no one could tell me with a straight kind of story what the Mexican rules were gonna be. So I didn't want a chance and so I had to check it. Anyways.
Yeah. Anyways. Anyways. Okay. So uh single to Mayo.
I come back. I want to get the good corn. I was talking last week at the at the other beards, the one that was here with Rick Bayless, and he's like, Well, where should I get the where should I get the good corn from? He's like, You idiot, go to go to Macienda. I was like, duh, because I know them.
Why wasn't I thinking? So I went, in fact, yesterday I did a fast nixtimalization people, so it's not the best, but uh expect more to come. I did uh met up with uh Jorge um uh Gaveria from Macienda, who gave me some of the most awesome kind of corns. I was tasting them dry, just really interesting corn. So the one I I did yesterday was a white bolita from Michael, uh, which was just had an incredible kind of corn, kind of almost like a almost like a movie theater corn taste right out of the dry, uncooked.
Whoa, that's wow. Yeah, so I nixtimalized it yesterday. So now we're my game need I need to get my Nixon uh my nixdomatic uh kind of tuned in more, it needs to be broken in. I need another couple pounds of masa. And I need to get my tortilla press in order, man.
I have that Victoria, the regular Victoria tortilla press, and it's just weak. Everyone says it's great, but I look at it and there's too much slop in the freaking hinge, right? So, like it pinches it in the in an angle. So the tortillas A, they're too thick on the one side, even if I double flip them, I'd have to quadruple freaking flip them to get them the way I want, and then I'm always over pressing the one side that's closest to the freaking handle. Why don't they just machine the thing with the right freaking thickness for what I want?
So I'm gonna have to build some spacers or else get a better press. Because the lady who like did the best that I saw in Mexico, I mean, I didn't see any of the sweet, sweet old you know, abuelitas doing it with the hand pat. That's awesome, it's credible. But like these guys weren't using the little Victoria like hand press that I was using. They were using two sheets of giant coal roll steel with a with a big pipe on it.
And they were just like, and they were like totally even throughout. So I'm gonna more on that later over the next couple weeks. I'll talk about it when I get it but in honor of the Cinco de Maya, I brought in some treats from Mexico for us. Nice. Yeah?
So I have I don't know if I talked about these before, but uh these are from Puebla, these are Camotes. You know these? No. So apparently, these uh these nuns, I don't know, Santa Clara, Santa Clara, or something like this. These nuns use this like uh this like sp fancy sweet potato that grows around Puebla, and it's only made in Puebla, they call it Camotes, and they make these sweets with flavors in them.
So when we like they're different flavors, you can read semi-Spanish so you can tell me. And then Jack, you can have some of these. And then also I brought in my favorite Mexican confection. Mazapan. Oh, nice.
Mazapan is like their take on marzipan, but it's actually made, it's just made with peanuts, and it has a texture of hollow. This is what Hal of the Witches it would be. Sorry, all of the grease in the Middle East. This is what Halva wishes it could be. For those of you that aren't uh allergic to the peanut.
Are you allergic to the peanut? Not allergic to the peanut. Thankfully. Have some peanut. Jack, peanut peanut product.
Love it. Yeah, here, have one. Come take one. Cooking issues. Recorded in a studio that may contain nuts.
Okay. Now let's get to some questions. You like that, right? You try that? You try it?
You guys are so slow. I would have finished the whole box by now. Thanks, dude. I know, man. You do hungry hungry hippos, but uh, you know, I like to savor things.
Oh you know what? Jerk. It's called mindfulness, Dave. It's a new thing. What flavor are you opening on the commodities?
Wow, we had to do the smarmy accent. Is that smarmy? That's just my normal voice, man. Why why you know what I like about them? They dry out on the outside, but the inside has like a kind of an awesome kind of a texture.
Yeah. They're only made in Puebla, baby. Why don't we take a really quick break now? All right, we'll come right back with some actual questions on cooking issues. And we don't have to do a commercial thing because we're brought to us by us.
Yeah. How about that? Is that because nobody loves us enough to support us anymore, Jackson? No, they love us. We're just switching it up.
Cooking YouTube is supported by absolutely nobody. Yeah. Oh, that's not true. So rough. Let me ask you a question, though.
I was wondering the other day, who's the largest supplier of uh heritage and rare breed meats. I think it starts with uh H. Gee, I don't know. I can't place it. I can't place it.
I can't. I'm taking my tongue, man. I can't. I can't. Yeah.
I don't know. I don't know. I am Patrick Martin. All right, Peter, do your Patrick Martin's. No, man, you can't have me do that.
I can't do it. I don't know what you're talking about. You're the one who has a good impression. You're a liar. Sam Geiger.com.
That's HeritageFoods USA.com. Oh, yeah. I see, because he's because Patrick would get mad. Yeah, yeah. He's probably calling and saying, What are you doing?
He's too busy selling selling meat right now. Selling heritage meats. Sam Geiger wrote in a while back with cold pack squirrel. That's right. Cold pack squirrel wants to know.
Hey, can uh you discuss the best way to cook squirrel that have been cold packed canned thanks Sam Geiger. Well, Sam, I hate to break this to you, buddy. It's cold pack can suckers already cooked. Yeah. You don't need to cook it again.
But I think uh I was reading actually a lot on um squirrel. The success of squirrel meat canning, and I've never done it. I knew a guy in um I swear to God, I knew a guy in North Carolina who used to pay his landscaping crew in squirrel. You know what I'm saying? Because I I've only had squirrel in mixed in with stews in North Carolina.
So when you're making a squirrel that way, there's really no way for me to tell you I know what squirrel tastes like. It's like when someone gives you little tidbits of alligator that are encoded in like a half inch of batter and fried to within an inch of its life, right? Right? So, like Veronica, what does that taste like? Tastes like fry.
Am I right? Exactly. And it's pretty chewy. Yeah. I've had bigger pieces of alligator, and it's kind of like it needs to be really fresh.
I had like previously frozen, refrozen, like kept in somebody's like swamp cooler alligator. And in big chunks, you don't want that. Is it like snake? I for some reason I imagine it being like snake. Uh I've only had snake in small chunks with a taste like fry.
I've never had like a whole grilled snake. Oh, man. I'm sure it's good. I love snake. No, but it's gonna be fresh, right?
Yeah, yeah. I'm sure it's a delicate meat that is abused too much by freezing and refreezing. That's the only large chunk alligators I've ever ta cooked, tasted have been cooked that way. So I'm not but and similarly with squirrel. I'm gonna go ahead and say that I've never uh I've never had it in such a way that I know I could say this is what squirrel tastes like.
My guess is it tastes like rabbit. I hear that how squirrel tastes is vitally dependent on how it was skinned, whether all the glands have been taken out of the squirrel. Um that said, I mean, I mean I'm sure it's like uh I'm sure it's like rabbit. So if you'd use it anyway, you would use like a canned kind of uh a rabbit, any kind of a white meat. Strangely, all of the cold pack canning, they can in um in kind of liquids, not in fat, because I think they're worried about the fat thing, because I think it would be good to have it like Riet.
I would want like put some pork fat up in that piece and make it Riet style, right? Wouldn't that be delicious? Yeah, yeah. If anyone out there has made, hey, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is here, move my bag, please. Uh and my helmet, please.
Um I would love to have some squirrel riette. You know what I'd call that? Squirriette. Oh, very well, I don't know. It's not a piper level pun, but it's it's okay.
Welcome back to the land of New York. Thank you. Well, you're wearing like something very tropical, considering you're just in uh you were in Chicago, not Hawaii. Did you think you were going to Hawaii? No, I this is the shirt I bought the day when we were late after moving.
Remember? No, but uh oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh we're we were in the process of moving Booker and Dak's lab, by the way, up to Connecticut. So uh do you have any uh we talked about Mark. Oh good.
We talked about who else do we mention? Christina Tosi. Right. Mike Anthony. Right.
Anyone else we know? Anyone else winners, uh, friends of the Friends of the Program comes with us? Oh, wait, wait, Wiley got inducted into the state. Oh, yeah. He didn't win, it was it was a slam dunk.
That's just like a lifetime achievement. But still it's an appolate. Oh, Alan Benton? But I mean, it was like no, no, it was like an America's uh if it was, it would be Sam at restaurant. What do you guys think?
Oh yeah, well, it depends what you're using it for, right? Benton's bacon as a culinary bacon, but uh Sam Edwards isn't eating bacon. Okay, fair enough. What were you saying Benton was winning for Sus? No, it was like the America he knew he was winning too.
It was like a Wiley kind of award. Yeah. You know what? I whatever. The only time I ever won something like that, they didn't tell me ahead of time.
You know what the worst part of this award was, this program? So in Mark's speech, he thanks sobriety at the end, right? Like what? Hold on. And then all these other chefs were like, oh man, uh, they don't think I'm gonna drink tonight, man.
It's you know. So I was like, I can't take a bottle of champagne and a straw now because Well, it wasn't really a party atmosphere anyway, with Josh and everything, right? Or was it? Not everyone knew. I've been in situations like that where people are trying to have a festive thing and something really awful has just happened, and only some of the people know, and it's very tension.
We did have a moment of silence, though, for uh Homorrow. Because they knew that ahead of him. Well, he's from Chicago. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Bad year for food all the way uh around. Shaw, too from E Gullet was this year, right? I don't know who that is.
Yeah. Uh well, good for paying attention to the world stuff. Um he went on after e uh egullah to be one of the founders of Quirky. Oh, the air conditioning company? They're not an air conditioning company.
That's just anything. You know what I mean, yeah. Yes. Uh okay. Next question in from Trudy.
Uh says, Hey, Dave, oh, yeah. Nastash. Nastash, I gave her a whole pack of that. I have a whole. She's like, I'm done.
I'm done with the sweet potatoes. I'm done with it. Um. Hiya, Dave, Nastasha and Jack, and now also Peter and Veronica. This is Veronica, by the way, Nastasia.
She works with the music. Hi. Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Uh, I have a high look uh, this is a good word.
I have a hydrocolloid conundrum. I like conundrums. They're good. Uh, I've been trying to invent slash create a frozen moose pudding concoction. A frozen moose pudding concoction, right?
Say that with your say that with your most snoot tootly. Puebla. I also need to put my monocle on to do that properly. You don't have your planner's peanut monocle at all times with you? I usually pack it, but monocle packing.
All right. I'm playing around with a combo of agar, xanthan, polydextrose, psyllium, which I've never used. I mean, I know what it is, and flax, basically everything I have on hand. I haven't been like that's like a juice bar stuff, right? You're down with the psyllium, right?
You pay attention to people do. No, I don't pay attention to it. You just you're the one that tells me all the juice trends. Yeah, I know all the yeah, but I don't I don't know cilia. What about you?
What are you, Veronica? You juice trend person? Are you a juice person? I'm a dessert person. Thank goodness.
Dessert. Dessert, God bless dessert. You know that uh a lot of places now are toning down on desserts because their margins aren't as high. They'd rather flip the tables. Desserts have higher because the ingredients in desserts usually have you read that article?
There's a bunch of articles on this. I didn't, but that's just because I'm not their customer. If I was there, I would I would order enough desserts to make their margins pretty high. Yeah. Well, no, but in other words, like just like chocolate and cream and stuff.
It's just expensive stuff. Expensive, yeah. You know what I mean? A lot more expensive than mashed taters. Very true.
Poters is cheap. Um I don't know what's prompted that right now. Well, I can walk into a like try to make like uh whatever. I'm just saying. Like, you know, this is why this is why that's like one of the most ubiquitous sides.
Is because it's free. Yeah, yeah. Rice, potatoes, beans, all you know, fundamentally free. I haven't been having much luck though, since it always comes out slimy. What's your is uh you hate things that are slimy styles, right?
Mm-hmm. Okra. Oh my god, it's dust. Remember that okre that we Which No, it wasn't okre, that slimy. Oh my god, the yam, that Japanese slime yam.
What's it called? Oh, Tororo. Isn't it start with an M? N? Well there's sticky yam that's like grated and then it's yeah, it's no, but the the the whole one.
It's called like na nine. Oh my god. We had the most like HR unfriendly moment in the French culinary where someone had peeled the entire it's like a two-foot long ballast. There you go. And and you peel it and it just self-slimes, like it's made out of personal lubricant.
Did you smash it or did you? No, well we tried whole. Oh god. Everyone was like, oh everyone was like, oh! Like that.
That's pretty that's pretty much how it went. Uh yeah. See you guys next week on Cook. Uh yeah. Anyway.
Uh haven't been having much left though since it always comes out slimy. See, this is the problem with the show. This is why, like we like aren't nominated. Yeah, because like I say the word slimy, and then for like three minutes we're talking about yams. I got a mental issue.
I'm trying to reduce the Xanthan as much as I can since I think this might be the problem. Well, it is. Look. Xanthan is some slimy. It's not really slimy, it's snotty.
Like Xanthan is like snot. And also, like, even in like relatively small concentrations. Remember, Xanthan is supposed to be used in very small concentrations. In relatively small concentrations, it has that like jiggly, that jiggly, like you know, where like you twist like a container of it, and the outside starts rotating, but the center stays still for a minute, and then it like j like it like has that back motion, that like shoulder flick back motion to it. It's milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.
And and and it's not better than yours, which is weird. They come to the yard and they're still like, no, I'll keep I'll keep I'll keep the other milkshake that I already have. Um anyways, um I think the Xanthan might be the problem, but I can only reduce it so far before there's no more thickening effect. See, here's the thing you shouldn't really use Xanthan as a thickener. You should use Xanthan as a uh as a stabilizer, right?
Not an emulsifier, but a stabilizer. Uh well, I'll finish reading your thing before I get it, because I have this terrible habit of just going off into tangents. It's like I can't get rid of it, I'm sorry. Don't say it. This is why, you know, they have me write a book because there you're forced to follow some sort of linear thing.
If you go to tangents, at least like there you can put them in footnotes or something. You know what I mean? Yeah. Whatever. Uh I also have agar.
I got egot. But I'm not sure how to throw that into the mix. I have yet to use any eggs since I'm trying to keep it vegan. Vegan face. What?
Uh, you just, you know. I know. I was so happy you made it here, but then you disappointed me with the lack of vegan face. You know what I mean? Uh I want to keep it vegan if doable.
I know this posed problem lack specifics, but I just want to learn more about what gums will help and which won't, since I'm really fascinated by hydrocolids in general. I've also been wondering about guar gum. Is this redundant if I already have Xanthan? No, it is not. Thing with guar is uh so guar is very closely related to locust bean gum, but uh guared to be cheaper.
Now that fracking is there, it's not. But bad guar has a very specific beanie taste, and um it tastes like uh like um not chick uh black-eyed pea flour. You ever had black-eyed pea flour? Anyway, there are certain like African dumplings made with black-eyed pea flour, and uh so I used to have black-eyed pea flour around. And uh it tastes like ground-up dried black-eyed peas.
Right. Right? Which is okay if that's what you want, but not if you don't. Has a distinctive flavor. Yeah.
Yeah, which is unpleasant in ice cream, let's say. So you have to get a higher, more purified form of uh guar called flavor-free guar. And you can get that from uh a couple places the one I use is from T I C gums, flavor-free guar NT1000 or 4,000 or something. It's been a long time since I've had to buy it because it lasts a long time. Uh conjac.
I haven't used a lot of conjac. Conjac, a lot of people use it, but I haven't used it a lot, uh, which I just got a small amount of, I have yet to test gel-an, uh, methyl cellulose, CMC, gum arabic, and locust bean gum. Will any of these help? So these are like a long list of different hydrocolloids. Each has their application here.
Uh, which would you prioritize in terms of usefulness in the kitchen? I can't afford all of them, and so I'm looking to equip myself with the best Swiss army knives. Okay. First hydrocolloid that I'd learn to use 100% inside, outside, upside down, is agar. Why?
Because it's super friendly, you can buy it anywhere, um, and it can do a lot. And so for for your situation, you could either do a light set agar, right? So you could whip it into a uh into a mousse with a light set agar and then let it set, right? And it'll set, it'll gel uh in that moose form, use a small amount of agar, and you can get a really nice texture, like two percent, uh sorry, uh uh 0.2% two grams in a uh two grams per liter of agar will give you a nice, like very easy to break gel that'll just hold that gel there uh while it's been foamed up after it sets, and it sets at a relatively gel-an probably even better for that, and you could use roughly the same amount because gel an sets faster than agar does, but both of them will work. Agar, not freeze sauce stable, which is good.
Why? Because when it melts in your mouth, right, the structure of the agar will be obliterated because it's not free sauce stable. So that's good. But um then things like guar can stop uh when it's frozen, there's still liquids in there uh because you haven't fully frozen it, because if you did it would be hard like a rock, which is not. So things like guar will act as a kind of uh stabilizer to stop the liquids and solids from separating from themselves.
Xanthan will act as also in a similar way to uh the light agar would act as a kind of thin gelling agent. Don't use enough xanthan for it to actually be a thickener. Use it like very low percentages, like a quarter of a percent, like two and a half grams per liter, something like there, just to add a little bit of extra uh set, like a yield point to the uh to the thing. What I recommend is this. Go on, I don't agree with everything he says, uh obviously, but go on Martin Larish's website, which is Chymos, download the latest version of his hydrocolloid thing, and then just flip through uh zillions of his of the recipes that he crabs from all over the internet and all people, and kind of get a feel for what you like, try one or two of them, see what you think.
I definitely don't agree with all of the with all of it uh by any standard, but uh go check that out and obviously check out uh there's huge uh custard and pudding sections in the modernist cuisine. And if you don't own it, you know there are still some reasons for the local library. Did you know that you could, for instance, if you don't own Modernist Cuisine, you can go there and look at it. Right. Yeah, although I've got a patient caller on the line.
Patient caller, you are on the air. And I have a question about uh pina coladas. Oh, nice, pina colatis. All right. What do you got?
Oh, do we? Yeah, there we go. You use uh Coco Lopez, right? Yep. And um if I don't want to use that, let's say I want to like try and make my own at home or add something to like coconut cream, um, I'm wondering what I could add.
Like, should I just kind of add the chemicals on the back of the container, or is there anything you'd recommend? Yeah, so by the way, for a while we thought we'd start calling Nastasia Coco Lopez, but she didn't like it, so we stopped. Uh but the I might have to pick that one up. Yeah. So, okay, the first thing you need, obviously, is um you're gonna need like a very fatty, like a coconut milk product, very fatty, and you're also gonna need, so you want it thick, a lot of sugar, and you're gonna need a stabilizer.
Now, uh coconut fats in drinks are have for me been notoriously difficult to stabilize fully using like the normal stuff that I normally use, which would be like mixtures of gum arabic and xanthan. I haven't looked at the back of uh can of coconut cream in a long time, so I'm not sure. What do they use? Do you do you have one on you? Do you know what what they use?
So there's um coconut sugar, water, polysorbate, 60 sorbetan mono, saturate, um, probuene glycol, alogenate, mono, and diglycerides, emulsifier, citric acid, water gum, locus, bean gum. Bam. That is quite a list. Wow. Uh that's hard that's hardcore.
Uh well, and the reason it's hardcore is because coconut fats are difficult to stabilize in uh low, especially in low temperature drink applications. I don't think you need to go that hardcore because they don't need to stay emulsified that long. I would so obviously they're adding an emulsifier and also a several stabilizers, several emulsifiers and several stabilizers. You could try using what I use, which is just a mixture of gum arabic and uh mostly gum arabic, which you're using as an emulsifier and xanthan, but it's not gonna stabilize fully. How long does it need to stay there?
Just for like uh 20 minutes or like the time it takes today. Yeah. I'm gonna have to so of that list, some of them need to be cooked and some of them don't, right? And so presumably if you're gonna go through all the trouble, you don't want to cook the hell out of it because you want to have a fresh kind of a flavor, right? Yeah, I would guess.
So it's like uh huh. It's a tough problem. We had a coconut, I'll tell you what. At the bar, we finally came up with a recipe for a stabilized coconut like orjot that we used. I'll figure out exactly the ratios I use.
Jack, can you remind me to uh talk about it on the next program? And I'll just give you the recipe the next week on the air. Is that sound good? Yeah. Do we still have them?
Thank you, Scott. Anyway. Alright, cool. So we'll we'll we'll get that recipe for you. And I'll e I'll either tweet it on cooking issues or we'll we'll put it out on the air next week.
Alrighty? All right. Um the other question we had uh from Trudy uh was regarding fish blood lines. I don't have a problem with the taste of the fish bloodline since I actually like the fishiness, but I was wondering what this part of the fish is actually composed of. Is it basically uh proteins and water?
Um that's what uh jellyfied pig's blood consists of when I used to eat at Chinese restaurants. Why do you no longer eat it? Why do you do you have a different Chinese restaurant? What do you what are your thoughts on the pig blood, Pete? Pete Peter.
I like pig blood. Yeah? Yeah. You like it at Pig Blood? Yeah.
Yeah. All right. Stas? I don't have I've never had it. Also big fan of Boudon Noir.
Yeah, that's good stuff. Totally different though. Yeah, yeah, totally different. You know what? I like it when it's got enough.
I don't like it when it's so freaking rich. I like it when it's got like enough stuff in it that it's not like so rich. Like when you're just eating like a block of just like b with the bound with the least amount of stuff, blood is just too much for me. Yeah, so actually there's uh I think it's Hungarian. They make the a version of the blood sausage with rice in it, right?
It just helps to sort of cut it and make it not as rich. Yeah, yeah, it's outfit. What about Miami? Got a lot of blood sausage down there in Miami? I don't know if we do, but I definitely haven't had it.
Can't speak for my people. No, the north, the north Miami. The North Miami, they don't have it. She's from Miami, by the way. I have a friend from somewhere.
Wow. Strong. Strong words. That's that's Stas trying to be nice to that. Oh, yeah.
I am in the Miami, right? Uh okay. Is there anything in it that is bad for my dad who has uh hearth heart health issues? Um let me get to it. So what you should do uh is uh I will just read this to you.
That you can find it. It's called Fish and Seafood Composition and Nutritional Aspects. Uh in the document Seafood Product Teacher's Research Guide by Jacqueline Wheeler. It's available as a PDF on the University of uh Rhode Island's website. And uh by the way, what we're talking about, we're talking bloodline.
I'm assuming we're talking the same thing. We're not actually talking about blood. So when you're talking about clearing the actual blood out of a fish, you're talking about, oh my god, by the way, don't even forget if I have time. Shad, shad season. Does anyone out there, does anyone out there know how to bone a shad?
There's an old there's an well let me finish this. Remind me. You guys are Peter Peter, you're the worst. You know, I love you in the way that you're the worst. Yeah.
Anyway, so I'm gonna re just read you this page, Trudy. Uh fish muscle, we're talking about the muscle that's along the outside of the fish, and that's basically kind of a uh fat storage uh mechanism for fish, especially ones that swim hard. So white fish, fish that have less of that bloodline along the side of them tend to store almost all of their fat in their liver, whereas fish that have a larger what they call bloodline on the side tend to store a lot of uh st stuff there. So it's just a different composition, it's not actually blood. But so and so here I will quote from uh I'll quote from from section 7a, dark muscle and white muscle.
Fish muscle does not have a uniform color. This is my reading voice. Nice. Yeah. I like it.
Uh some muscles are white, while others have a reddish or brown color. This dark color is usually observed just under the skin. The proportion of dark to white muscle differs continuously from head to tail. The portion also varies between species, increasing with the swimming activity of the fish and sometimes approaching forty-eight percent of the body weight. There are often differences in the chemical composition of dark and white muscles with respect to protein and lipid contents.
The dark muscle has greater concentrations of hemoglobin and myoglobin than the white muscle. The presence of dark muscle is related to the activity of the fish. Those fish that swim continuously throughout their lives usually have a larger proportion of dark muscle than those who often rest on the sea bottom. It appears that white muscle controls short spurts and darting movements. While dark muscle is used for slow, continuous movement.
When freezing fish, the dark muscle is sometimes removed in order to prolong the storage life of the fish. The dark muscle spoils faster because it contains hematin compounds which can act as pro oxidants. It has been observed that dark muscle oxidizes one hundred times faster than white muscle. Therefore, consumers should be careful not to store dark muscle fish for long periods, since adverse flavor changes may occur due to oxidation. This is how you put your kids to bed.
Yeah, yeah. No, that's awesome. That I didn't know that, man. That's very interesting. Yeah, you see, and sometimes, like rather than just paraphrasing, better just to read the damn thing.
Yeah, of course. I mean, that was just a really well written, tightly packed chunk of knowledge there. Yeah. Right. And she finished up on uh another note.
I want to thank you for your podcast. It's officially my favorite thing to listen to right now. Man, uh it it's gratifying, but also I'm horrified that like there's nothing better than than us. Yeah, right. What a world we live in.
Yeah. What a world, what a world. For those of you that watch uh Wizard of Oz a lot. Uh is my favorite thing to listen to right now, is going through a stressful time in life when I first discover you, so you really helped me pull pull uh through it all. Well, thank you very much.
Uh unfortunately, I only recently discovered you, so I'm still at the 2012 episodes and going through them chronologically. Wow. So hopefully my question isn't an old one you've already tackled, and hopefully I'll catch the answer in time. Uh okay. So we got time, right?
We got any time? Yep, two minutes. Go. I have more questions than I can get to. Uh let me see.
I got I got two left. I'll hit some vegetti. Okay. Did I answer enough real cooking questions? Can I hit some vegetti on the way out?
Yeah, go for it. All right. So I'm gonna get uh Joel, next time I'm gonna get your oil question. And um, Monty, uh Monty from Jacksonville, Oregon wrote in. Uh he was asking about Douglas fur tips.
Remember I told you uh whether you should use the new tips uh or the old uh things. And I said I was gonna test hemlock over the weekend. I didn't have an opportunity to, but he tested it and he says, old, old uh Doug fur needles, bitter, nasty brew, young ones, sweet, citrusy, uh, delicious brew. So that was that was his he answered his own question, so that gave me some, which is a shame because I have a bunch of research here to mention about it, but I didn't. Uh and uh we're gonna get to uh Ellie on the next uh one on his uh on his corn and oil uh cocktails.
So we will we will just talk about some uh Brandon wrote in Heyhammer Dave, Jackie Molecules et al. Nice after following uh the Vigeti Chronicles of the past few weeks. I thought I'd send you my thoughts on spiralized vegetables, which is by the way, the technical term. Yeah. Spiralized vegetables.
Though I don't have a vegetti, well, I should think not. You're a dude. I'm kidding. I'll go going back to the double entendre. There's big there's big debates uh among our listeners over when she realized, when she realized what was going on.
And some people say never. Some people say like three-quarters of the way through. Some people say that she knew at the start. Anyway. She didn't know.
Didn't well. Though though I don't have a vegetti, I do have the Perderno spiralizer. And by the way, that's the one that's kind of the Japanese style one that looks like uh it's like a on a slide, and you can do that. I actually have one of those too, but I have it set up to do um sheets, like spiral sheets, and that's how I do potatoes for pizza. So potatoes for pizza, I don't want them in little strippy doodles, like I don't want them, you know, spiralized.
I want like those thin, curly sheets, very thin, almost like uh potato chip thickness, thin potato, like lay-style potato chip thickness, but like in long, long spirals, and you just toss those uh salt, pepper, oil, and then those on a pizza cook up just the right amount. Do you like thick pizza on it? Do you like thin pizza? Do you like thit thick potato on a pizza or thin? I don't like potato on a pizza.
What? Oh! You don't like you don't like Sullivan Streets potato. Oh, yeah, I don't get that one. Peter, what do you like?
I like potato and pizza. But thick or thin? Oh, both ways, man. I'm not a huge fan of the mashed potato because it weighs it down too much. It's leaden.
The thing I like about a thin potato is that it's like thin. It doesn't weigh down the crust. I mean, when I've made pizza at home, I don't do like potato tip thin, but I'll go on like uh, you know. He's holding his hands up. You're on a radio.
I know, I know. But I don't know, like what, like a millimeter? Yeah, how do they do it in North Miami? How do you like your potato pizza in North Miami? I've never had potato pizza.
This is new to me. Justino. Yeah. Hey dude. Uh, wait.
All right, all right. I'm almost on my. All right. Uh oh my god, so this is too long. All right, Brandon, I'm gonna get back.
We'll talk more about spiralized vegetables. We'll start with it next week. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
You can like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter at Heritage Underscore Radio. You can email us with questions anytime at info at heritage radio network.org. Thanks for listening.
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