Today's program was brought to you by Eating Tools, unique handmade eating and cooking tools. For more information, visit eatingtools.com. I'm Damon Bolti, host of The Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit heritageradionetwork.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday around from 12, so 12, 12, 10, 12, 15. Robert is Peter in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and the Heritage Radio Network. Calling your questions to 718497-2128. That's 718497-2128.
We are joined today not only, as usual, with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, his does. Jack Jackie Molecules Insley in the booth. Hey Jack. Hello. But we have from the Museum of Food and Drinks.
Sam, say hello. Hey. And straight from Mad Town from the from the underground, the variety of different underground collectives that they have in Madison, Wisconsin. The one the only Johnny Hunter. Um I have a story to tell.
So uh I have definitive proof that Kim Gordon is a huge fan of cooking issues. Yeah. What? Yep. So uh last time I was on the show, someone called in and asked who our favorite band is.
And uh I said Sonic Youth. A couple months ago, someone texted me. Yo, Kim Gordon is at the butcher shop. It's one of our businesses. I'm like, really?
So I run over there. She had just left. Someone, one of our employees, like didn't recognize her and told us she couldn't use the bathroom. Oh. But she drove, she was driving across the country, stopped at our shop, took a picture in front of it, put it on Instagram.
So I think that like she listens. Why? She just knows you guys. No, she knows the show. Why else would she come to the shop?
Because you're well she likes she stopped in like Indiana, Madison, Wisconsin, Fargo. Fargo. Yeah. Well, I mean, like if I was gonna be in Madison, I would definitely stop by your establishment. So I mean I don't think it has anything to do with it.
No, she was listening when I said Sonic Youth, and so she stopped by. Really? Yeah. All right. Well, well, we can ver this is verifiable.
Like, you know, if this ever means call us. Yeah, call, yeah, call, come on anytime. Or you know, come to the come to the Mofad event. You want to talk about the MoFAD event we're doing, Johnny? Yeah, we're doing a uh event on Thursday at MoFad, looking at the effects of pH on cooking, which is everything pretty much.
I don't think there's much that we do that doesn't have a pH effect, but I think there's some specific things that we're doing that'll be kind of interesting. I think especially the base stuff, not a lot of people think about that. Well, I mean, especially everything you do is kind of pH related, not everything, but you do a lot of work with fermentation and preservation, so much of that is Yeah, yeah, and that's doing the like salamis and the fermented vegetables and the misos and stuff like that. It's all pH based, so you know. I think so.
So yeah, we're each gonna have two or three demonstrations. Um people gonna try things, people get I I I hope that um I think the thing that's cool about the techniques we're showing is that people can take a lot of these things and uh do them at home. And like my big secret reveal is gonna be how to make black garlic in three days. Which uh I think like you last time you were here you mentioned it, but we never talked about it, right? So you're gonna have to pay.
Here's what's gonna happen. You have to come pay the museum to listen to it, and then afterwards maybe we can reveal the secret on the show if we haven't already. Yeah. Um but the technique it it's it's slightly different. The garlic's still black, but a different flavor from the one that that is the exactly the same.
Exactly the same. Not even a little bit different, because I thought before you said that it was a little bit different. Not better, worse, different. We've dialed it in. Oh, yeah?
Yeah. I mean I I think there's some flavor differences. But I I think if you were to blind taste test variations of black garlic, you would not be able to tell ours versus the other. Well, in other words, you wouldn't be able to tell that there was a difference, or you wouldn't be able to choose which one was which. You would be able to choose you would be I think there's so many variations in what black garlic does because the process is 40 days at 140 degrees.
There's a lot of things that are gonna affect how the flavor develops over that amount of time. That being said, I think our process has some differences just because I've tried it so much, but I don't think anyone could tell the difference. Yeah. Do you know I think I already talked about this on the show. I was trying to come up with a new technique for this.
When you're ready, I have a caller. Oh. All right. Well, we'll take the caller first and then we'll get to it. Caller, you're on the air.
Pittsburgh. Hello? Say that again. I said hi, this is Andrew from Pittsburgh. Hey, how you doing?
I'm doing very well, thank you. How are you? All right, all right. Got it got a question. Oh, I hope you have some sort of cured meat question because we got Johnny here today.
Uh uh unfortunately I wish I had prepared a cured meat question because this would be the podcast to call and before with these guys here. Exactly. What do you got for us? Um I have a question for um flavored simple syrups, specifically herb simple syrups. Okay.
Um and kind of best practices for creating them and then kind of running a random thought I had about them um by you. So um right now I'm thinking about doing um for things that are really delicate like uh basil and cilantro and stuff like that. Um doing um like a blanched stuff so having uh uh a pot of like cold cymbal and then uh do a quick blanch like cold simple surrounded by uh an ice water bath and then do a pot of oil water, blanch it real quick, drop the herbs into the uh cold cymbal to kind of blanch them, um and then uh bring up the uh maybe like room temp and let them ride for a little bit to try to infuse um instead of like blending it so you can come out with like a uh translucent um symbol and not have particulate matter in the symbol. Like if you would just blend it, uh that could go bad and cause off flavors. Okay.
Yeah, here's the problem. Once you blanch basil, it never tastes like basil again. Like uh you should um go I mean like it'll taste like basil, but it won't taste like what you are thinking fresh basil tastes like. Can I give a technique here? Yeah, yeah, sure.
But look, go back and read the Curious Cook has a whole section on uh the Curious Cook, the original book. It's now out of print, but you can I think look at it online. Has a whole uh thing about McGee uh uh trying to make uh pesto and his travails in in blanching Johnny go ahead. So one of the things that we do a lot is the stems from the herbs and do the cryo blanch centrifuge. Boom.
Really flavorful. And they stay for a long time? Yeah. Yeah, you your oils don't turn at all if you if you are your oils or your simple syrups don't turn at all if you blend it when when they're crowded. Right.
So they s we uh what you're trying to do, what we're the whole point here, right, is I didn't know it worked with syrup. I've done it with oil. Yeah, we freeze the syrups too and they hold really well. I have never done it with a syrup. Here's here's the thing.
You have what you're looking at is uh what you're looking at is trying to uh shoot the um the uh polyphenol oxidase enzymes in the head, right? And so you can you can shoot them in the head uh temporarily by like freezing with liquid nitrogen. You can uh do it by dehydrating the herb, right? Which is why like mint tea stays green, right? Or you can but that also changes the flavor uh or freeze drying.
You can do it by um you could do it by blanching, which uh alters the flavor, right? Uh and uh you can the problem with freezing it without blanching it is that then when it thaws, if it's exposed to oxygen again and the enzymes can kick back into high gear because the freezing doesn't actually destroy the enzymes, right? Right. Uh now I knew that if you mixed uh if you if you took that stuff and blended it in with oil and then spun it out, there's no water in the oil. And what happens there is the polyphenol oxidase enzymes can't operate in a complete lack of water.
So the oil stays nice and green and doesn't turn brown and get any brown flavors. I knew that. But apparently what I'm being told by Johnny I think the sugar content, we we noticed when the higher sugar contents were there with our simples that they would stay greener and brown when it was Right. I mean what what I'm just learning now is that apparently, yeah, high sugar concentrations, the enzymes also can't work in a super high sugar concentration. But uh I would keep it as high as possible, right?
Like 66, rich simples, uh to give it to give it a shot. Do you not unfortunately have an access do you have access to liquid nitrogen at this time? Because I mean normally if I was gonna do not unfortunately have an access to liquid nitrogen or do like a nitro metal drink like that I'm I'm sorry, I'm a large under, so I'm trying to figure out ways to do this for the bar. Oh. Yeah.
Yeah. So I would do um like nitro bottle drinks like like the ones that you've done, but I don't have access to that. So I'm trying to figure out a way to make like flavored simple that are that are salt stable. Um if you don't have access, if here's what I would try, and I don't know if this is gonna work, but if if I if you didn't have access to um liquid nitrogen or really to a good uh like a a centrifuge, I would uh the problem is you can't really pass freaking I would I would make a a I would take extremely high proof ethanol, do a quick blend in high proof ethanol, strain it through a cheesecloth, and then and then uh dissolve that stuff into a syrup, like a really high high high brick syrup, and it maybe would keep like a rich simple? Like super rich, as rich as you can get it before it crystallizes, and then maybe it's gonna keep.
But the problem is is that you're not it's gonna be difficult to get a high quantity of herbs into a recipe like that because you're going through like a multi-step process versus just like freezing and and putting it in, especially if you don't have a centrifuge. If you have a centrifuge, then you can just um I mean you could probably even I don't know, you could probably have you tried blending it directly without the first freeze into a super rich simple Johnny and spinning it out? No, but I thought it would work, especially if it's not the leaves, if you're just doing the stems. Well, I'd think it batter them probably. I mean, would would you do the the stems instead?
Do you think that's a better idea or do you do the leaves? Depends on the herbs, though. Some some some herbs the stems don't taste like the freaking basil, yeah. Ish. Yeah.
Yeah. You can concentrate it more too. You can just get like watch in there, you're not spending a lot of money. But like the Thai basil stems are like that weird color. Yeah, like purple.
Yeah. Which that turns always. Although, although purple basil, real purple, like fully purple basil, the color is awesome. But I've never tried to keep it though. Yeah.
But anyway, here's my point. I would try just try getting the richest simple you can. Uh it's just a it's a pain in the ass to strain rich simple. Yeah. Without a centrifuge.
I don't see. You know what I mean? It's like it's a real pain in the behind. Yeah, I mean most of the herb simple syrups that you see in bars are like sitting out on the table and they're like very brown colored. Yeah, here's uh try this.
But they're trying to make it probably some other way. Look, why don't you why don't you get a very rich simple? I don't have no idea where this is gonna work. Get a rich simple, blend the herb into it, and then let it sit in the freezer for like three days. Yeah.
And the the matter, the matter should the the simple syrup, the very rich simple won't freeze in the freezer. It'll just get real sluggish. And maybe eventually the stuff will settle to the bottom because it's still gonna be a liquid. Be like a clarification. Yeah.
Although a really rich simple, I wonder whether it would settle to the bottom or whether the stuff would float to the you'll probably get some separation. I don't know. Would it work? That's a good, I think that's a good method to see how the I think it would press. Would um would ascorbic acid help at all with the the polyphenol um of course, yeah.
It slows it down. Like you know, it's not gonna like uh it's not gonna completely stop everything, you know, in the same way that Linus Pauling didn't not die because he took all kind of vitamin C forever. But you know, it will uh yeah, it'll slow it down. I mean, I I wouldn't I wouldn't use in any of your syrups any of the uh sulfur-based antioxidants because I think you know you can smell and taste those in pretty small concentrations if you're not like uh dosing it exactly right. But yeah, ascorbic acid's good to it's always good to add to things.
Just the regular um point two five percent of it. Oh, is that what people use? I just you know what ascorbic acid, I just like I'm just like I just put it in because it's it's got such a low flavor profile compared to most acids that like I just I literally just like I I like old school kitchen it. I like pinch of this I'm a I'm a pinch of of kind of guy. Scorpic acid, yeah, that's definitely pinch.
Yeah, pinch, yeah. Okay. Um last question. Um I as I was reading, because I was kind of I I mean my first thought was your first thought to turn them E for this. So I was reading um on student cooking, um, and I was going across like what we were talking about, how the actual flavor molecules are are transmitted in so that they're much more um easily dissolved oil.
Um, I was thinking maybe using um some kind of an emulsifier almost to help find the oil and bring them out of the herb and it's not it to dissolve it herb. I guess it would be suspended in the in the simple. Do you think that would help with extraction? Uh well if you want to make an herb oil, like you can make an herb oil, right? And then you just use an emulsifier, like I would use like the one that we always use, which is the ticoloid and um which is a mixture of gum arabic and xanthan, and then you could put that into into simple, but I would do that right before.
In other words, oil, because it doesn't have water in it, is gonna be much more stable on the color and the flavor than once you then put that back into a liquid base. Well, maybe not if it's a really rich simple. I don't know, Johnny. I don't know. I mean, not not as like and not actually to like emulsify and oil like uh some other oil, but like the the this tiny little flavor molecules out of the herbs.
Oh, no, no. No. Do you think adding an emulsifier to the water when you're making a simple syrup is gonna make the herbs taste better? I don't really think that's no, I don't think it'll I mean, hey, look it. I've been wrong so many times in my life, like, you know, that but I n I don't think it will help.
But uh but you know what? Run a side by side. Like just run choose a couple different emulsifier, do a side by side, and then tweet us back and let us know, or call back and let us know what happens. There might be something that works every day. Yeah, I mean that's the great thing.
Like, do you have another call and then I'm gonna actually shut the phone lines down because we got a lot to get to. Oh man, wow, shut the phone line. Caller, you're on the air. Hi Dave, how's it going? Going all right.
Hey, um, so I just uh came back from Mexico City with the nixtomatic. Oh, nice. Uh it's freaking awesome. But uh now you call before you call your. Right.
Now you called earlier, right? Or I I did, exactly. Okay. The trick with the nixtomatic, if so, for those of you that don't know what we're talking about, uh, when you uh in fact we're gonna talk about nixtimalization at the museum event uh in two days, uh, Johnny and I. So like uh, you know, what you do is is you soak uh par cook and soak uh traditionally corn in an alkaline and calcium rich environment, and then uh it makes the corn somewhat softer.
It also turns the outside of the corn into uh what amounts to a hydrocolloid so that the masa, which is what you make tortillas out of, has a you know uh a characteristic texture, which is why you can make with just corn, you can make awesome well, and calcium and you know you can make awesome tortillas. Problem is it is extremely difficult to grind uh nixtimalized corn in a modern kitchen because uh to use like a cuisinard or Roboku takes too much water. Uh you know, Indian wet grinders like I've been using recently, which we could talk about later if you want, uh you know, they don't handle a dough that's as stiff as as Massa. Blenders get choked up on it, um regular grinders like uh uh sorry, grind like uh mills, like flour mills, are freaking useless for it. And so it's actually kind of very difficult process to do at home.
So there's this thing called the Nyxtamatic, which is frankly of just a very robo version of the universally detested Colombian made Corona uh corn mill, which is just like a hyper low quality uh iron casting uh like grind wheel that just you know grinds corn, but like uh the the coronas are I hate them. Do you like them, Johnny? I don't use them. Oh, because they're because they're terrible or just because you never used them. Yeah, I never thought to use them.
They're horrible. So the nixtamatic is like is like about 30 steps up. One because it's got a big Robo motor on it, and two, the plates are a little bit better. But the plates on the Nixtamatic still aren't uh let me say, they don't come out of the factory working. You know what I mean?
Like if you look at them like they're they're they're really rough. So they're not designed for kind of the American mentality of I'm gonna spend a lot of money on a nice piece of equipment and so it should work. It's uh it's more like you have to grind those grind wheels into submission. So, like mine, if you look at mine now, it's literally a masa wheel when you look at it. When you're looking at like a normal grindstone, like for regular western, like for wheat or dry corn or or or whatnot, it like the grooves that are in the in the grindstone, like the you know how they go the grooves in the grindstone should all alternate in direction and they form like shears, like scissors that that as you go like shear instead of crushing, shear this stuff, right?
And those grooves also act as a transport from the stuff to the from the inside to the outside. So here you want the outside to basically almost not have any grooves left. You want it to be pretty flat because the masa isn't is like partially sheared at the beginning, but really it should be smashed into little pieces because you want it almost be like a stone matate mano grind grinding it out. And the clearance needs to be pretty fine because the masa is not supposed to be coarse on the finest setting, and it just won't work that way. Because I think if you're looking at your plates, you can see kind of big holes on the outside of the where the two grindstones meet.
So you just gotta run that sucker, and your first three times, four times that you make masa, you're gonna have to run it through two and three times. This texture's still not gonna be right, but keep bearing down on that freaking plate, and then as you go, it's just you're looking at it, it's gonna be smoother and smoother around the periphery of the stones as they true themselves to each other and become uh kind of better mated, and then your masa is just gonna get better and better. Okay, so you're really tightening that um Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah.
Is do you have because I kind of I tried get running it through a second time, and like it was pretty tough to really get it through. Oh, yeah, it is. Um so we you just really bear down on it. Oh, yeah. Now, here's the thing.
Do not run the Nyx tomatic to the point where the wheel stops for more than about ten seconds. That's what I did uh like a month ago when I was making uh nut butter with it uh or two months ago, and I was making nut butter with it, and I I like added, I told I think I told you I added sugar to the nuts. Yes, yes, yes. No sugar, right? Do not know, dude.
No, ever, never, never add sugar to the nuts when you're when you're grinding them. It just like totally sees the machine. And I really had a nuclear like puff. Like, you know, like like a like a like a mushroom cloud of smoke and like you know, phenolic like insulation smell behind it, and it turned off. It came back on.
But we're actually we're testing it. We're doing miximalization at the ex at the museum thing, you know, and and and so like we're gonna see like probably tomorrow, we're gonna run the test on it to see whether it still has still has its huevos left, whether it still has enough huevos to grind masa, and we're hoping it does. Have you uh have you ever used a meat grinder for masa? No, but I mean like you had like what kind of plate would you put it through? This is like the tiniest dye.
I don't know. Have you tried it? That's yeah, we use it. How how coarse is it? It's gonna be for more like for tamales.
You can't do like tortillas. Uh we make tortillas with it. We run it through a couple times. It works pretty well. Really?
Yeah. I mean, it's not like I it's not nearly as good as like a stone grinder, but like I'm pretty happy with the especially I think if you used it first and then ran it through, you could probably save yourself some time. I've never owned a real meat grinder. I've just owned those Kitchen Aid things, which are monstrosities. Yeah, I mean a real grippy grinder will put it through fast enough, and the blade will be like the motor is powerful enough to really get like a pretty smooth texture.
Yeah, but you're talking about like the the the big ones where you soak the plates in the in the uh in oil when you're done for the end of the night. Exactly, yeah. Bench top ones at least minimum. Yeah. You know what don't work?
The KitchenAid ones. No. Worse piece of equipment. You know what's even worse than that is their flour mill. You ever use that?
No. It's a wretched, it's just a wretched. They're their pasta extruder is pretty terrible as well. You know why? Because it's based on their meat grinder.
Yeah. Which is hey, look, I love kids, my kitchen aid. I'm not trying to say anything negative about the KitchenAid here. But all plastic pieces for attachments is gonna be. Yeah, also there's just something like I've used real meat grinders, like you know, back when I was teaching at the SCI, and like my impression of a real meat grinder is meat wants to go in one end and come out the other.
That was not my impression with the Kitchen Aid. No, it wants to come back up. Yeah, yeah. It wants to spit back in your face. Which is not what you want meat to do.
No, and you you're raising your temperature way too high. Oh, super high. You think it's because the choke point's too small at the end of the dye? Or just because it's just bad? I think the machinery itself is like too much movement and it's not like it's bending and it's not like it's it's not like two pieces of metal with a powerful motor.
Yeah. I mean the only luck I've ever had with the Kitchen Aid one is where you you have to really make sure you cut the stuff into strips. Strips, yeah. Like, and then you have to s because they have to fit into the in between the auger and the tube assembly without like having too much compression, right? And you need to basically par freeze everything.
Yeah. Which then kind of messes up your texture if it's like a little bit frozen. That's the only way I've been able to use my KitchenAid grinder. It's fun to see people who have never used a real meat grinder. You know, you get like the the the standy mix the standing grinder that can do, you know, 300 pounds in like four minutes.
And they're like, what the heck? Like, this would save us so much time. But what do you are you were you grinding tomorrow at the uh uh on Thursday at the at the event? Yeah. What are you gonna use crappy kitchen aid grinder?
No, a friend of mine who works at a restaurant, I was like, dude, I can't use a kitchen egg, I gotta borrow yours. Oh no. Nice. And what do you but are you stuffing with a regular five-pound vertical guy? Yeah, I think it's uh little L E M one.
I think it might be a 10-pound so 10 pounder? The only one I I've I've owned, I remember back in the day when we were teaching at the FCI, they were gonna start teaching sausage stuffing. Yeah. And like I turned them on to like the the $80 version of the five-pound stuffer that they sell at like Grizzly. Yeah.
Really bad welds on that thing. Stuff sausage fine, though. Yeah, so it's fine. Actually, uh, that was the first stuffer we had, and someone who used to work for us is getting married this summer. I'm giving that to them for a wedding present.
Yeah, you're giving them the 8995 Grizzly. Yep. Yeah. He's pretty stoked. Yeah, well, it should be like, you know, here's the thing.
My only concern with that is that if you're gonna actually use it to get certified, the welds are so shitty that the NSF people, I don't know how the hell they sell it. You know what I mean? Because it's got it's basically like, you know, it it's its own uh it's its own back slop because it's always holding some sweet sweet business from your last time around. You know what I mean? Yeah, the inspectors come in and just you're gonna kill somebody.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we all gotta go sometime. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
So uh caller, I hope I answered some. I didn't I don't know that I even answered a question, or do we just talk about nicomatics? I think you got it. Because he was that he was wanting to know how to prep it. All right.
All right. So um now, should we take a quick break and then come back or no? Yeah. Come back with cooking issues. All right, here we go.
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Food, cooking, craftsmanship, and art are their ingredients. Oh, yeah, that is uh that is a new sponsor, a new business member. Eat eating tools, huh? Yeah. That's what that's what we get called all the time, right?
Eating tools. So what's on their website? Like, what do they sell? Are they designing or are they are they just selling other people's eating tools? Yeah, I believe so.
You have to visit the website. John, are you familiar with these guys? No, I was whether they were the first sponsor or the first tattoo. Really? Sam, are you an eating tool?
Are you a familiar with the eating tools? I'm not. I have a chat room comment. Two a two two-part comment. Um lot of good stuff happening right now about back slop is the comment.
Oh, yeah. And then um more more stars. Was the comment from the chat room. Oh well. I know it's Jordanian.
Alright, well, from Jordana, a friend of a friend of the program, actually, you know, f actual friend, like you know. Uh the she uh like recently wrote Alex Dupac's taco book, which we I think we discussed that last week. She had a question in a tattoo artist friend of mine uses citrus as a canvas for fine artwork made with a tattoo gun. Oh, mine too. Is this the same lady?
No, different friend. A man not not Amanda? Nope, nope, nope, nope. All right. Uh wants to think about methods of preserving the work, uh, since obviously it rots.
And uh, you know, what what do you what do you think? Well, here's the thing. Like, I think if you're gonna make back in the day, I just would have videotaped it rotting and then just had like sequences of like shots or time lapse, like I would have just taken like pictures of it like as it rotted and then like blown them up like super big on the wall because remember, like with art just like multiple like multiplying things and like you know, putting big things up on the wall equals awesome. But let's let's take this problem serious seriously. Now the issue is with citrus, you can't preserve citrus in alcohol without leaching the color.
Like that's the thing. Like you'd think you could preserve it like in alcohol, and apparently she wants to eventually do it in resin. The problem with preserving things like fruit and resin is you need to get rid of the water to preserve it in resin. Like w all those things that you see that like flowers and resin and stuff, they've all been dehydrated first. And the problem with dehydrating something as large as a piece of citrus is that uh it has to you have to get it to shrink slowly.
I mean, I I have successfully dried whole citrus, and you go to the market all the time, you see those dried lemons and dried citrus, but they're small and dark brown. You know what I mean? They're not like you know looking like a tattoo, which yeah, it could be its own thing. But um you could also mean you could try replacing a large portion of the water with glycerin, which is how they preserve a lot of flowers. They'll do a glycerin soak, and then as it dehydrates, it doesn't lose as much volume.
But I think you're gonna have problems. You could you could preserve it in simple syrup, right? Uh by changing the concentration of simple syrup, but you're still gonna get some color bleed. You could do it with uh old school, you could try formalin, like the way that they do that, but that's kind of gross. Here's what I think you should try to do.
I think you should freeze dry it. If the color's gonna look more pastel, but it will retain its exact shape. Then what you can do is you could, after you freeze dry it, you can paint it with a um like a resin coat on the outside, and that should re brighten the colors substantially over the kind of weird pastel note that you get on the freeze drying. The problem with freeze-drying large things is it's not what food people normally do. You have to go to like a f like a taxidermist specialist who specializes in freeze-drying kind of like animals and other things.
She wants to know if you can dye it after freeze drying. What do you mean dye it? Like dye it. You mean tattoo it or dye it? I would imagine dye it like a color.
Oh. Man, probably. You could paint something, you could probably spray it or dip it. I mean, it's just a very light porous, and you remove the water. Once you remove the water, it's fragile, like it can break, so you're gonna want to seal it right away or encase it in something, kind of um encase it in something so it doesn't kind of crack open.
But uh, I mean, I'm sure I guess you could dye it. But I mean, I thought the whole point was to preserve it as it was when it was tattooed, in which case we want to dye it. Ryan, am I wrong about this, guys? I'm gonna take a call. We have a caller.
All right, caller, you're on the air. It's Kim Gordon. Come on, it is not. You're making it up. Is it just a who do we got, caller?
Hi. Hi. Hi, this is uh Chris from the Green Zone. How you doing? Good, good.
Otherwise known as uh Aladdin Sane to Jack. Wow. Alright, so what do we what do we got? Yeah, so I mentioned to you on I think Instagram that I had some Turkish coffee tips for you. Oh yeah?
Hook up. How's it been going with that? I I have not uh I I have not been doing it uh recently. I need to get back into it. My my Mokelkete is still just a pile of uh coffee grounds.
I haven't c cleaned it out, so it's still I'm I'm still set up to do it uh because uh I think I mentioned last time I've I uh kind of was hand pulverizing it. None of the coffee mills I had were really making a fine fine enough kind of grind to do uh the Turkey or Greek, depending on how you think about it. My problem uh is um I can't get I can't get a really good foam. I can get it to rise kind of once, but I can't get it to rise again. And I've not I've not had something where I was like, see, here's my I think I said this before on the show.
My feeling is anything that has a super long pedigree, right? And I've tasted good Turkish coffee, right? Yeah. Uh but I haven't made that cup for myself yet where I'm like, yeah. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I know I do know what you mean. Uh I was in Beirut for three weeks over Christmas and New Year, and I had nothing to do at home but make Turkish coffee. And uh I was really craving my favorite cup from Istanbul, so I searched YouTube for some videos, and there's actually a video where in Turkish he tells you how he makes it. And his method is quite different to everything else I've seen, and I tried it for myself, and you know, amazingly it works. Basically, use way more coffee than you think you need, and then stir it add a little bit of hot water to it and stir it really finely to make a paste of the coffee, and then add more hot water, stir it again so it's all as homogenized as you can get it, and then put that on the flame.
And since the water's already hot, it starts foaming very, very soon, but it creates this really thick, dense foam. And uh I can send you the video later, but it it really works, and it's so counter to every other Turkish coffee method that I've seen. And he's using a rapid flame, or is he doing like a moderated, like either with a plate or with sand? It's no no, he's using just an open gas flame. So it's exactly the opposite of everything that like we're told is what makes it good.
Yeah, I mean, nobody nobody in like anywhere in the Middle East really uses the plate of sand seriously. I think they just do that for show. Yeah. Alright. Well, look, send us the video.
Cause like I'm uh because here's what I want to have happen. I want to make some Turkish coffee and say, Yeah. You know what I mean? Like that's what I want to have happen. Yeah, I think you'll get that.
It took me, you know, once I saw how he did it, it took me several times to get it, but now it's fairly consistent. And so now that you've described it in English, we can put it out on the put it out in the chat room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause they uh I need like uh as long as as long as I know roughly what's going on, I can kind of watch the hands to figure out everything. Exactly.
Yeah. I think I've said that on the show too before. Like we it's like it's almost sometimes better when you can't understand what a cook is saying, as long as you can see what their hands are doing. Yeah. You know what I mean?
So, Dave, we're we're running kind of tight, but I I have to get this Mofad ad in the show. Can I can I take sixty seconds here? Or less, actually, for this ad? Especially since it has such a nice flow, Mofad ad. Exactly, doesn't it?
Yeah. So let's check this out. Hi, this is Peter Kim, the executive director of Mofad, the Museum of Food and Drink. New York City's first food museum with exhibits you can eat. Mofad was founded by Dave Arnold, the host of cooking issues here on Heritage Radio Network.
We just opened up Mofad Lab, our new gallery space in Brooklyn, where we are currently showing flavor, making it and faking it. Flavor dives into the untold story of the $25 billion flavor industry raising questions about what natural and artificial really mean. And at Mofad Lab, you can taste and smell the exhibits. Flavor tablets deliver tastings of vanilla and umami, and the piano-like smell synth lets you compose over half a million different flavors. So come on by and visit Mofad Lab.
We're located at 62 Bayard Street near McCarran Bargainbrook. It is a family show. And I knew I could hear him almost laughing. Was Nastasi, were you here trying to make him laugh the whole time? I looked at him the whole time.
Oh man. I don't know. A couple weeks ago on the show, Peter was on, and a couple and like he tried to make me crack up during the thing, and you just can't do it. Because I'm not a human being. I don't respond to things like that.
You know what I mean? And so Stas, I guess trying to show her medal as a as a ruiner of his good time. I could hear it about I didn't know you'd be so close. I smile. I didn't even know.
Halfway through, I didn't even know Stas was there during the taping. And I could hear his voice change to that pre-laughing Peter voice. But we have to we have to bleep out the F U for the case. Okay, I'll I'll add a bleep for the podcast. For the podcast.
Yeah. Kids aren't listening live. Oh, right. They're not listening live. Should be in school.
Yeah. If they're not at school, then you know. Good point. It's fine. Good point.
Now, uh I can't believe that. Yeah, I knew I heard him laughing. Here's it. Like, here's some other things though. Not really piano-like to Smell Synth.
No. Not a not a man. Not like a piano, more like Street Fighter. You know? What do you think, Sam?
Yeah, I'd I'd say arcade-like. Arcade-like. What was your favorite? How old are you? Twenty-six.
Man. So like arcade games weren't like when I was a kid, arcade games were like me biting me. Like, you know, and you put in like a like a quarter and played a game. Is that what it was like when you were a kid? I feel like I'm more of the Mario Kart generation, so arcades were a little bit.
Do you go to arcades? I went to a few. No, I went to arcades. Yeah. I went to arcades.
Do they still have arcades? They're making a comeback. Yeah? There's like pizza places that have arcade games. There's barcade over here in Williamsburg.
Is it good? Yeah, it's great. You know, if you like arcade games, you should go to the museum of uh what's it called? Museum of moving image in Queens. Oh yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they have a like like arcade games are considered a moving image, and so they have a section on arcade games, which is pretty cool. Or the Museum of Food and Drink. Yeah. It is the same kind of like as like the Street Fighter Mortal Kombat. Oh my god.
So I brought my kids there this weekend, uh, Booker and Dax, and uh and of course they just walked up to the damn synth and saw try to see if they could push every button at once. And like I looked over and I just see a wall of light, like like every light lighting up. I was like, Yep, yep, my kids are here. Uh okay. Uh let me see.
Let's get some of the do we have time to get some we can get some of these questions? Oh yeah, totally. All right. Um here's a good one. That's it.
I'm not gonna be able to get to all the questions, unfortunately. But uh a welder friend of ours, this is from James, a welder friend of ours in Boston has graciously agreed to build us a fire pit slash pig machine slash grill to take care of our warming and cooking needs. Uh he'll be building it out of scrap metal based on our specs. I wanted to toothpick your minds to give him the proper direction. Below are a few questions.
What's a good shape and size? We were thinking six foot long, three foot wide, and two foot deep on legs, and what's the best height for those. Uh, we want to have a grill top attachment and a spit with a shelf uh that we could mount to a motor. Uh any recommended motor to. Any recommendations on adding a shelf and are there any models listed online that you could use as a visual reference.
I'll just go there right now. I hate almost all commercial, the crappy commercial rotisseries. I'm sure there's a very good actual commercial rotisserie, but whenever I've built rotisseries, I use um I use actual like gear motors, like Bodine brand, like AC, like fractional horsepower gear motors. The problem with most rotisserie motors is there's there's uh there's play in the gears, so that um when the shaft goes over its dead center point, because you're never gonna have your meat on there properly, it goes k chunk and moves into the next position where the gears aren't driving anymore. And then over time, that just it sucks for a rotisserie because it means that if your spit job's not perfect, there's like a uh there's like a uh force on your meat every time as it spins around, and it's just it's just crap.
And then you can see it accelerate up the one side of the curve and fall down the other. I hate it. I hate it. You real gear motor is the way to go on that anyway. And lastly, is there a place that you know of where we could purchase a motor?
Oh, okay. Uh uh just think of all the heartwarming. Uh the quick we have one of those motors. The thing is you want to keep it away from the uh heat. You know what I mean?
You want to like shield it pretty well from the heat. Uh which means uh either like connect the shaft, make the shaft long and let it bleed off enough heat before it gets to the shaft. Uh if it's getting custom built, then they could put the put a space for the motor a little bit farther away from the uh fire. Yeah. You know, also I like you know what I like?
I like the uh I like the flat spade drive on a uh on a rotisserie thing. So you have like um you you keep it mainly round. See if you keep it mainly with rotisserie is is like you want it to go in and out really quickly. You don't want to have to futz around with it. So you want very easy to engage on the one side, and then you want to drop it basically into its bearing on the other side without having a lot of a lot of messing around.
The best ones I've used, I think are the flat drive ones, like the Italian style ones that uh uh Mark has, Mark Mark Ladner. Um I've always kind of wanted to design one that you could just drop in like sprocket style and have it go. That would be nice. That would be sick. Um the other thing is uh spits, most spits suck.
They really most spits just really really suck pretty hard. Um do you have any recommendations on this stuff, Johnny? On the fire pitch. The thing is you I don't like I don't like doing things that are multiple pieces of equipment, you know. Yeah, I don't I like to have like if I was to have a custom rotisserie built, I would want it to be set up so that it was like really good heat dispersion, not so that I could also grill and smoke on it.
So you're the anti-Alton Brown. Yeah. You're like you're like the ultimate unit task master. I mean, for like major pieces of cooking equipment. So Johnny, Johnny, your basic theory is this.
Listen, go get yourself a warehouse. Yeah. Go get yourself a warehouse and then fill it with large pieces of single use equipment. I have a warehouse full of it seems to work. Uh but the the one thing I the one thing I will say on on multitasking, because I've converted things to rotisseries before.
I've converted like uh my salamander to a rotisserie. I've built um rotisseries. Well, here's another thing. Like, are you okay with doing rotisserie over over a normal grill or are you backfired only? I I'm okay over a normal grill.
But I do think the backfire is um is like a more even cooking. The the thing on a rotisserie is if you're gonna do it all depends on what you're gonna do. If you're gonna do really, really fast kind of style rotisseries, like very small, almost like kebab style rotisseries, you can go old school and just do the hand turning. So those they always use flat spiral round skewers and little triangular shaped uh V grooves that they they sit in, and then you just it's not really a rotisserie, it's just like turn turn turn turn turn four turns and done out. Right?
Or you can have like uh uh faster kind of uh smaller rotisseries. But the problem with doing a large thing like a pig in a rotisserie situation on over a fire is is that you get a lot of flare ups, and although that can add to flavor, it's kind of hard to regulate, as Johnny says. So the thing is. Yes, the pig too. It're getting too much fat.
The drip down and yeah. You're gonna have a huge fire. All right, hold on a sec. So all right. So we can we'll we can talk more about this next time.
I'll get to the herbs next time. The other questions, we got we'll probably say one thing about MoFat on the way out. But one thing I'll say is here's the problem with trying to create something that big. Most of the time you are going to want to do smaller things for you and your family. Like like if you're it's a big difference cooking for you're gonna want to be able to cook for like 20, 30 people, 40 people with a party, great.
But it's it's a lot different when you're only cooking for one or two, especially when you're using uh natural uh like woods and charcoals and stuff like that. Because the amount of wood or charcoal that you're gonna have to use to fire your your thing up if it's huge, it's gonna be astronomical. The amount of time it's gonna take to get a big honking machine up to cooking, because those big machines are built on being like kind of big and like you know, and so like I would definitely invest at least in a smaller area that can be heated on its own, that you can cook smaller amounts of food for smaller groups of people, and then allow yourself a monster area where you can go completely ape for larger things. What do you think, Johnny? I I was gonna I felt like it was someone who was doing this professionally.
Oh. Oh, that's different. 'Cause like who gets a custom welded smoker box just for you know parties. Uh I I would. Yeah, but like I don't know.
I mean, uh it's true. I hadn't thought about that. Well, write back in and let us know what the intended application is. But I do think you're your your point of having something where you can fire up just a small box and you know, you know, do like one rotisserie chicken is gonna be a beneficial. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, not for a restaurant, but yeah. Yeah. Well, in this case, so uh Sam, you want to say anything about the museum where they can get tickets to this uh extravaganza? Yeah, so go to programs.mofat.org. It's on Thursday from 6 30 to 8 30.
It looks like there's about six tickets left. So Johnny will stuff your sausage while you're there. Yeah, we we sold nine tickets to just now. Wow, sweet. I'm gonna do I'm gonna I'm probably gonna do uh my old school trick, which is off the blog, so it's old, of uh uh nixtamalized rye.
Uh I got a new technique with um uh using uh baking soda to do a clear dulce de leche syrup, uh which is just done with milk in a pressure cooker, which is pretty cool. Uh and uh Sam has gr has decided graciously made the lie eggs, which we haven't made in a long time since the last time we did the McGee course at the FCI. Clear lye pickle. We're gonna do the inverse loot fisk. Yeah.
Lootfisk. All right, that's it for cooking issues. We'll see you soon. Thanks for listening to this program on heritage radio network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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