Today's program is brought to you by Thurman Maple Days. Celebrate flowing of sap in the Adirondacks, self-guiding to seven sites for talks, tours, tastes, and old fashioned friendliness. For more information, visit thurman Maple Days.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 heritage radio network.org for thousands more. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Richards coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday. This time a little late. Well, you know, whatever.
But noonish to like late. This is your normal time. Well, but I feel like it's late because we have a guest today. That's true. On Harry's Radio Network, uh uh broadcasting from Robertus Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Joined as usual with Nastasia, the hammer. Lopez, how are you doing, Stuff? Good. We got Jackie Molecules in the booth. How are you doing?
Um great. Just got back from Charleston. Oh yeah, how was it? It was good. Yeah?
Yeah. I get I I I got there early and drove through the low country to all those weird little islands. Uh well, let's talk about that in a second. We have special guest in the studio. Uh the maestro of the food lab, which sold uh how many billion copies did you sell a lot, Kenji?
Not quite a billion yet, but we're we're working on it. Kenji Lopez all billion billion selling book. New York Times bestseller, though, right? Uh yeah, yeah, for a little while. Nice.
Nice. Yeah, I think it was something like a billion. In fact, uh we share a publisher and uh editor. Yeah, an editor, yeah. Uh I I don't even I I think of her as like the whole the kind of face, Maria Gornichelli, you know, uh world renowned uh editor.
Anyway, so like your the success of your book actually got her off my back for a while because she's not wasn't for a while worried about my second book because of the enormous success. You have a second book come in or uh well yeah, yes. Cocktails also no, no, not no cocktails. No cocktails, no recipes, I think. Oh, okay.
Yeah. Uh like food ramps, maybe. Yeah, maybe self helps. Adult coloring books. I'd have to have Nastasia do them and then steal her ideas because Nastasia is the Nastasia's the line drawing queen.
Oh, yeah. I mean, I could get my wife to do it, but that would be weird. It'd be easier. Like we could just come out with a book together and this I could just say, do this, and Nastasia would do the line drawings. One of the very one of the lesser known Nastasia Lopez skills.
Yeah, I never would have guessed that. Yeah, no, it's true. Nastasia is a uh is a uh inveterate uh doodler, and you like working in pen, right? Yeah, I do. Like not pencil, pen.
Pen. Pen. She's a pen worker, likes pens. Um give a rat's ass about fancy rats behind, rather. No.
Family show. About you're like, you know, any old, any old bic, any old bick will do. Uh so Jack, so now that we uh now that we're all here, so tell us about the islands. You went to uh which islands did you go to? Edisto Island and St.
Helena Island. Yeah? Yeah. Is that where like all the the gulla stuff's happening? Uh-huh.
Yeah. I got some frogmore stew. Yeah. What's in Frogmore stew? It's like uh just shrimp uh that you have to peel yourself and like uh boiled potatoes and corn, that kind of thing.
Uh presumably it doesn't taste like uh the Cape Cod version of that though. Uh no, it did well, you know. I can't say that I've ever really spent much time in Cape Cod. What? Yeah.
I know, it's weird, right? What's your Cape Cod equivalent? You what what's your East Co what's your northeast beach mentality basically? Well, like I'm from Long Island, you know? Alright, so it's the same crap.
I guess so. It's all the same crap. Where on Long Island? I'm from a place called West Babylon, so it's like uh South Shore border of Nassau Suffolk, kind of right in the middle. So you're you're not really a beach thing.
But you drive out to Montauk. Yeah. And hang out with Billy Joel or something. Wow, oh yeah. Oh you know, I've never been to Montreal.
I really don't like Billy Joel, actually. You don't like Bill Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what? I'm sorry. Whoa. Stas, you hear that?
I heard that. Sorry, Stas. Yeah. Stas, huge Billy Joel fan. I actually uh like how I was from the West Coast, so it's like Yeah, but how can you come from Long Island and not like Billy Joel?
It doesn't make any freaking sense. Because I always hated Long Island, even when I was a kid. Well, I mean, you know, I came from I came from Jersey, you know, back in the day. That's when I went to elementary school. I still like Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen.
I was gonna say and Bruce, yeah? Yeah. Well, I didn't like Bon Jovi at the time, but with age comes perspective on how kind of perfect uh slippery when wet is like almost like, you know, Moses came down and was like slippery when wet. You know what I mean? It's like when you think about the perfection of like the it's like you know the childhood fan it's uh it's awesome.
You know what I mean? Like I didn't like it at the time. I'm more of a Springsteen's f fan than Joe Bon Jovi, actually. Yeah. Are you from Jersey?
Uh no, I'm from New York. Oh. Well, yeah, yeah. So you get to look down on us folk who live in where New York originally. Um I grew up in Harlem.
Oh yeah, real New York, yeah. So you're one of those city kids that I hated. Yeah. Yeah. Now now my kids are those city kids.
But I think I think I've said this before. I think it's uh it's a lot different now because you can be cool and like live in the suburbs now because of the internet. Right, right. You can be cool anywhere these days. Yeah, whereas back in the day, you know, we felt like losers.
Like us suburban kids, we felt like losers. What about you and Covina, Stas? Loser. Loser. Although the the internet was around when?
When you were in high school it happened? Too late though for you. Senior year, yeah. Yeah. The internet didn't happen until basically I was done with college.
I I got I got email when I was in high school, but it it was like internal email in the school. I literally remember when like I saw the first email I'd ever seen, and by the way, you know the guy that invented email just died like two days ago. Really? Yeah. I forget his name.
He died, like he was like seventy-four, he died like two two days ago. And uh, you know, he popularized the at symbol, the whole thing, like invented email. Uh, I remember in like way before anyone had or cared about email when there was like, you know, like a hundred people with email addresses. I was a junior in high school. This is in like eighty seven, eighty eight, something like that.
And uh this guy was like, I have this thing called email watch. And he like typed an email, and I was like, this is worthless. I was like, who's ever gonna use this crap? This is garbage. Nonsense.
Man. Did he send it to you from his Apple Newton? Uh, that was that was early 90s, right? We had a 2E. We had two E.
He it was an Apple IIe, which of course, you know, I coveted because of the green screen so much better than my Radio Shack TRS 80 computer. And uh uh but I just remember thinking this is not gonna go anywhere. No, no. This is worthless. It's like watching TV on the internet.
Yeah, I forget that dude's name, but I hope he's a billionaire. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Anyway. He deserves it.
You know, being an early adopter or something like email, you should win something for that. Yeah, you probably get a cooler email address. Yeah, he's John 01 instead of John 387. Yeah, well, this is you know, obviously, this is way pre there was no WWW at that time. Literally, you had to like know exactly where someone was and send them an email.
You know what I mean? Uh dumb. Okay. Um so you have anything you want to uh plug about the book? Anything specific you want to talk about?
Anything No. I mean, I don't know. Buy it if you want to, don't if you don't. Well, anyway. Call your questions to Kenji at 7184972128.
That's 718497 2128. Alright, so let's uh let's hit some stuff that we uh have here. Can I actually like jump the line? Because I have something that I'm I'm interested in hearing both of you talk about. All right.
Is that cool? Sure. So there's all these articles about um bay leaves lately that I've been reading, and um kind of like challenging the notion that they actually do anything right in a big you know stat or I mean they taste like bay. Yeah. Have you seen this, Kenji?
You've have you seen these arguments? I I I have had people ask me I I actually wrote a I wrote an article like a couple years ago called What's what it was it was a question I got from a from a reader, and the question was what's the point of bay leaves? Because they taste like bay. They do, yeah. You can taste it.
And and and of course, like depending on where you get your bay leaves, whether it's like a Turkish bay leaf, which is what general the what you generally find dried, versus like a California bay leaf, which you find fresh, like they have different flavors, but they yeah, they they definitely have flavor to dishes. You can you can tell the difference side by side if you taste. They are merely the most popular of the aromatic leaves, which almost all of the all of this style of aromatic tree leaf come from the um the laurel family, right? So you have aromatic avocado leaves, whereas some aren't, which I believe are the same family as bay. Are they?
I think. I don't know that they're all in the same family, but I know Lauriacy has I'm pretty sure. I I gotta go look it up because I wasn't expecting to talk about it. But like there's a lot of aromatic leaves in that in that kind of family. I don't know whether like sassafras and spice bush are in the same general family, but like a lot of those, uh, you know, that family has these kind of aromatic leaves.
And uh of course they make a difference. Now the crappier the leaf is. Let me give you an example. I have some crappy, you know, spice spice class. That's a brand of spice right here.
Spice class. Uh so I have like crappy spice b uh class bay leaves, and so I have to use like four or five times as many of those to get the same flavor. To get the same flavor. And they're a pain, so I tend to tie them up by the by the you know the stuff. Yeah, and then throw them in like larger quantities.
But uh perhaps you've heard of the spice jack old bay, which is like has like a huge hit of ground up bay in it. Bay is a sp to be clear, I can taste when bay leaves are used. I'm saying that there were a lot of articles posted. A lot of my friends were sharing. It was on the owl.
But who wrote it? What's the owl? Yeah, well, was it was it some like angry internet person just trying to make angry internet? It was like part humor, but also it's a blog. You know, you know the the one one thing about bay leaves though, um, and is that uh and this is different from most other herbs, is that um you know the well, similarly to most other herbs, there is a big difference between dried and fresh, but uh uh but the difference in bay leaves is that the dried versions are almost always the Turkish bay leaves, and the fresh versions are almost always California bay leaves, and they have a very different flavor.
Like the California bay leaves have a much stronger sort of eucalyptus. It's not the same plant, right? Yeah, it's not even the same plant. Yeah, yeah. They're both sold as bay leaves.
So a lot of people say, oh, the fresh bay leaves are always better than the dry, but but that's not always the case because it adds a flavor that's quite different from a standard bay flavor. So I I almost always use dry dry bay leaves that I store in the freezer. Well, fres you know this is a huge misconception people have about everything in the world that fresh is better than uh dry. Yeah, it's like it dep they're almost always different. And so anything that is sometimes something is different and worse.
Sometimes it's just different. Sometimes it's just different. Like ginger, like fresh ginger versus dried ginger. Different. Totally different.
Dried basil, bad. Dried basil bad. Dried parsley. Dried chives, not good. I haven't tried really dried chives, freeze dried chives I've had.
You know what? Like uh we're talking if you go and buy a bottle of uh spice glass. Oh, spice glass. You know, I got in big trouble with uh with my wife because did I talk about this? Maybe.
Because uh, you know, I I've been saying we've been doing the uh the 70-style potato bars recently, you know, where you just make a big ass big baked potato and then you're gonna be. Oh, right, right, right, yeah. It's like taco night. Yeah, it's like taco night, but it's like baked potato night. Because I'm like, you know, whatever, we're bringing it back.
And um so my wife was cutting up the chives and she did like the ultimate chive like horror show of chopping them long. I I I kind of like that sometimes, like in a soup or something like that. They have no flavor when you chop them long. The chive flavor, yeah, but then they stick in your teeth. I don't know.
I'm not a but you know what you shouldn't do? You shouldn't like you shouldn't look at your the chives that your wife has chopped and being like, what the hell are you doing with these chives? Why? Look, on a baked potato it's better than crushing them, at least with the donuts. Yeah, that was the the the first like fancy restaurant job I had um on my first day and on my first day of service, I was chopping chives with a line, and I had no idea what I was doing then.
And and the chef, um Barbara Lynch is uh number nine part because the chef, like she walked by my station while I was chopping the the chives and without even looking at me, like just hearing the sound the chives were making as I was chopping them, she's like, You're doing those wrong. Throw them out because you could hear the kind of crumbles. Yeah, the crushing noise. The crushing noise, yeah. Because I was crushing them instead of slicing them.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I like I like thin small discs, like th like two little tiny. You want them to be sliced thinner than they are wise. That's the best. I like although they're a pain to dose out like that, because they tend to stick in clump if you do it ahead.
But that's life. Big city. Especially if you crush it. If you slice it. Yeah, if your knife is sharp and you slice well and they they stay nice and separate, I think.
Now let me ask you this. So chives, would you ever use it's not true. So obviously, like the application for blended chives is ranch dressing, right? So ranch dressing, dill chives and other stuff. But in general, is chive ever it's they're expensive, so is it worthwhile to ever blend would you ever blend it or you use a different allium for that?
I wouldn't. I mean, you know, I've seen like chive oil, right? And you blend chives there, but uh you never make it though. Do you ever make that stuff? No.
I mean I didn't think like I did in like yeah, like the early 2000s in restaurants, chive oil color on the soup. Yeah, but could you cheat on the chive oil and really use a different allium and scallion tops? Probably. But scalli, I mean scallions taste a little different, don't they? In the oil?
I don't know. I don't know. Maybe they don't. I think it's just one of those things that people used to do. Maybe maybe chives are a myth.
Maybe maybe there's no point in chives. No, chives they're good. I like chives. Stas, are you chival fan? Yeah.
Yeah. Stas likes the chive. But anyway, this thing about bay, who's the owl? Who's this blogger? Who's the owl?
Do we know them? No, we don't we don't know them. Um let's see. This is like saying Kelly Kelly Conoboy. This is like saying, Oh, we have you know, wine.
Flavor? You're like, yeah, yeah, wine has a flavor. What are you talking about? Bay leaf. Like, did this person have like a negative experience with bay leaves?
Do they think it's a scam? Are these like the kind of people that don't like modern art because they think the wool is being pulled over their eyes? It could they it could be someone who has your spice class bay leaves who use one one bay leaf in a soup and don't notice it because it's a shitty bay leaf. That's true. I think that's the issue.
I do think that's the issue. Yeah, then fine. Use the answer is use more. The good thing about bay is that um yeah, most recipes tell you to use a bay leaf or two, and that won't really do much with most of the bay leaves, the low quality bay leaves that that people have. So I invariably triple the amount that the recipe calls for.
And bay leaf is not the kind of thing that rides unless you go way over. It doesn't really ride over the top. Right. Um, but like you can't like I can't I never make a stock without bay. I I very rarely make like a super stew or anything like that without bay in it.
Rarely. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's it's good. And like the whole point of it is it's an integrative spice. So it's not supposed to, it's not like Nastasia's least favorite, cumin, which is like supposed to hit you on the head.
You know what I mean? Right. It boosts boosts other flavors pretty well. Stas, why don't you like cumin? I don't know.
We've gone through it before. I don't want to. I know I know. There was a comment in the chat room, uh they said, How about getting Kenji to talk about his vegan month just for Nastasia's benefit? All right, but before we do that, Jack, uh we had a I had a comment in on the on the Twitter from uh geek girl with a number, which I forget the number.
Anyway, she wants to know how to get on the chat rooms because apparently we're not making it like clear how to get onto the chat rooms. Oh, it's clear how to get in the chat room. Well, tell her how to get on the freaking chat rooms. I think this person emailed us and then said they could figure it out. So you go to the website, you click play, okay and it's gonna pop up with a player.
And then uh play the chats? They're like a report. Well, I need to pull up the live stream first. Uh and then uh, you know, you just click on the heritage radio logo right there and it pulls up the chat room. There you go.
You could also go to mixler.com slash heritage dash radio dash network if uh you want to go manual with it there. Mixler. Mixler. That's the yeah. Sounds like the sounds like a like a Flintstones character.
Kind of does. I have a caller if you want to take the call. All right, caller, you're on the air. Hi, Dave and Kenji. It's uh Alex from Santa Barbara.
How's it going? And I was wondering um settled debate for me about the liquid smoke brine versus actually smoking, because it's been coming up a lot that you can get pretty close to there with liquid smoke and a little bit of nitrate in your brine for let's say 48 hours, and then you low temp out for 36 on, let's say, you know, a brisket. And it's basically the same. And I don't believe it, but I've never done a side by side. And I want you guys to explain the math to me.
But who said it was the same? Uh like chef steps and or close enough to be the same. Yeah. I've said similar things. Not um I I I said similar things in a sous-view um pork uh rib recipe I wrote uh a couple months ago.
Um it's I mean it's not exactly the same. And it's it's it's not exactly the same in the same way that like anything you cook sous-vide is not going to be exactly the same as something you cook via another method, right? Like sous vide brisket is sous vide brisket. It doesn't it's not exactly the same as barbecue brisket. Not at all the same.
Yeah, but that doesn't mean uh I don't think that means better or worse. But as far as the smoke flavor goes, um I mean you can you can get smoke flavor from a liquid smoke brine. Um that that will I mean that will make people think that it was smoked. Well I mean you don't get like bark development. Right, like things like that.
But but it is it is it is literally the same stuff that that is getting deposited on your meat while you're smoking it. Minus some stuff. Minus some stuff. And you and usually you'll get my question right there. Yeah.
Where it's what's the minus stuff that would be I could taste the difference. I mean I know you're gonna get different product depending on how you cook it, but just the flavor of the smoke. They get they get rid of uh a lot of the theoretically cancer causing like polycyclic hydrocarbon stuff, uh right? Isn't that like I think so, yeah. And then they they also you know the the the issue is usually you're in an oil phase or a water phase, because most they're not so like presumably some is gonna s like some smoke compounds like would uh would gravitate towards the oil phase versus the water, so you're probably only getting the water phase stuff.
Right. But but when you're but when you're s when you're smoking in a smoker, you're all mostly getting only water phase stuff anyway, because the the smoke is being transported by the moist air, right? Well, but there's this actual particulate matter as well. Right, right, right. There's some.
You know, and so like like you know, I you noticed like uh, you know, when the chefs used to use the smoking gun, do they use any more? I think some people do. Yeah. You would notice that like the particulate matter would settle out after a couple of minutes, but the smoke aroma would stay in the in the thing because there is like a heavy kind of a particulate thing. But I mean the the truth of the matter is is that smoking does a number of things besides imparting flavor, right?
So you're being exposed to a particular uh a particular atmosphere, you're being exposed to a particular temperature at a particular humidity, and so you know, like Kenji was saying, like you get the the bark. So different things happen from a textual standpoint that are a lot of times difficult to um separate from uh from just the flavor. From just the flavor. And especially especially with things like crust development, it's virtually impossible to separate the like uh the textural difference uh and the the cooking difference uh from the flavor. It's just not not possible.
Right, right. And the other thing to be aware of is that liquid smoke is produced at a very specific temperature for a very specific thing. So you smoking something for real might be different if your temperatures are high or lower, you're using a different you're gonna generate different kinds of compounds because pyrolysis, very, very complicated stuff is happening. Um The other thing is that I find that like uh smoke applications, more maybe with powder than with the liquids, it's super easy to overdose on it and it goes like bitter. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and and people I think people do often overdose on smoke. But I think people often also overdose on smoke when they're when they're actually smoking things too. Right. Um because I I always think I mean the smoke should be it should be seasoning like like like cumin or or bay leaf or whatever. You know, it's it should be seasoning, it shouldn't be the only thing you taste in there.
Um but but I will I will tell you that you know, in in in the testing I've done for for you know getting smoke flavor into meat thro through methods that aren't smoking, that brining in a liqu in a in a brine with liquid smoke, I think is is the most effective way to keep it subtle and to get good penetration without you know it's it's very different to do that than to say like add liquid smoke straight to like a barbecue sauce, which you just paint on the surface. Um brining it overnight in a in a in a in a brine with liquid smoke gets you a much more sort of natural tasting smoke penetration. I'm gonna get my behind kicked. I don't really like barbecue sauce. Well, what kind of like Kansas City?
Like I'm gonna be able to do that. I know I just don't I don't like goopy, yeah, I don't like goopy. Yeah, I'm I'm more of like uh like a um you know vina like a vinegar sauce. Yeah, yeah. I don't even consider like I know that they do I I consider that like red pepper and vinegar.
Like I don't consider that pepper vinegar a little sh a little sugar, maybe, but yeah. I don't consider that like when someone says barbecue sauce, you're thinking Kansas City style ketchup and molasses. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not I'm not a huge fan of that. I like it on French fries.
Okay. You know what I mean? Like I think it's okay as like, you know, kind of a uh a secondary catch up. Yeah. But I just not I'm with you on that too.
Yeah. And people love it. I'm gonna get my like I'm I'm happy that you like it whoever you are that likes of it. I'm not against it in theory. It's just not my it's not my cup of tea on on meat.
I have another collar. Sure. Caller, you're on the air. Uh yeah, Dave. Uh Dan Seattle.
Uh couple of pressure canner questions. Okay. Uh so first of all, I got a very b a big new all aluminum uh uh pressure canner for Christmas. Made by American Canner Corp? Yep.
Yep. Um so my my first question is can I make the stock in it before I put it in jars? I mean, is does the barrel aluminum really matter much if for stock? Well it depends on what you believe. Like if if you believe that aluminum is bad to cook in, then it matters.
If you don't, as I don't, then uh you know y y it won't bother you. I mean, flavor wise, I don't think you're gonna taste aluminum in your stock. Yeah, not in the stock. Okay. I mean the the hard part about uh even like small amounts of like uh you know, in some classic stocks it'll be like a couple tomatoes, but does it it's not gonna do anything.
You know what I mean? But the the um I wouldn't use I guess you can't fit it in the dishwasher anyway, because it's so big. I was gonna say like like where you don't want to do on that is like uh harsh detergents on it because it's I believe it's cast and so it'll get porous and pitted after a while at the bottom and but I cooked. Yeah. I mean the the the hard part about the pressure canners, uh, if you're using them to do anything other than straight canning, is that they are a huge ship to steer.
So uh, you know, uh on a level of difficulty of getting the right heat input, I'd say it's like twice as difficult as like with a regular pressure cooker to get the the heat input correct. Just because of its volume, you mean yeah, yeah, just because it's so hard to read the slope right. You know, whereas like uh a normal pressure cooker responds within a minute or two, like this guy could have like, you know, four or five minutes of ride up and down. Right. So it takes a while to kind of dial it in.
So like what I would do is the first couple times you use it, I would uh kind of keep track of where your settings are based on how much you have in it, because that's pretty much you know, assuming that you use relatively constant loads. Yeah. Also, that thing's a pain. You ever use one of those things, Kenji? Mm-hmm.
They're a pain to close all of those screws. I mean, look, oh yeah, I've seen those. Nothing else can do what they can do. They're huge volume. Right.
You know, pressure cooker canners. But do you have the regular canner lid or do you have the sterilization lid for it? Uh uh the what what? Do you have the regular canning lid for it or the sterilization lid with the tube? Uh the regular, right?
Yeah, yeah. The sterilization lid is a is it's creepy. How does that work? So they're really if you're gonna use it as a sterilizer, which I guess some people do in places uh I don't know where who don't have the sterilizers, they uh they're worried that there'll be pockets um of gas in it that that will cause it to not go through the sterilization procedure at the same way. So they have a they have a tube that extends down that you have to like vent out the tube to get rid of uh entrained non steam gases before you crank the stuff.
But remember what a nightmare that was to us? Yeah. And we crushed the tube and we were yelling at each other and screaming and nightmare. Nightmare. I I use like pretty much exclusively electric pressure cookers now because one uh I right now I have I'm using the Brevel Pro which um which has like full manual you can I mean it only goes up to 12 psi which most electric cookers do but you can get anywhere from anywhere from 1.5 to 12 at half psi in increments.
Can you hack it like the Quezen art? I don't know. I haven't tried um but it but it also has like automatic altitude adjustment and like and automatic pressure release and stuff which is pretty nice. Automatic altitude adjustment so it'll go so yeah that that's that's not worth it. I was gonna say you could put it into another container jacket like to three PSI and then hit go.
But that's not worth it. It's not worth it. But so it's it's actually working on pressure not on temperature? Uh it has it so it has it has a pressure gauge and it also has two temperature gauges like it has a temperature probe at the bottom and at the end at the top. But the pressure gauge is a release or the pressure gauge is a measurement?
Um I'm I'm not sure actually I'm not sure. I don't know I should I should I should ask them. Yeah yeah yeah okay yeah I'm not sure how the altitude bitches much more specific question okay I want to make coots needed pabil in a canning jar. Can I just put the banana leaf and the pork I mean whatever like the toughest piece of pork I can get and the aciote in there and is there some overwhelmingly obvious reason that wouldn't work. Huh I don't know.
What what do you think Angie I I think it would work I mean what happens to banana leaves in a pressure cooker they probably break down I don't know I've never tried that specifically but I've but I've stuck um I mean I've stuck meats and and like onions and things like you can make like you know you caramelize onions inside sealed jars in a pressure canner. Onions obviously lose a lot of their onion potency. They get a lot more neutral and a lot sweeter in a pressure cooker than they would in any sort of other normal cook. Sure. Um or like, you know, if you were gonna do like acid canning where it's just a boil out versus pressure.
But I don't in other words, I don't know whether banana leaves are gonna have a different flavor extraction or anything around the because you know there's that layer around the banana leaf that has that particular flavor. Banana leafy flavor. Yeah, which I like. But I don't know what happens at pressure cooker. I don't know.
I don't I don't know how you can find out. Yeah, do it. Yeah. Yeah. But uh there's there's nothing on the surface of it that seems to think that it won't work.
All right. Well I I will just give that a shot next time I get around to it. I wound up with way too many banana leaves the last time I made uh I I made this regularly. Yeah. I need to get them out of my freezer.
All right, well let us know what happens. Thanks. I got a question from the chat room if you want to take it. Yeah, this is okay, go. To Kenji or Dave, can you ramanize fresh pasta?
Also instead of doing the baking soda technique, can I just use kensui? I don't know if that's pronounced it. Yes and yes. Okay, there you go. But uh I don't know that you'd want I mean it depends on what you like why you're doing it.
He said he used the modernist cuisine recipe for ramen and broke a pasta machine. Because it was too dry, or I don't know. Oh, well, wait, wait, so specifically the question is, is is it gonna go through his pasta machine? I guess so. Can you ramanize fresh pasta?
Oh yes, you c yes. I mean, obviously this is how they make pasta. So is he asking is he asking, can you take like can you make fresh Italian style pasta and cook it in in in baking soda water and will it taste like pasta? No, I think he's thinking can you do yell yellow alkaline noodles? Through a regular pasta machine?
I mean, I would assume you can. Yeah. Well. I mean, like, look, fundamentally yellow alkaline noodles are i is like a fairly normal pasta dough with consuy in it. Yeah.
Right? Yeah. So like typically a little bit drier than a like an Italian style dough, but it'll maybe be harder to push through a pasta machine, but I don't know. Right, but you could up the water, you could still get the yellow some of the bounce and the the consuite flavor. But it'll taste like that.
So you're basically just making ramen in a different shape. Yeah. There uh there's um, you know, like you Yu G Yu Graman, he does he does like a bunch of different pasta shapes with ramen dough. So he makes like ramen ramen flavored or kette and stuff like that. Right.
The key thing, the real baller move is to do forget forget making uh freaking noodles. Make uh lasagna so that it retains its texture when it's being cooked. I mean, that's the baller thing to do. And then slice it afterwards or just. Yeah, no, but like in other words, instead of using like Italian style pasta for uh although you know who makes you don't really want to use fresh for lasagna anyway, unless it's a very specific thing.
Not you would want like a dried ramenized, but not like fried and pre-cooked ramenized, unless you're gonna do the thing. But like w what's an application for pasta where you really want that the texture, the bounce, right? Where pasta tends to disintegrate? Ramen. But that be that's the reason to ramenize something.
Yeah. For ramen. Chicken chicken noodle soup that you're gonna put in a can. Yeah. He specifies he says when I'm asking what I'm asking is to make fresh Italian noodles, then ramenize.
So cook so cook so you you you mean using that hack where you cook it in water like with baking soda or consui, and it gets a little bit of that ramen, like that ramen flavor. You can get that flavor. I don't think you're gonna get the texture. Well, with dry pasta, you do get you do get the texture's different significantly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um but I've never tried it with fresh pasta, but I don't see why it wouldn't work with fresh pasta. Well, let me put it to you this way. I would bet it would be more likely to work if you did the pre-soak and then bring up from cold than if you did it. Because once the protein's cooked, it's cooked. Yeah, I mean maybe yeah, maybe with fresh pasta the problem would be that it doesn't spend enough time in there because it's it cooks so quickly and and it's not absorbing much of the liquid, right?
So how much like how close to ramen do you get if you boiling it in water with uh if you do like a thin pasta like uh like spaghetti or capolini or something and and cook it in water with baking soda, like it it gets it gets pretty close. Um in flavor or in texture? Both. Both. Really?
Yeah, yeah. It's actually it's a good trick for if if you're making like if you want to make like a pasta salad that where the pasta doesn't get mushy, you know, because pasta when when when you make I mean, I don't know why people make pasta salad anyway, but if you make pasta salad. But uh but it gets it gushy as it sits in the dressing. Um if you cook it in like um alkalized water, is that the right word? Alkalized.
Alkalized water, yeah. Um the pasta stays a lot bouncier even after you after you cool it and dress it. Let me tell you something about angel hair and all those small pastas. They're supposed to be creamy. They're supposed to be creamy.
Yeah, but if you want them if you want them to be ramen and you can't get ramen where you are. So when when do I like those things dry? I guess they're anchovy sauces for Christmas Eve where I like those pastas dryish. How do you like how do you like your very fine pasta sauce? I don't like fine pasta.
Yeah. For real? Me neither. Why? Because it's bad.
This is a lot of hate about people. It's not bad. It's just different. It's not your al dente stuff, it's just a different product. Yeah.
God damn. I mean, gosh darn. Yeah. I also know a good way to find out if you can do this, by the way. Yes.
Oh, caller, you're on the air. Hey, this is a scooter in Lontana. Tenji, you may have just answered a question I asked a couple weeks ago about uh canning noodles. Um I called and asked about getting noodles that are like the you know the the canned chicken noodles. Yeah, yeah.
Um you think if you add some alkaline to your homemade noodles and put them in the can that they'll hold together? Uh yeah, I I think well hold together better. Um but I I would I I would cook the noodles separately in in uh alkalized water and then add them to the soup before you can it. But I I wouldn't like I wouldn't add I wouldn't add baking soda to your chicken and noodle soup. Um but I would cook the noodles separately.
Or if you're or if you're making or if you're making if you're making homemade noodles, yeah, you can you could add consui or baking soda or something to them. Right. Yeah. Sweet. Thank you.
All right. Yeah, cool. Now uh Jack, what was the other question you had off of the uh So I've got two chat room requests. I'm gonna let you choose your own adventure here. Uh they either want a conversation on vegan month.
Okay. Comparing vegan month notes or revisiting the conversation about weighing cocktail ingredients. Oh, okay. Well could do either of those. Well here, hit it on the vegan month.
Let's talk talk about vegan month. Okay, wait, comparing notes as in whatever. I've only ever done I done I did raw vegan for a week. I didn't know. Oh, raw vegan.
Okay. I know, but you did you did what do you do? Vegan. I do it every year. Are you in the middle of that month right now?
I'm in the middle of it right now, yeah. So uh what's up with that? Um well, okay. So I I started it, you know, mainly well, I've always been interested in vegan, like as far as diets go, it's one of the ones that makes sense to me, just sort of from uh ethical and environmental standpoint. Um it's made sense to me.
Um and so I, you know, mate, but the first time I did it, I was I was sort of skeptical, and I did it mainly because I wanted to challenge myself and see what would happen. And and then it turned out that I actually had a really great month because it made me, you know, made me think about recipes in a different way, think about new ingredients and new techniques. Um I I think from a from a recipe development standpoint it's been great because I it just it means like for a month out of the year I I think about a completely different set of things than I normally do. Um but um you know, but these days, you know, when I'm when I'm not uh when I'm not testing recipes or eating for work, um I I'd maintain mostly vegetarian, some fish, but um like I don't I I don't really go out for meat anymore. Um so uh you know in that sense it's it's sort of changed.
Uh the way I eat. So what's your favorite thing you discovered this vegan month? Uh I've been working a lot on hummus. Um and I, you know, I was actually uh going to be publishing a recipe for a recipe next week, um, but then last night I went to uh John Fraser's new place, Nick's. Have you been there?
No. It's it's awesome. Awesome. It opened on Monday. It's um a vegetarian restaurant.
But John you know, John Fraser, uh he has um uh dovetail and Narcissa, neither one of them vegetarian restaurants. He's like, you know, great chef, Michelin Star guy. Good man, too. Good man too, yeah. Um but and he opened a vegetarian restaurant that is amazing.
And they have this awesome hummus, and I was talking to him about it, and he uses a completely different technique than I use, so now maybe I'm gonna hold off on the recipe and do some more tests. What do you do? Uh so okay, so so m you know, the testing I was doing was mainly about about getting the the texture right and um so you know, so doing things like trying to peel whether peeling pick chickpeas really matters. Um my technique now is basically just like cook the crap out of the chickpeas um and then and then puree it all. Um but what he does is he cooks the crap out of the chickpeas, um, but then completely reduces the liquid um and puree's all the mirror paw and everything like basically everything that was in the pot, all the liquid, all the mirepoi, everything that was in there with the chickpeas, pureees it all together.
Um and it and it and puree's it importantly pureees it while it's hot in a blender um as opposed to letting it cool and then doing it in a food processor because when it's when it's hot, it's like the texture of like a milkshake, you know? It's like easily done in a blender. And then by the time it cools down to serving temperature, it's the texture of hummus. So you can get it a lot smoother in a blender than you can in a food processor. Because a setback?
Uh yeah, yeah. The uh are wait, so are you an advocate? Is he an advocate of the p a peel after soak, rub the things off after soak? No, so I mean okay, so where where I'm coming down in it, and and again this might change if I do some more testing, but where I was was coming down in it up until I had his last night was that um uh you know it when I when I served it side by side to people, um, people mostly picked the one where they where they were peeled. Um but the other one was also way better than you know, the one where you just cook them to crap was way better than uh than anything else uh as well.
So it's it's like you can get you can get like 90% good hummus without peeling the chickpeas if you want that extra 10%. You know what though, peeling chickpeas is not that big. It's not that hard. It's not that hard. Yeah, you do like the with the gold panning method, right?
Uh yeah, also I just like put my hands in them like your soaks, and then yeah, and then I yeah. Yeah, you put them in water, rub them around with your hands, and then and then kind of skim off the skins that flip to the top. I find it strangely cathartic. Yeah, yeah. But you know, some people don't like doing stuff, stuff like that.
The one thing you don't want to use is canned chickpeas. I mean like in a pinch they taste okay. In a pinch they taste okay. Yeah, and and and again, you know, this is like inside by side taste tests, they don't taste okay, but nobody eats things side by side in real life. Do you ever do it with like the the smaller like Bengalgram stuff or you know only using Italian style or uh I've been using, yeah, just Italian style.
Hummus so hot right now. Hummus. So hot right now, hummus. The uh Okay. So I did I you know, I don't know if you know this.
I had to, this is years ago. I had to do raw vegan for a week and it was a horror show. It was just a complete horror show. Well the raw part is the part that doesn't make horse. I was an angry monster.
And when I went back on cooked food, my toilet thanked me. The I mean it's just and by the way, uh we haven't talked about this, but uh, you know, Richard Grangum, the guy who wrote uh um uh oh my god, the the how cooking made us human? Uh nope, but oh he's awesome. He's a professor at Harvard. Um and um Oh, I know that book, yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Why the actual title's out of my head. I just have the tagline, on fire, I think, or something like this. Uh so he's done a lot of amazing uh work uh uh on like uh primates and like how how long we would have to sit and eat to get nutrition from uh raw food diets, things like this.
So he's gonna come on the show. Uh we're trying to schedule it, we're not sure when, but he's gonna come on the show. We're gonna talk to him about his uh his book and how it relates to kind of cooking. But yeah, raw food. Well these days a lot of people do have time to sit around and eat a lot, right?
Yeah, he reviewed some of the data that was done on people on raw food diets uh and kind of how much they had to eat. And it's a great way to lose weight just because your body can't absorb a lot of the stuff that you're you're eating. So it's just a fantastic way to uh you know to lose weight. Two minutes, Dave. Two minutes.
All right, so you want to talk about uh I have to I have to read uh an anti-me rant and then uh we can talk about cock weighing cocktails. Okay, let's do uh let's do cocktails and then uh I'll rip through the anti-me rant. Okay, weighing cocktails. So yeah, so I I think I tweeted once a while back uh that uh why why don't more people weigh their co weigh their cocktail ingredients instead of measuring them in jiggers? And uh and then some people said yes, and then some people rightfully said no, that's stupid.
But I you know I I think I think really it comes down to context. Like if you know like I know I know what drinks I I drink at home and it's not a huge like I maybe make four or five different drinks at home, or like most of the time it's just a negroni, right? And if I'm making like three or four of them, um I find it's easier just to throw the thing on the scale, pour the stuff in, and I'm done. And I know the ratio, like I I don't have to carry it, I don't have to care about the density of the things because I know how much I want of each one and it's done, and I don't have to mess up a jigger, I just pour it into the glass and that's no but you always have to pour into another glass, because what if you overpowered? Well, you just don't overpour.
Well, no, but you'll like you never pour you never pour the liquid directly into the batch. It's not like cooking. It's like I pour it directly into my mixing glass. You're freaking savage. You're freaking savage.
Like you have no you have no you have no room for mistakes then. Uh well and it's also if I slightly overpour, I just don't care, right? Savage, then why weigh it all? Just do it by eye. That's that's yeah, that's a good question, I guess.
Anyway, let's read the anti-illusion of precision. Yes, yeah. Well, you know, a lot of times that's the case anyway. A lot of the stuff is just making yourself feel good with precision. With cooking, no, like this I I wrote a rant a bit about like recipes that have gram measurements and very, very precise amounts, and it's it's like use thirty-three grams of onions and it's stuff and stuff.
And that's like I think total illusion of precision because it's not like the onion I'm using today is the same as the onion I'm using next week or the one that you're getting in California or whatever, right? It's like you can use the same exact amount of ingredients and and come up with completely different flavors just because ingredients vary a lot. But but for some reason there are there are some people who like really want this kind of precision in a recipe, even if it's a sort of false precision. How often do you use a thermometer? Um when you're not testing for writing.
So these days not much because I don't cook meat very much at home, but when I cooked meat, all I mean I always use it for meat. Even when you roast a chicken? You use the thermometer on a chicken? Oh, it's I especially use it for roast chicken actually. Really?
Yeah, yeah, because well, because yeah, roast chicken is one of those things where I think if it if it gets slightly overcooked, it's not good anymore. Um chicken and turkey areas. Oh, because you're not a briner. I'm a dry briner. Yeah, yeah.
We we need another whole other show to get into these kind of uh arguments. Let me let me Jack, can I read this anti-me rant real quick? Real quick. Jack, uh thanks to the wonderful network. I am a big fan and admirer of Dave.
That said, this is about the Gaps diet. Do you know about the Gaps diet, Kenji? No. Yeah. Uh uh.
That said I have to admit that I'm rather disturbed that Dave got off topic to evaluate the Gaps diet for his listeners. I didn't evaluate it, by the way. I just said that I don't have any data on it. I don't know about it, but that things that I saw initially on it set off red flags, but not that I had the data. That was maybe long and didn't actually make the point.
But that was what I was trying to say is that flags were being raised about the presentation of the of the diet, but that I have no actual data on the diet. That was my take-home, by the way, just so you know, Kenji. All right. All right. Uh I'm I'm gonna have to family familiarize it.
Um I mean who's I say Hustino instead of instead of uh Jesus Christ, should make it a little more family friendly. Okay. Uh I mean Justino, where is uh where in the list of many things he's an expert on is human physiology and healing diets. The question should have been discarded as off topic and never brought to the fore. Uh but it has been, and Dave didn't even know where to begin talking about it, which is kind of what I said.
I don't know about this specific diet. I do know about some fad diets, like masterclans, it's a load of horse crap. Unless unless you love it, people, in which case, anyway. Uh bottom line is that uh this is a healing diet with a long history of success and a lot of endorsements from qualified medical professionals. I saw, you know, whatever.
Amazingly, it addressed problems with human microbiome before anyone was thinking of the human microbiome. If Dave will check all those ailments that Gap says it cures, uh all are identified by reports as ailments that are triggered by gut dysbiosis, autism, a bunch of things. More like associated with you know, most of the data. Anyway, um triggered by gut dysbiosis. Gaps fixes those problems and fixes them by just changing diet for a while.
Justino, it doesn't really have to be it doesn't have any products to sell, unlike real fad diets usually do. Usually, not always. Master cleanse. Uh anyway, if you would like to have uh an author of a popular level uh Gabs diet book on the air with Dave, I could arrange it. Well, I think he should never comment on food as medicine issues again since it's really not his area of expertise.
I do feel that he owes it to his listeners and gaps people to set the record straight as much as possible. The easy way would be to have an established commenter on the diet come on. Happy to arrange that. I'll still listen every week, of course, even if Dave was just packing sugar honey and iced tea when he addressed uh addressed that topic. Let me know.
Thanks. Alan Balliott from Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Yeah, I'll have someone on, but I mean I may I may look we'll see how much I know when the expert comes on, and we'll see whether or not we'll see what happens. I'm happy to have someone on, and I would love someone to come on and tell me that you know the red flags that are raised when I look at it are not red flags and that I'm you know a bad or unknowledgeable person. You typically don't uh talk you typically don't talk about diet and and health much, or I was asked specifically about it.
I avoid it, not because I don't think about it, but because in general, I think most proscriptive diet plans are horse hockey. Yeah. Unless someone proves to me otherwise, my general idea is because the human body is so freaking complex that most of the data that people rely on, and this is this is not I'm not talking off the top of my head here. This is based on not specifically the Gaps diet, because I haven't read about it, but like much, much waiting through horse like scientific horse hockey on many different diet things. I am just ex I am extremely cautious about people telling people that they can how they can change their lives by manipulating the extraordinarily complex and poorly understood system that is the human body.
Right. Fair enough. Thank you so much, Kenji, for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks, Kenji. The book is the Food Lab Better Home Cooking Through Science.
Available everywhere. Um that's it, Dave. All right. Thanks for listening to this program on Heritage Radio Network dot 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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