Today's program is proudly brought to you by Culture City, a for-purpose organization that provides a place of acceptance and support for all autism families. For more information, visit CultureCity.org. 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 Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Royal Network from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Every Tuesday from around now. Actually, we're on time today, kinda, huh? Yeah.
I was actually here at noon. What the hell's that all about? I don't know. Uh 1205 over here. Uh nah, I was saying, uh, nah.
Nah, I don't know. Let me see what my phone says. Okay, 1205. Close. Close.
Close. Uh joined as usual uh in the studio by Anastasia the Hammer Lopez and Jack Jackie Molecules Insley in the engineering booth. How are you guys doing? Good. Good.
Hey Jack, someone got really angry at our microphone here. Oh, I see what's going on. It's like it's like someone like all bent it all the pretzeled it up. Oh, really? Yeah.
I I think I fixed it. They just knocked off the vibration support. Someone's voice was so intense that it knocked the microphone off of its vibration support. So, Stas, what do we have going on tomorrow? Tomorrow we're gonna be at the Bass Pro in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Is it the is it the Bass Amateur? No. It's the Pro. It's the professional style bass. Yeah, what do we look like over here?
They just released the people that are gonna be there. Oh, who's gonna be there? Uh the Bassmaster Angler of the Year. Ooh. Ooh.
I'm assuming this is like a freshwater bass, right? Uh I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Next, yeah. Some guy from Wicked Tuna. His name is Captain Bill Hollywood Muniz. Oh, I like that. I like that.
Which Hollywood? I don't, probably Florida. All right. What do you got there? And then there's Johnny Damon, who is a World Series baseball player from the Boston Red Sox and the Yankees.
Wait, well, okay. Nice. Nice. Nice, yeah. And then uh private military contractor Brant McGee, who's seen on the History Channel show alone.
Wait a minute. So like what does he like what does that mean? Is he he's gonna break our necks? I don't know. And then there's America's Favorite Fisherman host of Johnny Houston Outdoors, Jimmy Houston.
And wait. Sorry, Jimmy Houston Outdoors, Jimmy Houston. Yeah, it would be hilarious if a guy named Jimmy Houston was the host of a show called Johnny Houston Outdoors. Yeah. That'd be kind of like that's how things work nowadays, though.
Alright. So hopefully they'll come on our show. Yeah, and when are we if people can come by live if they're in the area? From six o'clock on at the Bass Pro Shops. We'll be out in the parking lot.
For real? For real's. Well, there's gonna be a lot of stuff going on in the parking lot. Okay. So the uh from the parking lot.
Yeah, we're gonna be closest to the thing, they said, because of our power needs. Jackie Molecule's gonna come. Yep. Oh yeah. We're gonna actually set up with mics and and everything.
By the way, we are in no way affiliated with uh Bass Pro. Like they're not giving us anything or anything. Not yet. We'll see how it goes, right? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, again, not the amateurs, the pros. That'll be in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And coincidentally, on the way up, I need to pick up a part from my chainsaw. So this week.
It's in it's in Bridgeport. Or nobody from where? I forget the name of it. I forget the name of the I forget the name of the place. No, they don't sell like real chainsaw parts at Home Depot.
No offense, Home Depot. But like, you know, like uh I was making these benches. I was ripping through a bunch of uh logs, like hard, like oak, so they're pretty hard. And uh I didn't buy a rip, okay. I don't want to hear it.
I didn't buy a ripping chain. I was using my normal my normal chain on it, right? Pretty sharp chain. And uh the bar the bar nut like rattled a little bit loose and so it shattered my tensioner. So I gotta go get a tensioner for it.
Yeah. So I was like, wow, I don't care. Do you care about this? Uh while uh at like while this was going on, I'd already bucked, you know what bucking is between you saw logs into smaller pieces so that you can use them for firewood and whatnot. So I'd already uh bucked uh this tree and I was loading it into my cart and my tractor died in the middle of the woods.
In the middle of the freaking woods. Like good. In the middle of the freaking woods. Aren't you gonna have a bunch of people try to lift it out? You can't lift this freaking tractor.
First of all, like I have to go up like a wicked hill, like with covered in leaves. You know what, people? If you can afford a tractor that works, just get a tractor that works. Yeah. Do you know what I mean?
Mm-hmm. I just can't afford a tractor that works right now. Do I want a tractor that works? You know what I really want? I want like uh some sort of like either like you know what a John Deere Gator is?
I think you've shown me before. They're like they're like, imagine like uh golf cart on roids with like a rollover. Uh cool, awesome. I can move wood in that. I don't know.
I got a caller, by the way. Caller, you are on the air. Hey, what's up, guys? Uh this is Ed from Washington, D.C. How you doing?
Doing good. How are you guys doing? All right. Uh speaking of tractors that work, uh, my dad has has had a Kubota for like 15 years and has never had a problem with it. Which kind?
Do you know? Uh I do not know which kind, but it's just uh it's just a beast of a workhorse, and nothing's ever wrong with it. With a front end loader on it? Yeah. Does it have the backhoe too?
Yeah, it has back hoe, and he can load a he can attach a drivetrain to the rear and put a wood chipper on the back and everything. Oh man, I'm so jealous. That's what I need. But they're like 20 something grand. And they mean you know, and they maintain their resale value like so well.
You know what I mean? Like uh Staz and I were once looking on Craigslist. It was his retirement gift to himself. Oh, well that's nice. But I like how someone gives themselves a retirement gift that allows them to work harder.
But the uh which I appreciate. Uh, but Stas and I were looking at these guys. If you go on Craigslist, there's like uh fake people trying to sell kubodas at unreasonably low prices. So like Ms. Nastasi and I, for a while, like one of our minor amusements when we weren't working was to mess with the scammers about like, you know, are you familiar with these scams?
So what they do is they say they they they're they always say that they're in the military and that they just got re reposted somewhere and they won't be able to take their Kubota with them, right? And it's and you're like, and so but they post it as though it's in your like local Craigslist, but then they're like, oh, but it's it's it's in uh Ohio. And they're like, uh, you know, it's already packed and everything. It's like, and so like Stasner always like, well, that's such a coincidence. I happen to be going through Ohio like tomorrow, can I come see it?
And they never write back. They never write back. Or like people ask us for the, you know, like, well, let's go on and on, but like we'll give them total like straight up like, wow, that's so amazing. I'll be in Alaska. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'll go, I'll be in Fairbanks like tomorrow. Can I come look at the tractor? You know what I mean? I love doing that kind of stuff. Anyway, so what's your cooking related question?
Anyways, so um I I have uh own an ice cream company here in DC called Milk Cult. We're trying to mess around with some different kind of topping stuff. And I want to do a few kind of um sweet powdered vegetable toppings. Uh and trying to do like a sweet Thai basil and a sweet carrot. And I was wondering if there's a way I can kind of uh produce a lot of this stuff without a dehydrator by I don't know, like um pulverizing it and then mixing it with um for the Thai basil, like chlorophyll and maybe like a bulking agent or something like that, and what kind of suggestions you might have.
Okay. Uh are you milk cult the Twitter as well? Yeah. Oh, nice. Hi.
Um the uh huh. So you wait, you don't want to invest in a dehydrator. What what what equipment do you have? I mean, I mean I have pretty much everything else. I mean, yeah.
Right. I don't have a rotor app or anything like that, but uh I mean I got pretty much everything else. Right. So tie basil, I haven't had a lot of experience trying to to dry it down because I always always use it like uh super fresh, and I don't think you're gonna have you're not gonna I know you're not gonna have any luck uh like uh wet milling it and then drying it because it's just gonna and you know you want them as unblemished as possible as they're drying out so that they uh so basically you're looking to get all the water out before the polyphenol oxidase enzymes can turn them into a swampy morass of crap, right? That's the goal.
Right. Um but you know you might be able to do the old school just crack the crack the oven and keep keep it on low, keep the oven open, keep it on low just to get because really it's only that initial section of dryness that you need to get past, and then once you're over the hump in terms of dryness, then they can they'll dry out rather effectively without rotting on you. Um but let me see if there's anything like I have never I I I hate to admit this because I I should try it. But you know, like uh the there's the old I think it was Thomas Keller who first started talking about it, even though it doesn't seem like it's his kind of a technique. And it could just be that I'm losing it in my, you know, in my as I get older.
But I think he has a micro I know there is a microwave dehydration of herbs technique. I don't I've never tried it, so I don't know how it works. But for things like herbs, you might be able to try uh, you know, the the nuclear uh dehydration there. Um but I would just throw some in an oven. I mean, uh do you have a if you can turn the convection off even better so that it's not even though the convection helps with drying, like I find that things like herbs tend to blow around a lot if you don't have it specifically set up.
I mean, that's the really nice thing about a dehydrator. Um the other thing I would do is like call up a buddy with a dehydrator and just like throw a couple sheets in as a test to see whether you like the result before you go too ape crazy trying to figure out whether you know whether you like it or not. There I don't think there's a commercial source of uh of uh dried Thai basil. I can't think I've never seen it, right? Um but the other thing to do would be to, you know, I mean the real baller thing would be to contract someone out to freeze dry that stuff.
That would be amazing. But uh I would try somebody's uh yeah, that'd be amazing. I mean, um, but again, that's like even more difficult. So what are the other things you want to try besides Thai basic? Uh carrot, carrot and beet.
Carrots, go buy them freeze dried. Just buy them freeze dried and pulverize them, right? You know, I don't know how much, like, yeah, you could buy them, buy them freeze dried. Because you're not gonna use that much, right? No, no.
I don't know if we're gonna go into like maybe like quartz, a couple quarts a week or something like that. So not like huge amounts. Right. Um, beets, I've never seen, I don't think, freeze-dried beets. Wait.
Is it that company that does just XYZ, do they do it just beets? I have no idea. They have just corn, they have just peas, they have just raspberries and just strawberries. I don't know if they I don't think I don't think they do beets. I'm wondering whether you could just as a test, like just pulverize commercial beet chips and see whether or not they're any good.
You know, you because you can buy as long as they're unsalted, yeah, they might work. Yeah, give that a shot. I mean, like, it as long as you don't own the equipment, you're gonna have to just kind of like hassle around and kind of figure out what's going on with it. But with otherwise, with beets, um who has worked on that? I mean, people used to make beet soil and beet beet kind of powders all the time.
I know Wiley used to do it at WD, and a bunch of people have done it, but I think that they're using um, I think they're dehydrating it. Now, as far as binders go, like it all depends on how you want the texture of the product, you know, to be. I mean, you can make it kind of, you know, any texture from a dry powder, and then actually the texture you want is gonna depend a lot on uh kind of how much you need to treat it beforehand to get the moisture out, but it could go anywhere from a dry powder to like a strusel topping. And strusel toppings are pretty, you know, they're fairly uh moist, and you know, and they just have like you know, uh like butter and then other like I would use pre-cooked starchy starches in them so that's not have that extreme starch taste to it. But um things like things like that.
You know, but I would just I would just test out different things. I I'm having uh in my mind trying to figure out what kind of topping you want, whether you want it to be a dust or like a hearty crumbly thing or what. I think I think some of them will work as a dust and some of them will work as a crumbly soil or a strusel and we'll just have to play around with what works which way. Yeah. I haven't done a lot of the soil work.
I mean I used to do a lot of the powdered oil works but that's not what you're that's not what you're what you're doing there. But most most of those soils I think were like or like make a dough make a dough right here's something you could do. You could make a dough of the flavor you want this wouldn't work with Thai basil but you can make a really stiff for instance beet like like and like almost like a twelve but like not necessarily sugary and then just like crack the or you could make it sugary and then just pulse it like a praline and get you know get the thing out like a beet twelve would work and that would probably be delicious and within the realm of normal kind of kitchen practice without having to do anything crazy you know what I mean? Yeah nothing crazy no new equipment or anything. Yeah yeah yeah old school just like make a twelve and pulverize it.
Great. Well thanks guys. Alright well let us know. Tweet us on over and tell us what happens. Okay.
I go I haven't been to DC in a while. You no I was just in DC. Did you enjoy it? I did. You know the lines for all of the attractions are longer than they were when I was a kid.
Have we talked about this on the air? Uh no I think it's lines I hate lines. Well but the thing is I think the lines weren't as long when I was a kid. Let me put it this way I am just as impatient or I'm the same impatient now as when I was a kid I'm pretty sure right which is to say impatient. But the um I think that like there's only like uh they're not making more constitutions but we keep on making more Americans.
I think that's the thing. You know what I mean? There's just more Americans now than there used to be, and they all want to see the same piece of paper. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean?
Whatever. Hey, I got something in from Erin, actually. Um, Aaron, Aaron Fairbanks, executive director. Uh she wants to know if Frilo technology is a real thing and if you know anything about it. Frilo?
Yeah. Well, explain to me what it is, and I'll tell you whether I think it sounds real. Guaranteed oil cost reduction. It's like uh they say it's a revolutionary technology that uh the in which the oxidation process is reduced and therefore dramatically increases the lifespan of cooking oils. What is it?
I'll have to show you the I'll have to show you. I've never used it, but I mean I know there's lots of different technologies out there to keep your fry oil in in good feather. Um you know, and you know, the the ultimate dream is obviously that your that the food uptake of oil is the exact same as the uh oil input rate to maintain optimum frying technology. That's why that's like the continuous potato the continuous potato chip model is like um I mean I know everyone likes kettle cooked potatoes, but I mean in terms of like oil or continuous French fry uh production lines, that's like the that's the the right it's like the oil always is perfect, and you just keep on making fries until the earth extinguishes itself. You know what I mean?
It's kind of like the sun, how the sun will just keep on like you know, doing fusion. Yeah, keep on keeping on. Same as this. You just keep on as long as you keep feeding this like French fry sun with like fries, uh like fry and oil, it will just be always perfect. Isn't that awesome?
Yeah, it's awesome. Anyway, uh so I don't know about this Fry Lo technology. I'll show you over the brig. It's it's weird. I mean, is it any is it any kin to J-Lo?
Does she own it? No. No. No. It's manufactured in Japan.
I can see that. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. What do they know about JLO?
Who knows? Who knows? Who knows what they know about J Lo. Stas, you uh you a J-Lo hater? No.
Really? I mean, I don't feel like there feel nothing. You feel nothing. All right. Okay, let's get to some questions.
Uh Joel Esposito writes in Is it practical? Uh like that practicable. Is it practical to pipe a house with CO2 lines? That's carbon dioxide. Uh like ball locks on retractable hoses.
What do you think about the word ball lock? Yeah. Nah? Nah. Nah.
Ball lock. Do you prefer uh ball lock? Another word like a it sounds better than saying a universal universal beverage or a Pepsi locking system. I mean ball lock. Pepsi locking system.
Yeah. All right. As opposed to the pinlocks, which is what Coke used to use. Pinlock. Nobody uses the pin locks anymore.
Whatever, pinlocks. Like ball locks on retractable hoses from the ceiling or just a dedicated station piped out of a countertop with a pressure regulator at the point of use. Also, what's involved in getting a tank of nitrous oxide, N2O, for culinary use in a residential setting? Joel Esposito. Okay, look at here.
Uh here's the problem. Uh let's go backwards. Here's the problem with nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is um uh uh um psychoactive, right? So people abuse nitrous oxide uh in the form of whippets, right?
And the uh the issue um with it especially is is that people will uh inhale it directly from the tank, and if you inhale it directly from the tank, you can pass out with the mask on your face and asphyxiate yourself and die, right? So, you know, if you piped enough oxygen into it, you probably wouldn't die, but nobody hooks up a system of oxygen and N2O, and even that would be dangerous because what if the oxygen failed and you're by yourself and you're huffing nitrous. So it's classically dangerous thing to have lying around the house if there's anyone in the house who has a predisposition to like uh huffing the stuff right so I'm just gonna go ahead and say that right there. Another problem nitrous is typically used um in consumer applications for uh injection into uh automobile engines to like provide extra power like nitro boost those have some sort of like poisonous stinkofin added to it so that you can't uh huff it now you can get medical grade nitrous like I I used to have it I gave the nitrous cylinder back but I used to have it uh I think we gave it back right the big tank we gave it back when we close the lab yeah uh I used to have it uh around uh the trick is is just convincing somebody once that that you are a reputable person and that you needed it so I convinced the guy to give it to me once because I worked at the French culinary institute and I said to him uh you know I called a couple different places and they're like well you need a you need a uh a doctor's license I'm like I don't because I'm not gonna prescribe it. I think I've gone through this on the air and they're like you know and uh you know but after about like 20 minutes of them of me just saying no I don't need it right then they I said what I said I said okay it's it's I said it's not a legal requirement for me to be a doctor to get to nitrous.
I said so what is it that would make it okay for you f you to feel good giving me the nitrous and then you you tell them a story which was is true be like look at I spend thousands of dollars a year on uh nitrous oxide cartridges for whipped cream makers and I'd prefer to spend you know a hundred bucks on one nitrous oxide tank that'll last me two years than a thousand dollars on cartridges and so the guy said so a bunch of people said well I will never feel comfortable selling it to you so go hang yourself I was like okay but then this one guy said um get the New York City fire department to say it's okay I said I I didn't say that's crazy I said okay so I called at the fire department and I said hey fire department do you have any regulations about nitrous oxide and they said no we have no regulations about nitrous oxide I was like so you have no problem with me having a nitrous oxide tank based on fire department rules in uh in my place and keep in mind like I had a certificate of fitness for compressed gases both for oxygen and acetylene and industrial environments uh actually that's the only certificate of fitness I had at the time but like you know I was like you know I've been to your center I have you know blah blah blah and and I said to the guy here's the magic phrase I was like well will you sign a letter saying that the fire department has no uh uh problem with this and for some reason the guy said yes and so then I faxed the letter over to the guy at the at the welding supply and he said uh he said all right the f the fire department doesn't have a problem with it then I guess it's okay and you know even though there are literally no rules about it right um so anyways it's all about convincing first of all you have to be the kind of person that is accurately not I mean that is not going to like cause problems with it and secondly you need to convince someone that it is a that that they can feel comfortable in selling to you and that's about it. So like you know if you have a you know like if you have some excuse like um you know I'm going into a business where I'm spending all this money on nitrous and it's ridiculous because there's no limit on how many nitrous cartridges you can buy and like you know you could fill like a uh you know a a 15 foot weather balloon with uh nitrous cartridges from uh whipped cream makers if if you so desired and then start inhaling that until you until you keel over dead but you know it's like and there's no law against it and there is no whatever I don't don't get me started. Now as for piping your sounds like thank god as for piping your house with CO2 it is entirely feasible to pipe your house with CO2. Bars are piped with CO2 all the time they're usually piped to the bar guns and to the carbonators or to their kegging systems and not to individual point of carbonation rigs but they do it all the time. They use a very tough kind of uh polyethylene it's a it's it's it's a braided reinforced like double polyethylene hose and they use um Odecor clamps that are you know not those little crappy ones that you that really tighten down with a with a clamp uh thing they're like ear clamps that are very good and they use uh you know nickel plated brass or stainless like uh flare fittings and all those things never like they don't fail right but the the danger in it because remember you're not running high pressure CO2 you're taking it down to the pressure you're gonna use it at which is you know in all cases under a hundred psi or thereabout even if you're running a full uh like a carp like a McCann full size carbonator uh and you're carbonating at room temperature and then piping it through a coal plate, you're still looking at no more than like a hundred and five probably PSI or something a hundred and ten maybe PSI through it.
So it's not like super high pressure, like 800 psi that you need to need to worry about. But you definitely want to get to use only uh things that are not gonna have catastrophic failures. The danger with CO2, like any other thing, is that uh it is an asphyxiant, right? So if you have luckily you can sense it. It's not like nitrate nitrogen where you're not gonna sense that you're being asphyxiated, but it is an ex asphyxiant.
So um you don't want to be in a situation where if you have uh a catastrophic leak that all of a sudden you know you you know die. So uh that's that's the main that's the main kind of a thing. But I've actually never heard of a case of it happening because you you get panicked in excess CO2. But I mean, I I've never heard of it happening. I mean, maybe it has, but I've never heard of it happening in uh in a beverage situation.
Just get the good hose. Don't get the crappy unreinforced BSOs. Uh okay. Dave, Nastasia, and Jack. Uh two questions.
This is from uh uh now he wants me to try to pronounce his name in Norwegian accent, but I can't do that. Only Nils can do that. And so Nils has given me like Nils pronounces by the way, thank goodness Nathan Mirval never listens to this show, except for the time he was on it, right? But he always says Mirvold, Mirvold, right? That's like Nils Swedish Nils' imitation of a Norwegian accent.
So now I have to say this name in a fa in a nil in my imitation of Nils doing a Norwegian how do we do it? Jurgen, right? Jurgen Daland Seldforce. Sellforce? Right?
That's how Nils would do it. I don't know how we'd say talent, force. Sellforce? Anyway, uh, anyway, okay, here are the questions. Uh are you involved with uh XKCD's survey?
Jack, I know Stas doesn't give a rat's test. You know about that. I think he's in the bathroom. Oh, he's in the bathroom. He's using the using the facilities.
Oh. Do you know even know what that is? That's that cartoon, that like tech science related cartoon. People go crazy for it. It's like uh on the Wikipedia, it has its own like explanations page that's not related to the actual comic.
It's like these like stick figures. Jack, you familiar you familiar with the cartoon XKCD? No, sir. Oh, and I think I've seen yes, I've seen it. Yeah, you've seen it.
XKCD, is that what you said? X K C D. And it doesn't mean anything? Like you can't say it. I don't know.
How are you gonna say it? I don't know. I'm sure there's a or what does it stand for? I don't know. Well, you look it up.
But anyway, so are you involved with their survey? Uh, because they've did a huge survey where they're trying to collect a bunch of random data to see whether or not you can make either interesting or interesting yet spurious uh correlations on large data sets, like people who don't like potato chips might also be more likely to kick puppies. I just said that I don't really that those aren't two questions. But anyway. Uh the there is a on it a sandwich question that reminds me of an episode which thought to define a sandwich by listing what is and what is not a sandwich.
Because in the in the survey there's a list of uh things, are they a sandwich or are they not? And I'm not gonna get back into it because I'm just gonna get all worked up about it. And uh it's all about anyway, I'm not gonna get into it. No, we're not involved. And then for Jack, is there any way for us not listening live and with no Twitter account to see the chat activity referenced in the show?
Yeah, I th I thought I answered this. Um I'm pretty sure you can get in that chat room and scroll up. And it should show you the history. Uh that's that's what I've done in the past. If I'm like not in, I can scroll up and see what happened.
Yeah. So just get in there and scroll up. Let me know if that works. No Twitter required, no nothing. Nope.
Okay. Uh hi, Nastasia, Dave, Jack, and the chat verse. Ooh, I like that, the chat verse. Chat verse. Uh, I uh now this is about apple cider.
We didn't talk about the apple cider question last week, right? Strangely, even though it was an entire apple sex cider show. I don't think we talked about the cider, did we? I don't. I think we did.
Do you want to wait on the cider till the end so that people don't get cidered out? Yeah. Or do you want me to go through it? Wait. Oh, Stas, you're so mean.
All right, listen. I am going to I'm gonna I will I will get to it. I will get to it. Especially because it asked about the uh about the center fuge. We should talk about that.
When are we gonna talk about that on the break? Sure. Let me come back from the break? Okay. Uh all right, let me hit this real quick.
Uh from Chris. I'm writing in to ask about Greek uh Freppay coffee. What do you think about? Uh there's a guy, these guys in uh in uh you ever eat out in near Harvard, like at like the local kind of joints, not the places that Harold McGee takes us. Yeah, sometimes we do.
So there's this like place that Harvard people used to go. I went there when I was in college, right? Uh to this place, and I'll never forget it. My friend Mike went into it, right? And he goes, uh, because we're, you know, Connecticut people, you know what I mean?
And and he goes, uh, I want a milkshake. I want a milkshake. And the guy behind the counter says, You don't want a milkshake. He doesn't have that accent because he's from Boston, but I don't know. So he goes, You don't want a milkshake.
Mike goes, What the hell do you mean that I don't want a milkshake? He's like, a milkshake is when we just take milk and shake it. He's like, What you want is a frap. Not like a frappe. What you want is a frap.
And Michael's like, what the hell is this? You don't get to choose. This is not like the caterpillar in freaking uh Alice in Wonderland where you get to choose. No one on God's green freaking earth thinks that a milkshake is when you take milk and you shake it. That's some sort of like Harvard like yard abomination diner nonsense crap.
Jack, you ever heard of that? No, that's ridiculous. That's crazy. That's crazy. Anyway, frap.
Uh I'm here to ask about Greek frappe coffee. I discovered, by the way, uh, not even get into it, but you know, it means something entirely different in the cocktail world. Okay. Okay, whatever. You don't care.
It's nothing to do with what anyone thinks it means. Anyway, I discovered this drink in Athens a few years ago. And here's the drink. One teaspoon of Ness Cafe. And what we're talking about here is the instant coffee, aka taster's choice.
Which is in fact, no, but I bet you stuff, I bet you you like that stuff. No, I don't. You wait, but you like like the stale, crappy coffee that you get out of those quilted trucks on the side of the street. What? The what?
You you know it, Jack. What? Where the guy comes home from Africa and his sister's at the door, and she's like, You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I do. Terrible.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean it's coming out soon? Like every freaking year since 1990 something. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What?
Jack, explain it. Do you not go to the show? Guy comes back from Africa. He's a volunteer. He's a volunteer.
What? This is a Peter Kim? Peace Corps? Peace Corps, something like that. Sister opens the door.
Did you make this up? It's literally coming home from Africa. You know, I can actually hold on. No, let me explain. Sister.
Oh, I missed you so much. It's really weird. Long way from West Africa. Oh, real coffee. Real coffee.
Folgers. And he just came back. Oh man. You have to see it. It's all kinds of wrong.
No, they're eye contact. Yeah, yeah. The body language is no good on this one. And she just woke up. And then he gives her a gift and she's looking at him all intensely and she puts a bow on him.
I'm just narrating now. It's bad. What's kind of funny is that in West Africa, they like at least, you know, like in uh in Senegal at least, there's like this culture of this powdered coffee that is sold all over the streets. And is it good? Is it better than Folgers?
So she's a good thing. It's totally different. And it's more a fret because it's like tossed back and forth and it's got uh spices in it. So it's got the spice Jair in it. And uh yeah, tuba, cafe tuba, and it's like goes back and forth, but it's a little sweet, but you can get them to not put the it's a lot sweet, but you can get them to not put their sugar into it if you ask for it.
So like you can get plenty of freaking coffee in West Africa. Yeah. But you can't have coffee and incest at the same time, I don't think. Got a comment in the chat room from Tim. The best part of waking up is incest in your cup.
Oh. Wow. I can hear that. How about we take a break? Wait, wait, wait.
We'll answer the question afterwards. Alright, alright. Alright, we'll come back and talk about Greek crappay coffee. In the center of the face. Towards program is proudly brought to you by Culture City, a for-purpose organization that provides a place of acceptance and support for all autism families.
This is Culture City's founder, Julian Maha. Culture City was really born out of uh necessity. You know, it was born when my uh you know currently six-year-old boy was diagnosed with autism. Uh his name is Abram, and he's non-verbal. And even though my wife and I were both physicians at the time, it was really hard for us to find any resources at that point to help him.
All the other organizations out there that we know of, um, they do phenomenal work, but their main focus is basically finding a cure for autism. Our main focus is basically trying to prepare the community to accept not only children with autism, but their families as well. You know, in addition to that, we also want to provide help to these families in the here and now. You know, so tangible things like, you know, iPads for nonverbal kids, you know, financial scholarships, uh therapy scholarships, you know, art camps, and also some um lecture series that can teach parents about, you know, dietary issues, um, you know, how to financially plan and things like that. For more information, visit CultureCity.org.
Nice. So, uh, you know, obviously, like uh, that's an important important topic for me and my family, obviously. But uh how long have they been uh been with us, Jack? Uh we've we've been connected to them for a while now. They're so so awesome.
I went down to Birmingham twice and hung out with that whole team and um once once at the gala with Aaron uh with Heritage, and then they had me come down and DJ the second gala they did uh just unbelievable stuff that they do. Like really, really, really great. Nice cool. Yeah, because you know so many people are trying to like all these autism organizations are usually like we're fighting for a cure. And these guys are like, no, that's not what we're doing.
We're just educating people, you know, on what it actually means to have autistic kids. Right. And also, you know, there's uh uh yeah, like yeah, they they uh look. I'm of many, like as a parent, many, many minds about this, which I you know, not me we're a cooking show, not to place necessarily to go go into it, but yeah, I mean, trying anything to r kind of remove stigma and ex and uh increase uh acceptance and understanding is uh good in my book, right? Yeah, totally.
Um, back to the Greek frappade coffee. Uh I discovered this drink in Athens a few years ago. One teaspoon of Nes Cafe, incest free, by the way. I'm gonna specify incest free. That's a new label that they're gonna introduce.
Yeah. Fair trade? Nah, nah, no. Incest free. Like the trade is still not fair, but it didn't involve incest, right?
Oh man. Dang. Dang. You know what I mean? Oh god.
Oh, now I have the best part of waking up good in my head. Incest in your case. You really never seen it, dude? No. No.
I must have missed that whole like era. Yeah, like every year. It comes every year. The shows that I watch don't advertise coffee, they advertise catheters. No, but you're the catheter store.
What kind of cathy do you need? You need like a self-lubricating catheter, you need a catheter you can take in your truck, you need a cat. Like, there's like like constant like CNN must have the most heavily cathetered audience, I think, like in the world. It's just all catheters all the time. All times of day, all times of night, catheters.
No? And like uh, and reverse mortgage reverse reverse mortgages. I know that guy. He just died. Fred Thompson?
Yeah. Yeah. Catheters. Yeah. And Humara adds.
Humera. I don't even know what it's for. Do you know what Humare is for? No. Jack, you have any idea what Hemares for?
I do not. Did you see that Charlie Sheen came out? Oh, yeah. What do you mean he came out? He has HIV.
Oh man. Yeah. Oh. Big long interview on today's show. That's terrible.
Huh. Well, that again. Uh let's take it back to Greek frat page coffee, shall we? Man. Man, it's killing killing the vibe.
Um, okay. So where were we? One teaspoon, Nes Cafe. And by the way, it says teaspoon, but I did some research. I have to be honest, I've never had uh instant coffee uh in my life.
You ever had a stuzz? Yeah. It is actually like if you read the coffee literature, I forget the name of it, but the AVI Press, which was published out of Connecticut in the 70s was like the uh series of highly technical uh you know books on um on food technology. They had one on coffee in which they described uh uh instant coffee as like one of the greatest technological achievements of all time. Just happens to taste bad.
Anyway, my assumption is it tastes bad. It's not that bad. Especially if you're like me and you like milk and sugar, you can't really taste. Really? Yeah.
All right. Okay, so uh, but anyway, all the recipes online. Uh don't just say a teaspoon, my friend. It is a heaping teaspoon, a heaping teaspoon of Nes Cafe, two teaspoons of sugar, a quarter cup of cold water, and then whip, whip, whip, to magical micro bubble foam with the immersion blender or similar. Pour over ice, add a splash of milk.
This without the milk forms a pretty stable micro bubble foam with intensified flavors and a creamy viscous mouthfeel. You like the words creamy and viscous? Creamy and viscous mouthfeel. Uh which one do you dislike both? Or in combination?
Miscus. What about the word meniscus? Nope, don't like it. Okay. Uh the thing I don't like about it is that it uses instant coffee, which I don't love the taste of as much as fresh coffee.
I'd appreciate your advice and making a an espresso slash fresh uh brewed coffee version. I would also expect a cold brew coffee version would be spectacular if the hot brew version worked out. I don't know about that because okay, well I've tried stick blending soy lecithin at various concentrations into uh rapid chilled uh fresh coffee and did not get a stable foam or the same micro bubbles with uh as with the Nescafe version. I have also tried various concentrations of Xanthan gum, and it goes from unstable foam to coffee snot before stabilizing in the uh in the way, as with instant coffee would. Coffee snot sounds really bad.
Like it sounds like you have a sickness and you've like snarfed it through your nose and then blew it out, which is unpleasant. Unpleasant. Um I suspect I might need some kind of solid slash bulking agent, but I'm at a loss for what those might be. I have an extra constraint that I avoid soy proteins, so VersaWhip is not an option. They make a uh non soy versa whip, by the way.
You just have to make sure you know which one is which. Uh wait, wait, wait. Oh, you avoid soy proteins, but not soy less lessithin. All right. I also find that the splash of milk, even skim, seems to accelerate the breaking of the foam, causing the small bubbles to quickly join together and flow to the top of the drink.
It would be great to prevent this if possible. Any thoughts, advice, much appreciated. Thanks, Chris. Okay. Um, you're you're look okay.
So what the instant coffee does for you, obviously, is uh it is soluble in cold water, right? So you can already use cold water to make it, right? That's the advantage. I did the calculations, right? So uh what you're looking at with that Nest Cafe, oh man, I I did the calculations last week because I thought I was gonna do it last week, and I don't remember them.
I don't remember them. But you're it's a soluble solids uh uh thing, and so you're supposed to put that amount of coffee, a heaping teaspoon of of of instant coffee, into six ounces of liquid, and instead you're putting it into two ounces of liquid. So you're roughly three times the solids content as you would get in a normal cup of coffee. That plus it's cold, right? So espresso, uh like a really like high extraction espresso, is going to have a higher solids content than you would get in uh in this by by yourself.
So if you make a very concentrated espresso and have it go right over an ice cube, you might level out at just about the solids content that you need. Um, you know, as long as you didn't like uh as long as you didn't, and I'd have to redo some calculations on how cold the actual espresso would get. But this is how I make I make shaken espresso like that all the time, even without an immersion blender, and you get a very nice uh bubble. Now, if you don't have the, in other words, if if if it's too watered down at that point, then I would just have the espresso let it cool off for a while, then put it uh on, you know, whip it the hell up and pour it, pour it over ice, and it and it should work. Because think about this.
Pick up on this. You're using two ounces of water and a teaspoon of sugar in your thing, which is very high solids, right? Not not just the high solids from the coffee, but you have extra sugar in there. So you are dealing uh you're whipping something that's only a quarter cup, two ounces. So if you just do like a highly extracted espresso and add enough ice water to take it up to two ounces with sugar, you should be in roughly the same ballpark and it should work.
What do you think, Sas? Yes. Yeah. As for the milk stabilizing it, yeah, I wouldn't use uh Xanthan because it's gonna snot up. I'd use something a little more uh less snotty.
Perhaps Xanthan mixed with um. I have to think on it a little bit. But give that a shot. Let me know how how it works. And if you desperately need to add milk, you could just thicken up the milk with something, nah, but not Xanthan.
I gotta think on it. I gotta think on it. But anyway, let me let me know how that works. Um, okay. I enjoy oh wait, we already did this.
We did it, we're not gonna do the cider right now. We're not gonna do the cider right now because Nastasi doesn't want to hear anything about cider. No. She doesn't want to hear anything about cider. Okay.
Cidered out. Cidered out. Although I would like to discuss, although you know what? Nastasi and I may on Thursday spin another batch of cider in the centrifuge. Should we talk centrifuge now, real quick?
Yeah. So I might spin another batch of cider in a centrifuge, in which case I can come and talk to you about the results from that second um spin because I have another, I have my second and last batch of cider for the year that is about to be done with primary fermentation. Um, update on the I think right for right now we're calling it the the Booker and Dax 500, right? Is what we're calling or something like that. Uh Centerfuge.
Updates on the centrifuge. So I got some good news and I got some bad news. The good news is that when you get it, you're gonna love it. That's the good news. The bad news is is that it does not look like we will be able to put it on sale on Black Friday.
Uh on pre-sale on Black Friday. Now the plan, I think we discussed the plan, right? The plan was to put it on pre-sale on uh on Black Friday, and we're gonna give you uh uh like a hefty discount over what the eventual retail price will be, and also we're gonna let you like put your place in line, right? Because you know, we're not gonna probably make enough, you know, whatever. So but it just so happens that all that all of the motor suppliers to all of the people right now just went on strike.
And so the prototype, which is fundamentally done and is going to be shipped over here, like the last one before we pay for the hard tooling, the one that we need to do all the videos to like put up on Black Friday. The factory is on strike, and so we won't get it until until probably December first. So we plan on still putting it on sale before the holidays. So I would reserve some of that, some of that, you know, buying ability. Uh and we still plan on having you be able to send Christmas cards out to your buddies.
And if you were a Kickstarter um backer, we will be sending you, you know, your uh your notice with an extra $20 off, but it will unfortunately will not be the day after Thanksgiving. I think Nastasia secretly set up this strike because she is sick for the past three years. She is sick and tired of always having some sort of Black Friday nonsense to deal with, right? Yeah, yeah. No, Red didn't set it up.
So we're we could actually pretend that we're just not going to be part of Black Friday. I'm not going to be part of it. I'm not going to believe in that commercialism. That's not true though. That would be a lie.
There's a strike in the factory. But the good news is that if there's a strike, uh maybe uh we have an even slightly less uh slightly more exploitation free motor. Right? Anything about that? Yeah, that's a good thing.
It's a good thing. Christmas miracle. Christmas Christmas miracle. So more updates on that. But we never do we ever talk about what the centrifuge can do, or are we going to wait until we get closer?
Let's wait. I will say this. Here's what I will say. It will have a one-shot capacity of 500 mils at a time. It will not require balancing.
It I have written recipes to have it clarify all the standard stuff that I do at the bar, and I've also done like a lot of the modernist cuisine, like the pea butter and all that. It works for the pea butter, it works for uh herb oils, it works for all of that, works for all the Costinos, it works for lime juice, it works for all that. Here's what's cool about it. Aside from the fact that it's gonna cost less than a thousand bucks, and it's gonna be, you know, a little bit bigger than a cuisin art, uh, not very much bigger than a cuisin art, so countertop friendly and cabinet friendly. Uh aside from that, and the fact that Diary mentioned you won't have to balance it, it's not gonna require balancing.
Yep. Okay. Uh, we're gonna be able you're gonna be able to run it in batch mode, which means that you're going to be able to uh like uh put like a container with like a couple of gallons of uh orange juice and then just run it without stopping and have it go. Now the product won't be, I gotta be honest, won't be as clear as it will be in like single-time batch mode, but it'll allow you to get very large uh throughput of items like that. So more discussion about you know how it works and what it's doing as we get closer, but just thought I'd give you guys the updates, right?
Yep. Okay. Uh this is from Kirk in Atlanta, Georgia. Got a quick question. Uh I made some clear ice by wrapping a bread pan with insulation, uh, insulation tape, a bootleg version of the cooler method, carved it all up and threw it in my freezer.
A few weeks later, I see that all of the ice cubes have lost a significant amount of their mass. I moved into a new house and the fridge slash freezer isn't new. Is there anything I can do to prevent this loss, or am I just stuck with having to make ice weekly to keep pace with my cocktail consumption? Okay, first of all, uh is it a frost-free freezer or is it not a frost-free freezer? Because I would think that in a frost-free freezer, um, you're you're gonna have a lot more uh weight loss over time.
But secondly, uh I would wrap your ice cubes in or put them, put the slabs after you cut them, what put them in Ziploc bags, and you will not get any you will not get nearly as much uh loss because you're gonna maintain the in I'm making quote marks, the humidity on the inside of the bag, and you're not gonna get as much sublimation off of your ice cubes as you would otherwise. So there's two reasons they could be shrinking, right? One is sublimation due to dry air inside of the thing, which I think would tend to be enhanced by frost-free freezer. And secondly, it could be literal uh freeze thaw mass loss if you're going through hardcore freeze thaws, like if you're actually getting drip off off the ice cubes. Either way, you will know if you put the ice cubes into get you can buy two-gallon Ziploc bags, right?
So you don't have to worry about it. Go throw them in two gallon zippies. They make freezer ones, but I don't know if they make two gallon freezers. They might only make one gallon freezers, but try zippies uh and let me know what happens. Um team, I'm trying to make cultured maple butter and it's working okay, but not great.
Can you help? Making the butter is fine. I culture cream into creme fraîche, then whip whip the cream and standing mixer until the solids just separate. I strain out the buttermilk, squeeze the solids together, and rinse them in cold water to get rid of the rest of the buttermilk. The problem I'm having is getting the maple syrup into the butter.
Even though some of the one quarter cup of syrup per pound of butter I use gets mixed into the butter, not all of it does, and then the butter sort of wheeps. Weeps maple syrup drops. The flavor is fine, but not as robust as I would like. And the weeping is a little weird looking. The only recipes I have found for maple butter have you mix the syrup to the butter once the butter has been made, as I tried to do, or a straight maple syrup spread, maple syrup that has been heated and whipped.
Um what's the best way to get grape maple flavor into dairy butter? How would you do it? I don't have any modernist cooking types of appliances, but I do have a great uh thermometer, a Vitamix, and a stove. Thanks for your show and hope to hear your thoughts. Kelly, okay, Kelly, here's what I think.
The problem is this you what you're okay. We when you're let's say you were to knead the hell out of the butter after you make it. You have to get like, let's say you were to get all the way out, right? Which I don't actually. I like to leave more of the buttermilk in uh than um you would get commercially because I think it adds to the the kind of flavor of the fresh butter, right?
So I don't try to get it. Now commercial butter, right, can range in its solids content, but typically when you buy the more expensive butters, they have a very high solids content to them, uh i.e. not as much water. Um and what you're looking to do is replace the water in at least a portion of the water in the butter with uh maple syrup, which should work, but the thing is is that you're gonna have to get it in there and you're always gonna have some weeping unless you do this. I think what you should do is make yourself a very uh thickened uh maple syrup.
Now you could either make a an agar kind of fluid gel, very fine uh you know agar fluid gel. In fact maybe that's what I would do. But it still wouldn't be a hundred percent maple because you'd need to do the agar and you can't do agar and a straight maple syrup. You'd have to do agar into a little bit of water and then temper the maple syrup in. But you could probably get I don't know what the maximum bricks you could get is but you could probably get it pretty high.
You could try any other sort of uh thickener on the maple syrup but I would thicken the hell up xanthan for instance like if you made like a real snotty xanthan in water you could dope it back into the maple syrup. I don't know that whether you can get Xanthan directly hydrated into maple syrup or not. But anyway the goal here is to make the maple syrup stand on its own and then you're basically folding a solid into the into the butter and then it shouldn't weep out. It might look weird as it's spread though. The other alternative would be to um the other alternative would be to and I don't know if this is going to work but you could make the butter then uh break it could you re-emulsify it then can you make it again?
I don't think you could make it again. I was gonna say like you want to replace the water in the milk with the water in the cream with maple syrup to some extent and make it with the maple syrup in it, right? I wonder whether that would work. But the issue is is that I think you'd need to add quite a lot. I don't know how how like I think you'd be diluting it.
So if you figure that heavy cream is roughly thirty percent uh or ch thirty and change percent fat, right? Then it's like sixty and change percent water. So even if you were to add um even if you were to add uh let's say six hundred mils of um six hundred mils of maple syrup to a quart uh or to a liter of heavy cream, you'd still only half of the of the non-fat stuff in that mixture would be maple syrup, right? I think that's your problem. But um I don't know, I'd like to try some stuff and give it a shot.
Uh do or do we is uh are we uh are we getting kicked off? Do I have time to do one more because I miss this blanching celery thing? Quick? All right. All right.
Uh so I will I'm not getting to the uh to the Robichon fries. Maybe we can talk about that tomorrow because we're gonna be out the what's it called tomorrow, right? Um but I do want to get to this because I mentioned it last week. Um Dave, Nastasia, and and Jack. Um this one's just a Jack, doesn't care what we think.
From Alan. Um please ask Dave how he would blanch cartoon in the kitchen if it didn't get blanched in the garden. So cartoons are. Hey Dave, how would you blanch cartoon in the kitchen? Uh okay.
It very interesting question. So blanching by blanching, what we mean here is not like uh you know, putting in boiling water uh what's going on. That's not the kind of blanching we're talking about. What we're talking about here is um the procedure of uh not allowing light to get to uh plus so this is done with for instance, um celery, although they have celery that's uh you know that is self-blanching now. Uh but cartoons and uh also uh I guess you know, on div and things like that, right?
That on dee th you like that word on dive. Anyway, uh of getting rid of the chlorophyll, but not just the chlorophyll, some of the bitterness. And so what you're supposed to do is several weeks before harvest, you're supposed to wrap like either mound up earth or wrap uh the thing so that the sun doesn't get to them but they're still respiring, right? And this blanches them out. Now, the question is if they haven't done this for you, how the heck are you gonna do it?
Um and I've never tried it. In fact, I don't really get to cook much cartoon because we not a lot of not a lot of cartoon here in the US, right, Stas. You ever like No? No. No.
No. No. Yeah. Uh no, no. But you would like it because you love artichokes.
But you would love it. Yeah, I know. Because you like artichokes. Well, I like artichokes, but you you don't like artichokes. You love artichokes.
Yeah. Well, you could put butter on a cartoon, you freak show. Anyway. Uh so um ecotrofi. Yeah, it's like one of the good Italian words, right?
It sounds like a curse word. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, please. Please don't get me starting on that one. So um I looked it up, right?
So the question is, can like okay. Can you just put it in a basement, for instance, and get it to work? Well, so uh I didn't find any information on cartoons, but I did look up uh celery. Now, celery is responsive to ethylene gas. Right?
But uh, you know, and you can just look up uh celery and blanching and ethylene and you can find this. And in fact, there's a paper on celery from the twenties from like 1927. You can get it's the um I think it's called uh I can't read my writing, but action of ethylene gas uh accelerated blanching on celery from like the 20s. Uh and you you can look at it. Now, this this paper doesn't have temperature control in it to the extent that some of the modern studies do.
But celery, you're supposed to keep celery away from ethylene-producing fruits, uh like a bananas, uh, because uh they can get what's called damaged, i.e., they go through it through accelerated respiration. If the gethalene level is too high, according to the 27 paper, you don't. But the other key is that it needs to be maintained above refrigerator temperatures for this to happen. So, what I would do is put it in a light-free place or wrap it, but not too closely because the uh the the increase respiration in at least in celeries, so maybe also in cartoon, uh, is uh enhanced by the removal of CO2. So you don't want to put it in something that traps the CO2 in it, and then just put like or keep it in like you know, like wrap like paper so that things can leave, but it's like bananas and cartoon.
This is a test. This is just a theory. I have no idea this would work, and keep it in a light proof place for a week or two and see what happens. Now, I don't know whether you can keep the cartoon alive more by putting it in water so that it doesn't crap out like you do with herbs, but the problem there is I don't know whether or not there's a way to prevent bacteria from growing in that water to keep it from going too swampy. But this is just a test.
So let me know what happens. Let me know whether you have any suggests blanching the cartoons, and we'll talk to you tomorrow from Bassbro shops, 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 questions at any time at info at heritageradionetwork.org. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization. To donate and become a member, visit our website today. Thanks for listening.
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