It's time. Today's program is brought to you by Micter's Distillery. Visit Micters dot com to find out how their taste is everything. Cost be damned. Attitude is creating some of the finest whiskies available.
I'm Damon Bolti, host of the Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit Heritage Radio Network dot 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 every Tuesday from Bushwick, Brooklyn How you doing?
Oh, I'm on the super reverb. The lady who's eating lunch outside is like, what the what the heck? Check, please. What? Check.
Can I can I move? Can I move? She actually just got her check. It's fine. Okay.
Uh yeah, yeah. Uh well, welcome to the show. Calling all your questions to 718 497 2128. That's 718 497 2128. Here for the next 45 minutes or so, right, Jack?
Yeah. Uh which speaking of, we have uh Jack Insley, our uh intrepid engineer over there in the booth. One of the listeners referred to him as J Maul, which is his new Star Wars name. Jim God. J Maul.
J Maul. You need to have like one of those double sided, like uh you need to get you some like face paint. You could be like like Kiss almost, so that's not a c do you like that kind of music? Do you listen to like kiss? No.
You don't like to rock and roll all night? I like rock. Do you like to party every day? No. No.
Not every day, no. That's why. That's why you couldn't hang with him because party every single day. Not just not just some days. I couldn't get into the the I could never take them seriously with uh makeup and the theatrics and all that.
Yeah? Now well, you know, I hear that they're with the exception of Gene Simmons, I hear that they're a nice fellas. Yeah, Gene Simmons is horrible, dude. Yeah, that's what I hear. So I hear.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh and uh got Staz, the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? Good.
Yeah? Yes. Any anything special happening? You're giving a talk at Yale on Thursday. I am, that's true.
Is it open to the public? I don't know. We could look it up. I'm supposed to have uh figured out what I'm gonna serve people and I haven't figured it out yet. But if you're in the Well, we don't know.
If you're in well, I know where it is. They the like the event that I'm going to is at a place in New Haven called Bar. Right. It's called Bar. That's what they're doing.
Bar has been there for over 25 years. And the reason I know this is because that's where I wooed my wife. Jen. That's where, like, on they used to have something called alternative Did I already talk about this on the show? They used to have something called Alternative Wednesdays, right?
So Alternative Wednesdays was when they because back then it was like pre, you know, pre when people like listen to stuff. It was like industrial rave stuff. You familiar with the band LA Style? Jack, you familiar with the old kind of uh industrial housey. He's on the phone.
It's uh their big song was James Brown is dead. Of course he was not dead at that time, but yet that was a song we listened to. So that's how I that's how I was able to uh land my wife, which is uh which is nice. So anyway, I'll be there again on Thursday. And we also have in the studio his new special guest, uh our new Booker and Dax Sears All customer service representative.
Social media too. Big big social media. Social so unlike Nastasia and myself, anti social media, which by the way, like I know I have a million like Twitter things. I've been my head has been so buried because I'm working on this MoFad exhibit that's opening up in a couple of weeks and on my next uh Booker and Dax project that I've been buried. I haven't been getting I get like once a week I look at my Twitter.
So if I haven't answered you, I will answer you soon. But uh I like to introduce uh Rebecca. Give us your whole life in twenty seconds or less. My whole life? Twenty seconds to less.
Whole life. Into the mic, please. What do you got? Um hello everybody. My whole life.
Yeah. I'm 22. I like the color orange and ice cream. Wow. Orange is nice.
That was under 20 seconds. She did it. Yeah, she I gave her less than one second for every year of her life. I'm glad that you like uh ice cream. Where are you from?
Um outside of Philly. Outside of Philly. Oh, okay. So do do you like uh okay. So in your 22, so but by the time that you probably remember most things, Briars had already changed their recipe to include all sorts of stabilizers.
Do you remember back when Briars did not have stabilizers? I don't Briars is not my favorite, so I don't know. Well, yeah, but you're from Philly. It has to you have to like technically not from Philly, but where you well, where are you originally originally Long Island, but I've also lived in two other states. So do you believe that it's uh do you believe it's Strong Island or the Wrong Island, so I can figure out where you're from.
I'm gonna go in the middle. You're gonna go in the middle? Yeah, I was too little too little to the wrong Oh. Stas likes it. Stas believes in the strong island.
You like that you like going over there to the beach and all that stuff. Uh uh. Well, I don't. Really? Yeah.
I don't. What do you man. I have to sometimes. Oh I'm a poor stuff, has to go to the beach. No, no, it's never for fun.
It has not been for fun once. Wow. Wow. Hey, two things. So I have a caller that uh that I want to get to, but before we do that, I have to send a big big big shout out to John Nahol.
I hope I'm pronouncing that right. And of course our old friend Joel Esposito both listened to the drop and made donations and specified that it came from cooking issues. So they are the coolest people of the day. Thank you. Please please specify so that Jack knows, you know, kind of what's going.
Also, after we spoke to the talk to the caller, Micters, huh? We got Micters on board? We got Micters, yeah. They've been they've been around. This is their first cooking issues episode.
Oh, alright. So, you know, I like their product, but they apparently don't like ours well enough. Alright, whatever. Well, now they do. Alright.
Here they are. Alright. Molecular whatever as our sponsor. Okay, listen. Hey, enough enough of that stuff.
Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave, how's it going? Doing all right. This is Chris from the Green Zone in DC. How you doing?
How's uh how's it how's how's everything going? How was that recipe with the mint working out? Was it our is it everything more? It's not summer anymore, and uh the entire summer run I just wanted it to order because I couldn't find a solution. Yeah.
Yeah, mint's tough. Mint oxidizes so quickly. Um since most of what I do involves infusions, and of course I'm doing iSy infusions. Um one of the things I'm trying to infuse is some sticky resins like mastic tears or frankincense tears. And when I tried one of them in the ISI, it gunks up the entire iSy.
Like, you know, I did two it was a um half liter two uh nitrous cartridges, and the entire inside of the iSC was like coated in this sticky residue, and then it m it messed up my strainer, it messed up a bar spoon, and just everything was coated in this like really impermeable stuff. Um and then I tried doing another one, just a standard infusions in a jar, and that was a bit better, but again, like everything it touches just gets this coating on it. Um I was wondering if you had first of all, if you knew what solvent for that would be, other because I've tried everything from pure alcohol to vinegar and nothing worked. Um and also a good way to infuse it that doesn't just gunk up all my equipment. You know, it this is crazy.
I have another question in from George who we met on uh Mastika. Like it must be like in the in the in the mental air. Uh and that stuff that stuff is some sticky, some super sticky once you start using it. I mean, uh I used to make uh oil and even just a couple of tears uh would stick to the bottom of the pan forever and took a long time to fully dissolve into the oil, and there's always like some sort of residue left. It's just a nightmare.
And I was thinking about it for George's problem too. He was he was trying to make uh he wants to make the the water, the mastica water, which I don't know if if you if if anyone's been back to Greece recently, they now have uh this like basically seltzer water with uh Mastica flavor in it, which actually I think is I like it a lot. I think it's really refreshing. Nastasi didn't like it so much. I pounded it like, but I love that resin flavor anyway, Mastika.
The flavor's great yeah, I love it anyway. Um and so, you know, his problem was how to how to dissolve it, but not in an E C because you can't get to an E C and neither can you throw it away. Like my solution for him was gonna be like, let's throw it away. You know, like like put it put it he he wanted to do a distillation, right? So what I what I was gonna tell him, and I'll give maybe I'll read his question later if I have time, but what I was gonna tell him to do was um he he was looking to either do uh an infusion into alcohol and then uh or oil and then try to suspend it, right?
In which case it's gonna go cloudy. It's not gonna be like the oh, you we lost uh I'll keep talking. It's it's gonna be cloudy, it's not gonna be uh you know, clear. So for for that application, if you were gonna use an extract, that's gonna go cloudy. Can you can you can you go back a bit?
Oh yeah. Sure. So I'll say for George, he had a slightly different problem. He was looking to make a uh he he wants to make the the water, right? And so he he he had a couple of different things.
One, he was looking at distillation, not at infusion, uh, and also just at using like Mastika extracts. Now his problem with the mastica extract is is that it was clouding up, right? Uh I mean, sorry, not cloud, flo floating to the top uh and not not staying in. So one thing you can do, obviously, with I'll just answer both of your questions at the same time. One thing you can do is is just uh keep shaking it, and over time you'll get some transfer and then skim the stuff off the top, but it's gonna be fairly light, you know, flavor wise.
Another thing you can do for that is you can uh stabilize that with gum arabic into uh into a syrup. You can stabilize the stuff with gum arabic. Once you stabilize it with the gum arabic, you then should be able to make a soda with it. Uh it will separate over time, but you'll be able to shake it back in, right? So that you'll be able to do.
So you try that. Um that's how they do it. Now, unless you use uh uh an oil stabilizer that's weighted, you're not gonna be able to get it to stay in 100% in a carbonated beverage without having it separate over time, but again, you can just shake it back in. So gum and good the reason you use gum arabic is that gum arabic has very low viscosity uh and dilutes well without break without having uh emulsions uh break. So it's it it is used for soda syrups to stabilize things into soda stirrups, but it's not gonna help with stability over time because it's not gonna change the weight of the particles, so you'll still get some separation anyway.
Uh but uh then he was saying, George was saying, I want to distill the stuff, but then it sticks to everything in the pot. So I was gonna say to just do a test, do an old style, like real uh cheap distillation, get a pot, put a strainer in the pot, line that strainer with something you can throw away, like linen cloth or like a a napkin or or you know, some sort of paper filter, something that's not gonna be something you don't mind losing. Stick the uh the uh mastica in that, the kiosk mystica in that, and then put the lid on top, put water in the bottom, boil it, just boil that boil the you know crap out of it, and then just keep putting ice cubes on the top of the lid so that you form a reflux system where it keeps on uh where it keeps on refluxing. And I think it'll work, but I have to have someone try it to make sure that it would work. Now, on your thing with the EC, maybe we could do a similar kind of a situation.
I don't think the melted crap will go through a tea satchel. So if you were to buy uh like and maybe double bag some tea satchels, not the you know the tea satchel styles that are like plasticky with kind of big holes? I wouldn't use that. I'd use kind of the more papery ones with the small holes. Stick the stuff in and do the ISI.
You should be able to extract it and the melted goop, I don't think is gonna make it through the uh the tea bags. But I could be wrong. So I I mean I could be wrong. So I would test it uh and see whether or not uh that uh works out for you. By the way, George, that that you know, that same technique using an ISI might be good for flavor as well.
So I knocked out two Mastikas with one stone. It's good. So Rebecca, what are your favorite kind of ice creams? We were talking about Briars. Briar's obviously Philadelphia style, famously no no eggs, right?
So do you like a Philadelphia style? You just you don't even consider yourself Philadelphia. I shouldn't even talk to you about Philadelphia ice cream. So what kind of ice cream do you like? Are you one of these hyper dense, like super rich, like French style, like gelato stuff?
Anything chocolate? No. I like hard ice cream. Like hard ice cream? The other day I tried what was it called?
Famous, famous ice cream in Brooklyn. The last it's like something hills. Hills, hills? I don't know. Now you have to when you say hills, I say hills alive in the sound of music.
Did you go to Oddfellows? No. You should go to Oddfellows. I will try it now. Sam Mason's Sam Mason's right.
There was a beautiful salted caramel with salted caramel in in it. I would hope that the salted caramel contains salted caramel in the colour. Well, no, sometimes it's just the flavor, you know? Yeah. This was a a good one.
All right. So I've got a collar, but I have I have a pretty hilarious comment I've got to share before that. Alrighty. Got a comment here in the chat room. Right.
Man, cooking issues is just a sideshow compared to this chat. Wow. Dave might be out of work soon. Wow. Well, I like being a sideshow.
That's I've been I've been called a side show like my whole life. Right, Sas? Yeah. So usually though, I'm not a sideshow like I'm a side show freak. Is more like what people call me, a side show freak.
Huh. So they're having a lively chatter. By the way It's a very lively chat. You can remember. We're talking about croissants, you know, um all kinds of stuff.
Stas doesn't like croissants. That's why I never can talk about them. I think they're delicious. What are they saying about the croissant? Well they ask uh they're they're asking like, hey, what's everybody eating?
So I said, I'm having a croissant. And they started talking about croissants. You know what's an absurd word? Chris Sandwich. Makes no sense.
That's a ridiculous word. And what about those donuts that are also Cronuts? I happen to know the fellow that makes the Cronuts. What are you what are your feelings on them? Um I would rather have one or the other.
Yeah, I'm with you. Wow. Hater on Hater on the Hater on the Cronut. It's called Ample Hills, the ice cream. Ample Hills.
Oh yeah, that stuff's good. It's amazing. Yeah. Alright, well go check out my man Sam Mason's Oddfellows, too. If you're an ice cream fan and you're in the Brooklyn, Greater Brooklyn area.
I have to try it. You you must. You're uh you're obliged. Okay. Um wait, we have a caller you said?
I do have a caller. Alright, collar, you're on the air. Hi too. Nastasha Dave, Jack, and Rebecca. Uh I might have something for you, Dave.
Uh we have a medium-sized liquid amber in the yard. Uh and if I'm able to procure some sweet gum without murdering the tree, I'd be happy to send you the good. Any ideas on how and when I might harvest uh the resin all right so we're talking about uh sweet gum trees uh liquid embarrass styra sty how do you pronounce that styracophula styracca what is it styracca I don't remember sure yeah anyway so sweet gum trees uh which by the way I found out you can grow in the my place in Connecticut but they just don't grow there naturally uh they have a uh right that's what we're talking about here sweet gums and they have a resin in them that is supposedly sweet that can be harvested and was harvested by Native Americans. I have no idea how to do it. I don't think it runs as freely as like uh a syrup.
I don't think it saps out that same way. I think you have to do it like you would for uh like other resin style things where you make a uh like a um uh a vertical remember if you're ever gonna wound a tree like that to get the resin you want to go vertical because you don't want to in any way uh girdle the tree you know what I mean um and would you go off of a side branch? Oh or do you need to go off the main track. Oh well I never thought of it. Most people who are gonna like uh you know take things off of trees end up going off of the trunk.
I had never thought of doing a branch. I don't know how they do I don't know how they harvest uh um you know gum acacia from acacia trees. I should go take a look at some pictures and see how they do it. Acacia trees I think are relatively small uh uh you know in in relation to a sweet gum which is I I consider that for this neighborhood like a mid-sized tree you know what I mean? So, huh?
I don't know. But I I mean I'm gonna look at some pictures and maybe uh talk about the next time up. I'll encourage you to look at some pictures too but I I think it's gonna be a uh a wound and wait uh kind of a situation, and I don't know what the difference in flavor would be between, let's say spring because I haven't researched in a long time between let's say like uh uh like an early spring like first uh resin versus a later, but I I'm pretty sure the last time I read there was a definite time that is best to do it. But I'm gonna look into it and we'll we'll uh you know I because I I want to try this stuff. Let me just put it this way I want to try this stuff.
Right. Is there anything else I need to do to confirm that it's the right species that has the five-pointed leaves, drops the uh monkey balls. That's it. You're good. I'm on the west coast.
I'm in Southern California. Uh so you know, this wouldn't be a native tree here. Right, yeah. Right. Any problem there?
No. I mean, I mean, it's it's probably, you know, I I think this the sweet gum is like from like my area here in New York on south. So it doesn't like uh it doesn't like it to be like hyper cold, you know what I mean? It's so it's not like an extreme northern tree. So I think it should do fine uh you know out you know where you are.
Um I don't know, I don't know how it is um with uh drought tolerance or anything like that, but you know, if if the tree looks good, it's gonna it's gonna be good. And there's no other species I know of that looks like a sweet gum other than the sweet gum. In fact, in fact, this kid, I was so upset. This kid was at a county fair. Did I mention this on the show?
County fair up in Connecticut, and he won some sort of freaking prize for his collection. Now he is a kid, so like Nastasi would cut in some slack, not me. And he puts a sweet gum ball in his collection of plant seeds and writes sycamore. Well, what the hell? They don't eh, you know, uh, they're spherical, right?
So, like, you know, a sweet gum ball looks like a uh a sycamore ball in the way that a basketball is very similar to a kush. You know what I mean? It's like they're not, they're not Did you crack him? Well, he wasn't there. I was just like, you know, if I if I was the judge, I would have been like, goodbye, kid.
You know, learn some precision. And then I would have written a note. I would have said, not sycamore. Sweetgum. Smiley face.
Smiley face. You know, or you know, look, it's probably not the kid. The kid, I'm sure what happened. Okay, I feel bad. I'm sure the kid went to one of his parents and was like, hey, Ma, hey Dad, what is this?
And they were like, that's a sycamore. And so like he was just like, you know, he believed them. So maybe he should just go smack his parents in the face. But I'm not advocating smacking your parents in the face. I'm just saying know your sweet gums.
But let me know. I'm gonna look into it and maybe I'll if I can remember, I'll talk about what I've learned and then call back and tell us if you were able to harvest anything. Can I hear with a couple of just brief questions for myself? I have a quinine sulfate source from Chem Sabers. Okay.
But I'm wondering if you would serve this to your family. Quinine sulfate? I serve it to my family constantly. Well, but this from the source, it's uh 99% titrates. In humans.
But it does say it meets it meets USC USP specifications. Uh I could give you like the certificate of analogy. Yeah, I wonder if they said it's USP re okay. Listen, remember this. Remember, all the quinine you buy is actually from quinine bark.
I mean a kinchona bark, okay? Right. It's not synthesized. So it's not like it's made out of some crazy like, you know, like conglomerate of poison, although it itself is poison. But like the uh so you have that going for you.
Now the the issue is is whether or not it's been certified for food or for uh drug by the way drug uh how can say not certified for drugs but it it has a USP so it's good for pharmacopia. Uh is there like a just a more expensive process to go through FDA to get the actual safe. I mean the real stuff's not that expensive. In other words shweps isn't paying the prices that we're paying to get this stuff. You know what I'm saying?
Right. Um shwips. But the um so I look uh if it's USP I feel pretty safe, especially considering the small amounts that you're using. The risk is is that they if they stored it in a an area that's contaminated with stuff that is otherwise nasty. But what do they say that the other like half a percent of point is uh so we've got purity by HPLC uh 99 to 101%.
Uh and it says yeah water four to five percent uh heavy metals point zero zero one percent insoluble matter point one percent I mean look it says that organic volatil impurities pass the test if it says USP I would use it. I like I I I don't want to make your decision for you, but if it said USP I would use it. Okay. Well I'll I'll try it on myself and I know that can be the one that suffers. Right.
But again, if it is a heavy metal thing, right, you won't know that I've shafted you for another couple of decades. But hey. Right. By then maybe they will have fixed that. I'll call back then.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like and then along with I'm gonna be carbonating that, uh, do you see any problem with leaving a CO two tank on? Any problem with the regulator or it's just under my sink, a ten pound tank, and it's a pain to go in there and twist the thing off. Is there any potential? No, I leave mine on all uh a hundred percent of the time that there yeah, there are potentials for problems, right?
If you're if your hose bursts, it'll dump the entire ten pound tank into your into your kitchen. Um but like you know, what I would do is is a lot of people who sell uh kind of homebrew stuff, they tend to sell this kind of very flexible hose that comes off of the tank. Okay? Right. And uh I hate it.
I really freaking hate it. That like unreinforced hose is the worst. And I've seen that stuff burst. So I would invest in the real like uh it's like double wall. There's an inner tube, then there's like uh there's like a uh um like a fiberglass reinforcing and then an outer, and the inner line is I think polyethylene, and it's this completely reinforced like beverage line, and I have never once ever, ever seen one rupture.
I've seen one be abused so horribly that it did generate a pinhole leak, but I've never seen and that was real abuse, but I've never seen one spru like rupture ever in service. Right. And if you get the real uh Odicker ear clamps that are really cheap that are meant for that size tubing that you're using and clamp it down, it it would take a force of nature to cut that thing uh open. Uh and uh so I wouldn't I wouldn't worry uh worry about that because that's what people do a hundred percent of the time in bars. They hook the tank up to their to their carbonator and then that's it.
You know what I mean? Okay. Um but don't do it with the crappy hose though, alright? Okay. Uh for a friend, what would your thoughts, time and temp before cooking?
Uh Nastasaja might want to plug her ears. Uh cooking a human placenta. Oh, Jesus. I don't think Dave likes that either. Oh, Jesus.
I can't give I can't imagine what happened if I gave a recommendation on the air. Jack, what are your we're getting I'm getting even Rebecca who I don't know, this is literally the first time I met her, has a anastasia style face on. Jack, what are your thoughts on this? Uh I say go for it. I don't have no idea.
Ask a doctor. So listen, doctors famously don't know how to cook anything. Like, not I mean plenty of doctors know how to cook things, but it's not part of their purview. But doctors will always a doctor will give you a food safety recommendation. Right.
I don't know. They'll say boil the heck up. What? Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know that I want to go on record with uh with a placenta recipe.
I think it just might be one of those things that comes back and bites me in the behind. You know what I mean? And thanks for your call. I understand. Yeah.
All right. Let us know what happens with the liquid M bar. Thanks so much. All right. Yeah.
Let me tell you though. What? One question. One question. One question.
Even if Jack tells you, hey, just one question. Hey, don't come on the air and hey, listen, listen, listen. Oh, but no, but he's doing us a favor. He's going to get us a liquid M bar. Here's one thing though.
On the chat room, why don't you guys go to town? Those of you who don't mind, go to town on uh on your uh placenta recommendations. Am I right, Dad? Yeah. Send go go crazy.
Relegate me to the side show. You know? I'll be the side show and you can be the freak if you're putting you know what I'm saying? That's what I'm saying. Okay.
I mean rip so rip through some questions because I don't want to miss them. Uh got a question in, I don't know who it's from. Uh on Lardo. I recently cured Lardo that is now uh hanging in the walk in. It was just now that I realized I accidentally used insecure number one instead of instacure number two.
What we're talking about, Lardo is basically cured uh uh back fat delicious. Do you like Lardo? Mm-hmm. Wow, finally, something. Uh uh and um the recipe that this person is using um calls for curing salt.
So curing salt is salt plus either uh sodium nitrite or sodium nitrate. Uh now if you're doing a long cured product like uh like a like a ham or in this case a lardo, if you're gonna specify curing salt, you would typically specify uh the one that has nitrate in it, right? So uh instead of because nitrate is longer lasting, longer acting, and it takes a long time for the curing salt to make it to the middle of a of a big cut like this, and if it doesn't make it to the middle before it's converted, then you don't have any curing power. Capish? Gotcha.
Okay. So uh uh he or she used the wrong one uh and is wondering whether they're you know they're gonna kill everybody. Uh the answer is the answer is I would feel 100% okay with this because uh first of all, remember um a lot of people when they would traditionally curing Lardo, they're not using a curing salt anyway, they're just using regular salt. Secondly, uh it's a it's a whole cut, so if it hasn't been punctured, there's nothing going on in the middle anyway, so it's not like a salami, what where you know, like the actual, you know, the word botulism comes from the word for sausage in Latin because you know you take stuff, you mix it up, it's contaminated in the middle, you uh you exclude the air, and it's botulism time. You know what I mean?
If you if you don't so first of all, you you're gonna have a high salt level, which is gonna inhibit the botulism. You're dealing with a whole muscle cut. And here's the here's the kicker. Unlike muscle meat, um, there is not as much water in back fat by a long shot. So it doesn't take as much to get the water activity of back fat very low.
And if the water activity of the back fat's very low, there's gonna be no botulism growing. Uh and so I think you're aided by so although I looked up on the net uh on the way over here that like the f super fresh back fat unchilled has a uh fairly high water activity, like nine nine one or something like this. If you and it just said uh dried, I think salt didn't dried or smoked or something like this without no curing, had a water activity down like point s point seven something. And so in other words, ain't nothing. Ain't nothing growing in in that's in that son of a gun.
So I would I would feel uh I would feel confident. I would say confident. What do you think, Stuz? Yeah. Peter I wanted you to mention to uh people to buy tickets.
Oh, why don't you mention it since you're gonna be able to do it? Buy tickets to their new exhibit at tickets.mofad.org. Wow, that was a sale, Stuz. That was a friggin' I'm sold. Wow, I'm gonna go right on that damn website.
Hey, I'm gonna be there too. Yeah, Jack's gonna be there. Jackie Molecules, J Maul. I'm doing sound. Sound, okay.
Hey, I got some uh I have caller, right? And I also I have to read some of this stuff that's coming into the chat room. Um y you you opened up the rabbit hole here. Elliot says three hours at seventy-six point three degrees Celsius, then Sears all. And then uh someone else said you forgot to pre-sear the placenta.
Wow. Someone else said soup dumpling placenta. Oh. Yeah, so that's happening. Uh and there's a caller on the line.
Caller, you're on the air. Hey guys, how's it going? It's uh John from New Haven here. Um just got my uh my MoFad tickets yesterday. I actually can't wait for these, but I'm really looking forward to that.
Nice. See, that's a sale. Oh, yes, go ahead. I've been interested in making some on my own, and I'm looking at the series seeds website and they say to either do it in a dehydrator or an oven for at 130 for like two to three weeks. Yep.
And that's a really long time to tie up my oven. I don't have a dehydrator, but I do have a circulator, and I was wondering if I could do uh the garlic in a ziploc bag for like two or three weeks in there. That should work. I don't see why it won't. Another uh option if you're really interested, is I know people have done um slightly higher temperatures they've used to keep warm in a rice cooker and just let it let it rock in the rice cooker and it's actually faster because the temperature's somewhat elevated but it's not high enough to uh like you know cook it cook it out or anything like this and so I know um I know a bunch of people who do I think it was uh it was Johnny Hunter I think who was telling us about like the rice cooker uh stuff and that you could do it at a higher temperature than what is recommended and and it still works and works faster.
It has a slightly different flavor obviously but it works and works faster. So the rice cooker um yeah basically anything that you can control you know uh like dehydrators you know you can get like a you don't remember if you're doing a dehydrator you need to seal it so it stays moist right you know yeah um you know you could also just get uh like a like a um uh an electric thing uh electric blend you know oh what's a flexible electric heater there may have and stick it to the outside of a jar with a thermocouple in between that and the jar and put it on one of these thirty dollar p IDs you could be you could be out of the woods with a with a temperature controlled curing chamber for probably under 70 bucks uh you know because you don't need hyperaccuracy you just need it to stay relatively the same temperature and and be and be sealed. You know what I mean? And so you you could do that without like see once you have the circulator you have the water running all the time you have that noise in your kitchen for two weeks you're running that thing and yeah blah blah blah blah. Like if you do this it's like you know very uh you can insulate it so that you're not like throwing off energy into the atmosphere, and you can make something kind of fairly uh efficient uh that way, probably for pretty cheap.
Okay. And then just real quick to go back to the circulator again. I wouldn't be running any like food-borne illness risk or anything like that if it stealed away for that long, or would the time and temp you know they kill everything. What t what temperature are you gonna use? Um I mean ideally around the 130, 140.
Oh, yeah. If you're running it like uh what's 140? What's that in Celsius? Uh 55. Oh, yeah, so then that should be fine.
Yeah, you're fine. You can you can run it from now until we all keel over dead and you'll be good. We won't queue over from the from the microbes. We'll kill over from being dead. Great.
All right, perfect. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. All right, good luck. That's how to ask a question and and get out though.
See? The one question. Yeah, I appreciate that. You're gonna hit it. Hit it and quit it.
Anyway, uh, we'll take a quick break and come back with some more questions on the cooking issues. It's not as good as the show you were just listening to, is it? Give us a few bucks. Help keep us running. HeritageRadio Network.org.
Click the donate tab on the top right corner. You don't uh you don't like the silence? You think that you you you think people actually prefer to listen to the show rather than the silence? I don't mind silence, but I'm I'm guessing they like you better. Now now now you have sounds of silence going through my head.
Yeah, well, Saz and I have this thing where we were cooking turkeys, and when I was boning the turkey, I was singing Wakalote, my old friend. And so now whenever I have sounds of silence going through my head, I have Wakalote, my old friend. You know what I mean? And I'm sitting there, I can go back to like boning this turkey out. You know what I mean?
Nice. I've never had a real honest to God freaking Wakalote. I need to, right? You know what I mean? These like weak, these weak commercial tabos.
Although the ones at Heritage Cells, right, they're pretty close to a wild turkey, but they're still raised, right? I mean, they're but they're fairly close. So can I say that if you're pretty wild? Oh. So if I could say if I say if I've had the Heritage turkeys, would you say that like I've had the taste of true Wacalote?
I don't know. I want to hear Steve Jenkins say it. Yeah. You gotta you gotta shoot him in the face to save him. Actually, you know, that's true with a turkey.
That's why one of the things I want to go hunting for is uh is turkey. I'm not my wife will not let me get a freaking first of all, you would okay. Look, my wife won't let me have like a gun in that. I'm working on air rifles. I told this on the air, but you can't use air rifles to kill turkeys in Connecticut.
But the good thing about shooting turkeys is it's headshot or nothing. So it's kill or miss. There's no wounding. Kill or miss. What if you miss the head?
Well, you have to miss so bad. It's got this long neck. I'm just saying. So what I'm saying is you're shooting for the head. It's attached to a long neck.
So it's not like you know, if you're trying to get a heart shot and you hit it in the butt and it's running around. The odds are you either kill it dead or or you miss it entirely. Seems to me that this is a good mode of hunting. Plus, they're hard. So it's like, you know, I don't know, right?
I mean, if you're gonna go hunting, it seems to me that like what you don't want to do is be an inexperienced hunter, go out there and just wing a bunch of birds, and then they're like flying around in pain for whatever because you missed. You know what I mean? Jack, you're not with me on this? Yeah. I got a caller.
All right, caller, you're on the air. Hey, my name's David from uh the Seattle area. And uh I was wondering if you'd ever thought about or ever made a carbonated granita. Um I was thinking about doing it with like a block of dry ice or um liquid nitrogen with just some soda or something like that. Yeah, funny story.
So uh Sam Mason, I think it was Sam Mason, I think it was Sam Mason, was interested in uh carbonated uh grenades years and years and years ago. This is like maybe like like 2006 or 2005. I think it was Sam. Came over to uh the FCI where I was working, and he was like, hey, can we carbonate uh can we carbonate um you know sorbet and whatnot in the in the tailor? We had a tailor at the school because the Carpagani was I didn't have access to the carpajani, so I had to tailor.
And he was like, hey, can can we do it? I'm like, I don't know, let's find out. So we tried to like plug all the holes in the tailor and like pressurize it with CO2 while it was running, and I blew the gaskets out and we sprayed sorbet mix over the entire freaking kitchen. Sorbit mix everywhere. And the the the short answer is is that you can carbonate anything, but then you can't you can carbonate uh a granita as long as you never uh harden it, right?
Because the carbonation can only live in the liquid phase. As soon as it's frozen solid, then or even approaching solid, all of the CO2 will be squeezed out. So what you need to do is uh is keep it at that kind of like s slushy area where there's still enough liquid to have carbonation, and then carbonate it at a fairly high level and realizing there's gonna be a lot of nucleation sites and possibly foaming, because uh only the liquid will um absorb CO2 and the ice will exclude it. So that's the that's the short answer. Uh and you you you know, dry ice, the problem with dry ice is you're not gonna get an appreciable amount of carbonation in it uh unless you keep it under pressure.
And if you keep it under pressure, then y you might hose yourself, right? So um I would uh, you know, d as a cheap way to start, I would um I mean if you have a dipper cabinet, something that's not gonna freeze all the way, then I would like put the mixture into bottles, like shake carbonate the hell out of it after it comes out and then just leave it at in that kind of a slushy state, uh, and then uncap and like slam out of the bottle or just cut the top of the bottle off. 'Cause that's what I used to do when I would carbonate gels. I would uh I would set the gels in uh in bottles and then just cut the bottle open and then take the gel out without rupturing it. Um because I never was doing it enough to like invest in a system that let me reach in and n you know and get a large thing out.
Does that make sense? Yeah. Um and then uh this is just like l going back to your old streams. I was wondering if y if you and uh Stasi ever found that pear that you were you tried in in London. No.
No. Okay. The uh I forget which one it was. I'd have to go back and look at my notes. I think it was uh there was the uh the beer superfin was delicious.
Like well, it was like this like butter pear that was like I think it was a super fine, right? I think that was one of the ones. And then there was a pair that had a really awesome um what was there? There was a pair that tasted like quince that was ridiculous, so good. I have to go back and look at my notes.
Um and no, I was never able to find it. And like the problem is in uh in uh the U.S. obviously is I don't live in like hyper pear country, so I I've I've been meaning to take a trip up to Corvallis for years, but no one's I don't know, I've never made it up during pear season or during berry season, by the way. Although it turns out like in Connecticut, this little area in Connecticut I am, is like the Oregon of Connecticut in terms of berries. Like we had to have berries like coming out of our ears.
It's awesome. But maybe I could do pears then. You never know. I don't know if I have fire blight. Maybe if I don't have fire blight and I have pears, maybe I can grow them.
In which case, Nastasi and I'll have to break back into the Brogdale, steal some seeds. I'm not gonna steal seeds and bring the wood mic. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna be that guy that throws like an entire agricultural industry into disarray by by smuggling seeds in. But if you were that guy, send me the seeds. You know what I'm saying?
Like I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it. But if you do it, you know. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, like we here at cooking issues are firmly against ruining, ruining uh agriculture for everybody. You know, we're totally against cane toed introduction into Australia, et cetera, et cetera. Nobody likes, nobody likes it. What?
Super muscles? Zebra muscles. Zebra muscles. What about you know that like the U.S. crayfish are so strong that we've wiped out all the European crayfish?
Wow. Yeah. That's that's America for you. Right, right, and blue. Yeah, yeah, I love it, right?
Love it or leave it. America, love it, love it, love it, leave it, and even if you leave it, we'll bring it to you. Five minute warning. Oh. Alright, so listen, uh, let me see if there's anything that I needed.
Did uh Tozy ever get back to us? She did. Okay. Uh we had a question in. I will get this because uh you're cooking the the cake right now.
Um let me see. From uh I'm gonna get down to who the question was. Uh okay. From uh Jeremy Brainerd wrote in uh asking Christina Tozy about a recipe. Uh it says uh thanks for the excellent show and analyst hours entertainment.
I'm working my way through the archive and about 15 episodes to go, and I haven't heard anything about this. I'm making a cake for my mother-in-law's birthday this Saturday, and I'm using Christina Toasey's chocolate malt cake recipe. Everything seems fairly straightforward, but I have a question about the temperature of the fudge coating. The recipe states that the fudge should be warm, in quotes, uh, when it is poured on the cake, but fails to specify what warm is. I'm planning on making the fudge this week and reheating it using a circulator.
It says calculator, but I assume they meant circulator with an auto-correct, hate autocorrect. Uh what temperature I mean, I like it, but whatever. Uh what temperature should I heat the fudge to uh to coat the cake but not make it too runny so it runs off the sides and onto the counter. And uh he he thanks us, but don't thank us because I emailed uh Christina Tozy, because it's her recipe, and asked her, and Nastasia will be playing the part of Christina. Please read.
Hi Dave, fudge should be just warm to the touch and viscous, not super warm to the touch, and not hot steaming, which would leave the fudge in a more watery, much more fluid state. This will render the fudge thick enough to spread itself evenly across the layers without being so loose that it seeps into layers where it doesn't belong. If coating the cake in full with fudge rather than leaving naked, make sure the cake is very cold slash frozen, 0 to 32 degrees Fahrenheit without being TMI crumb coating the cake versus ideal. If the listener has no idea what this means, I'd say S T E T. If coating the cake, fudge sauce should be warm to the touch or a much looser fluid state because the cake is frozen.
It will lock a thin layer of fudge around the cake without melting the cake or having a fudge coating that is too thick, not even. Hope this helps. Alright, so I'm gonna guess like 110, something like that. That's warm to touch, right? Fahrenheit?
Sure. 10? Try one ten. I don't know. I have no idea.
Sounds just like Christina. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so fooled for a second.
Yeah, and Nastasia reads with this reads with the same passion that Christina brings to her craft. No. Alright. So uh we're running out of time, so I have some questions I didn't get to. We'll get to them next time.
We have uh clarification questions, we have some more ISI questions, chili questions, and questions from Alan in the UK on apples, which I'll get to because I really love the apples, and I've been uh juicing apples myself recently. Just did uh six uh gallons of cider over the weekend. Uh and we'll get to those questions next week when we're back 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.org. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.
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