I do my show on the Heritage Radio Network because I think it's important to talk about the impact of technology on our lives. I do my show to reach home cooks and help them do better. I love getting together with people in the industry. I like hosting my show because to me it's the stories about people and their relationship to food that help make the food more interesting and more delicious. Our hosts do their shows as a labor of love, but we still need your financial support in order to keep the lights on and keep the tape rolling.
Please become a member today at Heritage Radio Network.org. Today's program is brought to you by Firesider, a health tonic based on the traditional New England cure all of raw apple cider vinegar and honey. For more information, visit Firesider.com. Hey, hey, hey, I'm Jimmy Carboni from Beer Sessions Radio. 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 alive from the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from eh a little late this time, still roughly noonish to like, you know, around one o'clock every Tuesday from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Hey, speaking of uh Bushwick Brooklyn, my subway uh, you know, they're constructing or something, so it went like uh one stop too far, and I got to take a different walk than I normally do, which means I was paying a little bit of attention. Some classic bushwick on the walk over here.
Check this out, Nastasia. First of all, pass by King's Distillery, you know, which is right near here, Kings County Distillery. And like typical, like, by the way, this neighborhood, if you've never been to it, is like a bunch of hipsters have actually moved here, but this is supposed to be an industrial neighborhood, right? It's like all like low industrial neighborhood with roll-ups, like some residential buildings, and like just like a lot of trucks and stuff coming around. So anyway, like they have their warehouse here, I guess maybe it's even where they age it.
The roll-up is up because it's hot as hell, right? No one guarding it, all their whiskey barrels right there. Literally, like on the ground, like if it had been you and me there, I would have been like, let's just I mean, like, let's leave a note saying we're not actually stealing. This is a security test, and just roll it. Just roll it, roll it out, roll it down the street, and go.
There is not a single soul there. Then I loop the corner and I find that of course someone's working on a high low because someone's always working on the roads around here on the uh on the overheads on the wires, and some incompetent truck driver, like you know, okay, sideswiped it, so there's a like the complete street is completely shut down because of this like giant truck sideswiping a high-look. Then I see, like in more classic uh Bushwick, a 76 El Dorado convertible, which by the way is a sweet car, but beat completely to hell Anastasia and being used as a uh extra storage closet because they don't want to pay for the uh you you know what were those things called? The storage places, yeah. Manhattan.
Yeah, but here's the classic, and here's what makes it so awesome, and something that I would have done back in the day. They got the historical license plate for it, so they wouldn't have to pay as much uh for insurance, and they can still keep it on the street. Oh, Brooklyn, you know how I love it. Yeah, uh anyway. Uh do any good cooking?
No. No? No, but you're getting a duck meal report from my sister's roommate. Yeah, live. 530.
Yeah. All right. So roommate, like lives with her. Okay, who is it? JR.
JR. Alright. But uh so he he's being called a roommate for the purpose of the show. But it's uh it's lame. She won't call in.
She's always busy. Yeah, busy. Busy. Busy or scared? We're not sure.
We'll ask JR when he calls in uh to the show at uh at 12 30. So uh what else? Then make sure he's like, you know, a solid dude. Well, I mean, Nastasia knows him quite well. I mean, I don't know, like, you know, my opinion on it is you know, quite meaningless.
Call in your questions to 718497-2128. That's 718497-2128. We have a lot of questions to get to because we didn't do any last week because of the uh Rockstar thing. By the way, uh I'll uh one thing there's a I'm not sure if people liked it. Yeah, I'm not sure if people liked it.
Some people liked it. I got some tweets that some people at least liked it. David in the booth. Hello, David. I forgot to call you out.
How are you doing? Hello, good, how are you? All right. Are you uh did you hear anything one way or the other? Do they like the new that that that style of show?
Uh yeah, chat room, a couple people wanted to have some questions answered, but I think generally the response was favorable. By the way, I cannot believe that it was on uh August 8th and no one made an 808 reference. Nothing sounds quite like an 808, David. Money make it, money, money. It's true.
Disco Discovery. Anyway, uh, okay, so we got uh a bunch of questions. Um we have a caller too, whenever you're ready. I'll take the caller first. Caller, you're on the air.
Hey, it's uh Judy from Alden. Hey, what's up? I was just gonna I in fact I have a question from you today on cookies, right? Yeah, the cookies. Well, uh, you don't have to answer the how many cookies I should take for a hundred dollar question.
Because I think I figured that out. Um what was the answer? So the question, by the way, people like because I was gonna go into it. What was the question? Was uh a colleague offered her a hundred dollars to bake in quotes a bucket a bucket of cookies.
And the problem is nobody knows what a bucket of cookies looks like. I mean we know what a bucket of chicken looks like but no one knows what a bucket of cookies looks like right so what was the answer and how'd you come across the answer uh I'm thinking three three cookies? No three batches oh three batches I was like oh my goodness that is a tiny bucket or a very large cookie so how many cookies in the batch like how many how many how many cookies well first of all like when you say a batch of cookies how do you want to scale do you want to scale in cookies because cookies if you bake them like my grandma did they're tiny. If you bake them like you know like like Tozy does they're bigger we're talking Toezy style size cookies? Yeah I'm baking Tia's cookies so they're about a heaping tablespoon.
Okay and so it's three batches like how many like how many roughly cookies like that is three batches one batch was twenty six. Alright so this person's getting like seventy five cookies assuming that you eat one from each batch to prove that they're okay to yourself they're getting like seventy five cookies for a hundred bucks that's a freaking steal that's a steal that's a steal it's like um uh you'd have to pay two hundred dollars if you want to what size bucket does that go into that go into what what size bucket is is required to hold this thing like I'm not gonna buy a bucket it needs to buy a bucket yeah see see I was thinking about this uh question you know and so the the by the way folks for for those of you don't know they that you're not you don't like do this for a living and in fact, what the the the problem here is you're shifting from a uh I don't know if you've read uh either predictably irrational by Dan Arielli or uh Richard Thaler's misbehaving or Nagrous, but you're moving from a a social norm, right, where you're baking cookies for someone because because they're your buddy into a market norm and it's like totally different. And I think you've fallen into you've fallen into this in uncomfortable, like in between situation because if the person was going to pay you for the cookie, so you're basically you're putting yourself out in a discount situation, which like if you're happy to do it is one thing, but in general, when you switch from a social norm to a market norm and then you undervalue yourself in a market norm uh situation that can lead to like resentment. Let's say you're not willing to bake that many cookies for that amount of money indefinitely, right? Then all of a sudden you've put yourself in an untenable because you've anchored the price, right, with this coworker.
I don't necessarily want to have the same career trajectory as Christina Tozzi. Right, right, right. But my point is is that okay, you're if you're over delivering, right? Let's if someone asked me to do something, I'll give you another example. I know a wedding photographer, right?
He hated shooting weddings. He hated it, because he's a photographer, wasn't a wedding photographer. What happened was someone said, Hey, we want you to shoot our wedding. And he's like, I don't really want to shoot weddings. They're like, Well, we really want you to shoot the wedding.
So he goes, Okay. And he puts it at a number so freaking high, right, that he's like, you know what? Like, if they go for this, they're crazy and I should do it because that's so much money. They went for it. He did that, and then he got a bunch of those other high, high, high paying jobs.
If he had gone low just to do it as like a marginal favor, then that he would keep getting asked. You see what I'm saying? So it's like I would like I would I would say charged more for cookies, I'd be able to buy a feed rack. And more well, that's the thing. So like let's say, let's say you think, like, let's say you were gonna do this even like marginally, right?
You like the first batch you do, you have to say to yourself, okay, if I don't really want to do this for a living, like what's a high enough number such that I won't be asked to do it again, right? And then like that's what you that's what you charge, and then if they go for it, you're like, well, maybe it's worth doing after all, I have to reassess my choices. If if you do it, uh and then and then it doesn't even matter really what you make off that one batch because you're like, okay, maybe I'll do this again and I'll invest in a bunch of equipment I wanted anyway, like a speed rack, a bunch of sheet pans, maybe some extra SILPAS, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then down the line you'll get a uh, you know, a bigger oven, yada yada yada, right? But you price yourself so high that you're like, mm-hmm. But then if you put yourself in a situation where by the time you factor in your time and anything you have to buy and the and the goods that you're manufacturing, the actual cost, because remember, you're buying ingredients probably and paying a lot more for them than someone who does this for a living is.
Do you see what I'm saying? So like you kind of like uh have undervalued yourself in this situation. I was thinking about it on the on the ride over here. But I mean, of course, like uh egg costs two dollars, butter costs three dollars. Yeah, but yeah, that's uh that's on a good day.
That's on a good day. I mean, butter on on super sale in a regular supermarket paying retail is three dollars a pound. You know what I mean? Uh anyway, my point being, you know, you just have to like kind of factor these things in when you're switching because see what I would have done is like like I think that anything less than two dollars a cookie and you're you're valuing yourself below the market. And then if they say no, but I don't want to charge professional prices.
Well, no, but that's that's my point. These are people I know. Like I wouldn't I would charge like a perfect stranger, maybe more money. Yeah, but see, I think it's like tough. It's like you gotta read this book predictably irrational, where here's the here's the scenario.
Let's say someone shows up at your house for Thanksgiving, is the scenario he gives in the book. I think it was this book. And uh, and you cook them a nice Thanksgiving meal because they're your family and you love them, right? So you cook a nice thing. And then what if someone got up afterwards, like, okay, how much do I owe you?
You'd be like, what are you talking about? How much do you owe me, right? Because if you were going to do it for a living, you charge a lot more. So you're like putting yourself in this uncomfortable kind of in the middle position, unless you're happy to do it. But then like be expected to ask to do it again and again.
You see, I would charge, like, I would charge enough that it would be professional prices. Then they would say, Oh man, and then you'd be like, you know what? Here's a batch of cookies on the house because you're my friend. See? And then like you didn't have to go into the market and yet they got some cookies and they're still your friend, but they won't ask you to do it again because they know now that when you are charging for cookies, you charge this high rate.
You see what I'm saying? Well, uh, I guess I see what you're saying, but they're also for the people who have eaten these cookies in the past. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. That's why it's a it's an uncomfortable thing.
I I think we should change the topic. You tend to talk about the same subject. I think they're I was just finishing listening to the last podcast, and it's fine if it was just 15 minutes, but nobody got to talk about anything else. Right. Well, that was a sp is a special, it was a it was a one-off special like rock and roll wine thing.
It's not like the normal podcast. Yeah. Yeah. I would consider that like a give out. Oh.
Yeah, I would consider that just like a special. Okay, but uh but Sash didn't give out her home address to perfect strangers. She she did that? Nastasi gave out her home address to perfect strangers last week on the show. Oh yeah.
The pressure cooker. The um Oh, you got it? I don't have it yet. Oh, she'll bring it in. She'll give it to me and I'll read it.
Yeah, no, I don't have it yet, but I should send it to her sister. Oh, right, yeah. Well, I'm gonna read it first though, right? Because you wanted me to get some Yeah, I'm gonna read it first and then we'll we'll give it to now the sister. Now to be really cool, yeah.
She's not gonna be she doesn't want to be the Dunk Meals correspondent anymore. Apparently I was mean to her on the phone. But she's having her we're calling him. No, now she's calling. She's calling.
Oh, she's calling? She's calling. I can side with both you and Stas. Well, that's what makes the show work, right? If you uh if if you if you only sided with one of us, then it wouldn't be fun, and you would just, you know.
But uh yeah, I don't know. Uh I I think that's enough for today. All right, cool. I usually wouldn't be able to call in like this but um working at Sweet Green uh has taken a big emotional psychological pull and uh you uh do you got how much do you know about sweet green? Not much.
Okay, so we make uh 300 sales an hour and live store Monday through Friday between eleven and two. People will wait upwards of a half hour. And there are several in your area. All right. Uh wa in new in uh in New York and Manhattan or over here in Brooklyn.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Every well I I don't know if they're in Brooklyn, but we're in Manhattan. Well, I'll definitely check it out. And uh you you you think about the cookie price.
All right, you you think about the cookie price thing more and then and then you know, email us back and let us know what you think. You think about the curing saber question. What okay. All right, we'll do. We'll uh we'll talk we'll talk about it soon.
Alrighty? Okay, all right. All right, thanks. All right, bye. All right.
Uh wait, so what we're gonna, what were you talking about? Don't know. All right. Uh let me see here. So your sister like decided to call in after all, Nastasia?
I think so. You think so? Yeah. Anyway. All right.
So I feel like uh we had um um we got a c uh question in last week from Chris. Here it is. Have you looked into the level of evidence linking carrageenins to inflammation or bowel cancer? Uh so carrageenins, for those of you that don't know, are a class of hydrocolloids that are developed for uh that are made from um various species of red seaweed, right? And uh carrageenins are thickeners, have been used uh for centuries and centuries in cooking.
Uh the common name would be like an Irish moss. Uh and uh they have a very specific synergistic reaction with milk. So the super interesting thing about carrageenans is that uh i because of the synergistic reaction with milk, it takes a preposterously small amount of carrageenin to gel a milk system. So it's used extensively, especially in things like yogurt and uh ice cream uh and other uh thickening chocolate milk, for instance. Uh but it's typically used in vanishingly small amounts because uh of that synergistic uh effect with milk.
Now, also an interesting thing about carrageenins is carrageenins are um not a it's not like sugar, which is pretty much just a molecule, sucrose, right uh carrageenins are a a they're a polysaccharide but they're not in any sense pure in other words they're a mixture of three or four different types of molecules called now the main molecule kinds are kappa caragenin. Kappa caragenin is is brittle uh and very very closely related actually to agar which is another uh uh hydrocolloid uh it just has the the difference between them has to do with uh the the sulfates on them anyway so kappa caragina very close to agar in structure and in uh texture in fact um it melts at a lower temperature than agar but it it's fairly similar there is uh iota carrageenin and iota is uh a lot uh softer and bouncier than uh kappa so it's very different um kind of uh even though it's very closely related very very different uh kind of texture uh iota is also interesting because uh gels made with iota when you shear them will re somewhat reset after after time so they're uh interesting uh for that and they're widely used. Lambda carrageenins are more thickening carrageenins they don't really gel but all actual natural carrageenins are mixtures of these things uh and they're they're made uh industrially to specify certain kinds of uh uses so you'll be if someone says they're giving you kappa carrageenin what they mean is they're giving you mostly kappa caragina with a bunch of other stuff in it that's been standardized for a particular application let's say ice cream anyway uh so that's a long uh introduction uh into what so long in fact that my phone was like maybe you're not watching me anymore and it turned off uh so that's kind of what carrageenin is. Now, um the thing about it is that um it has been it was rumored to have uh caused uh cancer. Now most of the stuff about cancer and specifically in kappa carrageenin, it comes from decades ago uh in the uh in the 80s.
Uh but every once in a while there's a kind of a uh a resurgence of it, and the question is how strong is the data? Uh and then um I'll read exactly what uh the question was if uh oh it got uh it got oh okay. Have you looked into the level of ev evidence linking carrageenins to inflammation or bowel cancer? Uh I'm still on a quest for a fresh espresso, espresso that is stable for at least five minutes, and lambda carrageenin seems promising, but Wikipedia and a few other sources, not just crackheads, suggest a potential risk. Thanks for any insight you might have, uh data or alternative approaches.
Love the show every week and looking forward to the centrifuge uh Chris. Okay, so the the deal is is that most of the current stuff that's being put out, when I say current, really like 15 years old, are in this country anyway, is put out by a particular person. Her article, her name is Tobacmin, and her uh review article from 2001 is available on the web for free. Um and it's called something like uh potential health effects of carrageenin and the diet dietary carrageenin. And the here's the deal.
No one really thinks that carrageenin, uh the actual carrageenin is uh is bad for your health. All of the all of the data is focused on something called degraded carrageenin or polygenin. And what this is is uh kerragenins that have been broken down into real real much smaller um molecular uh weight molecules than you would have in um carrageenin that's actually kind of used uh industrially. And so her point is, and so it's so basically no one thinks that care regular caragenin is uh causing cancer, okay? Now, the question is is okay, now does this degraded carrageenin polygenin cause cancer?
Now, most of the studies for uh degraded carragenin are feeding directly feeding uh degraded caragenin to things like rats, pigs, and mice. And in general, they're feeding them at levels like one percent in the diet, i.e., 1% of everything that you eat is degraded uh uh or drink is degraded carrageenin. And at levels between 1% and 5%, which is a gigondous amount of carrageenin, um of degraded, straight, they're feeding a straight degraded carrageenin, either in the liquid diet or in the solid diet, there have like it does show um it does show the um uh the increased uh cancer rates and inflammation rates in in those things. The studies in, first of all, you can't do that study in humans, that would be ridiculous. So no one no one's done that.
I believe she has participated in some epidemiological studies. I didn't get a chance uh to to read them. Uh now here's the issue, right? That's all degraded carrageenin. Now the her one of her main arguments, she has two main arguments.
One, that uh carragenins as sold, like I told you before, don't have uh a specific molecular weight. So any carrageenin sample that you have possibly has a bunch of lower molecular weight polygenin in it, right? Because they're not specified. Now, whether or not an actual sample has that in it, who knows? I don't, but it's not specified, for instance, or or um written in it that this contains no uh fraction smaller than let's say, you know, 10,000 uh you know uh Daltons and what or whatever they measure.
I don't know how they measure it. Um because Daltons, I think is only for proteins, I can't remember. Okay. Point being that uh it might be polydispersed this way. The other uh issue she has is that is that in the stomach, now when you the way you make polygenin, degraded carageenin, is you take carrageenin and you heat it in the presence of acid.
And so one of the uh contentions has always been that in the stomach, possibly carageenins can uh get converted into degraded carrageenin. So there is a study that she references in her in her 2001 study from 1983, done in Europe where they just took carageenin, they put it in at 37 uh degrees, which is roughly body temperature, and they put it at one mole point one molar hydrochloric acid, which is by the way, the maximum that your stomach gastric juices ever get. And actually the pH that they had, which they referenced, I don't know if it's a typo, they referenced that they had a pH of one, it might have just been a typo, which is way below the pH of gastric juices most of the time. Most of the time your gastric juices are about ha uh point five per point five uh uh point oh five to point one molar uh hydrochloric acid equivalent anyway, that neither here nor there. And they showed that there was caragenin uh degradation being done uh over that length of time, six hours inside the stomach, to the point where it was classified uh as having uh some degraded caragenin in it.
Now, first of all, that's showing that taking carrageenin and putting it in the stomach creates some degraded carrageenin. Remember though, in the other ones, they're feeding straight degraded carragenin, not partially degraded uh car, you know, full caragenin. And furthermore, uh logic would dictate that that degraded carrageenin gets degraded even further into smaller subfractions. So I would say the evidence relatively weak, real very kind of weak. It's you know, uh the evidence is weak?
The evidence, the evidence is weak? You are weak. Anyway, I would say it's weak evidence. I don't feel bad feeding it to my family and the levels that uh are currently being used. I don't see any reason why this particular hydrocolloid, in other words, I don't know that like they didn't say, okay, we did the study with uh Carragen and now we're gonna run it with agar, and yes, agar is much worse than carrageenan.
So I don't really the studies didn't have kind of that level of understanding why there would be a causal relationship versus other kinds of similar uh undigestible fibers. So until I see that or until I research more, I would continue I I me personally would continue to use it, but that's the actual data if you want to uh go look at it and make a decision for yourself. Yeah. Hey Dave, we got uh JR on the line. Oh we got oh, so it was JR.
All right, JR, you're on the air. Our dump meals, our dump meals co-correspondent JR. How are you doing? I'm good. How about yourself?
Doing well, doing well. So describe the dump meal you made for us this week. He didn't make it. Oh, okay. Describe the dump meal uh that Natty made for us, our our other dump meal correspondent Natty.
You're just the report the reporter on the dump meal. So what what was it? Right. If Natty is the dump meal correspondent, I'm like the auxiliary reporter. Oh, I like that.
So you're like, okay, the yeah, I don't know. We'll figure it out. You know how like CNN has a billion titles, so that like everyone somehow seems like they're the chief political correspondent. You have to seriously, like there's 50,000 people at CNN who are all somehow the chief correspondent for something. It's kind of like, you know, there's a sculpture in front of Columbia University's uh art uh sorry uh law library that is the largest of something, but it has so many qualifiers on it.
It's like the largest semi-relief, semi-free standing, attached law school. It's like one of those. So we'll figure out some title for you like that where it seems like you're in charge. Right, right. You've got a chief like country correspondent, chief national correspondent, chief US correspondent.
It's all about, you know, trying to get some name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what do you want to you what do you want to be? You want to be the chief national dump meal correspondent? You know, I'm just kinda taking it day by day here, just kind of not get yelled at.
All right, all right. Well, listen, if I yell if remember I've never met you. So if I yell at you, it can't be personal. Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah.
All right, so go ahead. So what was the dumb meal? So these so the dump meals. Um, so there were three actually this week that we tried out. Again, I didn't make them personally, but I had some kind of role.
Um we had a peach cobbler. Oh, peach cobbler, describe. How do you how the hell do you make a cobbler dump? What was the crunchy on top of the cobbler that was done in the in the crock pot? Yes.
Um there w it was pretty I I was surprised at kind of the texture and that it was actually like crunchy. Oh, what was it? It had a good element there. Well, what was it? Do you know what was in it?
Sorry, I couldn't hear you on that one. W what was in it? Like what were the ingredients? Like what was the preparation? Um, so again, I was working the late shift, so I didn't have great details on how it was made.
Uh but I do know that there was some granola and I think peaches and a few other things. But peaches, when we say peaches, we talking like peaches like off a tree, or we talking peaches from a can, or are we talking Peaches the Rock Star? We're talking about peaches from a can, not from a tree. Um but they were actually um pretty good. It was delicious, actually.
So canned peaches and granola for a billion hours in a crock pot is fundamentally what we're talking about. Uh here we go. Recipe call for 1.5 cup oats, two-thirds cup buttermilk baking mix. Buttermilk baking mix? What is buttermilk baking mix?
You said I use the one for waffles and pancakes. This quick teaspoon cinnamon teaspoon nutmeg, one cup sugar, one cup light brown sugar, eight medium peaches sliced. Whoa, so an actual peach was killed for this? I used four because it was a mini crock pot. Uh left it in for six hours, took some nycle and passed out.
And never mind. I was actually told, I you know, again, my correspondent gave me the details that it was actually real peaches. Yeah, yeah, real peaches, yeah. But is there NyQuil in the dump meal? Was it like a is it like a nutcracker dump meal?
Wow. Wow. In which case you have visions of it being awesome as you're passing out. Maybe why are you thinking it's a little bit more? So the oh wait, so is oh, the oatmeal somehow crunched out on top.
Alright, what was the second dump meal? Uh by the way, what is your idea of delicious? Do you find McDonald's apple pies delicious? No, I don't actually. Okay, why?
Tell me why, so I know where you're coming from. Why do you not find them delicious? I mean, I think there's a feeling of freshness in the cobbler that we made uh that isn't there in the McDonald's. He's being like a real CNN reporter, avoiding the question. Secondly, like one of the fundamental problems of the McDonald's apple pie is it is weak in acidity and salt.
At least, okay, I haven't had one in in 20 years. But back the last time I had one, and I've had them both baked and fried because they did a switch over, right? And they're just not they're not, you know. The what is what in your opinion, what is the best easily gettable fake, mass produced pie? Right.
No, I mean what is it? What's the what what yeah it's like do you like hostess pies? I don't. Okay. Hostess pies are poor quality, but they taste good.
See, I'm trying to like ferret you out here. Why do you not like hostess pies? Why do I not like them? Yeah, do you not like them in theory, or do you actually think that they are a bad tasting item of food? Um I think they're a bad taste, and like frankly, I think that people want things that feel fresh and feel like there's real sugar in it as opposed to artificial.
What's artificial sugar? You mean corn syrup? Yeah. Don't get me started, JR. All right.
All right, what's the next what's the next dump meal? What's the next dump meal? The next one is mac and cheese. Oh my God. Okay.
So, how was mac and cheese that had been kept uh in a crock pot for six hours? It was actually quite good. Um used some shell pasta noodles. Um, and I don't know, like very good. Well, it wasn't necessarily like very like dewy um in the way that like Wait, sweet.
So was if it wasn't in what way was it good if it wasn't give me the recipe, Nastasi. I don't have that one. We have to get the actual recipe so I can insult the actual recipe bit by bit. I don't have any idea what JR's actual like yeah, no, what his like idea of a good mac and cheese is. JR, you're uh you're a uh you're a Yaley, yes?
Yeah. Okay. I have had Yale University's uh macaroni dishes in the past and their Roman rice and beans and all of those things. How did it compare to Yale Dining Hall? Um I wish this was Wait, what?
He fuzzed out there. He's got he's just like a real correspondent. When like when the going gets tough, the sk the feed gets dicey. We're keeping it accurate on the show, though. We're going for real.
Alright, so wait. So wait, how are you there, Jr? Yes, I'm how was it compared to the Yale dining hall macaroni? I said I thought it was far superior. Far superior.
I would also tell you that personally I'm not a very big fan of the dish in general, but I really liked it. And it was even in like the heat of the summer, it was very good. It felt like very even light, I would say. Okay, but like I what was in it? Was it just like a mac and cheese, or did it have chopped up tomatoes on top, for instance?
Did it have a breadcrumb topping on top that was added after it came out of the dump Stravaganza? Because that would add some sort of texture to an otherwise textureless overcooked pasta dish. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. What was the uh what was the che what was the cheese component?
Do you know? Did you see what cheese went into it? I Zach. Um, but I I Velvita, Velvita, please. I know I'm not sure.
Please, Velvita, Velvita, Velvita. By the way, Velveeta, uh, I think we've talked about this on the show before, but Velveeta was built for queso. You like queso, right, Stas? Yeah. Yes, queso, delicious.
Rotel tomatoes, Velveeta. Here's a secret though. Velveeta is very expensive. So if you don't want to use all Velvita, you can take Velveeta and supplement the rest of it with like other uh cheeses and use the excess emulsifiers that are in the Velveeta to pull everything back into the queso kind of uh realm. Alright, did you have another dump meal to describe to us today?
I have one last one. Yes, I have sticky rice pudding. Oh my god. And that was actually this is the one that was used from a new book that we received recently. Uh and as opposed to all the others that you've heard about over the course of the past few weeks that were from one book.
Um and this one was also good. It was kind of like a coconut um sticky rice pudding. Um very flavorful. Um, and yeah, very positive readout. Literally all three were very, very good.
Did it use Thai black sticky rice or did it use regular short grain glutinous white rice? Uh we use it in grain rice. What? Was it white or black? See, my sticky rice puddings I like.
I like using the Thai black sticky rice, it still has a hull on it because it like you do you ever use that stuff, Stas? Remember, we used to cook with it occasionally. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I love that stuff because it's glutinous rice on the inside, but not as sticky on the outside. It's got that beautiful color to it.
Yeah. That would look honestly, if you're gonna crock pot something like a sticky rice pudding, that's the one that I would go for of these three, right? That's the one that I would probably go for. But uh, but what we need is we don't have a list of the stuff so we know what went on top. I know.
The main problem we have here, JR is that there needs to be a differentiation in texture in foods that you eat. Otherwise, this is the problem with nursing home food is that there's no freaking differentiation in texture. Everything is made so that it can be gummed by anyone because they don't actually respect the people they're feeding. Not this is that's a harsh generalization, but I'm saying that in many places that I have seen, there's a lack of, and in hospitals as well, a lack of respect for the eater. And what that typically means is I'm gonna make life easy for myself and I'm gonna jam Pablum down your throat with it with no texture, right?
And so the problem with the dump meal in general is the creation of alternate textures. Same problem with anything. Same problem with low temperature cooking, same problem with all this, is that you need a variation in texture. So, like my one of the key questions here is if I'm gonna write a dump meal book, right? All of the textural adjuncts are gonna have to be thrown on after it comes out of its six-hour hell steep inside of the little bucket of death.
You know what I mean? Like there's plenty of stuff that can chill for six hours that are relatively high temperature. It's just but you need to have somehow to crunch it up. Like, what's one of the greatest things on earth? Duck comb fee.
One of the greatest things on earth, right? Yeah, but who eats it right out of the thing without crisping up the skin? Enemies of quality do that. Evil people do that. You know what I mean?
It's like anyway. So like what we have to figure out is how the different textures were. Not to be scared. Yeah, don't be scared. And listen, if you want to be the chief national dump meal correspondent, you gotta get the recipes down so you can insult them or whatever.
I mean, I don't know whether you're taking like we have people accusing you, JR, of being in the pocket of big dump. I mean I guess I should have disclosed my interest before I came on the air. Yeah, definitely. All right, well, listen. Well, we appreciate it.
And we'll get those recipes and we'll report back to people maybe next week. Thank you. Thanks a lot. All right. Thank you.
Thanks for having me on. All right. Uh have a good rest of the show. All right, cool, thanks. Uh okay.
By the way, remember uh Russ, uh, who is uh 23 wrote in about espresso a while ago? I feel like we didn't fully answer. I think we did. We did? Yeah, you definitely Russ, if you need more information on how to go cheap on espresso, I I'll say this one thing in case I forgot to say it before.
The issue is is that uh because he was interested in using that ROK, which is the pressure thing. All right, look. I'll just say this again. Uh there is something cool about taking the incredibly hard route to make a single cup of coffee when you're 23. The problem is, and I say the same thing, it's about people who are doing uh like uh back when everyone was writing about doing um low temperature cooking by using coolers, giant like uh insulated coolers, and you know, can you cook a steak using a five-gallon cooler and you know heated tap water by calculating the all the the final temperature and your temperature drop and the and the strike temperature of the water?
Sure. Let me ask you this would you do this on a regular basis? Answer no, right? Because when do you actually need coffee, Russ? Like, you need coffee in the morning when you are not a human being.
When you wake up and your eyelids are glued shut because you're like kind of sick and you had all those things you were working on the night before, you're tired as all heck. You can barely get up to go to the bathroom and take a shower. And at that moment in your life, it's when you really want a nice good cup of coffee. And if you have to go jump through 18 flaming hoops at that point in your life to get that cup of coffee, you're just never gonna have that cup of coffee. That's all, right?
What do you think, Stuz? I don't care. About coffee? I really don't care. About what?
About coffee, about making coffee. I just don't care. Nastasia buys her coffee on the street. No, I just make it into Mr. Coffee.
Why do you not care about coffee? I just don't care at all. Why? I don't know. Why?
Because I put milk and sugar in it. So you're saying that people who put milk and sugar in their coffee shouldn't care? I I just really don't. Why? I just don't care.
Coffee to me is coffee. And I really hate it. What's interesting to me is that you're like obstinately don't care. It's not like well, because I it's only because you care so much that I I'm letting you know I do not care. Because I care.
So if I didn't care, you would care. No, I still don't. That's what you just said. I still don't care. That's what you just said.
But I'm letting you know, because you can't, that does not get through your head. I do not care about coffee. All these years, eight years, I don't care about coffee. Before I met you, didn't care about coffee. Do not care about coffee.
How do you consume something every day and not care? How do you like every day consume something and what I brew and that's it? Well, you but you said you like it. That doesn't mean you don't care. I'm not sure.
But your advice to this person is care a ton. And I'm saying that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying she doesn't even listen to what I freaking say. What I'm saying is make your life easy because in the morning, when you actually need a cup of coffee, you don't want to have to jump through a bunch of hoops. You literally didn't listen to anything I said.
You didn't listen to one word that I said. I said that when you're 23, you were willing to go through a bunch of steps to do something, but take in mind the fact that you need to do it a lot and you don't necessarily want to jump through those hoops all the time. You're telling him to perfect it. That's not what I said at all. That's not what I said.
I said you can do that as an interesting exercise, but it's not something you necessarily want to do every day. Okay. Didn't listen to anything. People does not listen to a thing I say. Did not even get the gist of what I was saying.
I'm surprised how much I listened to what you say. Then how do you not get the gist of what I was saying? You start talking about coffee and I'm done. Like it's not a good thing. See, that's what I'm saying.
You don't even care about what I'm saying. I could be saying don't drink coffee. I could be saying you still drink it. You know what you should do, Nastasia. Just buy no dose, crush it up and put it in Kool-Aid and drink it in the morning.
Caffeine pills. No. Just get something to make you poop in the morning. I'm gonna buy you a mixture of X Lax and No Dose. Coffee.
Like when I stayed at your house, I had to bring my own Mr. Coffee. That's do you care enough to bring your own freaking coffee machine? No, but I'm saying. You're just a liar!
No, that's a good thing. You care only to make comments. That's all you care about. You care a lot about coffee. People, she doesn't care about coffee.
I have an automated machine. Since like I have an automated machine. She cares enough about coffee to bring her own coffee machine. If she really didn't care, she would just turn on my machine and take whatever came out of it. I don't know how to use it.
You had that like drill on the top of your bean thing. No. No, first of all, then you could just bring coffee and throw coffee into the machine. You don't care what it's like. You don't care if it's pea water.
No, no. You keep on making up new things to go along. You said to me, I'm not touching your machine because I don't want to. That's not a machine. No, no, no.
That's garbage. You are just obstinate. I'm not. You want me to care about coffee? No, you okay, people.
Let me ask people. Anyone in the chat room who happens to be there right now. Does someone who does not care about coffee bring a coffee machine to somebody's house three hours away that they had to unplug and take off of their counter, bring special coffee to use because I don't have that kind of ground. Yes, you did. Special meaning any.
I had coffee in my house. So the function she goes, brings her coffee machine and brings her coffee. I submit to you. Does this sound like a person who does not care about coffee? Especially because you could drive five minutes and buy other coffee.
No, no, no. Or does this mean someone who just obstinately, like my racist dead grandpa, obstinately only enjoys having garbage to shove it in other people's face and say, see, I like garbage. That I submit to you is what is actually happening. No, I'm not saying I like garbage. Yes, you are.
I'm saying I like garbage. You are saying that I will drink pool water. No, that's not true. Someone who doesn't want to spend time wouldn't have thought to pack a coffee machine. Because everybody needs coffee, right?
Doesn't everybody need coffee? No. No. Who no? In the morning.
No, like I say, I'm gonna I'm gonna buy you X Lacks and No Dos and grind it up. It'll have you go to the bathroom the same way, and it'll wake you up the same way. Chat Room is a fan of Mr. Coffee, by the way. Thank you, chat room.
Yeah, but I'm not a I don't I've never said anything negative about Mr. Coffee. Like, I mean, if you're gonna do that, like you'd probably get a technivorum. I don't know if they still sell those, but I'm not a I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that kind of coffee. Nastasia is saying there's something bad about that kind of coffee because she doesn't care about it, and so because she hasn't care about it.
You told me that you think it's crap. I never said that. I said the coffee that you buy every day in the morning out of it. No. Nastasia goes to a street corner.
I don't anymore. That's what we were talking about. Okay. That when I was telling you you like crap, it tastes like that to me tastes like the Mr. Coffee stuff tastes like the street coffee.
Tastes like the stuff I grew up with. Nastasia used to say that the apogee of coffee production was to go to a quilted metal box on the side of the street with plexiglass and get coffee that had been brewed at 3 a.m. with beans that God knows how old they are, like makes chalk full and nuts look like the greatest coffee on earth, was kept in a swivel bucket that entire time, right? And then served to her at some point later in a styrofoam cup that she then ate, drank 20 minutes after that. That she didn't just say that that was acceptable to her, which would have been one thing.
She said that's my favorite coffee. The apogee of all coffees. The apogee of all coffees, people. That's I never said that. Uh okay.
You said that's your favorite. Anyway. Okay. Uh did we get anything, uh, David from the chat room on whether anyone's tested vacuum uh tumbling or uh pressure infusion? Uh I'm not sure.
Let me check. Yeah. Because remember, we're gonna try to do something with uh Greg Blonder from Genuine Ideas uh on that. Oh my gracious. Oh, geez.
Did we uh did we handle the uh bitter orange question? Just got an email from Ken Ingber who said, fantastic fight. The I don't care about coffee fight is fantastic. You're taking the husband part, and Dave is taking the wife part in a high energy, pointless bicker. First of all, what makes the what makes one wife and one husband?
What's the difference? I don't know. Chat room did say this is the Godwin's law of cooking issues. What's Godwin's? I don't know what I mean.
That is the uh adage that any discussion on the internet eventually devolves into somebody making a comparison to Hitler or Nazism. So wait, which one's Hitler and Nazism? No, you made a you made uh racist. Oh, my grandpa was racist and is it actually dead. No, not that specifically, but just the idea that like a discussion will eventually devolve into that.
Oh, yeah. Well, that's like, you know, I don't know about Godwin, but it is a hundred percent true that high school debate in t everything there ends up with nuclear war or fascism or Hitler. Everything. Everything. Like uh anyway.
Did we answer the bitter orange question already or no? Last week? No. Okay. This is uh from uh Matt Hall.
Uh I recently prepared some Cuban style pork shoulder marinated in a moho sauce. Uh initially cooked sous vide and finished off on the grill. I live in Rochester, New York. Our local Wegman's grocery stores are great, but they're not bitter oranges great. The usual recommendation for simulating bitter oranges is a mix of sweet orange and lime.
I decided to research the actual composition of bitter oranges. Uh, and sure enough, uh citric acid and malic acid are the primary constituents, but I also found references to fumaric acid. The below article is once as an example, blah, blah, blah. Further research shows that fumaric acid is a well-known acidulant for foods. My question: do you have any experience to comment on whether fumaric acid provides a unique contribution to the flavor profile?
Spectrum chemicals supplies food grade fumaric acid, and so I'm ready to give this a shot when one way or the other. Thanks. Um so the answer, short answer is no. I also know that it is used as an acidulant in foods, but I never bothered sourcing it because I was talking to some professional um food formulators, and I talked to them about it, and they said it's mainly there to adjust uh pH to be it to be an uh acidifier without having that much flavor impact. So it's actually more, it's less of a flavor impact acidilant and more of just a um like something to adjust to pH down.
I don't know if that's true or not, but I remember that they they someone said that to me, and it's stuck in my head. And once that stuck in my head, like kind of the fire inside of me to go get it kind of fizzled out. Um also, you know I try, I try to, you know, when I recommend things, recommend things that are easier to get than stuff that you get on Spectrum Chemical because their prices are really high. The exception is quinine, just because quinine's a unique kind of a thing that you need, and the results you get using quinine sulfate are so different from the results you get using conchona bark. But uh I get your point.
If anyone out there uh in uh chat land or uh can tweet me that they've used fumaric acid and whether it tastes uh substantially different, I'd I'd appreciate it. I mean, obviously, you know, the major acids we use are all different lactic, uh malik, citric, tartaric, uh, and uh phosphoric, phosphoric being the most different and one that Nastasia does not enjoy. But do you like cola? Mm-hmm. But you don't like you never liked anyone's like any everyone who's tried to make a drink with phosphoric acid in the bar, you've hated, right?
Yeah, I think so. Is it just because they think they overuse it? Yeah. I can taste it pretty You also don't like if you know there's bicarb in it, you don't like bicarb. Like all those adjusted waters with bicarb you don't like.
Right? Dave, we gotta wrap up in a minute. Oh man. Yeah. All right.
Um waste it on a fight. Waste it on a fight. All right, well, let me oh my god, we have so much else to talk about. Like uh plums and bitterness. Uh but anyway, I guess we'll have to get back to it next week.
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