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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 Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from I don't know, like, you know, around 12, 12, 15, something like this.
From a bird's pitcher in Bushwick. Oh yeah. Uh today we have already in the studio, as usual, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Nastasia? Good.
Yeah. You got David in the booth. What up? Nothing. Uh we're waiting on.
So, by the way, I was having one of my usual unpleasant uh uh text exchanges with Nastasia earlier this morning, and I was saying, I think we should change your name from the hammer to the to the pit bull because it's the biting for no reason. Look, oh, I shouldn't go that way. Like, biting for no reason. I shouldn't make a joke at Pitbull's expense. Do you know that pit bulls like are like so discriminated against that uh basically in the New York, and this is what made me think of it in the New York City shelter system, right?
Almost I mean, uh I don't know about the public shelters, but in like the private shelters, like uh by the way, I just got another dog over the like over the weekend. Nastasia's doing her her uh like moron headshake. Is that the moron headshake? Yeah, the moron headshake. I mean, it's not a she's not mad at me, it's not like a vegan face, it's just a moron headshake.
Anyways, so I went to go get this dog, and um apparently any small dog can get adopted here. Any uh it basically pits can't get adopted and pit mixes, and so you know, if you can, you should adopt a pit mix. Why didn't you? I needed a s like look, I already have a dog, a large dog. The odds that like I would it I would get the okay, get the high sign for adopting another large dog, roughly zero.
You know, I think my kids like are old enough now to take on a dog that has some territorial, you know, like uh traits, whereas like when they were a lot younger, you know, you get a little nervous of having any kind of territorial dog around. So the like the lab was awesome, which is also sheltered dog, is awesome. But like um, at this point they can handle it, but I you know I couldn't handle the big so it's this min miniature, like they I said, uh what do you think the mix is? The guy goes, Heinz 57. Because it's just like a like a mixed mutton.
But anyway, if any of you are in the New York area and want to go to a shelter, I highly recommend Sean Casey Animal Rescue in Brooklyn. You can just go walk dogs, uh you you know, you show them your driver's license and you just walk dogs, you don't need to take one. But if you're a dog person and you show up and you start walking dogs, be aware that there's a high likelihood that you'll end up with one. Do you know what I mean? Because they're cute.
Dogs are dogs are dogs are cute. This guy looks like a little miniature version of my lab, even though it's like I don't think there's any lab in it. So Dax, my young son, was walking the small dog, and I was walking the big dog, and it's like a mini me walking a mini version of my other dog. It's kind of it's kind of crazy. Not that called mini me?
No, there's like a thing for that. There's a thing for a shrunken version of you and your dog walking next to you down the street? No. Man, they didn't teach me that in vocabulary school. Hey Dave, we got a caller on the line.
It's John Carson, who is Chef Emily Peterson's father has a question for you. Wow, nice. How you doing? Uh welcome welcome to the uh to the show. What's uh what's up?
Sure. We use we use Heinz ketchup and used to use gold horseradish. Right. And there's a assortment of other ingredients, which you may or may not need to know for for this. But when you would make the cock, that it would be about the consistency of ketchup.
And you could put that in the refrigerator overnight and take it out the next day, and it would still be the same consistency change. Right. A friend of mine gave me homemade horseradish that he makes. And I I did everything exactly the same. When you put the the cocktail sauce in the refrigerator, 24 hours later, it it has coagulated.
It's as it's like as solid as jello. Huh. And why is that happening? That is very interesting. I don't know.
So go so like Gold's, I haven't purchased uh Gold's in a while. For those of you that don't remember, Gold's is like it's the tall, skinny bottle uh, and it comes in either with beet or without beet, uh horseradish uh grated that you get in um in in supermarkets. It's like the brand that like we all grew up with. I don't I'm trying to remember the label on Gold's. Does it is it gold's have anything in it, or is it just shredded horseradish?
Don't do they vinegar it. There's vinegar in it. Emily actually read the ingredients, and there's nothing that and she thought it could have something to do with the in the and that the acidity level in the homemade horseradish was different. But I don't, you know, I don't know. But this is uh the guy who makes the horseradish, he knew that was gonna happen.
And he said it's not as bad as if if you use Hunts ketchup, but you know, why would you use Hunts? That's crazy. Yeah, well here's here's my here's my only theory. You you're does your friend not add anything? No offense to Hunt's, but I mean Heinz is the ketchup, please.
Anyway, um does your friend not add anything to the horseradish? Is it No, it's his in his horseradish, it's very simple. It's it's horseradish. There's no beets added, so it's horseradish, right? Vinegar, pepper, salt, and a little bit of sugar, and that's it.
Huh. See, here's what I here's what I'm thinking. Um my guess, and this is just a guess, is that uh there's a lower liquid content in your buddy's uh horseradish and straight up, that if you add a little bit of vinegar when you did it, that it would all turn out. There are two things that I think could be happening here. I don't believe Gold's horseradish is pasteurized, but I'm not sure.
In which case, if it's like a pectin leaking thing, that could be an issue, but but I but I don't know. Um my guess is it's a liquid thing. Ketchup is very, very is it's basically it's what's called like a thyxotropic uh liquid. So that under under shear uh under shear ketchup is acts like a liquid, and when it's not under shear, it acts like uh a solid, right? And my guess is that the horseradish is um is that horseradish with a certain amount of liquid keeps that thyxotropic balance the same.
Because remember, horseradish is also fibrous, so it's gonna add some stability uh or could add stability almost like fiberglass to it. And then if the liquid level is a little bit higher, it'll go liquidy very quickly as ketchup does. And if the liquid balance is lower, then it'll set up even uh firmer. By the way, we now have in the studio who can also win and weigh in on your question, uh Harold Harold McGee, the master blaster of science in the in the as it as it relates to the delicious. So Harold, the question we have on see whether you have anything else.
I know you heard the tail end of what I was saying. Hey, hey, I heard you I hear you heard the tail end of what I was saying there, but uh the question was we have a a horseradish, uh we have a cocktail sauce made with uh everything else remains the same, Hein's ketchup and you know uh whatever other you know flavor adjustments are added to it and either the store bought Gold's brand which is the East Coast brand which you may remember uh might be West Coast too of prepared horseradish versus someone else's homemade horseradish and the home homemade horseradish makes it set solid into a gel and my guess is it's just that the cocktail sauce is extremely sensitive to liquid balance. Huh sets into a gel that's a new one on me. Yeah I mean I don't know of any I don't know of any um uh special hydrocolloid in horseradish that uh you know may or may not be activated although I could be wrong. I I don't know about that either but I do know that horseradish has a very active uh peroxidase enzyme and that might be doing something that allows crosslinking that wouldn't otherwise take place.
Well is is the store bought horseradish um pasteurized? That's the question. I bet I mean how how else would it be shelf stable? I mean it's horseradish I don't know I mean I buy it's refrigered it it's refrigerated but when you buy gold it's definitely in the refrigerated but it may be pasteurized and the pasteurization may you know stop some of whatever they are the the the the from and this gels it gels I mean it it's not you know it's just it's not just like it's thicker. It's I mean there's a there's a chemical reaction going on here that it you know it it's it's it's a solid mess.
Well tomatoes are full of pectin, so uh I you know I don't know much about horseradish, but I mean if there is some sort of cross linking going on, I mean that's plausible, I guess. So you're saying that that's you know, you're lucky that Harold stopped by Yeah, and and that's gotta be something what it is. I'm gonna check and see if the gold is pasteurized. And if that's it, you know, and and then the other thing is do you care? I mean I've I've experimented around with just adding a little water to it the next day and mixing it up and it and it comes back and it's fine, but I was just curious why why that happens.
You know, and it's gotta be something like that. That the the it's some kind of reaction with the pectin in the ketchup. Hmm. Well, so yeah, so like I would look uh we we could look into like Harold's thing and so I guess but you do say you add a little bit of water and it comes back. Yeah, yes.
Yeah, that so that doesn't sound so much to me like crosslinking. Well, unless it just breaks unless you just unless adding liquid, you're literally just breaking it almost like you'd be making a fluid gel. In which case you're taking a light gel and breaking it, you know, into a into a fluid gel. After you break it and it comes back, does it hold peaks better than regular I mean cocktail sauce holds a peak pretty well as is because it's you know it's the th takes atropic things, so it's I I haven't I haven't really experimented with it that much. Hmm.
One of those things now it's like a you can't scratch, I gotta figure this out. Yeah. Well, uh I don't know. I mean I I'll uh I'll try to remember over the uh over the week to do some searches on uh horseradish and uh and pectin and gelling, see whether I can figure anything out. You know, maybe Harold will too.
I never know what you never know what's gonna pique Harold's interest. This sounds very interesting. So yeah, I'll I'll play around with it this weekend. Well we'll uh we'll uh we'll look into it. All right, well thanks.
It's a good one. All right, all right. I if necessary, I could send you some samples and and you can you can look at this. Yeah. I could drop some off at the radio station.
I go I go into Brooklyn about every other week, and I've actually been there on Emily's show a couple of times. I can make it a point of of I can bring you I tell you what I can do. I can bring you the ingredients and you can put it together and then you can you can watch it, Joe. That sounds great. I'll do it.
Yeah. And then you get some cocktail sauce out of the deal. Yeah, all right, which is you know always good. I like uh especially in the summertime. I know I like some uh cold shrimp and cocktail sauce.
You like some cold shrimp and cocktail sauce, does it okay? Wait, you're not a fan of wait, is it a fan? You're not a fan of cocktail sauce? You're not a fan of cold shrimp. Both.
I don't choose it, I'll eat it. I'll eat it. All right, all right. Well thanks. Another yet another thing.
Although this is better than normal Nastasia. She's like, I'll eat it. So before we get into the meat and potatoes of the show, and Harold's here, so I'm sure people are gonna want to call in for some Harold McGee style questions. A couple of things. One, Harold was here last week for impossible burger, erger, erger, erger.
Right. And then you're actually here again for the impossible uh food group, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
The sweet, and I don't know if anyone's gonna want to call in and ask questions about uh GMO, uh heme protein, uh vegetable, coconut you know, oil, um burger alloys. Sounds more and more delicious. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, but like it's interesting. Uh it's a it's like I think it's like of the level of like, you know, uh uh a mediocre hamburger, which is uh saying a lot.
Yeah. Go going from scratch to that, yeah, is is impressive. And the thing is that they've got uh they're they're scientists. So this is you know, stage one, and they're gonna move on and on and on. Sure.
It's like an incredibly impressive first effort, I would say. Yeah. That's what I would say. Yeah. And the the the blood note, the the the kind of sucking on iron note, bueno.
Did you taste it at time, Nastasia? No. Did you didn't go to that event with me? Okay. So that's one.
Two, uh, Harold's here last week and did not get to see the amorphophalus titanum, the the giant, even Titanic shapeless penis flower, the world's largest single inflorescence. The actual the largest branched inflorescence, Nastasia is not from uh uh in the Arms. It's actually in the Acacia, the palm family, as I was told by someone at the botanical garden. Uh-huh. Which is interesting because one, the the families sound very similar.
But the uh or the orders, I guess. Anyway, but the um, yes, I saw it. Uh when I saw it, it was not at max by the way. So the interesting thing from a food perspective, and the reason why you bring it up is that uh amorphophalus uh uh titanum is uh or titanum, I don't know, is like first cousin. And by the way, the flower in the wild gets to be about inflorescence, it's not a single flower, but gets to be about twelve feet tall in Sumatra, where it comes from.
And uh it's pollinated by uh carrion flies and whatnot. And so it smells, and this one smells uh a lot actually like rotting mouse, is what it smells like. It smells like rotting mouse. But it it's it's like first cousin, uh if you consider genus relations cousins, it's first cousin to conjac, like what you make conjac out of uh the the food stuff, which also smells, but it's apparently a much more heady brew of scents, according to docs that you sent me, right, Harold? That's right, yeah.
I don't remember exactly what the mix is for conjac, but uh but it's it's the the inflorescence, right? So the the root itself, does it need deodorizing before it's used? No, no, no, no, no. It uh literally it doesn't smell until it opens up and uh it produces the stink in the inflorescence, and in fact, um the inflorescence itself, uh a portion of it will heat up, I guess due to um you know to metabolic activity will heat up a couple degrees above ambient to help release of the waft. Um Do you think you would have wanted to see that, St.
I didn't I didn't even invite you because I figured you wouldn't even that's not your jam, right? You like flowers but not rotting flowers. When I showed up at uh they opened uh the botanical garden early, I showed up at nine a.m. and Dax and I went, we just walked in. And then at 10 when I left, there was like the equivalent of a three-block line trying to get in to see a stinky flower.
Just goes to show you the lengths that New Yorkers will go through to see a stinky flower. Not just New Yorkers. I mean, I was in from California, I saw that this was happening. I was watching the the uh corpse flower cam regularly to see if it would it would open while I was here, and was sorely disappointed. In fact, you and I were in the touch.
I was I was maybe gonna delay my flight. I'm glad I didn't because it it stayed closed for another couple of days. But anyway. Anyway, so uh but you know, you should uh go check out there's gotta be someone, I think Davis has a couple. UC Davis has a couple, but I think they're held uh kind of privately, they don't necessarily put them on display.
Yeah, and I heard that actually someone had one in Berkeley a couple of years ago. Well maybe that's there's a yeah, there's a wiki list. Yeah. Uh-huh. But did you you didn't get to obviously see the No, heard about it after the fact.
So listen, if any of you listening have in the San Francisco Bay Area or within, I don't know, probably probably a hundred mile radius or so, and you want Harold McGee to come smell your flower, I'm sure he will come smell your flower. Or if you're growing any form of uh of uh carrion uh fly um or any sort of dung dung uh insect uh pollinated uh arum family flower, I'm sure Harold would love to come smell. Am I wrong? You're not wrong, no. Yeah, I mean like you know, conjac.
Look, the amorphofallus titanium, the corpse flower, has uh uh you know it has the the problem that it only blooms, it doesn't bloom for at least 10 years after you after it's you know started and then and then it blooms once and then uh doesn't bloom again for another like four to seven, eight years. And so the bloom is like 36 hours, right? Yeah, yeah, 24 to 36 hours, and like to make it even harder, it's it's like a very picky, you know, it really just wants to grow uh in Sumatra and like nowhere else. So every anywhere else you try to grow it, it's a it's a huge kind of uh it's a cordal you. All right.
So speaking of gardening, I have some stuff I brought. Oh, do you want to do dump meals now or do you want to do dump meals after the break? After the break. Nastasia's sister, our dump meals correspond. By the way, Harold, a dump meal is where you just take like uh like like a short list of ingredients, throw them into a crock pot, walk away, and then eat it.
Uh-huh. Hence, you dump the stuff into the crock pot, and then that becomes your meal. And so Nastasia's recently college graduated sister is our dump meal correspondent. And she called in and I was, and apparently I was like horrifying to her. I was mainly horrified at the at the dump meal, right?
Uh fixated on her washing chicken. You don't wash chicken. Anyway, um USDA says wash chicken. Really? Oh, wait a minute.
No, no, no. No, they say don't wash chicken. They flipped the chicken. Don't wash chicken. Three, four years ago they flipped.
Yes, you know, and and because it's gonna spray spray salmonella everywhere. Spray salmonella all over the place. Uh yeah, and but my point is is that like this is yet another reason why, like most people's recommendations are garbage. Because people flip back and forth. People you ask someone a question.
You ask a USDA person, hey, should I wash chicken? And they've never run the experiment, they've never run the freaking test. They're like, yeah, you should wash chicken, right? Me, it's just why the hell would you wash a chicken? You know what I mean?
Like, like, I'm not thinking about like this or that, a boop of people bought. You're gonna cook the freaking chicken. Why are you gonna wash the freaking chicken, right? Here's why I wash my freaking chicken. All right.
Because often when I buy a chicken, it kind of stinks. All right. This I'm not I'm not saying anything against your chicken. Uh but listen, listen, Harold. I remember this was oh, two decades ago, back before duck was fairly common, right?
As a thing you could buy uh in a soup. I mean you could buy it, but you know what I mean. It wasn't something that they sold a lot of. So I bought a duck. And it was in one of those classic, like poultry tubes that they put like chicken and ducks in, right?
That seal in stank, and they're they they didn't used to be modified anything. They were just tubes. And then uh they would presumably freeze them in the tube, ship them, thaw them out, and then they'd sit god knows how long until somebody, some knucklehead who wanted to cook a duck, you know, because back then Americans cooking ducks, like, what are what are you, French? You know what I mean? So, like, I bought the duck and I opened it up and it stank.
I mean, it's stank. It's stank. And and by the way, what stank means in this case is lots of bacteria are growing on it. Right? And so, like, I was like, it's still good, it's still good, I can fix it.
I can fix it because it was dinner. You know what I mean? People were coming over, it was dinner. I didn't expect that uh all of a sudden my main protein, the centerpiece, this duck I had been thinking about, was gonna be garbage. So then what do I do?
I attempt to wash it off to get the stink away. It still stinks a little bit. I put soap on the freaking duck to try to wash it off. And then I say to myself, Oh, am I gonna eat this freaking duck that stinks that's going bacterially wrong? That is garbage, that is like just like, no, no, I'm not.
And and that's kind of maybe when like my aversion to watching poultry started. When I realized that I was using it as an excuse to try to serve my family garbage. And when I realized that I was a severe enemy of quality in that, I probably overdeveloped a reaction in the other direction. You see what I mean? That's I'm just telling you like the the analysis of where I come from on this on this poultry washing situation.
Now the USDA though, like it's like, you know, someone that's the problem. It's like doctors when you ask them advice on on nutrition, they just say something that sounds good, they haven't actually run the test. Really, the USDA person would say, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad.
Who knows? I don't know. Do it if you want. You know what I mean? It's like, in the absence of data, don't make recommendations.
Yeah. Yeah. Unless they're just personal preference. Yeah. Or say, this is what we think might happen.
So we think maybe it would be better not to. So if you have a chicken that you deem has like a little bit of smell, but maybe it's gonna be okay when you eat it, you want to wash it. I mean, I think that's fine. I'm fine with that. But just they like like deregur washing your chickens when you open them.
Yeah. Why do it? Yeah. No, I agree. Uh and usually when uh the the chickens that I buy when they have a problem, it's on the inside.
So I I don't actually mess with the outside that much. I blot it so it'll crisp up better, but I but I do rinse the inside. Right. Well, there's also like a lot like uh you know how when they do like a bad butchering and they leave a bunch of lung on the inside? Yeah, I'll rinse the lung out because you know it's just easier.
Yeah. Now the flip side, some things have things that smell terrible in them or are are tastings that aren't spoilage issues, and those things I rinse constantly. Fish. Fish, you know, uh most of the time when you uh buy it a hole, they haven't uh cut the vessels along the spine and rinsed all that kind of uh blood out. I do that.
Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Yeah. And and stuff just happens on the surface no matter what. I mean, uh rinsing fish makes a huge difference.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm totally pro-rinsing fish. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying?
I think but the thing is like you're but USDA would say same problem, right? Bacteria. But this is why you shouldn't listen to them. You should rinse it if it makes it taste better and not rinse it if it doesn't make it taste better. Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think we're in total agreement here. But like I was I apparently pissed off Nastasia's sister. So now she she claims she has a meeting or a boss's show.
So it's quite a preamble to this whole thing. Yeah, she claims that uh that she's not calling in because she has a meeting, but really she doesn't want to, she's like now she's filing her report, her dunk meal reports with Nastasia. But what makes it difficult is it's harder, it's easier for me to like you know go after things if I know exactly if I can query like why certain decisions were made or not. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Oh, so I have some stuff for us to taste. First of all, I brought the latest now. For those of you that longtime listeners, you will know that uh uh Nastasia and I, and I think maybe did Peter was there? Was he there that time?
Had some of uh Harold McGee's delicious uh walnuts, Harold's Harold's nuts. But then we have a new version of McGee's nuts here that uh and you want to talk about them? I brought them some so Nastasia can uh can sample them. She's now she hasn't had them before, so she can uh yeah? Yeah, yeah.
So uh I went to Turkey a couple of years ago, and one of the things I did in Istanbul was visit a place that made baklava, and uh we were given little samples of the things that they were making, and I was amazed at the flavor of the pistachios, which were compared to California pistachios, tiny and dark, dark green and just incredibly aromatic. So I bought some and brought them back and shared them with you because I know you're a pistachio fan. And uh I also uh prevailed upon a friend uh who may have been on the show, uh Ariel Johnson. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. She's been a couple times.
Yeah. Uh so she at the time was at UC Davis. I was in San Francisco. I told her about these amazing pistachios. She said, Why don't you bring them up to the lab over the weekend and we'll put them on a machine that's not being used and see if we can figure out why they're so different from the the California.
So we did a gas chromatography mass spectrometry olfactometry test on these two batches of uh of pistachios uh and found that basically they have identical chemical compositions. It's just that the Turkish ones had like 50 times the quantity of the volatiles that gave the aroma. And they they were so fragrant that they to me they smelled like mangoes. Right. So they were fragrant not in the way that like bronte pistachios are.
They were fragrant in a different way. Yeah, uh fruity. I mean, incredibly fruity. Now bear in mind, for those of you that don't you know pay attention to the botany here, they are actually related to mangoes. I mean, distantly.
They're all anacardasia-e, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh anyway, so that that was a wonderful experience.
So uh a couple of weeks ago I was in uh Oxford for the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. And uh my Turkish friend Eileen Tan was there, and uh we knew we were gonna see each other, so she wrote me for Miss Stone Bowl. This is like you know, a week before the coup, uh coup attempt, and said, Anything I can bring you? So I said, pistachios and pistachios and some pistachios. So she brought me two different batches, which we've got here.
One is the standard Turkish pistachios, which are larger. Do you like pistachios? Do you like pistachios? Do you like pistachio nuts, pistachio? Yeah, all right, all right.
So smell these. These are the standards. They smell like nuts. And then the uh special ones for baklava making, which apparently are not sold on uh in the market generally. They're sold only to manufacturers.
Mm-hmm. You get the difference? Yeah, this one smells more. Taste smells more. Nastasia, the the poetry of your descriptions is remember not to chew on the mic, people freak out.
I know. If they freak out. Daniel. What do you think? Good.
Really good. Yeah. Taste a little mango in there? Something? I mean, they're they're super fruity.
They're nuts, but they're fruity and nutty. But they're you know what I I think I told you I had some black walnuts, American black walnuts, that I think had gone rancid and fruity as a result of rancidity. Uh-huh. Like so it's like rancid fruity notes. Yeah.
Uh but these are not like that. These are good fruity notes. Yeah, these are so rancid uh aromas are are like fatty acids and alcohols and aldehydes and things like that. These are terpenes. So they're formed by the plant uh early in the development of the nut, and I guess they get diluted with as the nut gets bigger.
I guess they're they're there to protect the nut, and so they're really concentrated to begin with, and then as the nut gets older and uh the shell g gets hard and that kind of thing, um maybe it doesn't need as much chemical uh protection, so the the flavor gets milder. So when you're young, you protect the nut. You gotta protect your nuts when they're young. Yeah, when you're old like me, you don't need them anymore. Useless.
You're going with the nuts. Is that a Wu-Tang B-side? Protect your nut. Protect your nuts, oh, it should be. It should be.
Yeah, so these are nuts. Now the reason they don't harvest used normally is just they're more expensive to do because you lose out on the harvest. Yeah. So they're uh they're apparently not for general sale. They're only sold to baklava makers.
Now why do the baklava people care that much about like the quality difference of their nuts? I guess to make a better baklava, I don't know. See, but why don't they but they must make friends of quality. They must friends of quality, but they must actually believe that the other ones are better eating nuts. Maybe because they have 'em both, they actually must believe that the bigger ones are better eating nuts and these are better pastry nuts.
Could be. Could be, yeah. Maybe uh otherwise there'd be a market. They just charge more. Yeah, yeah.
Uh yeah, good question. Maybe maybe in a place that has pistachios galore, people are not willing to pay a whole lot of money for them just as a general eating nut. Yeah. So nut eating. Oh, speaking of young uh seeds, nuts.
Uh so I have this uh pumpkin. So it turns out that I have this uh garden patch up in uh Connecticut, and it's um it's like cucumbit fantasy freaking land. So like cucumbers go freaking bananas, and I didn't know this because I hadn't ever planted a pumpkin before. Pumpkins go freaking nuts. And I planted like a a pumpkin that's actually a Connecticut variety, I forget the name of it, but it's from Connecticut.
And it's one of the ones that's designed to become giant, like a couple hundred pounds. And uh and I was gone for a couple of weeks. I came uh came back and looked at it, and it's like Jack and the beanstalk, the sucker had punched through both sides of the garden. And uh uh one of the pumpkins on I have to thin them out so that they get big, right? But one of the pumpkins that uh I was gonna consider keeping in the span of two weeks, it had it had grown through a a fence.
It was the size of like a tennis ball or a racquetball, uh, and it had grown into 10 10 pound pumpkin over the course of like two weeks. And it it it snapped itself off because the the vine could no longer hold it through the fence. It was like through a uh like a what is it, you know, like uh chicken wire fence. It was through it, it snapped it off, and so I took it, right? Because I'm gonna harvest them anyway.
But they like there is almost no information on the internet about uh young pumpkins. Even though I'm sure everyone who tries to grow big pumpkins is thinning pumpkins out. There's nothing, there's nothing on them. And what's interesting is the skin is very, very thin and delicate because you haven't uh cured it at all, right? When you cut it open, the pith between the seeds hasn't uh fully, it's like still kind of solid, so it's kind of hard to scoop it out.
Uh the flesh is actually really good. I made uh I made uh like a uh a pumpkin pomzan with it. You know, like I I cut the pumpkin, roasted it down a little bit, but was gentle with it so it didn't get all smashed up, and then layered it like uh like you would for like a lasagna or something like that. But I did it Mexican, I did it with Oaxaca and string cheese and cotija because that's what I have in my fridge. You know what I mean?
Uh-huh. So it's not bad. You know what I mean? It ain't it look, Parmigiano is Parmigiano, cotilla is cotilla, but it made it's good. It's more of like uh, you know, like a Mexican, Italian pumpkin casserole.
You know what I mean? Anyway, yeah. And then uh pumpkin's new world anyway. And then and then later I took the rest of it because again, it's 10 pounds. I'm not gonna eat it in one day.
I I actually did hack it up with a pasta and uh rehydrated uh uh shiitakis and more of an Italian style with uh you know with fusili and you know actual parmigiano. It was delicious, but delicious. But so they're very good, and you can actually eat them raw, and they have the texture of a melon, but they don't have melon taste, and they don't even have that much pumpkin taste. They're very light. They're like the watermelon of pumpkins when they're like that.
So there's a they're a lot uh they're uh more refreshing, even raw. They have a lot of latexy stuff. So you know how when you cut pumpkins, you your fingers get that like second skin on them, that gross second skin when you're cutting pumpkins. Yeah, it skins the hell out of your hands. Uh but you know, I just peeled it with a veg uh veg peeler, uh chopped it up, and it's it's it's nice, it's refreshing, it's good.
Um, so it's a lot less pumpkin y even than like a calabaza melon, which is like pretty mellow in flavor, you know what I mean? And when it cooks up, it holds its flavor and doesn't uh holds its shape and doesn't mush out. So it stays real, it's soft as hell, but it stays intact, it doesn't instantly pulp out. But the most interesting thing, which I brought for you guys to taste, is the seeds. The seeds are almost the size of full-grown pumpkin seeds, but and I salted these a little bit, but they're soft, and you can eat them like cucumber seeds.
These are totally uncooked, but they're they're almost full size, like pumpkin seeds. I didn't s I just put out a little salt, but they're otherwise uncooked, unseasoned, just rinsed out of the pumpkin. Hmm. That's good. They're great, right?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very refreshing. They're they're chilled, which helps. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but like I I would mix these into a salad any day. You know what I mean? I also roasted some and they were good, but they lost some of that snap and texture. What do you think, Nastasia hater of things? I like them.
Yeah, they're good, right? So people out there who are growing pumpkins. I looked on the like I say on the internet, I couldn't find any good information. Someone was like, throw 'em away, they're useless. Put 'em in compost.
Feed 'em to, you know, feed 'em to rabbits, feed them to pigs. The fact of the matter is, is there's a lot of delicious stuff to do with these young pumpkins, and it's not insubstantial. I fed my family for two days, including when guests came over, on this one freaking pumpkin that would have been culled and tossed into a ditch by most people. Yeah. Young pumpkin.
Chat room is suggesting a pumpkin dump meal. Pumpkin dump meal, pump dump, pump and dump. You know who? Mark Ladner. Mark Ladner, it that's his favorite cooking term.
He's like when you when you ha when he's doing an event, I'm like, hey, Mark, what'd you bring to the event? No, no. Pump and dump. Pump and dump. It's like, right?
It means something that's easy to do at events. You know, you pump out of like whatever bottles and dump. There uh uh obviously he's doing it at a very high level. Uh all right, I brought some more crap to taste. Do you want to taste the poisonous stuff first or last?
Last. Last? Uh you you stage it how you like. All right. Well, just in case we die, let's start with the non-poison stuff first.
So uh Can we take a call then after the tasting? I'll take a call. I'll take a call while uh while I'm while I'm while I'm saying let me say what it is, and then while I'm pouring it, we'll take the caller, all right. So I have uh uh I'm testing centrifuges out and uh I don't think we're gonna talk more about the centrifuge today, but I'm testing centrifuges out, and uh what what that means is I have a whole boatload of uh clarified orange juice like like around my house, right? Because I d I can just go buy it, right?
And it and it it clarifies rough in a roughly similar fashion to other citruses and things, and which is a big thing that we're clarifying, the centrifuge. So I have like gallons of clarified OJ uh in my house. And so I was like, hey, I start fermenting it. So I've been fermenting it. This is my uh first fermented batch.
Now I actually uh interestingly like um I think it tasted better uh when I first made it. I think this is like a month old now. So I think it tasted a little better when I first made it. Uh but this one was I have a batch that I just made, but it hasn't bottle carved up yet. But uh this batch was made with uh orange juice, which is about 11 bricks, uh taken up to about 15.
Oh and it got shaken up on the right over, taken up to about 15 with uh white sugar. But I have one with uh with honey as well. Uh-huh. But this is just pouring all over the ground is what it's doing. I'll say don't worry, it's sticky.
No kidding. It's very dry. It's like super dry. And what's interesting is is that even though I don't really like clarified orange juice because the the bitterness of the orange pulp is gone, right? Uh when you're when you're using it, uh I actually quite like this because the bitterness uh after all the sugar is fermented out uh comes back.
All right. So while I'm waiting for this thing to stop, uh, let me put it this way the bottle was a little uh shall we say excited. Uh why don't we take a caller while I'm pouring can I have a glass and stuff? So you're just sitting there looking at me like it's like some sort of like all right, caller, you're on the air. Hey guys, this is uh Tyler from EC Davis.
Hey. How's it going? Yeah, go impossible foods. Oh, impossible foods, yeah. So you uh Hi Tyler.
So nice to hear your voice. I was wondering if there's a scientific reason for scalding milk or cream in the pastry recipe, since usually they're they're pasteurized. Hello. Uh scalding milk or cream. Um well uh even when they're pasteurized, they're they're they've still got stuff in them.
And um, you know, back in the old days, uh it may not have been pasteurized, they may not have been pasteurized. Uh at this point, you you may not know how old it is. So I guess it's it might just be a way of sort of standardizing the microbiological quality. Great, scalding. I even isn't I I always well, I I was chewing out for one second because I had this uh I had uh I was pouring stuff and getting stuff dripped all over me.
But anytime I see scalded milk in a recipe, I think it's uh uh a throwback recipe. Right? Which recipe are we talking about here? Uh uh pastry cream and things like that. I mean, I think of this, I think it's like a a throwback, right?
Could be. I mean, has anyone done a side-by? I always follow recipes just because it's easier to follow a recipe than it is to have a failed recipe afterwards, unless you're specifically testing out a theory. Yeah, yeah. I mean, something else that it's gonna do is uh is change the flavor.
Uh for sure. The question is whether at the end of the process of making whatever you're making, you're gonna notice that flavor difference or not. But scalded milk, scalded cream tastes very different than uh than plain pasteurized either one. What about la uh UHT pasteurized? Um yeah, I th I think if you scald that it's gonna taste different too.
I mean, the amount of time and the temperature that any milk product reaches, the longer it stays at that elevated temperature, the more the flavor changes. Yeah. And and the more the proteins are messed with, and the more X, Y, and Z. So in general, when you're selling something in a store, you mess with it the least amount that you can uh, you know, in you know, to have it sell before it spoils. What about parmelot?
You think scalding parmelot's gonna do anything? Parmelot. Um, that tastes pretty cooked to begin with, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Um, so I mean uh as with all questions like this question, what I would do is a side by side, right? Just make the same recipe with and without scalding and see whether anybody notices any difference, whether you notice any difference during the process of the making, you know, whether it makes a difference to the process. Um my guess is that there are small differences, but they're not gonna be that significant. Right, and especially for things like that that you're not really relying on the chemistry of the milk. So I think like small amounts of heat difference and small amounts of uh of uh changing the uh conformation of the of the of uh uh the ingredients in milk can make a huge difference in things like cheese making.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh but even yogurt making. I mean, uh you you get a much thicker set if you scald the milk first. Right.
But you they but here you're but there you're relying on the chemistry of the casein uh you know and and the micels to to what you're working on. In like a pastry cream, you're not. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't guess.
I don't know. Yeah. That's my theory. Sticking to it. Cool.
Thanks so much. Alright, thank you. All right, to taste this, detaceous. What do you think, guys? It's just orange juice.
Yeah, it's kind of weird. You have a weird flavor. You're weird. It's orange juice. I'm washing that that noises me washing the uh the the orange juice off my hand.
But it's is it drier than you thought? Yeah. It's really dry. That bitterness at the end is from the orange juice. That grapefruit bitterness at the end of it is present in the OJ, completely masked by the sugar.
Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. I like it. The bitterness to me is refreshing, like beer bitterness. It's almost like it's got like a bitterint in it.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and the and the fruitiness is toned down, I think, because there is so little or or no sugar. Yeah. So there's just not that kind of reinforcement from the taste.
Yeah. Interesting stuff. I like it. I'm pro. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, uh Sunday morning brunch. Yeah. Yeah. This thing's uh right now clocking in probably somewhere between eight and ten percent alcohol.
So uh higher than beer, but lower than almost anything else. Like lower than you know, any normal wine or anything like that. All right, so what? Should we oh should we do we have time? Should we take our quick break and then come back?
No, I would just go through. You gotta get to that guy's question. Alright, so uh may answer the question before we eat the poison. I'll have you guys distribute the poison. So I brought uh some poisonous stuff.
So the um uh pot of what's it called? Pot of pot of phylum, the the American uh mandrake, uh, the may apple is uh an awesome looking leaf. You ever seen that leaf? It looks crazy. The leaf looks awesome, Nastasi.
It's like super green, big leaf. They're really low. And each plant only has like a couple of leaves, like two leaves, and they they they they um they grow by underground runners, so they kind of self-propagate themselves. And they produce the entire plant is poisonous. And so it was it's been used uh uh as poison uh by Native Americans, it's used as uh a medicine as a huge cathartic in small amounts.
Uh the resin, which is obtained from the uh rhizome, I think it's a rhizomatic thing, uh, is used as a topical wort remover, but uh there's been uh people who've overapplied it and uh they've and they die. Uh so this is my lead up to having you eat it. But the fruit of the May apple is uh incredibly delicious once it's ripe. Once it's ripe, it's incredibly delicious. The problem is very hard to get them because as soon as they ripen, they uh they're eaten by all the animals.
So uh last week I harvested them all when they were still a little green, and then I wrapped them in plastic in case they self-produce ethylene so that they would uh you know increase their ethylene production. And the question is is uh is uh is is the may apple a climacteric fruit? Will it self-ripen after it's been removed? Answer yes. It will uh soften and it will yellow.
Uh and so uh my theory is is that if it smells tropical and is soft, that it will not be poisonous. Now, you don't want to eat the seeds because the seeds are also poisonous. Well, it's thought that the seeds are poisonous. So if you guys want to inspect these, uh I brought two of them with me. If you guys want to inspect these while I get to the uh questions that we have.
All right. All right. Rich McDonough wrote in. By the way, we had a we have a question in about uh cocktails for Burning Man, but we're saving that for next week when Jordana Rothman, who has made cocktails at Burning Man, is going to be on the show to discuss it because we figured it'd be it's better to just have someone on the show who's actually done it so that and and uh I'm the only person apparently who gets sassy with Jordanna. Yeah, right.
Yeah. True. Yeah. Right? Yeah.
Okay. Um thanks for doing the show. And by the way, uh he calls out Nastasia, Peter, who's not here, but um, you know, you can stand in for Peter Harrell so yours you go. New engineer, that's David, and the ghost of Jackie Molecules. So nice.
The ghost of Jackie Molecules. Uh, have enjoyed doing pressure infusion uh in the EC or ISI, depending on uh what era you're talking about. So this is uh we're talking about nitrous infusion where you use uh nitrous oxide to inject uh liquid into an item under high pressure and then you boil it back out and you do fast infusions. Uh I've just got a hold of a large tank of medical grade nitrous oxide. Uh now listen, listen.
And 2.5 and five gallon corny kegs, which will take up to 130 psi plus a high pressure regulator, which will manage around 120 psi before the safety valve kicks in. Um you've mentioned pressure infusion in a keg was possible in liquid intelligence, but didn't go into details. As this is still much lower pressure than an ISI, I assume I need to adjust recipes and let it sit for longer, but how much longer should I go without risking bitterness from materials such as cacao nibs? Any other tips and tricks you can share would be great. Sheers, Rich.
Okay. Uh okay, so listen, it's actually, not uh that much uh it's not that different. So if you go uh on uh Amazon look inside Nastasia, can you get Amazon? Do you have that on your phone? I don't have the app.
Uh if anyone actually, hey David, can you uh do liquid intelligence look inside and then uh look up pressure chart and see see whether it's there. I thought I had it on my phone, but uh I don't. But in liquid intelligence, my book, which you can buy on Amazon. Uh the um there's a uh chart of the uh pressures inside of an ISI bottle uh and it literally lists directly what your particular recipe will produce inside of the bottle for a given fill amount uh at a given ethanol concentration with a given number of chargers. Now there are two numbers there.
I think I gave both numbers. If not, I'll have to go and find I'll try to post a picture of it. Uh the number is the initial pressure, which is important but not the most important, and second is the final pressure, which is what you're not going to be able to achieve the initial pressure, but you probably will be able to achieve the final pressure. So the the issue is is that if you have uh uh five gallons quite a bit, I would do it in the 2.5s because um it's not like unless you are a gorilla, it is not easy to vigorously shake a five-gallon container uh under pressure. It's just not, you know what I mean?
Uh oh, oh another thing, uh I forgot to mention, oh stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. Listen, the difference between an ISI and uh a keg is that when you're doing a ISI, all of the gas is delivered at once at a high pressure, and then that pressure drops as you shake it. In a corny keg, you're delivering the pressure at the pressure, and you must shake it until you get to an equilibrium pressure inside. So you have to keep the uh the valve hooked onto the keg as you're shaking, which adds to the difficulty of doing it. So you have to keep the thing on as you're shaking.
You have to shake vigorously, do not turn it upside down or stuff will leak back into because those things, like I say, don't have check valves in them. So you have to hold it and shake the ever-loving hell out of it, up and down, up and down, up and down, until you stop hearing gas come out of the tank. Then you know you've reached uh um equilibrium relatively close to equilibrium. And then you let it sit for your predetermined amount of time and then you vent it. Now if you can't get pressures close to the ones that you get in the ISI, but my feeling is you can I don't know if David has found the the relevant document or not.
I have it where am I looking let's just for for craps like look at the final pressure on I think I gave 40% ethanol in a half liter whipper with two chargers. Is that on that chart? Where is the chart exactly in that you have to just ask for a pressure chart and it should find it somewhere. Okay one second. Yeah.
So anyway, you should be able to get to it. So as long as you with that caveat that you shake it until you stop hearing a lot of gas go in, which means you've reached equilibrium, everything else should be the same the venting, everything else should be the same. One more note of caution do not, do not, do not I don't care if you do whip it balloons with it or whatever. The way people die with nitrous oxide once they have the tanks is they put a mask on their face and they pass out. And there's not oxygen supply.
It won't kill you. If you had actual if you had a proper oxygen mix going in with the nitrous while you are breathing it, you would pass out and you wouldn't die. Uh and if you remove the mask you revive very quickly. The real danger is people asphyxiate themselves with the mask and it happens more often than you'd think. So uh do not under any circumstances ever put a uh mask uh over like uh attach a mask to this and like go uh and do uh mask shots of nitrous with your bodies.
Just don't. Just don't do it. Um all right so uh we'll see if David can come up with this stuff. And meanwhile, you want to, Harold, are you down for tasting or not? Does it smell tropical?
I have a question. Yes. Have you tasted one? Last year. Let me tell me see this one.
This I tasted last year's. Uh-huh. Last year's but fully ripe. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So this really is, we really are guinea pigs here.
Oh, yes. Is that right? Okay. Oh, it smells very tropical. Let me see here.
Oh, yeah, smell that. Even if you don't taste it, smell that. I'm gonna taste a little bit because come on. Yeah, just describe the flavors. Uh the aromas, rather.
Uh actually, to me it smelled a little like cherries, like benzaldehyde kind of. Plus passiflora. Uh-huh. It's got passion fruit note, too. Okay, so a little sulfur action.
It's good. It's really good. It might, it's one of my favorite fruits. And this tastes like what you tasted last year? Yep.
It's one of my favorite fruits. It's got tropical, it's got banana notes. Don't eat the seeds. Spit them out if you get any. It's got like banana notes.
It's got like passion fruit notes. It's got like. That is good. Yeah. That is freaking delicious, right?
Stas, are you up for it or no? Oh, thank you. No thanks. All right. So listen.
These seeds, everyone should do these. Everyone should do the seeds. All right. Alright, we got one minute. Why don't you do give us a dump meal report?
Oh, she made um she made root beer pulled pork. Pork butt, root beer, soy sauce, salt, and pepper. I said all together. She said yes, how else? And so what was the what was the uh she said I didn't like it?
Uh why? She said tasted like ass. It just tastes like root beer, but the pulled pork really pulled easily. I said, but it tasted bad. She said wasn't great.
That's it. Tasted like ass, huh? That's a technical description in that because it was pork butt or because she is an aficionado of ass tastings. Yeah. Anyway, hard to know.
So listen, I had I had a question I didn't get to. Uh I was gonna talk more about uh our 23 year old friend's espresso machine problems, but I guess we'll get to that next week when Jordana is on. And she'll I'll berate her for her cocktails, and she'll berate me for my espresso machine uh advice. Um anything uh anything you want to add, Harold, to this uh tropical fruit uh temperate temperately grown tropical fruit taste. Uh we need to grow more may apples.
Yeah, may apples is freaking delicious, right? It's freaking delicious. Cooking issues. 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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