Today's program was brought to you by the Wisconsin Cheese Cupid Pairing app. Available on Android and Apple devices. I'm Linda Palacio, host of A Taste of the Pass. 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 in the new year, slightly late as usual on the Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Hey, how are you doing? Got as usual in the studio with me today, Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez, direct back from her trip to Italy. How is it?
It was okay. Uh bad company, right? Yeah. Uh don't worry. Your friends don't listen.
Your friends don't listen. Your friends don't listen. Uh we got Peter Kim, the uh director of the Museum of Food and Drink, talking about uh what's going on with the program there, what we have planned in the new year, and and of course, in the booth, Jackie Molecule. Jack Insley, how you doing, Jack? I'm great.
Happy New Year. Yeah, same to you, ma'am. Yeah, so what do we got? What do we got going on? Anything anything good to announce for the from the Heritage Radio Network in this new year?
Absolutely. This is gonna be slightly long, but worth it. Alright. Um, the cooking issues listeners came through so much for our fundraising drive that I have to shout all of them out. All right, shout away.
Are you ready for this? What's that? That's uh that's uh The chalk jams? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, huh, let's see.
I'll I'll put it over some music here. We'll put the theme song on or something. Thomas Metcalf, Alex McLeod, Aaron Perez, Brian Garthwaite, Josh Whitlam, Jason Molinari, Drew Lang, Gregor Harris, Don Vaux, Marcos Mokeen McQueen, William Sabados, Chris Walker, Fred Schneider, sorry, Steve Terrell, Kenneth Yee, Andrew Fessler, Andrew Schultz, Jen Tom, Renee Casper, Jonas Diergnis, Justin Carlyle from Ardent, Devin Maloney, Steve McLarnan, Rich McDonough, hey, Nastasio Lopez, Lee Crawford, Nicholas Devlin, Nicholas Siebert, Edward Dinell, John Derragon, Catherine Alford, Chris Kaiser, Robert McCammant, Peter Spandy, Kim Dykman, Co. Miles, Kevin Scott, Mark Bledsoe, Jeff Mays, Yuri Mayman, Ellen Elliott Papanow, Ruben Cable, Gene Nahal, Andy Melka, Ray Les Locasero, sorry, Jeffrey Given, Nicholas Elliott, David Tassanari, Joel Esposito, Timothy Helmuth, and of course John Riper. There we go.
Wow. Nice. Thanks, everybody. You really like the the cooking issues team really made our fundraising drive like possible. Nice.
Nastasia put a note on my uh on my list of questions today saying I should handle the old questions first, but I don't have my old questions, so I won't be handling them first. Someone can come up with them and then read them to me. But in the meantime, for some reason I'm told that we're actually doing a live product demonstration on the on the air today of a product that I have never used before or seen before. Well, why don't you stash? Why don't you tell us what this is?
Some people from Drinkmate sent us a drinkmate. Mostly for sodas, uh beer, wine, smoothies, and coffee. So it looks a whole hell of a lot like a soda stream. Yep. It has the same form factor as a soda stream.
It looks like it uses a similar cartridge. I haven't you haven't shown me the cartoon. The cartridge, yeah, is the same. The exact one with the exact fittings that soda stream uses. Yes, so you can use a soda stream cartridge in it?
Yes. Okay. Flip it around there, Peter, so I can take a look at it. All right. It uses what looks to be an identical bottle to the soda stream, at least identical in style.
Now, the the thing I'm a crap about this guy as opposed to the other ones, is these people are saying that you can go ahead and carbonate an alcoholic beverage in it from uh from the get go. Uh now, just with what that means for those of you who have ever tried carbonating a uh a non water beverage in a soda stream, is that they must have recalibrated the overflow, the uh overpressure valve in it. Uh that's the main reason why you can't carbonate um alcoholic or anything really other than water in a soda stream, because there's the extremely distinct possibility that if you're not extraordinarily careful, you will clog the uh overpressure valve and lead to such amusing things as the bottle flying off in all directions and shattering a bunch of glassware in your house. In fact, I had someone, even though I explicitly said what the problem was, he was like, uh maybe even a cooking issues listen. I don't know.
It's like, he's like, thanks, Dave, for ruining all the glassware in my house. I'm like, hey, man. You know, this is at your own risk kind of a situation. When you go off the instruction manuals and take heart uh Searsol owners out there, if you deviate, the instructions are there to provide the safest experience possible. Anytime you deviate from the instructions, whether they're our instructions or the soda stream people's instructions, you're kind of taking your life into your own hands.
You know what I'm saying, Stas? Yes. You agree? Mm-hmm. So the bartender here, when I told him what was going down, he was like, Oh man, it's funny you say that.
I put milk in my soda stream. It was a mess. Oh, don't ever milk. Milk's the worst. Yeah.
Of all the things you can try to cover. Put milk in there, like you want. Yeah, what was the urge? Well, aside from the fact that like if it depends on the on the milk and how it's pre-stabilized, but you can have issues, you know, with but uh it's it's uh uh uh it's a huge urge people have to carbonate milk. Why?
Yeah. It it just is. I guess you could make a better egg cream. Egg creams no. I don't know.
There's no such first of all, I'm gonna get some angry calls about this. I've tried to love the freaking egg cream, contains neither egg nor cream. I've tried to love it many times, many, many times I've tried to love it. I have made it, I have purchased the official you bet foxes uh syrup, which is the official egg cream syrup, which is like at one point maybe looked at a cocoa pod at some point, but that's about as close as it gets to being real chocolate. And uh I just don't like them.
I just don't like them. I do not like them. Okay. Do you like them? No, I don't.
Do you like egg creams? No, I'm not crazy about it. Jack egg creams? Yeah, someone call me. Someone call in two 7184972128.
Is that right? Yeah. 7184972128, and then uh tell me why egg creams are worth even worrying about. Piper used to try to work on it all the time, and even he, he was dedicated to it. I think it's all he did when he went home was work on egg creams and eggnog, anything with the word egg in it.
And uh no no good. No good. All right. So um I'm just guessing based on looking at this, you've overfilled the bottle. No, the max fill line is Max fill line for alcohol or max fill line for water.
Did you actually read the freaking instructions? No faith in stocks. First of all, like Peter and Nastasia have read the instructions. So, like by Nastasia's own reckoning, that's like one person of like, you know, of normal care reading the instructions. Alright, so let's go.
I'm gonna put a micro put a microphone. I guess. I don't know. I don't know how this you're saying. Peter, come on, just do it.
Who's to define short? Short's not a number. You made that up. You just lied. It said 0.25 seconds.
A quarter of a second? It says maybe as short as 0.25 seconds. So this is an interesting technique that I've never tried with the soda screen before, to be honest, of this short burst technique. The idea, I guess, being that you can't build up a big head of foam with these short bursts. Keep going.
It hasn't gone through its overpressure yet. Does it say to go till it farts? That sound is so funny. Yeah, till it farts. Tell it farts.
It's just like a soda screen. This is an interesting technique, people. I might have to revise I'm not gonna revise liquid intelligence. But this might be a revision. Oh wait for it, wait for it.
Wait for it. Look here. Wait. You have to take it. I know, I know, I know.
Wait for it to settle. Don't take it off yet. You're taking it off. Do not take it off yet. Patience.
Patience is not a virtue, but in this case, this is not patience. This is just waiting for God to not be angry. Now wait. God's still angry, Peter. Okay, I think we're good.
No, you're not. You are not. You are not good. You are not good. I will tell you when you are good.
Yeah, yeah, I see it. I see it. You're not good. This is what people, when you're doing this, it's like it's like when I tell you how many years have I been carbonating, Peter? Why would you doubt me when I say it's not good yet?
You know what I'm saying? It's like wait for the bubbles. You see all those little bubbles that are still in it? As soon as you release it, those will expand, create foam, it will overflow the thing. I'm just taking this off the top.
You know what that will do? That will release the pressure. And not release the pressure. That will release it. They have a separate button.
Alright. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's see. Oh, geez. Oh geez.
Oh geez. Alright, so you see? Now. Alright, you supposed to shake the bottle before releasing the pressure. Whoa, whoa, whoa, why?
It says it's what we're supposed to do. Go, go. Alright. Gently shaking. Okay.
And then place the carbonation and fizz and fuel on level service, open the slow release. Not yet. Not yet. Dave, you've had your kids, man. Listen, stop!
It's gonna ruin the beverage. Stop! Alright, we're gonna talk about something else until this thing because first of all, that was the weakest shake I've ever seen in my life. Give this thing. It said gently shake.
Crap on them. This is carbonation Jedi training. Now listen, alright. I'm gonna keep it away from Peter until it freaking settles out and looks clear. What?
We don't they don't know what we're carbon. Oh. We are carbonate. What are we carbonating, right? Not milk.
A uh mule forced. Mule forced Riesling, 2009. How much did this bottle cost? From Alsace. It's on Heritage Radio.
It's on Heritage Radio? Oh nice. Alright. 13.5% uh alcohol by volume, which is a good uh alcohol level for carbonation. Um doesn't this mean means in the place of said, in place of being saying?
What does this mean, French speaking? I don't. That's I don't know. Place speak, right? Said, yeah, but I don't know.
Place said, mule forced. It's so weird. It's such a random combination of German and French. That's what Alzhas is, I guess. Uh Stas, isn't it great?
Just, you know, ten minutes of uh verbal hatred from Dave. Listen to the take the edge off. This is a great. I don't see how we're gonna have relaxing beverages unless we're taking poles directly off of the freaking bottle because there's no cups in here, geniuses. Yeah, that I'll take that one.
That's my bad. So now, Peter's a great drinking buddy. Now, Peter, you may gently open it. Well, you know, he has to release. But yeah, that's what I mean.
Gently re Gently! So, all right, put it on. Stop! See, look look at the thing. Don't look at the instructions, look at the beverage.
I know. All right. Now, there are bubbles that are slowly rising to the top. Watch a phone open the bottom. Wait, wait, wait.
Wait. Now you may fully release it. No, it says I suppose to close the the slow release. Why? And then wait for the bubbles of to settle before opening.
I don't know. What's with the bleep thing? You don't have to touch the blue thing? I don't know, dude. Okay, so I can press the button for the fast release.
No, no, no. Okay. Once. In in point twenty-five second bursts, Peter. Alright.
Alright, there, you're good. Okay, fully depressurized. You're good. Yes. Alright, now.
Here. You got LN to Chili's glasses? What are amateurs? These are the worst people in the whole world. I may say something else, uh, Jack, Stas, and Peter.
Is that nine times out of ten, this one's Jack's. Nine times out of ten, um, still wines, although they taste good, c oh, where have you learned to pour? Like people, when you're pouring a not cold enough drink, which this wine was not cold enough, into a not cold glass. It doesn't say it needs to be cold on the instructions, which is strange. Oh, I'm sorry that they don't really understand the principles involved.
I'm just letting everybody know. Listen, it's a well-known uh fact. It's a fact of uh physics slash chemistry, depending on how you look at it, that the carbonation level is directly it's gonna be weak carbonation because it's under chilled, and because Peter touched it. Cheers, people. Let's see whether Cheers.
Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year, guys. I hate myself. It's nice, actually.
I have to roll that. It is nice. It is nice. It's undercarbonated. I'm surprised.
It's undercarbonated for what I want. It's undercarbonated for what I would do if I was carbonating. But it's carbonated well for a wine. And in fact, most wines you don't want over carbonated. So, like one of the uh ripes that you have with uh carbonated.
This was my general touch, Dave. I was you you were assuming I was making mistakes every step of the way, but I was microcalibrating the carbonation. You know what the other thing is, is that uh this wine has a bit of a sherried note on the end, a bit of oxidation, which uh I like in carbonated beverages, but a lot of people don't because the oxidized nature of it kind of comes up. But I think that's just due to the age of the wine uh in this in this case. Well, happy new year.
Cheers. Good job, Peter. Is that what we need out of life? Is that what we need out of life, people? Good job, all the free people.
Give it a shout out. What? Just what we use. I just want you to be proud of me, Dave. Oh, that's uh you know what?
You know what? I'm gonna go give the bartender a taste of this because he wanted to. Brought to you by Drinkmate, Carbonated Drinkmaker. A machina des babidas carbon carbonizadas. Right?
Yeah. It's not obviously they're not selling in Canada. Where's the French? Where's the French at? Yeah.
Where be the bigger thing? I want to see what a smoothie tastes like, carbonated. Disgusting. I'm telling you that right from the get go. Who, like carbonating a smoothie, you know what that makes it taste like?
Like it fermented, like it went bad. Like rot, like stink. I don't like carbonated smoothie. Blah. Well, get back to me.
Maybe you people love carbonated smoothies. I don't know. Listen, I have my taste. You have yours. What's that from, Stas?
You you carbonate your drink, I'll carbonate my brrrrr. That's like uh what's his name? UConn Cornelius is like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm better at Hermie than I am at at uh and I'm better at uh at uh a uh what's his name? Uh what was his name in the box?
Oh, uh Charlie. Yeah. It says on the box four steps of sparkling, but forgets the sort of three steps in between those four steps of yelling at each other. Human degradation. Hey, listen.
Listen, people are drink mate to the fill line. Listen, people now listen, people. Tell everybody else how worthless they are. People, people, people, people. Here's here's the New Year's resolution.
Stop being an enemy of quality. And just do it right. Just freaking He did it right. He did it right. And that required me yelling at it.
That required me yelling at him. It's like, it's like, listen, when I'm yelling, it's not personal. It has nothing to do with it, it has to do with the product. I just want the product to be good. Everybody at Roberta's really loves this.
They're very, very, very impressed. Oh, good, good. But you know what my point is? Is that all I worry about is the quality of the product. Yeah.
That's it. Well, we know this. Yeah. You've ruined me, too. You should hear the things I say to my girlfriend now.
Wow. Like what? Well, I mean, when things aren't done right, I just kind of lose it, you know. I think but I think that's good. I called her an enemy of quality once.
She never forgave me. That's a good thing. It's like, because no one wants to be that. I mean, that's the thing. Like, no matter what you do in life, you can either try to be better at it or not.
Right? Like, why be lazy? You have to live. Like, that's the thing. You have to go through life.
Why would you want to do it in a haphazard and crappy manner? I don't know, Dave. Sometimes I don't want to live sometimes. Oh, that's that's by the way, Peter's Patrick Martin's invitation. Taken, no, no, but taken from uh a div uh round table, a Mofad round table we did, where uh Peter Singer, the uh the philosopher kind of, you know, who started the animal liberation movement, uh, was on the panel and basically calling Patrick out, you know, that these you know, these animals.
Oh no, so someone in the audience actually, these animals want to live, and he's like, sometimes I don't want you to do it. You do it. I can't do it. You're the Patrick imitator. Well, sometimes I don't want to live, you know.
And then I'll say I'll say something. I'll be Peter Singer, which I'm not gonna do in Australian, because he has an Australian accent. Uh but he goes, uh, he says, uh, what did he say? He said, well, all of your animals, even if they're treated really well, like, you know, they're all castrated, all the males are castrated, like, you know, what you know, what do you think about that? Do you remember what his response was?
I was circumcised. Oh, pretty brilliant, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well done, Patrick. Uh cheers to Patrick.
Yeah, cheers to Patrick. Our our benevolent founder of uh of the Heritage Radio Network. Okay, by the way, before I get into it, yeah, what by the time we get into it, it'll be over. But the today is just one of those freaking days in New York City. Do you know what I mean?
Well, no, it's like it got cold so fast that the crazies haven't made it home yet, so the crazies are still out, but it's like freezing. Like I had that guy on the subway today who is playing music out loud on his phone. Yeah. Oh, worst. Worst.
Worse. Worse. Makes me wish I was a giant hulking brute because then I could just pick up my phone and play the like whatever the polar opposite of what he is playing. And it's always a dude. It's always a large dude who's never like, I don't know, comes from a place where no one's ever been like, you know, dude, that's like not cool.
You know what I mean? Like he's always been big, and so no one's ever like, you know, dude, you're you're kind of a you're kind of an a-hole here. You know what I mean? And so, like, but like if I was a giant human, I would just play with the opposite and then be like, oh, wait, I thought it was just random annoy your you know neighbor with crap music day. You know what I mean?
But no, I'm not a giant. I can't even say when headphones are too loud. Never mind playing music. And then, and then, yeah, I know, right? But put headphones on.
I mean, no one in the subway is trying to kill him. He doesn't need to keep his wits about him. I understand people on bicycles who play music out loud. Like, I don't particularly like it, but I understand my brother does it. I understand it because they're like trying to say, I am near you.
Like you hear moving music, biker near you. I get it. You know what I mean? But like in a subway, what the hell? Well, you know, why do you need what you know?
And then when I get off the subway, I'm walking over here, you know, through the through the through the apartments, right? Through Bushwick House, and I'm walking over through here, and the dude on the electric bicycle, smoking a cigarette, doing delivery delivery, creeps past me on a sidewalk doing like 15 mile an hour on a silent freaking electric bike. Hate that. Hate that. Oof.
Hate that. New York. Just, you know, New York. Happy New Year. And everyone who went out and walked their freaking dog this morning, I'm a dog owner, by the way.
Everyone who went out and walked their dog this morning and forgot to bring their gloves with them, didn't take the time to pick up the poop because their hands are too cold. I don't care about your fingers. Pick up the poo. You know what I'm saying? Anyways.
Alright. Hi, Peter. Oh, hello, Dave. This Riesling is uh quite lovely, isn't it? It was good.
It is good. You know, wait, these guys come up with a portable one too that you can take. So when you go to Phil's house and you're like, who brought this crappy Chardonnay? Well, it's not portable. The lid could stay on.
Well, no, it's a separate it comes with a little CO2. What's the retail on this thing? What is the MSRP nostalgia? I have no idea. No blue.
What is it again? I'll look it up. By the way, uh, okay, so I haven't seen you guys in a while, so I'll run through some of the stuff that's happened uh cooking-wise over the uh over the break here. I made possibly the best prime rib of my life over the Christmas time, and it unf I I hate to say it, but it's not wasn't like a reproducible thing. I started doing I put uh how did I do it?
I wrapped my mom had like some old giant Ziploc that uh did I even use that? How did I bag it? Huh. Because I did it low temp. I don't even remember.
I think I bagged it like in like a trash bag. I don't know. I bagged it in something vile and disgusting. But I thought originally, oh no, I know what I did. My mom had I told her to have the butcher cut the bones off, right?
So I we cut the bones off, and every year I try to cook the bones and stuff. Like, you know what? You don't need to low temp the bones. You want the bones cooked high, and you want that high overcooked meat with the fat and the gristle and crap around the bones, right? So, like all of a sudden, and there's not a big piece of meat, so it's okay to pre-salt that for a long time uh ahead of time.
So all of a sudden now I'm already on a winning path, a path to winning, right? Uh so I salted down the the uh bones, put them in the fridge, took out the roast, and then wrapped it in plastic wrap a billion times like we used to do with uh with chickens. Remember? Mm-hmm. Remember the old plastic wrap roll?
So I plastic wrap rolled it, which means it was super easy to get circulated. But here's the problem. I didn't have enough time to I didn't have enough time because I started too late, right? So I was starting it at 55, I was gonna do it all the way through, do a cool down, but then like, and you know, when I only had a couple of hours left, I was like, ah, so I jacked it to 58, figured it doesn't matter if the outside's overcooked a little bit, and then when I rest it to cool it down, I'll get an initial bump into the inside, which was true. So after a little bit of that, I pulled it out, and the initial was at uh 50, like fi four, no, like four in the high 40s, right?
Uh Celsius on the inside. So this is where my tandoor training, and by the way, after the new year's I did tandoor chicken, I am becoming much every time I use the tandoor, I get better and better and better at at the tandoor. And the tandoor is all about in and out and in and out. If you're a Who fan. You're not a Who fan?
You know like the Who? No, it's in my head. Now it's yeah, sorry about that. Well, you know, isn't that the squeeze box song? Anyways, so like what I did is I was like, Ma, Ma, have you already done cooking the potatoes or what?
Can I give the oven? So she like pulls the potatoes out. I crank the oven to 500, and then it's in and out, right? So I'm like in for 20, out for out for 20, let it let it the outside cool down, in for 20 until I figured that the the last rest would bring me inside. It's just up to 55, and then the outside would have that overcooked thing that we all like.
Oh, and underneath it, I just let the the rack roast until it was right, right? Threw it in for a couple minutes at the end, and then serve the whole thing. Uh in fact, I cooked, I fact I put the roast on the rack for the in and out. I wrote pre-roasted the rack and then put the roast back on the rack for the in and out procedure so that you wouldn't get an overcooked section next to the bone where you don't want it overcooked. Right?
Right, right? Uh great. So why would why is this not replicable? Uh, because I didn't write down the numbers or anything like that. And the end effect was what?
Delicious! Delicious! Delicious! Fiddler on the roof. Yeah, fiddler on the delicious.
Yeah, anyway. There's still time to try out, Dave. Yeah, yeah. And then uh I have a caller whenever you're ready. Oh, caller, you're on the air.
Hi, Dave. How's it going? All right, how are you doing? Happy New Year. Good, happy new year.
Um, I'm going to try and follow in your footsteps. I'm planning on going to Mexico City in two weeks. And I think I'm gonna try and bring back a Nyx Tomatic. Awesome. And so I think, did you say you carried yours on?
Like, what do you do I what should I expect? Like, I'm just kind of nervous about like buying this big thing and then like not being able to take it on the plane with me, kind of thing. Like do you pack light? Um I could. Yeah.
I would pack light and then just bring it back as you're checked. Okay. Yeah, just leave it in the box, like overwrap the box and have it as you're checked. Now, let me tell you a little thing, a couple things about the Nyx Domatic. Uh, did I talk about this when I was making Christmas cookies?
Uh-huh. That I like, it would poof, it came back to life. I told you it came back to life. Don't grind almonds in it after you add sugar. If you add sugar to almonds, if you grind just almonds or any nut, it works like a champ, right?
If you if you add sugar to it while it's grinding, the oil will get expressed and it will turn to a glue on the inside. Clamp your plates together, and then that's when you're gonna get to poof on the motor. So don't do that. Another this lady just pulled a bottle of wine. Oh, she's dripping water on her pizza.
She's dripping water on her phone on our pizza hot. That sounds so disgusting to me. Like water on pizza. Oh, Jesus. She's just oh my God.
I can't look. I'm looking away. I'm turning the microphone and talking to you, and I'm looking away from the woman. Um, so uh where was I? Where was I?
Nickstomatic. The other thing you have to know is that the casting quality on the burrs isn't she's done with the wine, I can look back. Uh isn't necessarily uh the best. And so what happens is is the first four or five batches you make with the nix d'ematic of masa are gonna be fairly coarse. And you need to literally grind the the masa burrs into uh into like a coplanar kind of uh a situation.
And so the very first one you do, like, you know, obviously grind some dry rice to get most of the metal grid out, but I just don't worry about a little bit of extra steel getting into my masa for the first couple of runs around, and my plates have gotten like a lot, lot uh better over over time. You know what I'm saying? Okay. Okay. So like your tenth batch batch of masa is gonna be better than your first or your second or third.
I don't know where it levels out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It keeps getting better, in other words. But it starts out like not so great, but don't worry about that. Okay.
Just buy a lot of rice. Yeah, or like I said, like after I went through a couple things of rice, uh, I just started, I was like, to hell with it. And dude, you you know, you're double grinding the masa, right? So you're doing a double double grind on it. Uh and uh, but yeah, it just keeps getting better.
Okay. That's good. You know, just I think for some reason I was under the impression that there was um they might give you a hard time about checking checking it. So I'm no, I mean it doesn't have any lithium batteries in it. When I was in China, uh, you know, they were like, you know, that's like literally the week I was in China.
I don't know if I already said this, but literally the week I was in China, they stopped allowing you to bring hoverboards on the plane, even in check baggage because they kept blowing up, but there's no lithium batteries in this, so it's all good. Cool. No one understands corn grinder anyway. God, corn grinder. That's like I brought a, you know, when I went to Japan, it brought back the toilet.
They're like, You're bringing a toilet back? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I am. And what yeah, yeah, right. Well, thanks so much. All right, hey, listen.
Uh, let us know how it works once you get it. Have a good time in Mexico. I'm sure you hey, go to uh the the uh the Merced, I think is the name of the market, right? Go there, and uh there's a lady squash blossom quesadillas. Get it, buy it, eat it.
I've already listened. All right, good. All right, thanks a lot. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.
All right, uh oh, so uh the last thing I will say is because it is the season uh to be jolly uh for New Year's, I busted out our old mochi maker that we had like years ago, and I made the fresh mochi, which is delicious, and I'm here. I know this trend is like 10 years old almost next year, this year, 2016. Uh I think 10. Moffaled. You ever had a moffal, Peter?
Nope. Jack, Maffle? Nope. Stas Moffel? No.
So I was like, I don't Stas is like, why are you talking about food? This is a cooking show. That's not possible. I've only seen you once. I know, and in that time.
One to me, one to Nick Wong. No, we were together talking about it. Third time. Yeah, well, I'm sorry that you know, not everyone in the freaking world like can sit around and talk with us all the time. How many times do I have to hear you talking about Daniel Krieger and bananagrams and how you have disparate ways of playing with each other?
Once. Not once. I've heard it three freaking times already. And that's something stupid. Freaking how to play bananograms.
People, two letter scrabble words are legit. I'm sorry that you don't like key spell QI. I apologize for your lack of liking. Yes, yeah. By the way, it is not the same.
I'm looking at it now. It's not the same as a soda screen bottle. It's not the same as a soda screen bottle. It's got little weird pegs on it. So they're not mutually compatible.
I'm enjoying observing the acrimony, much like the emperor between Luke and his. Give me some electric hands, Peter. Infinite pow. Uh so the uh no, unlimited power. That's what he says, right?
When he kills Mace Windu. Uh and I'm supposed to spoil the new Star Wars for Peter, not a good one. Don't do that. Not on air. I would never do that.
God. One of my friends spoiled it on Twitter. What the hell? I know. Why are they still your friend?
They're not. It's over. Alright, done. Anyway, so back to mochi. So uh turns out fresh mochi is freaking delicious, and I don't advocate that you go out and spend 219 bucks on a mochi maker.
But if you happen to have one lying around, uh the tiger mochi maker, it is sick. And I did fresh mochi, which was really good. Like, we did it, I did it Italian style because I didn't have any sesame oil or anything with me, but like little they're like little gnocchi, but even more chewy, delicious. But then you just take a and you pat it out thin, and it works the next day, styles, which I couldn't have told you because I did it this morning. That's true.
Uh and last night. You can take the hard, like Day Old Mochi, and I think even commercial mochi, and you just put it, you sp put spray grease in a waffle iron, and you it just expands to fill out the waffle iron and turns out like crisp creaspey outside and like gooey inside mochi in the waffle iron, and that's hence mochi waffle maffle, and they are like dude. That's the next ramen burger, man. It's gotta be like I don't like pick up on this people. Like start making this crap in restaurants here in the US because it is a win.
The only issue is is that uh the texture like all freshly done mochi, the texture tends to change um pretty drastically and pretty quickly. So it's best as a quickly eaten item. And I saw some people online doing it, and their stuff just looked like low, weak, weak. You gotta make sure that the waffle goes on long enough, get it thin enough, and here's the other trick. You have to lift the waffle plate out a bunch of up like two or three times during the cook to get the maximum lateral expansion of the mochi.
But anyway, so uh I'm I'm planning on playing more with uh mochi uh as time wears on. The reason I got it out, not because of New Year's, because anyone who's listening to the last episode knows that this year is going to be the year of starch research for me. Well, plus I supposed to write a book and get a centrifuge done. You're here to hear her to hear first, folks. Yeah.
Well, let's just take a really quick break, yeah? Alright, coming right back with cooking issues. So today's program is brought to you by the Cheese Cupid app, which is a really fun and awesome app which will pair cheese with a beverage. So don't be shy. Choose a category.
What beverage complements your cheese? What cheese compliments your beverage? Wisconsin Cheese Cupit has the answer. Simply choose the beverage or cheese in need of a soulmate, and Wisconsin Cheese Cupid will do the rest. Feeling adventurous, pairing roulette will create a random yet perfectly delicious pairing for you.
So visit CheeseCupid.com. Get the app, check it out, pair your cheese and your wine. We'll be right back. You didn't see uh Despicable Me? Wow.
I learned Peter Kim has not seen Despicable Me. I haven't seen a despicable person. What's wrong with you people? Yeah. So that's that's you know, that's just a whole list of cultural references I can't use on you guys.
That's true. Weak. Oh, uh wait, we had one last thing. What were we talking about? Mochi, carbonation, tandor, tandoor.
I don't know. It'll come to me or your uh roast. No, yeah, no, not that. No, that's over. I'm done talking about that.
I'll never talk about it again. Uh I'll just get to some questions and eventually it'll come to me. Happy New Year! I have a cooking issue which I would love to discuss on your podcast, and that is the issue of cooking for a one. We just actually do we had this conversation last night, Stuff.
Oh, yeah. All three of us did. You think it's not sad? I'm the one who doesn't like it. Cooking for one is sad.
Going out to eat by yourself is not sad. What? Cooking for one. I don't mind either way, really. I don't like I don't like eating.
My life lives in Ethiopia, what can I say? Uh I don't like eating Ethiopia. She works for the UN. What? What?
Said he has yet to meet her. EthiopianWives.com, man. Yeah, man, yeah. The papers will come through any day now, Peter. Any day.
Um so it the the point being, I don't like to eat. I don't mind like when I cook for myself, and it's uh this person's she's gonna get mad. But like when I cook for myself, literally, it's always the same thing. It's poached eggs. And because I'm only doing three, it's traditional.
It's funny that you choose poached eggs. Why not just like a sunny side up egg? I find that to be even easier. I like poached eggs, and my wife doesn't like them. So like it's not that she doesn't like them, but you should treat himself.
Yeah, I'm treating myself to something that I can't cook in general for the family. That I see the waitress when she pours this freaking beverage for the person, wiped off the bottle so that it wouldn't drip all over every freaking thing. Low quality. Enemies, enemies of quality. Okay.
Uh yeah, I don't like uh eating by myself primarily because I eat so fast that there's always a lot of sitting and staring at the ceiling and all this other stuff while I'm waiting for the next plate of food to come out, and I freaking hate being by myself waiting for a check. I freaking hate waiting for checks. Even when I'm with the cover app. Yeah. I don't know, man.
Anyway. Anyway. Onto the question. On the question. It's not really a question.
This is more of a statement. Uh, even though single occupant households are the fastest growing demographic in the developed world, their needs are often overlooked. Obesity and poor nutrition caused by overconsumption of uh junk food, I just call it junk. Although you know what, I don't allow anyone to use in my house the word junk food. I don't allow it.
We have a ban on that at MoFed, too. Because I was yelling and screaming about it, or do you have your own banana? No, just in general, yeah. I think it's terrible. It's junk food, super food, anything that's just sort of on the any moralizing of food, I think is a bad and you know.
I tried to write a piece on that. We talk about junk people. Yeah, yeah, poor quality people. But I think there is food that's no, there's nothing wrong with that. I think there's food that's just poorly made, but like the problem with junk, it's calling food junk, is that it then sets it up as something that you kind of want.
It's like this like first of all, guilty pleasure. Oh, it's so decadent. Oh, my food is so decadent. I'm gonna put slices of cucumber on my eyes and my back and enjoy this decadent guilty pleasure. Yeah, guilty pleasure, being sinful.
No, it's food. Like either it's well made and it tastes good and makes you happy, or it's crap and garbage and you shouldn't eat it. You know what I mean? It's like uh anyway, okay. Uh overconsumption of junk food is on the rise.
I believe single people are more like I'm back to reading the question. Uh are more likely to eat prepackaged meals because they can't be bothered cooking just for themselves. I think that's true. But I don't eat prepackaged meals because I just eat cook eggs. As I like to say.
As like I say, when when I don't know, I have nice cheese in my free fridge, thank you. But like, you know, uh when life ha hands you eggs, suck eggs. Right? Um they need help. These are single people.
Back to the question. I'm a single woman and want to help people who live alone, uh, cook and eat good, healthy food, not just for their health, but because they deserve it. Uh cooking is something I enjoy. Is it Claire? I don't know who is this.
Louise Harper. Uh now you made me lose my train of thought. Like, that's hard. Uh cooking is something I enjoy, be it for myself or my friends and family. I want to inspire others to feel the same.
Freshly cooked food using natural ingredients. Although natural, I have my problems with the word natural. In fact, like I have huge problems with the word natural because if you buy into natural, right, the problem is that you think that the stuff that you're buying out that says natural on it is somehow what you want. What you want is people to go buy whole things like celery and make things out of it. Like something that is like celery flavored that is all natural is just as kind of reconstituted and discombobulated as anything else.
Look, even like Mary and Nessel believes the word natural means nothing. And when yeah the problem with a word that means nothing that carries connotations with it is is that people make decisions based on it and they're being uh bamboozled. That's the issue. Uh yeah, everyone in the business like knows that it is an absurdity. Yeah.
And yet pe like millions of dollars are spent by people thinking that they're doing the right thing by themselves and their family, buying things that say natural, and it's a word with zero meaning. I would say a good exercise is just in one day look for the word natural in all the food that you eat and just see where it appears. And that will, I think, kind of be illuminating just doing that. Yeah. In fact, or if you want to know more about the subject, come to the Museum of Food and Drink on 62 Bayard Street, but I was playing McKimming Park in the Uh so you can uh see how the word natural has been perverted over the last hundred and ten years.
Oh six, right? No, oh nine. Was that all just a setup for a MoFad ad? Basically. That's great.
That was really good. I have my pseudonym Louise. Yeah. Anyway, we're back to we're back to Luis Harper. Uh anyway, my recipes are for healthy food, not health food.
And here's the important part, and here's where we totally agree. Sharing she says my, but s sharing a streamlined approach to cooking with your listeners will help take a lot of stress out of cooking. So uh will my hand send tips on shopping, setting up a pantry, etc. Kitching tools. When your kitchen is well equipped and well stocked, cooking is way easier.
Uh sincerely, Louise Harper, her her uh blog is single serve.net dot AU, so Australian. I have no idea what shopping I've never been to Australia. I don't know what supermarkets are like there. But I think it's true. I think nine times out of ten, the problem with people cooking in general uh at home is that they they they don't have a streamlined procedure.
That's why, like uh if you want to use a piece of equipment, keep it out on your counter. If you don't have space for it, just realize you're never gonna use it again. Like uh I've said this a billion times, but like once my pasta maker got taken off of the counter, my rollers, I stopped making pasta. And I had to be making it for years, at least once a week because I could see it there, and my kitchen A was right next to it, and I knew how to like bust that stuff out. You know what I really want?
This is it. You know what I really want? I want the KitchenAid pasta rollers. But they're too expensive. Why do they cost 200 bucks?
Someone out there, please tell me. For God's name, why is the KitchenAid pasta roller set $200 when an Atlas like pasta roller with the same rollers on it that clamps to your counter? It's like, what are those things cost us? Do you even know? They're like $50.
It's seven $79.99, Dave. What? KitchenAid pasta roller? Yeah. I got it for $80 here online.
199. How many rollers does yours come with? I don't know. This is Bed Bath and Beyond. I need the roller and the cutter.
I actually don't need the cutter. I really only need the roller. I can cut pasta myself. I have hands. My fault.
That's just the attachment. Yeah. No, but that's all you need. But but usually it comes with three attachments, two different sizes for the thick noodles and the thin noodles and the roller. Right.
Yeah, that's $160 for all three. Yeah, I don't need all three, though. They sell just the roller. I'll find out here. I mean, again, my hands work.
I can cut. Uh you think this year, because it's the year of SARS, I should get back into cutting soba again. Remember when I was on my cutting soba kick? Yeah. My soba knife sits unused in my n my lower drawer weird Japanese knife case.
Yeah. Anyways. Uh okay. Uh hi. Hi, I've been listening to the radio show in the car or while I'm cooking or walking, uh, which explain uh all things where it's a pain to stop and take notes.
Also, from the show's notes, it's sometimes a bit tricky to remember which show certain things happen. This is for you, Jack. I don't know if you saw this. This is a long way of saying, wouldn't it be cool if there were transcripts? Oh boy.
If there are already transcripts, then just ignore me for being a bit slow. If not, I had an idea. Transcripts could go onto the podcast and make them more searchable, Jack. Or they could go on a wiki or something and get cross-reference and link by cooking issues fans slash nerd. Uh it might even be a lazy way to write a book, which I do need to write a book on.
You know what uh Father Bill uh Daly, Father he, you know, he he's the cocktail uh he thinks I should write cocktail priest. He thinks I should write uh a book called uh useful rants. Rance. Oh yeah. Rance by Dave Arnold.
Not Rance Prebis, Rants. No. Uh okay. I've been getting all nerdy about getting things transcribed through Rev.com recently. They do a pretty good job and cost one dollar a minute.
But if there are two hundred and thirty-one episodes, then that's a shade over ten grand, Jack. Ten grand. Yeah. It's a lot of money to find out of nowhere, but think of Kickstarter would make it easy. If uh if one of the reward tiers was fifty dollars and you get your name at the top of one of the episode transcripts, it'd be easy.
With that much volume, you'd probably get a good discount on transcription too. Anyway, what do you think? What do you think? What do you think? Kickstarter.
I think we should have an intern do it by hand. Yeah, Erica just said that here in the booth. Damn. Get the Umpa Loompas doing it. That's right.
Can we get them to sing the songs? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like when we're do doing stuff, can they just say that like if we were given good manners, we would go far? You know that little storage room in the basement we have at MoFad. There's a murder room in MoFad you have to walk down to it.
That's where we keep the Umpalumpas. Dumb. Um the Oopaloo is a great. And one of the many reasons why, although I love Johnny Depp, that that the more recent movie is a travesty, because of the way that's a more recent one. Oh man.
Well, where have you been? I've been building the freaking. Oh, oh no, that's a lie. This movie came out like in like in like eleven or twelve. All right.
Liar. Liar. Just a twinkle in your eye at that point. The museum that is. Okay.
Uh minutes, two minutes, two minutes. Oh, geez. Uh, hope you're well. It's been a long time uh since we see each other. This is from Chris.
Uh I'll cut a cut right to it. Although he does mention the last time I had the pleasure of seeing you, uh, I believe you accident accidentally in question mark, shot sub zero vodka in my sinus with a syringe at tails of the cocktail. Uh I may not be remembering it correctly, but either way, I've got some seriously clean sinuses. I listen to the podcast often, usually when I'm out in the run, it never fails to teach me something. Uh I'm working now on opening a new beer spot in Seattle called No Anchor, and finally have time to focus on some finer issues in a beer bar that I've never gotten to properly tackle.
Green design further than the exploration of beer cocktails, etc. To save on time, water, energy, and labor, the only cocktails we were doing will be draft and bottled cocktails that use beer in some way. For bottling cocktails that use beer, especially those that feature beer, in which we are concerned with maintaining hop qualities, we will ideally be using glass that blocks the proper wavelengths of light, brown as opposed to clearer green. Should I be concerned with whether a brown beer bottle can withstand the pressure of a carbonated cocktail? Do you have any experience with doing corked and caged cocktails in large format?
No. Although I want to, but I would be using probably champagne style bottles because they're designed to cork and then cage, and you can fairly cheaply get a um uh champagne corker to do it. I don't think those will fit standard beer bottles, but you probably could use a brown beer bottle that's meant for a Belgian style one that's bigger, right? One that's more of a seven fifty format, in which case it's fine. They will handle those larger bottles will easily handle like up to four volumes, and you're not probably gonna get above four volumes in a beer cocktail anyway, so they should.
The lighter, cheaper beer bottles, right, capping them and trying to get them to go in, some of them might have rupture problems when you're getting into the four or four and a half volumes range, but most of the time they'll be okay. And if you let them come up to room temp after you've bottled them and put them somewhere, uh, just like once you chill them down again, they're definitely safe. So they might explode, especially if you get secondary fermentation inside of one of the one of them, which is a distinct possibility because you're adding sugar. That's where you're gonna look out, right? So you're either gonna want to kill off fermentation uh so that there's no more yeast that's alive in it, or you might run into problems with explosion if they're left at room temperature.
If you leave them at fridge temperature, they will build over time. You might still get some explosions, but you never know. But it's it's something to be aware of when you're bottling cocktails for a long period of time that they're gonna change over time if there's live yeast. And even if there's not, unless you add something to actually destroy yeast, right? Like a preservative that kills yeast, you're gonna have issues with yeast in this stuff in the stuff uh fermenting and reducing your sugar levels as well as increasing your carbonation levels.
Second, as oxygen is the enemy of beer, and there are any methods you would suggest to testing when transferring beer from a keg into a corny keg for draft cocktail, are the effects of light noxygen going to be moot once we roll the beer uh up into a full cocktail and be served within a week, or there are small steps I can take to get that extra little pop jazz hands. Thanks for your time. Chris Alford, uh, who's a certified cysterone, which is a beer thing. Okay, uh, you're not gonna get a lot of uh oxygen during the transfer simply because it's already carbonated. So if you as long as it's already carbonated before you do the transfer, it's continually effervescond, and because it's continually effervescing, it doesn't have a lot of time to do a lot of oxygen uptake to it, and it before it kind of forms its own barrier.
You can pre-purge your kegs and everything with CO2 to make sure that you're not you're not dumping into oxygen and getting some mixing there. Uh and you can then post carbonate again into the keg and do a couple flash offs to make sure you've gotten any uh oxygen out and you have primarily uh CO2 in there. But hopefully that works. Uh so I'm being told that we're out of time. Next week I'm gonna talk to Alex about Cook's illustrated review of black or blue, depending on how you talk about it, steel pans versus cast iron, and what I think about cast iron and steel pans.
And that's 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 heritage radio network.org.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.