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 Linda Palaccio, host of A Taste of the Past. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network at Reburtis Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn! Every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Got a huge group of people here in the studio today. Join as usual with Nastasia.
The hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good. Uh yeah. And we got Jordanna Rothman over here in Anderson.
How are you doing? Doing well? So well. Yeah, Jordana and uh Nastasia together actually for the fourth of July, which we get to, but also special guest today. We got Cliff.
Clifford. So how do you pronounce how do you actually pronounce your last name? You go by the last name Endo usually, but it's actually Gullibe. It's goulie bear, but that was the name was given into our family by French missionaries. Ooh, so the original like Palau.
Endo is our Japanese last name. So Clifford Endo is what I usually go by. Oh, so why haga Makamaia like you're like when did this happen? When did you make this change in in your name? 18 years old.
Wow. Alright, so uh Endo it is no more gooey bear. Well it's still there. I just never say it. Alright.
Yeah. It exists for government documents only. Yeah, so like so wait like so you're interesting actually, like like Japanese, but Palauan, that's what I like, because I like the word Palau. Palau, yeah. It's a small tiny little island.
My mom's from there. I was born there. They're half Japanese, half Palauan. Nice. Yeah.
So you know, I'm sh would I like it? I would hate it, right? Tropical paradise, I would hate it. Yeah, it'd be terrible. The crystal blue waters, more fish than you could ever imagine.
Well, the fish delicious? Oh god, yeah. Alright. So I'll go. And so uh Jordana and Stons, you guys oh by the way, calling your questions to 718-497-2128.
That's 718-497-2128. You know, I do have a caller on the line. We can get to him whenever we're going to be able to do that. All right, okay. I'm not gonna let him hang.
Caller, you're on the air. Uh Dave, what's up? It's Joe from Greenpoint. How you doing? How's Greenpoint doing today?
Very, very good. Um love your show. Um lately I've been experimenting with uh smoking briskets, and I wanted to try to do like a combination of sous vide or like low temperature cooking and smoking. And I want to get your thoughts on how I might go about doing that. Like, should I do the smoking for I'm assuming I should do the smoke first and then the the put it put it in uh in in the uh water.
But uh what temperature should I do? I was kind of thinking maybe it would be cool to do it like medium rare braze type thing, but I don't know if that's something that you would recommend for brisket. Um just yeah, what were your thoughts be? Uh just just so you know this. So the people we got here, you got your normal nostasia to tell me that I'm an idiot, but Cliff uh has been doing uh worked with me for a long time and has been doing uh culinary production for past couple of years.
So it worked a lot with these kind of techniques. And Jordana uh was paid uh is currently paid to write about eating and cooking and formerly critic of other people's uh uh cooking, correct? Very critical. Very critical. Deeply critical person.
Right. So I'm sure you're like you have probably your own views on low temperature brisket. Uh, and you know, Cliff has his, but I'll just give you mine right away. Uh if you're doing a low temp brisket and you're gonna go medium rare, let's divide this into two problems smoke problem and the texture problem, the temperature you're gonna do, right? So if you're gonna go low temperature on it, um it's not gonna taste like a traditional brisket.
So if you're certain like Jordana, let's say you're going to a restaurant, someone's like, I'm gonna give you a brisket. You have in your mind what a brisket is, right? Someone comes out with something that's mead rare, even if it's tender, you're like, that's more stay. Right. It doesn't hit the spot.
Well, yeah, because the spot you thought you were getting hit with was the brisket spot. And a medium rare brisket doesn't hit it hits a it's delicious, but it hits a different kind of a spot. So like and and I think that's it, that's the main problem with, and I did this because I've I don't know how many thousands of short ribs I've cooked uh, you know, when I was at the French culinary as part of all the teaching stuff that we did, but you know, the more and more I ate, I was like, this is delicious, but it's not really a short rib. And if you want a short rib, this is not what you want. Anyone you you guys agreeing with me here?
So like you can do a medium rare thing, it became it's not gonna taste as meaty, right? And it won't have as much moisture loss, so it won't have the same texture or concentration of uh flavor. So there's that, right? So you can choose. You can do like a uh relatively, you know, uh, you know, medium, it's like when I do confit, I do high temp, honestly.
I do. Uh if you want to do the mead rare thing, do the mead rare thing, but it's not gonna be the same. The other thing is is that for smoke for smoking for flavor and color, yeah, you could smoke it uh you can smoke it before because that's gonna prevent the drying out of it. So if you're if you're gonna do if you're gonna do a mead rare, I would smoke before, then I would do your low temp, and then I would do a final crisp up on the outside of the skin. Yeah, that was my word was bark degradation.
Oh, oh, yeah, well, oh yeah, hell yeah. You gotta give a final crisp up. The answer is always a final crisp up. Yeah. Unless it's gonna be all you know, El Sasso.
But even in a case, like if you do a s like, remember, Cliff, when we used to do for the the low temp C V classes, we would do the uh short ribs, and they come out of the sauce and they have that disgusting like green tinge. Yeah, you have to fix that. You have to fix that. Yeah. Right.
So you just need a little bit of heat on the on the on the outside, even if you didn't care about the texture, even if you were gonna chum it up and turn it into baby food just to get the color right, much less the texture on the outside. But just remember the pleasure of a fine brisket is a little bit of drying out on the outside. In my opinion, it's a little bit of the drying out on the outside, unless you're well, I mean, uh no, it is. I mean it is. So I mean like a little bit of crust on the outside, even if you're gonna go uh mead rare.
I you know, one more last thing I'll give you. I don't really see any freaking point at all in going anywhere in between. Like, as soon as you hit uh as soon as you hit like uh in beef, I would say like 60 63 Celsius, anything above that, I don't see the damn point. Just go go, you know, go full temp. I don't really see much of a of a good range in there.
Anyone agree, disagree? Anyone, anyone, anyone? No? Alright. What is this answering your question or not?
I can't tell. Yeah, no, it's definitely, definitely. Um but what what temp would you uh first of all, do you think it's worth smoking it first than doing this, or is it just a stupid idea? And secondly, what temp would you do it if if you were to do it? What temp uh for the cook?
I mean I like the okay. Oh no, for the for the for the uh uh yeah, for the the C V part of it, the low temp part of it. Okay, well, after you look, like uh when when you're first doing a lot of low temp work, your your inclination is to do the uh kind of virtuoso move that like Bruno Gusseau, like you know, the the granddaddy of low temp cooking used to do, where he'd do like his you know uh long cooked meats at rare at like 54, you know, degrees, uh, which is like rare. You know what I mean? Uh and he'd be like, awesome, right?
And remember this is a story I haven't told in a long time, so Nastasia is not gonna throw up if I tell it again. But uh Chef Alain Sayak, who was uh, you know, like the dean at the uh French Culinary Institute, had a f went to a famous dinner that uh Joel Robouchon and uh and uh uh Bruno Gusot gave, and they gave them a 72-hour, like 52 or 54 degree uh short rib. And Chef Alain was like, this is not the short rib. And he thinks like it made me sick. I was sick.
I was like, it's not it didn't make you sick, dude. It was like straight up bacteriologically safe. Sucker was the safest damn thing in the world. It could be served to people in like a nursing home thing was safe. But uh he thought it made him sick because he's like, it is disgusting.
Who wants this? You know what I mean? So it's like it just wasn't anything he wanted. So for a virtuoso move with your with your food buddies who like like new stuff, yeah, you can go all the way that low. In general, people like long cooked things a little higher, like 57, uh, which is about 135, is a good mead rare long cook, but it's not gonna be as meaty.
You could push it all the way up to like I say, to like I mean if you're gonna if you're gonna go low, I would just do 50, 50 between 57 and 60, somewhere in that range. And um never above like 62, 63, but like I would I would stay in that 57 to 60 range. It gets a the each increment in temperature you go up, it gets a little drier, but a little more meaty flavored. Okay. Remember, if you're gonna put a sauce in the bag, reduce the hell out of it.
This is the mistake people make. They don't reduce the hell out of it. You ever put like a meat in a bag and you cook it and all the juices come out and now it's like swimming in its own juices, especially at these higher temperatures. If you're gonna go like 60, right? So think about the fact that any like sauce that you put in, which is not going to evaporate at all, is gonna get diluted by the meat's own juices, and then it's gonna be like it's gonna be poached.
And poaching is an entirely different technique, my friend. All right, cool. Thanks a lot, Dave. I appreciate it. All right, good luck.
All right, all right. All right, so uh before we get into the questions that were written in, we gotta talk about uh you know the so Stars and Jordan, Fourth of July. Oh yeah, it was really magical. Yeah, you were uh there in uh the Watch Hill, right? It was another time.
It was like being in the 1930s, and we built a fort and it was spectacular. A fort, I was told teepee, fort. It was a tee it was a teepee, yeah. No, it was a glowing teepee in the forest outside of our restored barn. I like that a lot.
You know, I'm gonna build a legit teepee, like 15 foot teepee with pole. This is the thing. I'm sure you're gonna do it better than I did it. Well, I mean did you buy did you buy the uh the two best known references on TP and lodge construction? Um actually what I did was I went foraging in a shed for electrical cords, which I lashed around some trees and hung sheets over them.
So if that's how you would do it. That's pretty baller. I mean, like I I like you know this you know what I like about Jordan Stas? She gets she gets it done. She gets it done.
She gets it done. I'm a resourceful chick. You know, you don't you didn't need a teepee. You didn't need a teepee in a week, right? What I need it, what I what we actually did, although Nastasia disagrees with this, is that we danced, we weaved throughout the trees, and I tried to pay attention to the trees to which Nastasia was particularly drawn.
She hates trees. No, she doesn't. She doesn't. She tells me because I like them, so she says that she hates the fruit. She doesn't like cooked fruit, the bottom of pools.
Biscuits. Uh biscuits and the eagles. Oh, cooked fruits. The eagles, yeah, she hates them. Not the team, the band.
But she does like trees. She does like trees. This is a witchy woman. But she always told me she hates them because I like them. Well, when we have to stop and like eat the leaves.
Yeah. She doesn't like the things that you do with trees. She likes what I do with trees. It's a different thing entirely. She likes SMing trees.
She wasn't there for the lashing. They did that in private. I lashed alone so that I could surprise her. Nice. I heard that you guys uh were crushing your beer cans and throwing them into Taylor Swift's deck.
Um yeah, yeah, that's exactly what we did. We sold them with fireworks, actually. Nice. And we created projectiles and they they landed in Ed Sheeran's hair caught on fire. I like that.
That's sweet. I like that a lot. So you know, I actually like you know, one of your buddies who was there was supposed to get the fireworks for your shindig's doll, didn't do it. Yeah, no, but I had another buddy who showed up with fireworks. Thank God for buddies.
The uh I I had a huge amount of illegal fireworks at at my place, and I have to say, I think I talked about it on the show. If you have the opportunity, if you live near a state that like has decent laws about fireworks, go out right now because I'm sure it's cheap and buy the 500 gram zipper cake entitled American Trucker. It is 11 seconds of awesome. Awesome. Is that the uh name of a firework?
Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. And right before we played it, I cranked American woman like Lenny Kravitz, and the American Trucker was like, blah blah blah blah blah blah. Like here's the thing.
Like most times, so the 500 grams is the most amount of powder you can put into a firework and sell legally and as one block of firework. And I bought some of the giant tubes that you like singly, which are awesome because they're like poof, you know, they go really high. But the ones that you like light one and walk away, it's awesome. So most of these last like 45 seconds a minute, but American Trucker does its full 500 grams in 11 seconds. 11, and I like it.
Like I'm I'm that kind of guy. I hope this doesn't say it's I'm that guy that I crunch my candy. You know what I'm saying? I put the hard candy in my mouth, I try to suck on it for a minute, I'm like F this and a crunch it, and that's it. We're different in that way.
You're the long suck? I'm a slow burned gal. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Anyway, but so maybe you would prefer the big and bold, which is another one of the 500 grand cakes that I got. But I'm saying American Trucker for my money, especially if you back it up with a bunch of like X caliber and El Diablo shells right afterwards. Awesome. Anyway, also I got another collar by the way.
Oh, yeah, one thing. Also, I hooked up my deep fryer to go uh LP. So I took my natural gas deep fryer out of the city. I'm no longer a deep fryer in the city, brought it to Connecticut, fired it up on propane, have it outside. So I've for years been telling people to uh put their deep fryer outside, and so I can report on how it's gonna work with weather and propane usage and all that.
I'll be testing it the whole freaking summer, but I was busting out fries and chicken and shrimp, like the end of the freaking world was coming. Anyway, caller, you're on the air. Uh it's Colin. Down in DC calling in. And I had a question, uh sort of set of questions about ice for you.
I got a friend who is opening and uh I got a friend who's opening up a bar in you know a former restaurant space. And they've got some equipment still there. And we're trying to see if it makes any sense to hold on to that for their ice program. So you mean like an ice machine? They have uh they have some ice machines you want to hold on to.
Yeah, they got an ice machine and they got like uh a victory two-door reach-in freezer. We're hoping to try to use to do some like bigger, clear presentation kind of cubes and stuff. Okay. Um on the with the small with the small stuff. Uh they've got an isomatic little thing that like pushes out the little waffle shaped cube things.
Yeah. Uh is that it's like smaller than you suggest in your book for shaking stuff or stirred stuff because it's just too much surface and they melt quick. Yeah. They're kind of execrable little things. I mean, like, do you have a use do you have a non-cocktail use for them?
Um I think they might, I mean, I think he's shipped in this place to mainly mainly cocktail bar with like a small, small food program. I mean, I mean, I don't know how much it I don't I don't know what the cost of ownership on that sucker is, but I mean like if I could if I could like like do whatever I wanted, I would get like a medium decent ice machine, right? With decent size, uh, you know, not like huge cubes, but decent sized cubes, one that's easy to kind of uh work with. I would do my own ice program by freezing down cubes probably in a in a chest freezer. Uh you could do reach in but chest in i in igloos, and then if I had like like super money, I would go get a nugget machine, because I've always wanted a nugget machine.
Uh and then uh that's what I would do. And then if you wanted like a serious, like uh if you want a serious uh what's it called, like raw bar, you could get a flake, but or you could just uh or you could just get a like a machine to flake out the cube, cubes that you got. But that that's I mean that's what I would do. I here's the thing. Like if you're strapped for cash, yeah, make it work with the crap ice that you know comes out of that machine, but uh, you know, make sure you make sure that you change the filters and make sure everything like, you know, i if it's coming out clear, your filters are probably good.
Like the water's like the water off that ice is quite nice. It's good. But it's just, you know, it's kind of small. It we sort of see that it's got limitations and you know we could calibrate around that and just try to work with it. But you could uh you could but the idea of like try for something like it's like a cold draft machine sort of sounds like what has uh has the buzz of something people use a lot around here.
I like cold draft for the like cocktail stuff, but you know if you're gonna do any culinary with it, it's kind of a crappy culinary ice 'cause it doesn't stack very well into uh like if you actually need to ice a bunch of stuff down it's a little bit of a pain in the butt. Here's another thing I'll say uh if you look if you in New York a lot of the times what you do is you hire like the bartender comes in and they're working a couple shifts here, a couple shifts there, a couple shifts here, a couple shifts there, right? Then it's gonna be hard to have everyone bend their head around the fact that you're using shell ice and everyone else is not and so you're probably gonna have some issues with it. If you're if your bar team is only your bar team and they're only working with you, yeah then you could crank you know like as long as you know what you your tools are, you can crank delicious stuff out no matter what ice you have. It doesn't matter.
You just have to like alter your alter your techniques uh a little bit. But then it requires you to make sure that everyone does alter their techniques and if someone comes in you have to beat them around the head and tell them that you know that it's a little different from where they worked before, etc, etc. Make sure that everything's right. You can have to keep a really uh eagle eye on your wash lines when the drinks come out and stuff like that. But it can be done.
I mean ice ice is ice, it's just the rate at which it dilutes. That's all it that's all you're messing with, right? And then how much surface water is on it. Yeah. Well, one one thing we had heard in talking to some of our some of our friends down here that uh had places was that you know a couple of them had had some kind of recurring maintenance issues with the cold draft machine.
Yeah, recently stuff to really pay attention to with those, or is those like they claim it makes them a little bit higher maintenance than just the shell ice machines? They claim that they fixed those maintenance problems, but I don't know whether that's true. It also used to be that there weren't as many people around servicing cold drafts, so when they went down there was like uh problems. I mean, a lot of times in the summer, especially as your machine ages, you're gonna get problems with your ice machine because they're running all the time. Um but uh you know, I had heard that I thought that they fixed that problem.
I I'd heard that that was a problem. I haven't I haven't owned one uh or you know, had to use one on a daily basis in years. So I don't currently know like uh but someone will probably tweet in and be like, nah, they fixed that, they work fine, or they'll tweet and be like, no, it's still a problem. You know what I mean? I mean, are there other are there other sort of brands in that ballpark that are recommended by people?
Almost everyone now makes a uh almost everyone now makes a larger size cube that you can use and a nicer nicer cube. I would look look, you know, you're gonna have a service contract at the at the bar or restaurant. So I would I mean, honestly, whoever services the stuff well, I haven't done it. But I haven't spec'd one in a long time. So, you know, I don't know, you know, things things to look for are, you know, uh is the filtration good?
Uh does it have a problem with uh with uh you know mold and slime growing on the inside of the unit because that's you know an issue. Who is that guy? Some guy told me about the guy in Texas who used to like go into every restaurant, bust into the kitchen with the camera crew, go to the ice machine and be like green slime, and that was like all he ever did. That was his only restaurant shake. You heard of this guy?
Definitely not. I think he's dead now. But anyway, it's a kind of a good shtick, right? Green slime. So you want to make sure that uh you know that that that's the thing, it's easy to clean and it's not gonna harbor nasty bacteria.
That's it. You don't want to harbor nasty bacteria, you want a good filter, you want to make nice clear ice, it doesn't taste like crap. Don't you hate when you go to a place and the ice machine has some sort of like crazy ass infection and that the ice tastes wrong? Don't you hate that? You hate it?
Yeah, and it never gets dry, just stays wet. Yeah, you know what else? Yeah, I hate that. You know what else I hate when they don't fix the filters on their ice machines and the ice machine gets that crumply look on the outside of the ice, that like raggedy look on the outside of the ice because it wasn't like filtered right. I hate that.
Or when you start getting the the cloudy sprays through the ice because it's filled. I hate that. Hate, hate. Yeah. Anyways, I hope that helps.
I mean, do you see like an inherent problem with that, other than that, like the bottom chunk's gonna not be beautiful? Yeah, as long as we like kind of I mean, uh did it work? Yeah, it seemed to. It's just the way the way it's the way it is right now, it's kind of slow because it's a little hot in that room, so we're working on the ventilation to make the uh refrigeration work a little more efficiently. Right.
I mean that it's supposed to be slow. If it like you should only be freezing, look, to get a really nice clear cube, you should probably only be freezing like, you know, uh in that kind of a freezer without movement. Because remember, you're not moving in like a climb belt. Climb bell can freeze faster because the water's moving. In a fridge, you probably shouldn't be free.
A freezer rather, you probably shouldn't be freezing more than like two, two and a half inches a day. Uh okay. Yeah. And that was another thing that's curious about. And you know, look, if if the double pans works for you, if it insulates it enough such that you're not trapping stuff in the underside of it and you're still getting clear cubes that you can like, you know, chip off the stuff, then yeah, I mean, that's easier to deal with than uh than igloos.
I've always just done it in igloo because I don't know, I just have. I've never tried a double hotel page. Yeah, I mean that's that's what I've done at home. It works. Yeah.
Um well the last okay, last thing is in in uh in your in the freezer, right? It's got a defrost cycle and uh individual timer to run that. Is there if we're using this primarily just for freezing blocks of ice, is there a best way to kind of game that defrost cycle. I don't think the defrost is gonna defrost is not gonna hurt your your as far as I can tell, the defrost is not gonna hurt your ice making. And uh it will it will shaft your coils if you don't defrost it.
Defrost, obviously, don't ever put freaking ice cream in a in a in a freezer that has a defrost cycle because you're just asking for paint. Obviously, yeah, ruining everything. But like uh, but but remember the whole goal of a big ice cube is giant freaking ice crystals. So the enemy, the enemy of your ice, which is like melting the small crystals and melting and like free freezing them back into your ice cream, rather, melting them back into larger uh ice crystals, is in fact your friend when it comes to big ice. Your friend.
Don't shaft those coils. That's mom always told me. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Uh we're not gonna we're gonna go through a whole other episode without getting to any of the written questions, aren't we? Is that gonna happen to us? Well, people should only ask one question per call. I know, but that's not in our rule. I think it's if you want to establish a rule.
Well, if you want to establish a rule, you can establish a rule, but that's not been all right. Should we do some questions before we go to break? Jack? Yes. Yes?
Yes. Oh, uh, by the way, I'll just I'll just put this in. I shouldn't do this. But uh John Rivett wrote in, and so Dave care to weigh in on the latest peas in guacamole debate. I didn't even hear about this until it was too late.
Apparently, the president of like our president of our United States cares about whether there's peas in the guacamole. Yeah. Guacamole. Melissa Clark does, apparently. I don't know.
Jordana hooked me up at this. Tell tell you I know you know, but the stas doesn't care because she hates to talk about food when she's not at work and we don't do that for work. So, you know. Well, the peas and guacal, well, I actually I miss the hullabaloo myself, but I'm aware of it because, you know, it's I'm aware of it. But um, there was actually there was a pea guacamole at ABC Cosina like a year and a half ago.
I mean, like, this is not like a new debate, and it sort of sparked up then. And then Melissa Clark published, I think, a recipe in the New York Times, and it was like this whole Twitter hullabaloo, and people were debating whether they were team P or Team No P. Well, I understand. It's a variant, right? If you like the taste, do it, yeah.
Yeah, like is it good? It's kind of like the baseline for everything. Yeah, did it taste good or not? Well, like I like I like Alex Dupac's like uh pistachio guacamole, I think it's delicious. Sure, and he actually makes a great one with Uni as well, which is quite good.
Yeah. Hmm. Yeah, that wouldn't be my first. That wouldn't be my my first way to describe it, but I like where you went with it. Um but uh, you know, whatever, right, exactly.
But like we need things to debate because like we're, you know. What's the debate? Hungry for you know, arguments that you know there's everyone wins. It's an approach, it's an approach approach. It's an approach approach debate, and we can all feel good at the end of the day.
I like peas. I don't. Okay, then I mean, how's that an argument? Well, because it's like it's a it's a it's a light way to have a debate and sort of like exorcise some of our demons without you know offending anyone. Well, I'll tell you what I like, you know, mine human nature.
My guacamole thing, I put cumin in mine all the time. Well, I mean, you bring shame upon this family. Yeah, well, you know what? I paid for the avocados, I do what I want. And the debate there ends.
If you don't want to eat my guac, I put if I really want to eat your guac, actually. You know, that's what I'm saying. I put you know what Nastasia doesn't like cumin, and so she doesn't put it. We've had this discussion on the air before. Yeah, so listen to this.
You ready for this? Nastasia does not put cumin in her chili. Wow. Well, too much cumin goes BO. Whoa.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's a thing. Too little cumin and you got tomato stew. You know what I'm saying?
Like beef tomato stew. For me, a guacamole is measured. I mean, you can put whatever you want in it, frankly. Like I wouldn't put cumin, but uh, it's a tasty flavor. It's I can understand why you would.
It's about the gradient of color. If you overmash your guacamole and it's like all like the same color green, then you and I have some words. All right, here's here's the issue. Like, I like a chunky, like like old style. I also like hyper puree, both.
Yeah, I'm I'm on the chunky style. I I can't do the pure. Okay, I also like both kinds of peanut butter. I'm just gonna go there. Yeah, but that's a totally different thing.
Guacamole is you want to see the green, you want to see the dark green and the light green and the sort of yellowy, and it reminds you what you're eating, and it connects you to the earth, and it's like a whole thing. You don't know. Connects you to the earth. They grow in trees. The puree, yeah.
What is the what is a tree grow out of? Arnold's well, so so do I grow out of the earth. You look at me, it'll remind you of the earth at the time. Well, when I mash you into a glass of minute, I'll just try to get the gradient of color. Hey, speaking of mashed and peas, though, I was just in uh London, and those guys make the mashed minted peas, which I didn't know I liked.
Yeah. I didn't know I liked mashed minted peas. Super tasty. They're delicious. Yeah.
I had one excellent version of it that spoiled me forever, and one like, oh my God, why didn't I have the excellent one all the time? Because the second one I had, I was like, oh, mashed minted peas, mashed minted peas. And they were like, you know, like all kind of like, you know what I mean? Kind of like give them the bad stuff, he's too excited. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ruined forever. Oh man, doesn't it suck to like just get turned on to something and have gotten a really good one and then someone gives you the crap the next day? The worst. All right. And one more thing, uh EW Nasser wrote in, uh, friend of the show, uh, regarding the collar about eggs ice cream a while ago.
Uh he's been using uh Jenny's ice cream recipes for a while. G J E N I uh look it up on the internet with great uh results. Uh should we do a should we do a question? Jack, do we have time? I have one more caller if we want to squeeze that in first.
Let's do it, caller, you're on the air. You have one question caller. Oh Jack is the hammer today. Hi, I wanted to uh ask you. Um I had a great time at Booker and Doc last weekend, by the way.
Oh, thanks. I want to ask you about the um how to recreate the Rasumatazerac. Uh-huh. And also just kind of you like your general formula for rattlers or like any kind of inform uh interesting ideas ideas you would try with them. All right the Rasm the Rasumatazerac is uh they were doing uh they were getting dried freeze-dried raspberries and then blending them Houstino into the liquor and spinning them out.
So any sort of like freeze-dried raspberry, and I think they're still using freeze-dried raspberries. So that's what they use for their base, and then otherwise it's a straight Sazerac. It's the only use of Peshodes I allow in the bar because I detest peixods, bitters. It tastes like cough syrup. Jordana, you love cough syrup, that's why.
That's what that looking for. Sipping some scissor. You know what? Uh we actually used to have Robotussin on the back bar. Remember that?
If it's not a controlled substance, no interest. Whoa. Uh whoa. You're getting the real. Getting the real.
That's what scissor is. It's not just like Robotus. But we're doing it for flavor, Jordana, just for flavor. And it tastes remarkably like uh Peshods. I know where you I see that.
Yeah, I can see that. And then we flamed it with the red hot pot. Anyway, blah blah blah. But back to the question. So like that's how they do that that.
And other other than that, I think it's fairly straight up, like uh, you know, Sazerac. I think they do the absent risk. They might rinse with something else. I gotta get the spec. It's not actually my spec.
I didn't write the spec, so I gotta I gotta get it. But the rattler, honestly, it's the only recipe that I that I've uh written that's written in cans. So like you do it just like you do the old school orange juice. We take a can of clarified uh of the beer, and then we take, and you want like a relatively non-hoppy, relatively uh light beer, and then um we uh pour a can of uh the clarified grapefruit juice into it and carbonate it, and that's it. It's like super simple.
A couple drops of salt, super simple, super refreshing, very light alcohol, but refresh- I like rabbit a lot, even Stas likes them. She's not a beer-y person. You had the rattler at bed BDX, any of you guys? It's like it's so like obviously, like a lot of people, they do like the lemon in the beer, but I like grapefruit. I like grapefruit and beer.
I think it's delicious. But you can't go too too too hoppy. You know what I mean? And also, I don't think the one we use is not cascade, even though that would be a more grapefruit-y, fruity thing. But anyway, we don't.
But anyway, so like I would think like anything like that, I think in the summer, people like the low alcohol stuff. People like to people like a pounder. And the juice itself is too damn sweet, but when you cut it with the beer, then like the sweetness is right on the thing, and like the beeriness is right, so it's like right in between. It's like the Arnold Palmer of beers. Kind.
Candy. Chandy, yeah. But like the grapefruit in particular, I find it refreshing. Because what's some mushy peas? Some mu mushy minted peas, but a bright green mushy minted pea.
Anyway, hope that helps go into commercial break, coming right back with cooking issues. Hello out there, it's Steve Jenkins. I'm with Fairway Markets. White Leghorn, Red Wattle, Bourbon Red, Navajo Churro. Well, these aren't names you're likely to hear at a Fairway butcher counter or any other counter today, but before the rise of factory farming, you would have.
And at Heritage Foods USA, you still do. Heritage Foods USA exists to promote genetic diversity. Small family farms and a fully traceable food supply. You see, we believe the best way to help a family farmer is to buy from them. And Heritage Foods is honored to represent a network of family farmers and artisanal producers whose work presents an immeasurable gift to our food system and to biodiversity.
The meat we celebrate, whether it's heritage turkey, Japanese steaks, Berkshire pork, or Navajo Chorro lamb chops, is the righteous kind from healthy animals of sound genetics that have been treated humanely and allowed to pursue their natural instincts. It's a simple fact. Animals raised according to this philosophy taste better. And as we like to say, you have to eat them to save them. Visit us at Heritage Foods USA.com for more information.
Yeah, I will see you all down the moonlight, no knock down on the threads. The gallery's taking up the jail. And a longer than normal break. Back with cooking issues. Hey, Jack, did you play any Jackie Molecules while we were on break?
No. I did not play Jackie Molecules. Can you play the Jackie Molecules ringtone, please? Oh man, I absolutely will. Here, hold on, let me pull it up.
Did you did you download it yet? I don't know how to. You don't know how to. I made a ringtone for our friend Peter, Peter Kim, who is the Brother Peter. Peter Kim is uh, by the way, the director of the August uh Museum of Food and Drink, and we actually have an exhibit that's gonna open in October.
We can't say he was paying for it yet, but we got a chunk of change uh to do it. And so, uh, but I made him a ringtone uh that Nastasi and I enjoyed. I'll play it for you now while Jack is getting up his jacket. Oh, you have yours ready? No child wants to play with a eater in the box.
Can you hear that? Peter in the box? Yeah, yeah. Because Nastasi and I are obsessed with Rudolph the Rudolph. My name's all wrong.
No child wants to play with a Peter in the box. So I had to come here. Oh, I love that show. King Moon Racer. That show makes less and less sense every time I watch it.
Stassi, you've seen it, what, 857 times? You've probably seen it more because you have kids. Yeah, but I think it freaks Booker out. He doesn't you know what he doesn't like to watch? He doesn't like to watch the other one, the one with Heat Miser and Snow Miser, even though Thomas Waugh, the bartender, is an exact mix of Heat Miser and Snow Miser.
Oh my god. Whoa. He totally is. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yep. Alright. Okay, so uh Jackie Molecules. Where's my Jackie Molecules at?
Oh, that was the one without you. Jackie Molecules. Oh man. Can any cooking issues listener download that? You had to donate to the Kickstarter campaign, but I'll I'll tell you this if you email Heritage Radio and ask specifically and ask nicely, uh I'll I'll send it over.
I'm gonna put that on. You never call me, Jack. You never call me anymore. So I'm gonna have that be your ringtone when you have perfect. I want like all my buddies to have custom ringtones.
Why not? We live in a world where that's possible. You know Nastasius, right? No. I shouldn't do this.
It's not about cooking, and really, like, I have so many questions to get to, but you know, I can't help it. Those of you that have met Nastasia in the real life will appreciate this. Yeah. You are mean to me. You are mean to me.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We got a question in Matt from Aquan.
I have to do this. There's a caller who's been waiting the whole time. Alright, caller, you are on the air. Hi, Dave. How you doing?
Hey, this is Chris from the Green Zone with the mint question. Oh, what happened? You did like you had you already had your event, yeah? Well, it's uh it's an ongoing series of events, so uh it's never too late. Alright.
Alright, alright. So so what happened with the one that you did? So the question, by the way, they're trying to do mint. Trying to do mint, right? Uh I have a blend check, not a vita prep, but um and I uh tried adding ascorbic acid as an antioxidant.
That didn't help. I'm basically using your blender muddling technique from liquid Intelligence. And uh ascorbic acid didn't work, uh I thought it might keep it from browning, but then I remembered all your talk about acid turning things with chlorophyll brown. Well, yeah, except except okay. Yeah, moderate.
Yeah. And so for my events so far, I've just been blending it on the spot and serving the drink on the spot at the bar. Um, but I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to keep that green color for more than like half an hour. No, mint is much harder than the rest of the herbs. The ascorbic acid didn't help at all.
No, I mean, in fact, if anything that made it worse. Right. Well, if you add small amounts, so too much acidity can go the other way, but like s like it should it should the baking soda did work though, and you tried even like toning it down to to it's hard. Mint is really hard. Mint wants to go brown really badly.
Yes, have you tried using like semi-dried? Well, I haven't, but so the whole point is that in in you know, my bar is a Middle Eastern team, cocktail bar. In the Middle East, blended mint lemonade is super popular, and it always has this vivid green color and really fresh taste. So that's what I'm going for. No, but they're using dried, right?
No, no, they're using fresh, but they blend it to order on the spot. Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I I look I've never had luck keeping fresh mint. You first first of all, you can't blanch it.
It's destroyed. You can't blanch it. You can't. No, as soon as you heat the mint, it's ruining. Run.
Yeah. Uh but then uh the uh yeah, I think the baking soda's gonna make it taste soapy. The it didn't taste soapy, it tasted almost like creamy, if that makes sense. Creamy. That sounds like that could be good.
Yeah, it doesn't have like a creamy texture or anything, but like it had this slightly sweet, almost vaguely fatty dairy taste. Cliff says bun peas into it, but he's just joking. That goes back to the guacamole debate we were having earlier. Um fake green not fake, but like chlorophyll extracts, one thing you could do. Uh well, you know, you could do that.
You could do chlorophyll extracts in it. Uh that's cheating. That's cheating like a motor. No, I think like sp like you make like a good spinach extract, uh that'll stay green. Green.
Yeah. Yeah. Green. I heard that's actually the source of the color in Chartreuse. You heard right.
Yeah. Spinach. Spinach. Yeah, so that works. I mean, it's and reduce it down or what?
Uh I mean, you don't need that much, I don't think. Like if you make a good extra do you have a good uh t a good uh recipe off the top of your head, Cliff, for that? Do you make that for the uh TV shows ever for the green? Uh it's we just we it's a blanch blend strain. But you squeeze the hell out of it before you blend it, right?
Blanche, squeeze the hell, get that black dark stuff out, then blend strain, right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh the spinach. Yeah.
The you know, uh the other problem though is when mint turns brown, it also the flavor changes. So if it's mainly the color, but you're not getting oxidative flavor changes in it, then you're gonna be okay. But if it starts tasting swampy, that's when you know you're gonna be able to do it. Yeah, it doesn't actually taste so bad. It definitely I I know what you mean.
Like, you know, if I muddle a mojito and I let it sit out for a while, it starts to smell and taste awful. Did you know that you're not allowed to yell at customers for not drinking their stuff fast enough? Did you know that? Well, I mean, you know, when I'm when I fled to order, the customers are definitely drinking it fast enough. Good.
Good for them. Anyway, but like uh I'm look, just keep keep calling and tweeting back and let me know whether you come up with something that works because it's a problem that uh everyone has had. We do all of our stuff on mint uh to order just because uh I've never been able to get it to keep, and I never do mint for outside events when we're gonna do bottle batching because I can't get it to work. So if you come up with something that you like, just let us know. Alrighty.
Okay, sound good. Alrighty. Uh Matt wrote in for wait, Jordan's on the air for a reason. We only have five minutes left. She had a big question.
Let me just finish Matt because I started it and then we'll do it. Matt from Ackeron wrote in on quinine. I haven't been able to get quinine sulfate USP from Spectrum Chemical. Uh tips on that would be appreciated. They rejected my LLC's attempt.
Hmm. Tell them you're a school. Right? Tell them you're a school. I wait, I didn't tell you to just falsely represent that you're a school.
I take that back. I don't know. Figure something out. Uh to make tonic, but I have been able to get kinchona bark. The tonic I've made from the kinchona bark is is it chinchona or kinchona?
I've always said kin. I think it's chinchona. Chinch well, it's ch chin, like chin chin, chim. Okay. Chinchona is great tasting, but it's brownish color that many find unappealing.
Can you think of any way to clarify it? Well, look, remember, clarity and color are two different things. I can have something that's totally clear, it's still gonna be brown, right? So you want colorless and clear. When I do it, I can make it uh totally clear.
I mean, uh, yeah, clear in in a centrifuge or with good filtration. Uh and that's gonna be good for good enough for carbonation. Um anyway, here's a link to uh Jeffrey Morgenthaler's page if you need the recipe. Yeah, I have that recipe. He also adds other spices uh to it.
Uh I've done a decent um I've done a decent uh quinine. In fact, I have a recipe for it in Liquid Intelligence, how to use the bark. The problem is that even when it's fully clear, there are foaming agents in can in the conchona bark that aren't the quinine, and it's gonna you're gonna get more foam out. So you just need to be careful. If you do a good job clarifying, and you could put it through uh a filter to try and do that.
Like you could put it through some sort of like uh some sort of you know filter that gets all the particles out, but I hate doing that. You could spin it in a low grade centrifuge that would also work because you don't need to do that much. But you need to get it crystal clear. Once it's crystal clear, I mean the color's not that unappealing once it's really watered down to the point where you're gonna use it. Uh then it looks almost like a ginger ale and people will find that it's uh pleasant.
And if you do get it clear, you will get foaming when you open the bottle, but you won't continuously lose carbonation uh because of constant nucleation of bubbles. So hope that helps. Now, uh Jordana, we're gonna Jack, we're gonna have to do another freaking catch up. I'm ready when you are. I got I got two whole weeks we'll look for the questions here.
I'm not gonna get to answer. Jordiana, what do we got going? Okay. So here's my situation. Um I'm going to Burning Man again this summer.
And wait, you you went once and you're gonna go again? Yeah, I'm gonna go for like as long as they'll have me, basically. I thought the whole thing was that they have anyone that shows up. Um definitely not the whole thing. It's like a very regimented thing with like tickets and a whole really?
Oh yeah. Didn't isn't it just like a bunch of people like lighting gas fires and it didn't start as a bunch of people like bringing a bunch of crazy stuff and lighting big gas fires in the desert? Um it actually started on a beach in San Francisco um and it's grown to I mean it's the second largest city in Nevada outside of Las Vegas for one week out of the year. It's 70,000 people and it's like an entire infrastructure. It's the city.
I mean, it's are there gas fires? Because like if there's no gas. There are definitely fires. You burn the effigy, don't worry. And a lot of the art burns as well.
Um, and it's a really amazing community. I mean, it's like a staggering infrastructure, actually. It's really uh uh it's really stunning what how well it actually works considering um its reputation. Do you live where do you where do you live in this situation? You live in do you have like some sort of like I live in a camp, yeah.
Like a bedouin tent? They're pretty awesome. Um I actually I live in in like a trailer, a double wide, really classic. They bring double wides into this. Well, I bring we bring it, yeah.
We bring it from Reno, drive it in. Damn. Yeah. That's up in the game. Yeah.
I mean, a lot of people live in tents, and that's still the majority for sure. Yeah, it's I mean, listen, like basically what it provides. It provides, I mean, it's not a whole I mean it's not like luxurious by any means, and I share it with six people, so it's not it's cramped in. When you say double wide, like you're talking about the ones that my grandma used to live in and Wappington's Falls. And you you drive it in, so you hitch it to a uh truck and you drive it in and then you park it and then you press a button and it expands.
So it's a movie trailer. It's like Hadad's. I don't know what Hadad's is. They're like the movie trailer. No, no, no.
It's not oh right, right, right. Actually, I do know what Hadad's is. Amazing. No, um it's no, I mean it looks it looks like an RV, it just doesn't have the driving mechanism inside of it. It's it's uh hitched to a truck.
Um basically what it provides is like a little bit more protection from the elements, and it provide it actually, it has a you know, it has a it has a bathroom for, you know, but it and then it has a um uh a refrigerator. So that actually helps with some storage issues, but not to the extent that I'm going to need them this summer because so part of the whole experience there is that you go and you want to contribute to the community last year. I really kind of let it all wash over me and it was really amazing, and I took so much from the experience, but I felt like I didn't contribute that much. So this year my my group and I decided that we want to build a bar um at Burning Man to give back to the community. By keep you mean you're not gonna sell liquor, you're gonna give it away?
There's no selling. There's no selling to gift. And so actually last year it sort of happened organically. Um we started we were making palomas for everyone, which is really nice. But um this year we wanna we wanna, you know, make it a little bit more formal.
We actually want to build a structure and we have this idea for like a rope installation art piece, and I wanna do and our our camp is Day of the Dead themed, um shout out La Calaca. So we want to do m you know Mexican cocktails, but part of that is citrus and the environment, the climate of Burning Man, uh the citrus will go immediately, so you can't actually bring citrus. So I started to think about what are some alternatives to how can I fake citrus basically in the desert. So my first thought was that I would do minding that there are sort of packing issues as well, you know, like I'm bringing two duffels, we don't have a tremendous amount of room, there's not you know, you y you gotta be a little bit scrappy. So my first thought was maybe inspired by the acid tasting that you did at the Fantastic Mofad benefit um at Carnegie Hall.
I thought maybe I would do like I would fake lime juice with some of the powdered acids. And so I want more information upon that. But then I was told by my friend Nastasia that you actually had another idea. Yes, many, many. So let's talk about it.
Whenever you have a problem, clear the parameters. How many drinks we talk about? How many drinks? Well, yeah, well, that's a mm Give me a I I'm gonna say fifty, hundred, thousand. Wherever I'm gonna say four hundred.
Four hundred. Four to five hundred, let's say. So let's say you were gonna just bring straight up lime juice. Let's say I can make a keep for you, right? Okay.
Uh you're gonna be talking about in the levels that I'm doing, let's say you have about an ounce per drink. How many? How many drinks? 400? Let's say five, four or five hundred.
So like five hundred ounces, so call that like uh eight, two-liter bottles. Can you do it? Could I bring eight two-liter bottles? No. It's too heavy.
I can't travel with that. Eight two. Now you're getting tough. Here's the problem with acids. Yeah, talk to me.
Acids don't have first of all, they don't have the richest of flavor that a real uh that a real you know citrus is gonna have. They're good for making sodas and things that are gonna keep uh infinitely. And the good news is the amount of acid that's contained in a liter, right? So a kilogram of lime juice only weighs 60 grams. Right.
But uh things that are shaken that have acids in them have no texture because they don't have any of the proteins that you get out of the out of the citrus. Um it's never gonna have that kind of fresh kind of fruit kind of a thing going on. Um, if you could have someone deliver the citrus to the trailer, then you could juice it and cook it. The answer to keeping it is doing cordial, right? Right.
So, like, you know, if you want to use real citrus, the answer is is like you don't want to be juicing every day, and the juice is gonna go bad. It's not pot. It's not even though we do have refrigeration in the trailer, and there's actually a little bit of added refrigeration in in this sort of like desert kitchen thing, it's not as it's it's not something I can count on. It's not like equal quantities of sugar and lime juice. Because you're gonna remember, you're gonna need sugar out there too.
So equal quantities of sugar and lime juice. If you just bring it up to a boil with some peel in it and let it settle out, that can stay out in the desert covered, not in a fridge forever. We're talking about, by the way, like temperatures can rise during the day to over 100 degrees and higher, and at night they can drop to freezing. Very, very challenging environment. Yeah, but this it's all good.
You'll be good for how long is it? Less less than a week. Yeah. So you you'll be good because the combination of the acidity and the sugar ain't nothing growing in in that cordial, right? So it's totally preserved.
Now, if you can't fly it out there, but you know, you could like like like when you pick up the thing, like quickly juice like the the limes or have someone buy the hey, actually, don't buy the really bad stuff. But once you're gonna cook it, the lime juice doesn't have to be super fresh anyway, because you're gonna make a cordial with it, right? Test it here first so you get the recipe right. But you could literally just buy the I'm making air quotes, like fresh lime juice that's been juiced a couple of days ago. You could buy it by the quart out there in uh in Vegas, in Reno.
You know my uh my uh crazy uncle Ralph Vigorito was a pit boss in Reno back in the day. Did not know that. Yeah, glad to pay him a visit if you'd like. Yeah, oh no, he's in Jersey now. I haven't seen him in a while.
Anyway, uh oh my god, he's an awesome character. Anyways, so uh yeah, like equal quantities of that lime juice. Not the real, not the real bull, real BS, you know, but like fresh semi-fresh. Right. Uh oh, here's another good one.
Uh, even easier. Even easier. Take the malic acid and the citric acid that I'm talking about. The powders. Yeah.
Test this. I haven't done it. I haven't made an orange cordial. But take the the malic and the citric, and it's 32 grams of um uh citric and 20 grams of malic acid per liter of OJ. Because OJ is fantastically easy to buy, fresh squeezed, right?
Combine uh that and every you know, every liter of that OJ, which you can source anywhere, and you can just fly out with the powders, put uh equal quantity a kilo of sugar in, bring it up to the boil, let it come down, and use that as your sour mix. Should be stable, should be uh should be good. Should be good. I haven't done it, so we have to test it. It's gonna have a cooked orange flavor, not a fresh orange flavor, but it'll have still like a bright acidity to it.
Okay. I'll test it. I'll see how it works. I'd throw a couple peels in anyway, but that should be easy and you can source everything. But I don't know.
I'm just talking off the top of my head now. It's also a matter of I mean that there are other logistical issues. I mean, there is actually there's this desert kitchen, so there is there is a stove. I mean, it's a propane, you know, like one burner, but so there's capability to boil. You only need to do it one time.
Yeah, but it's also like I, you know, I don't wanna I I you know there's a lot of people that need to be fed in this kitchen, so I can't like commandeer that for the case. I'll tell you what I'll do just for you. When do you have to go? Leaving the last day of August. All right.
So we have you know what I'll do? I will take and I will make a non-boiled version of this core cordial in quotes because it's not boiled, and I'll throw it in my dehigh at 110 degrees for a week and we'll see how it tastes. And then we're gonna make a powder. Well, no, I'll take the powder. In other words, like you'll just go out there, you'll buy OJ and sugar out there in Reno, dump the powder, the OJ, and the sugar together, stir it until it dissolves, and see how it tastes.
I'll just do a test in my dehydrator and see what happens to it. Yeah, that sounds great. All right. So this is this is uh this is the key. Light to light enough to travel with.
In the luggage, yeah. In the luggage. Luggages. Shelf stable. Ish yeah.
Enough. Yeah. You know. And uh is approximates the flavor of real citrus. I mean it will it will be real citrus.
That's what I'm saying. We're not just gonna approximate, we're gonna make it happen. Okay. We're gonna make it happen. Alrighty.
And listen, we're gonna have to do a catch-up show because I did not get to hardly any, I got exactly to one question. We have lots of questions that I know I owe you guys the answers to. Please don't get angry. We still have your questions. We'll get back to them next time on 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 dot org. Heritage Radio Network is a 501c3 nonprofit.
To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.