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 HeritageFoods USA.com. This is Chef Emily Peterson, host of Sharp and Hot. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadio Network.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Asians. Meat work? I don't know. Uh Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwig, Brooklyn! How y'all doing?
Got uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez with me. Got Jack in the engineering booth. Oh, we remembered you, Jack. Ah, Jesus! Like last week, like so much is going on that apparently I forgot to mention that Jack was at his usual post in the in the engineering booth.
And then apparently what Nastasi's actually doing during the radio show, as opposed to paying attention to what's going on, is texting Jack. No, Jack and I were texting back and forth. I know, that's what I'm saying. Like, you know, you can literally just say that on air. You don't need to say first of all, obviously, since I was talking to Jack throughout the show, just an oversight and not, you know, some sort of like some sort of like Jack no longer counts.
Jack Dak no longer counts. Right? Anyways. Call in your questions to a 718497-2128. That's 7184972128.
Hey, listen, you know what? So I'm gonna do this like weather forecast style, because I don't know anything for sure. But next week, I think we have like a 50% chance of McGee. Whoa, really? Yeah, 50% chance of McGee.
Like may go up or may go down. You know, it's one of those things it's like like the weather, like if a butterfly flaps its wings somewhere in Indonesia, we might not get McGee next week, but you know, you never know. Why 50? I thought he was coming. He's gonna be in town, and he suggested, hey, maybe I can like, you know hang out before and after the radio show.
And so he didn't say he would stay during it, but you know, assuming he doesn't hightail it out, he could uh, you know, hang out, and then we could get some McGee style questions on the air. By the way, uh one quick thing before I get into it, even though I'm uh horrendously late. Was that a call I heard, Jack? Do we have a call? No.
Okay. So uh I have this thing that really makes me upset. The people who do it aren't bad people, they're not like purposely enemies of quality, which by the way, Stas and I are still working on the shirt, we just have other problems we've been dealing with first. Um I hate, I don't know. Tell me if I've spoken about this on the air before, but I hate seeing people in medical scrubs on the street.
I hate it. Yeah. Have I talked about this, Jack? That you remember? No, not that I remember.
I hate it. Why? Uh, okay. So scrubs, right, are the universal symbol that I'm about to do something to your body that requires me to be clean. So I don't want it to be like you know, they're they're designed for like in a surgical situation, right?
You scrub up, you you know, you you completely try and scrub. This is me scrubbing, you scrub your hands, wash everything, right? And you have these clothes on that are not your street clothes, right? You put on these booties over your feet, presumably, so that you're not like you know, w trampsing around in, you know, your sneaks that you've been uh uh tracing through like puddles of filth on the street with, and now I am about to do something to you that like you know requires me to not be disgusting. That's what scrubs mean, right?
So the opposite of the scrub for a medical professional is the lab coat, right? Or the aka the doctor's coat. That is designed to protect my street clothes against the nasty stuff that might splash on me, right? See what I'm saying? See the difference?
So when I see, and and it's compounded by the fact that there's all these people now who have these jobs where they want them to look medically, I'm making those quotey quotes with my hands as air quotes. They want to look medically, so they make them wear scrubs even though they shouldn't be wearing scrubs as part of their uniforms, like Dwayne Reed does this sometimes, right? And I just think it's filthy, you know, seeing it in his feet. You know what, and and this ru the the reason I'm bringing it up on the show is because it also reminds me how much do you hate when you see people walking outside in their whites? Yeah.
Right? They're walking outside in their chef's whites. What about the people who have to go outside because they're taking a smoke break? They don't even take their apron off, and they're leaning with their like filthy apron and their chef whites against some nasty, like uh uh what are those things called? Scaffolds that I've seen dogs piss on and people spit on constantly, and then they're smoking, and that's the way they you know, and they're spitting and smoking.
This is like, you know, it's not you don't want to see that, right? Welcome to New York. Yeah, but my point is is that like every employer should know to tell their uh folks not to let a customer see them in their whites unless they're cooking. You know what I mean? Because when you're cooking, you're usually pretty on point about not looking like you're like doing something disgusting.
Like, but when you're outside, like you know, who knows whether you know you're gonna touch your face with your hands, which is revolting. There's all sorts of things that you know, in terms of cooking, you know what I'm saying? Anyways, people need to get their their uh you know their street clothes separate from their. Is it that people don't provide places to change? Maybe.
Or say I don't want to carry it, I don't want to carry. Is that what it is? Maybe. I don't know. Nasty.
Am I right? You agree? Yeah. For once, Doz agrees with me. Unusual.
Uh all right. We got a lot of questions to get to, so I'm just gonna start start ripping and tearing. Did what about that thing Cliff showed us last week? It's disgusting. I had no idea what that meant.
It's disgusting. Just Google ripping and tearing. Disgusting, disgusting. Okay, Jack, have you seen this? Uh no, I'm about to, though.
Yeah, there you go. All right. Ken Colgan wrote in on Martinis. Hello, Dave Anastasia. I've only just discovered the show, and I'm going through the podcasts uh in order.
I'm up to number 21. Oh my god, so many more for him to listen to. Oh, jeez. So I apologize if somebody's already asked this question. In the British newspaper The Guardian, in March of this year, former 007 uh Roger Moore explains how he makes a dry martini.
By the way, where does Moore fit in in your pantheon of uh of Bonds? Anyone? Stas? No, none. You don't like you don't care about Bond?
Oh, jeez, you're such a poor quality human. Like, why do you not care about James Bond? You didn't like the movies growing up? No. I never watched them.
You never seen a single James Bond? I have, but I just I didn't care for them. You didn't care for any of them? Jack? I've never seen the single James Bond.
What the hell's wrong with you people? Yeah. Whoops. Never seen Goldfinger? That would mean you've seen one.
You don't know the characters. You don't know Jaws? Roger Roger Moore, like one of the character bad guys from his era, is uh is Jaws, who's uh that giant dude who you might remember as the giant dude from uh Happy Gilmore. You've seen that movie, correct? Mm-hmm.
Oh my god, you guys are such you guys you're just saying to get me off this top. I can't believe you don't know the different Roger Moore's. Now I can understand they are kind of absurd sexist weird movies with no plot, but like you know, as a kid seeing all this stuff blow up. Anyway, Roger Moore, did you see Cannonball Run? Uh yeah, a long time ago.
He played a character like him in the Cannonball run stuff in in like an old whatever, anyway. So uh wow, I can't believe I'm dealing with two people that I can't pitch anything off of with uh It's the kind of thing I would normally be like, oh yeah, yeah, of course, but I had to come clean and be honest. You know? All right. Well you're familiar with it.
Should we take the call. Yeah, all right, but you're familiar with the fact that that James Bond asks absurdly for a shake in Martini, right? Yes, this this I know. Alright, so we can get back to Ken's question after this. It's absurd, it's ridiculous.
Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, Nastasha and Jackie Molecules. This is Antoine from Boca Ratone. Hey, what's up? How are you guys doing?
All right. Alright, cool. I had two questions. One was a simpler one. I was wondering if you've ever made a simple syrup with lactose, and if it's possible at all.
No, here's why. Uh you can add some lactose to it, but it's not it's it's like very uh low solubility, so you can't get it up to the levels of sweetness that would be required from a simple syrup. You can dope some lactose in, but remember, like even in ice cream, if you use too much dry milk powder, as it freezes down, you'll get lactose crystallizing, you get those nasty crystals. Okay, cool. And the other one I asked is if there's a more expedited way to make tomko katsu for ramen.
Oh, yeah, I don't know. What's the technique you use now? I've never had I've never actually I've sadly never made it my myself. You uh you what do you what do you do? Uh I was thinking of doing like a half pressure cooker sort of technique, perhaps, and then speeding it up some other way, but I haven't seen anything else on it.
Yeah, I mean I mean like like first first like pressuring it, then drying it, then frying it. Yeah. I'm sure that'll work. I mean I think the trick with the pressure cooking with it is you're gonna want to use a super hyper concentrated stock, right? And then after you release it, you're gonna want to pull it out and then you're gonna want to let it uh uh flash off hot to get rid of some of the moisture on the outside, but not so hot that you flash the moisture out of the inside, right?
But you're gonna need to get pick up your pickup on the outside of the of the thing. What so what's your typical what's a typical dip on this panko, right? Panko with what? Like an egg uh what what's the what's the dip on it? Is it flour, then some sort of egg dip, then panko?
Pretty much. I mean, just uh sometimes I'll mess around with some milks I'll add in there as well, they're a heavy cream or I'll mess around with different ones each time, but pretty much around that. You might want to get some batter bind or some crisp coat in your initial flour dip to uh increase adhesion and stop uh oil penetration down, but uh there's no reason that won't work. Just use a very concentrated stock and reuse it a bunch of times to do your pressure cooking, and I think you're not gonna degrade the flavor of it at all, and it'll be super quickity quick. Or you could just use, you know, one of the many cuts that's going to be like tender as is, and then you can basically just fry from raw, you know.
Depend depends on what cut you're gonna use, obviously. Cool. I don't know. I mean, you're always the man of the answer, so I didn't know if if you had ever made it before, but it sounds good. Yeah, try that out.
All right, let us know how it works. All right, thank you very much. All right. Uh back to this martini. So in the British newspaper The Guardian, in March I always forget when you go on a British airplane, they offer you two newspapers.
I can't remember what they are, right? But you always the what you always need to ask is you say, which one is the racist one? Because they offer you two and one's like some horrible racist rag. And yeah, yeah. And I can never remember which one's which.
So I don't know if the Guardian's the racist one or the not racist one. I don't know. Someone will tell me. But literally, like one time the last time I was flying over there, the stewardess was like, and the guy next to me is like, oh, that's the racist one. Get the other one.
I was like, oh, good, thank you. You know what I mean? They all know. And the people who get it know. They're like, Yes, I would prefer the racist one.
Um okay. Uh in the British newspaper The Guardian, uh former 007 um Roger Moore explains how he makes uh a dry martini you have to be uh uh uh a Sean Connery kind of a person no you don't you like Sean Connery? Did you like Indiana Jones and the in the last crusade? Was that your favorite Indiana Jones? I think so.
Then you like Sean Connery. Okay. Um put uh an egg cup measure of Neuprat driver mouth into a V-shaped martini glass first mistake uh and swirl it around to flavor the glass uh an egg thing an egg cup it's a I had to look it up an A cup stores an egg the Brits the British eat a lot of soft boiled eggs and then they break the tops off and you have to hold it in an egg cup. Stas is making an egg cup face which is like imagine the vegan face but with like just like a huge heaping side dose of derision and like scorn for whole cultures. Right?
Yeah yeah anywho an egg cup is about 40 mils which is uh you know like a an ounce and a quarter or something around there so you got that in your mind first of all it's a huge waste of uh of well anyway put an egg cup measure of Neuprat uh driver mouth into a uh V-shaped martini glass and swirl it around to flavor the glass V-shaped martini glasses are kind of self-limiting drunk machines because like the drunker you are the more you spill it before it gets to your face and it's like slosh it around. So in a standing cocktail party it's almost impossible to get too hosed on a V-shaped martini glass before it starts spilling everywhere and people send you home. That's the only good thing I have to say about that glass style. Okay, and swirl it around to flavor the glass. Then tip the vermouth into the cocktail shaker, swirl it around, and then throw away what's left.
You just spent like, you know, an ounce and a quarter or so of vermouth. Like it doesn't take that much to swirl around a glass, but what if? Would have. Would have. Then put a couple of ice cubes into a shaker, add your measure of gin, and so on and so on, and presumably shake and not stirred.
So uh first of all, my you know what my theory on shaking not stirred for James Bond is? That he uh because he's a super spy, like he doesn't want to get too wasted, right? Because he might have to shoot someone at any time, and so he like has his uh martinis horribly watered down. And he doesn't actually, he's probably like a little bit of a uh of a nance and doesn't want like too much like uh, you know, flavor, so he's like trying to get rid of as much flavor as he can. So he's British, so he has to use gin.
He can't go uh, you know, like he has well, you know. I got James Bond though, he does use vodka or gin, I always forget. Anyways, but you know, Roger Moore, actual British, has to go, you know, gin, because it's a British thing, and just shake it until there's like no alcohol or flavor left, and then you could pound a bunch of them and still shoot uh Hervey Village in the head, you know what I mean? Or like you know, intercept odd job when he's throwing his super sharp hat at you. Anyways, that's my theory.
Uh obviously it's gonna be horribly overdiluted if you cook it that way, but it will be cold. Uh as another as another thing. Anyway, someone in the comment section said you may as well just drink a glass of neat gin. Not true. Not true.
You may as well uh j uh drink a glass of neat gin with a boat ton of water in it, right? Because you you made it real cold uh watery when you did that. And I have to say that it looks pretty sensible comment to me. Hence the question Does the tiny amount of vermouth that would cling to the sides of the cocktail glass in the shaker actually alter the flavor of the drink if you then add something as strong as gin? Remember, his gin ain't strong anymore because it's been watered to hell because he's shaking that sucker and not stirring it.
Wouldn't gin shaking with ice be much quicker to make, and unless one has an incredibly refined palate tastes pretty much exactly the same. Yours, Ken Colgan. No. You'd taste it. I mean, remember, it's just uh, you know, water and gin, and so you would taste it.
I mean, like, look, uh, the other famous classical rinse drinks, I don't believe in rinsing for martinis because I think you should just add vermouth. I think the reason people want such a small amount of vermouth is that they're using like really old oxidized vermouth, and uh, you know, if you were to open a fresh bottle, um, you know, I don't use Noy Pratt in mine, but like if you were to open a fresh bottle of like a high quality vermouth or whatever you like the flavor of, uh, it would be good in a larger amount than that. But the answer is yes, uh, rinsing does make a difference. Most notably, the most notable rinse drink that um human beings make uh who aren't super spies is uh the Sazerac, which has a rinse of well, Arab Sant or Absinthe on the inside of the glass, and it's it's quite noticeable if you don't uh if you you know it's quite noticeable. And so, especially on the on the aromatic side.
So it does make a difference. I don't know about rinsing the the tin with it. That just seems kind of that just seems kind of dumb. It's the equivalent of adding probably like uh, you know, I don't know, five drops, six drops, or something. We'll make a difference though.
You know, I wouldn't make a difference if you were to do something that's incredibly strong flavored, but you know, gin that's had the crap shaken out of it isn't not gonna be a problem. Uh Jeremy Gabbard writes in, I've officially caught up gang. What do you think about that as a thing? Gang. It gets all of us.
I like that. I like that the last guy called me Jackie and Molecules. It's pretty strong, right? Well, you know him from Boca Raton. He calls in all the time.
Yeah. I'm just I'm just liking the name switch here. Well, well, maybe as we're coming out of commercial, you can play the uh you can play the Jackie Molecules Tom. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Jackie Molecules.
Uh I'm officially caught up on the back catalog of episodes after discovering your podcast a couple of months ago. Man, can you imagine that? No. No. Uh I'd like to dip my toe into low temperature cooking, but I haven't heard too much about uh circulators.
Looking at the ANOVA precision cooker. Is that what they really call it? A Nova Precision Cooker. Oh, ANOVA. Yeah, but like precision cooker instead of circulator.
Why would you come up with a new name? I don't know. I mean it does. I don't know. Precision cooker.
Um the Sancerre and the Nomaku. Nomaku, famously made by Wee Pop, Bam Soupy Pot. That's actually his actual last name is Supapipot. I love Bam. Bam's a good man.
Uh for home use. And as long as I take into account my water volume slash heating capacity, am I going to miss out anything that the pricier models offer? Which the pricier models, like, you know, I guess we're talking like the uh the eight hundred dollar um the eight hundred dollar um Stas, help me out here. Polyscience. Yeah, that P Press makes.
Or the the slightly heavier duty one, the old lab style one. I still love my old metal style uh poly science guy with the metal bottoms because I'm a very um abusive and I sent so we did the we shot the uh Thanksgiving turkey again, the one that you know we did have done a million times with the with the uh the the bionic turkey with the bones structure. And for that one, the metal guy really helps because it's easier to clean the oil out of the metal one and pipe the oil around inside of the bird, etc. etc. Anyway, um I gonna miss out anything that the pricer models offer?
I've read uh Kenji uh Lopez Alt's head to head uh uh which is a couple like a year and a half old now on Sirius Eats about the um different circulators, but I'm curious if there's any of the three that you particularly love or hate. Thanks in advance, Jeremy Gabbard. Okay. First of all, I went and read the serious eats uh head to head, and there's a couple of things that I mean, look, any head to head that someone writes when someone is sent three circulators or three anything, dishwashers, computers, whatever, you have to take with a little bit of a grain of salt the evaluations that someone does right off the bat because they don't take into account kind of what's happening uh year in, year out, and also what happens with a number of different uh users uh use it. So, you know, you can all go read it, but I'll just comment on on some of the things that the and and by the way, I don't have a boat ton of a I I own a sans air and I own uh owned a nomaku.
Peter Kim stole it from me, uh, but uh whatever, I owned one of the first generation, but I've not had any experience with the second generation nomikus, which are uh uh a little bit different. Um but I'll try to I'll try to go through I mean and they all work. They all heat water up and they're and they're pretty accurate. But um what uh what Kenji said, uh one of the things he said it to worry about is um evaporation during cooking and therefore like how how big a difference there is between the minimum and maximum water levels in uh in a circulator. So for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, like uh circulators have a heating element and a pump.
And if if either of those things goes dry, then uh then you're in in deep, deep trouble. So they all have sensors in them to stop that from happening, but also all units have a minimum water level on the on the pump and the and and uh and a maximum. The maximum is to protect the electronics, and the minimum is to is to prevent uh overheating or lack of circulation. Now the the the thing that that people don't list is how effective something is at circulating uh below its minimum depth. So for instance, if you were to put a uh an immersion circulator into the ocean, it's not gonna circulate the stuff at the bottom because the pump really only circulates the stuff at the top.
So a factor that nobody takes into account is how well it circulates a bath. Let's say your bath was a stock pot uh and your circulator is only hanging out in the top six inches or seven inches of the stock pot, but the stock pot's got another foot below it. Well, how's it doing there? And especially a problem when you talk about that kind of circulation is the fact that that hot uh stuff rises. And so the stuff that you're circulating and keeping hot tends to tend to rise and the and the lower temperature stuff tends to settle to the bottom.
So how effective something is at agitating a tall pot is gonna be a problem, especially if you do a lot of your cooking in things like stockpots. But anyways, uh having a wide range uh of of uh minimum to maximum depth is important if long cooking foods are on the agenda. 150 degrees this is Kenji writing, 150 degrees uh uh water in a metal pot with a 10-inch diameter and two gallons of water will drop in height by about an inch every eight hours due to evaporation in my apartment. Uh and then he says covering the top with foil or plastic wrap, don't use foil, use plastic wrap. Covering the top with plastic uh plastic wrap can cut this down, but the possibility that the water uh level will drop below the minimum line during extended cook is a very real one.
Not listen, you should never run a circulator for any length of time that's not covered. I'm gonna go back and say this again. You should never run a circulator uh without uh covering it uh for any length of time. It's just really, really bad practice. Okay.
So I mean like and this is one of the first things I teach people. So for me, you know, like how much the water level is gonna drop is not that much of an issue because I know that I'm always gonna be running with uh with plastic on the top. The exception being if you're running it during service. If you're running it during service and you're gonna be going in and out, then and you're just doing a re-therm bath, then maybe you don't need to, but um, whatever. Uh, the other thing is uh that I thought was kind of a little bit misleading on the on the review there is uh the talking about the clips uh on on the back of it.
Uh Kenji liked the screw clamp. You know, remember the old screw clamps that you used to use on the poly sciences? Yeah, I hate them, right? I like that's why the the newer poly sciences have this quick release uh guys that pop out because the uh I you know Kenji's worried that you're gonna that the clip's gonna fail and you're gonna drop the circulator into the water. The only time in you know the well over a decade that I've been using circulators on a consistent basis that I've ever dropped one in water was because I was so angry trying to yank the sucker off because I had to unscrew the thing in back and it kept on catching on the lid of the uh on the back side of the rim of the cambro.
I was like yanking on it because I was so angry. You know how I get stuff. I was yanking on it and I I pulled it up, yanked it so hard that it tipped and fell into the water bath. And that's the only time I've ever dropped it, and it was because it was firmly clamped. I regularly rip the clamps out of the uh the screw things out of the back and just place it over the edge.
So I'm not really worried uh uh about uh about that. And the other thing that's not taken into account in the review that's very important is you have to ask yourself what um what are you going to put the thing into, right? So uh one thing that one thing that like if you look at for instance the old metal style poly science versus the newer uh plastic style poly science, uh the newer plastic style one is narrower, and the Nomiku is very, very narrow. And what that means is it takes up less space in your circulating bath. So you have to ask yourself kind of what you're gonna be circulating in and whether you're gonna be pushing the limits of the bath, because the amount of space that the circulator takes up in the bath is a very real limitation for a lot of people who are cooking in smaller, like uh smaller vessels on uh their counter.
Yeah. But they all work. Uh I found uh the San Serra doesn't like to run pure oil. Uh found that uh when we were doing a Harvard lecture. Um, but you know, that's about it.
Uh yeah, but again, if you have the money and durability is the ultimate thing, then the old school metal poly science guys, I think are still pretty tough to beat. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Got a caller. Caller, you are on the air.
Hey Dave, uh got a quick question. This bay it's homebrew based, but it probably applies to a lot of cooking. It has to do with gelatin using it as a clarifier. Sure. I've been I arguing for years with my fellow homebrewers, and they insist that if you you know you dissolve it in some hot water before you add it, and they say if you bring it to a boil, it's useless, it deactivates the gelatin.
Um but I've always brought to a boil just to sanitize it, never had a problem, and I figured you would be the one to say whether this is hogwash or not. What do you think? Why would bringing it to a boil hurt it? That's how they make gelatin. Like what's the argument about not boiling it?
The the homebrewers, I guess in the old literature and they still cling to it, says that if you bring the the water to a boil that's got the gelatin in, it somehow deactivates the gelatin and won't work anymore. That's crazy, right? I mean, it seems crazy. Is it some special gelatin? Is it some super hyper fancy gelatin?
No, just regular Nox gelatin. Hogwash, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hogwash. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know. Look, look, look, maybe there's I could see that there's some sort of like gelatin solution that you could buy that's not set that is like, you know, the where the gelatin is, it's some particular way, but then you wouldn't want to heat it at all because you'd mess with the configuration. Like the solubility of gelatin, uh, it solubilizes at a pretty low temperature, right? But then, you know, bringing it to an extended boil, if you boil the hell out of it, you'll start to hydrolyze it. But let's not forget, how do you make how do you make gelatin in a stock, right?
You boil uh bones and uh and meat to uh break the collagen down into gelatin, right? I mean that's that's what you do. I mean I've boiled uh you know, I uh I mean no, I don't think that's a problem. I think extended boiling in acidic condition, because you're boiling it just in plain water, right? Yeah, just plain water.
Yeah. I mean extended boiling in acidic environments will will hydrolyze the gelatin for sure. But I've boiled gelatin many times and had it still set or you know, I've you know, I I uh maybe f I I don't I don't I don't get it. I don't I don't get it. I don't understand.
Me neither. Is there any actual literature on it though? What's that? Is there any like scientific literature on it? No, you know how home brewers they often just pick things up from you know other related things like you know, skimming the top off your beer because they do it with stock, you know, and uh they just uh I think just extrapolate it over and they don't really have any real reason to do it, and then they get told a couple of times and then they just stick with it, whether it's you know, never questioning it.
Alright, well if any pro brewers out there listening, uh, you know, um send us in some information and we'll we'll see. Uh love the show. All right, thanks a lot. Uh let's take a quick commercial and come back. Hello out there.
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So what are we? Are we gonna play Jackie Molecules on the way out since we're running out of time? Oh, yeah, we we can do that. That's fine. Yeah, when we leave, we'll just do an outro on Jackie Molecules because it's the greatest thing that's ever happened.
By the way. The now legendary ringtone, as I'm being told by listeners, we got so many emails this week for it. Really? Oh, yeah. It's taken off.
It's going viral. It's better than better better than my uh my ringtones. Like nostalgia's you're mean to me. Uh, but I don't even need to like play my phone because it's just my voice saying you're mean to me. Uh anyway, Caleb Sexton sent us in some of these super Jack, you can have some of these too.
Um Super High Bricks apricots, this new variety, I think out of California. And uh he dehydrates them, but they start out at like twenty something bricks, which is like super high sugar. Uh and so you know it's how a stas is eating. I know how super sweet they are at at the end. But the thing is I think uh what we should do before you dehydrate them to turn them into real flavor bombs is just throw a little more acid into it.
What do you think, Stas? Don't they just dehydrate on their own out there in California now? You're from there, you tell me. Because of the I'm saying like no water. Isn't it easier for them to like No, I mean acid not for I mean, uh I mean acid.
Well, not lime necessarily. I'd have to look up whatever the acid base of apricot is, but I'm saying other words, the sweetness is so high that it could stand more acidity to back it up. No, I like it like this. But I'm saying before it dehydrates, cut it, sprinkle it the acid, like kind of go into it so you get the level exactly. You're saying you wouldn't want a little more acid?
No. You like it just like this? Mm-hmm. Nice. Yeah.
And what do you think about these as opposed to blends? See, I like blends because they're super high acid. Yeah, I like these better. Yeah. Jackie should come in and try one while we're doing this.
Um I can't talk because I'm eating apricots. Pass it in. Pass it in. Um by the way, Jack, do you think sharp and hot should be said with like a Boston style accent? I think it should.
Shop, hot. Shop. Yes. Yeah. Anyway.
Um uh Ethan uh Kusher uh Kushner wrote in uh a while ago about lentil tofu. I think I talked about it. So if I forgot to talk about lentil tofu, because we had so many weeks where I like I would start answering things and then stopped. If I've talked, if I've not talked about lentil tofu and the possibilities, please uh just you know, whatever, email us back and let us know. And uh we'll do it.
The same about like Alex from Toronto wrote in about carrots. I think I talked about that too, about like uh stiffening carrots and whether that's a known reaction in other vegetables. I think I talked about it, but it's hard to know because I can't tell. Uh Elliot Papineau wrote in and he wants to say, can Dave talk about the awesomeness of French penny? Frenchipenny.
You like that stuff, Saz? What is it again? That's that that's the okay. So you know how like you're not a marzipan fan, right? But like if you add eggs to it and other stuff to de-stiffen it a little bit and they make it pipable, that's the stuff that's like inside of a king cake.
You ever eat king cakes? No. You know what a king cake is though. Unlike uh like Mardi Gras. Oh, yeah.
Right before the king cake is like got the sugar with the colors, and inside of it is that kind of like like more creamy almond crap that's not uh mart's pen. You like that stuff? I guess so. I love that stuff. I want what I want to do is start making things like that.
Because like what what his question came in? I'm like, damn, you know what? Like, we have the capability to grind this stuff down. We should do that with uh by the way, Caleb Stas is loving your apricot. She's sitting here munchicating on them.
Um is it we should do that with pecans? Wouldn't that be good? Mm-hmm. That should be that'd be good stuff, right? Alright.
Anyway, so Elliot, I don't have too much to say because I don't make it that much myself. I think it's a good product. But I will uh uh now you've got me uh stoked on the idea of uh of of uh marzipan. By the way, did we ever talk about the agar noodles? Because I s I know there's an agar noodle question, but I but I didn't uh get to it.
Whoever wrote in the agar noodle question, this is right back to me and I'll see. Okay. Um Hey Cooking Issues team, I have a hydrocolloid question. My death row meal is spaghetti with chopped garden tomatoes. Do you you hate tomatoes, right?
Yeah, me too. Someone twit tweeted me in uh today and said, Can you eat the blossoms of uh the tomato plant? And I was like, it might have too much of the tomatoine, which is you know, whatever the alkaloid that's related to like solanine or whatever, the Solonaceae style uh like alkaloid that's in tomato plants, which is why you're not supposed to eat a boat ton of the green tomato stuff. You know what I'm talking about? Why would you want to eat that?
Well, that's my point. I was like frowny face, every tomato blossom you rip off is one less tomato you get. Like who has that many tomatoes in their life? Not me. Not me.
Are you how are your tomatoes growing? Good, they're all green right now. Yeah, nice, strong. Anyway, uh my death row meal is spaghetti with chopped garden tomatoes, basil, garlic, oil, and salt. I make this often in the summertime when perfect tomatoes are available.
Part of the process involves chopping and salting the raw tomatoes to draw out moisture that would otherwise water down the pasta. What do you think about watering down the pasta sauce? I'm good. Hate? Yes.
Hate. Uh watering down the pasta. The liquid drawn out of the tomatoes is quite tasty, and I hate uh that it is no longer part of the sauce. I figured if I could thicken uh thicken it, it would adhere to the spaghetti and increased deliciousness. Uh my hydrocolloid knowledge is essentially zero, but I tried Xanthan, and that's what I had.
It thickened the tomato water nicely and all me also made me want to puke when I ate it because it was so snotty. That's a technical term. Snotty. Yeah, I would not use Xanthan. Can you imagine like a Xanthan pasta?
Nastasia's making her I'm about to puke face with the with the Xanthan pasta. Um I also don't want a heat slash reduce the water to avoid losing the raw tomato flavor. So what would you recommend uh and in what percentage to thicken the tomato water so it can be added back to the chopped tomatoes on the pasta? Thanks, dreaming of summer meals with my favorite pasta, soon with more tastiness, uh Jason. I think you're kind of in like you're you're hoeing a tough road here, uh Jason.
Because uh to thicken the stuff appreciably, uh you're gonna have to add a uh a boat a boat ton of stuff. I would use um I would use pre-gelatinized agglomerated starch is what I would use. And then you you're basically thicking and thickening it the way that cooking that with a starch. Uh so I would use uh like ultra spurse. You want to get a spurse and not a tex.
Um the reason I would use starch is because you need to use relatively large percentages of uh of starch, which means that it is it will diminish the flavor somewhat, but it's also super easy to dose in and dose out. You're not gonna go way over. And if you use a uh a it takes a couple of minutes, you don't want to add it all right away because it takes a couple minutes to fully hydrate, but it's really easy to use in kind of cook's measurements, like just like sprinkling a pinch in and getting it to do what you want. Whereas most other hydrocolloids, if you were gonna use like uh, you know, guar or an LBG, I think you're not gonna get we're used to starch thickened sauces, and so I think it's gonna be I think that might be the way to go in this situation, but still I don't know if you're gonna have as good a result as you would get out of, for instance, pulling the pasta a couple minutes earlier, doing uh or you know, a couple of seconds earlier, doing a very quick drain and then immediately tossing it with the tomato juice that comes out, because that tomato juice, remember you salted it, it's salty too, right? So that's gonna increase the salt level of your of your pasta.
But if you just leave everything else out, like you know, the tomatoes that you have out, toss the pasta uh in the um in the straight tomato water uh like and just pull it a couple of seconds earlier. I think it'll absorb a good wouldn't you think it would absorb a good bit of that stuff? And so I think if you pull like uh like you know, 30, I don't know how how long is the spaghetti cook? Eight or seven? Seven.
Seven? Depends. Yeah, for you and Mark, it's like it cooks for like two minutes. Yeah. But anyway, pull it like a good like I would say maybe like thirty seconds uh earlier than you normally would.
Then uh make sure that you uh toss the stuff in, but keep it hot. Like I would put the bowl back. Something that I uh will do is I'll cook my uh pasta in uh in a colander inside of my pot, right? Do you do that, Stas? So that way I can just pull the colander out.
No, I don't have that. Anyway, I pull the colander out, you do the the fast drain, then you put it into the bowl, and if you keep the bowl warm, like over the water that's been boiling, it makes a starchy mess. But um keeping it warmer as you're tossing in the uh the tomato water will help it absorb more as opposed to when it but but let it flash off. If you cover it, it'll keep warm and absorb more, but it also won't flash off moisture, and their whole goal here is to add more liquid while it's flashing off moisture, yes, Doz? Then add your tomatoes afterwards and go.
Uh the s super baller technique, and this is gonna be have to be the last thing I say, I still have to get to uh I still have to get to Steven from uh Moscow on uh on ovens and you know he's trying to get the Vizega, the uh the thing. And uh Alex from Sam it's too late, he already visited San Francisco, but McGee will be here so we can talk about it. And we'll finally get to Michael and his blown uh Ziploc bags. But the most baller technique would be to go drop a cool 10 grand on a really nice roto vap setup and just rotovap that tomato stuff down so that you get real hyper concentrated tomato uh you know, like you can make almost like a puree out of it uh in a rotovap without ever heating it. Uh cook the pasta and toss that in.
It'll be the most tomatoy pasta ever cooking issues. Well, I'm gonna play this Jackie Molecules on the way out. Jackie Molecules. 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.
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You got to tell your mouth! You wanna out with me again.
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