This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the emergent circulator for Sous V by Chef Steps. Order now at Chef Steps.com slash J-O-U-L-E. This is Mike Edison, host of Art Senses of Seizures. You're listening to the Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwood Brooklyn. If you like this program, please 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 roughly 12 to roughly 1245 or 1 o'clock or so on the Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing today, Stas? I'm good.
How are you? Fine. Got Dave in the booth. Also fine. Good.
Uh calling your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. It's been a while since we've uh all been in the uh studio together, right? Yeah. Um that's nice.
Last week I was at uh the Harvard giving the talk, and then uh the week before you were at the uh the sweet sweet Naples. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right.
So let's uh get right into it. We have a bunch of uh stuff to uh catch up with today. Oh, you done any interesting cooking? No. You're like rippity freaking doo-day, nothing.
Nothing interesting. Nothing. Yeah. See, I did I cook anything for the Harvard Lecture? No, not really, right?
I don't know. Did I even serve anything at the Harvard Lecture? You know what I did do at the Harvard Lecture? I showed off the uh prototype of the centrifuge. Talked about the uh relative uh difficulties of uh making a product.
Anyway, all right, let's get to uh today's questions because we have a lot. Look, Nastasi is Nasta Nastasia, by the way, is getting ready. Uh Judy from Malden sent us some cookies to taste today, so she's opening them now and and reading the description so that we can have a comparative tasting later. So, Dave, what's that? What's that uh signify there?
Oh, is you opening the box? I think I like that. IED in there or something. First of all, I don't think we actually uh talked about this. Uh Dave, did I talk about salt last week at all?
You weren't here last week. Week before that? When Nastasia I I can't remember that. All right, here's yeah, here's the thing. I like this is an interesting fact that uh came to my head.
Uh that when I was kids and when you know people my age were kids, everybody in their house cooked with um the cylindrical uh boxes of iodized salt. Like we're all familiar with that cylindrical box of iodized salt, right? So as soon as I started, you know, cooking, I've always a hundred percent exclusively used kosher salt, diamond kosher salt, in fact. Uh and so like the in my house, and by the way, my kids, you know, rarely do they eat out at restaurants. It's mainly stuff that we cook at home.
Uh, and a hundred percent of it is made with kosher salt. Kosher salt contains no iodine. There's no iodine. So I'm wondering if, you know, I mean, my kids luckily they eat uh enough seafood, you know, that not as much as the triple six mafia with the shrimp and the iodine poisoning. That's like my favorite, my favorite uh like rhyme ever of theirs, it and I I eat so many shrimp I get iodine poisoning.
I love that line. That's from sipping on some czurip. But uh the way, like uh point mean mean on. Yeah. Uh the intro to that song is kind of amazing, don't you think so, Dave?
I don't know. Absolutely. We're probably not allowed to play it because we didn't buy any rights to anything, but we don't have that kind of money. Yeah, rhyming shrimp with sh I believe shrimp is rhymed with with pimp, right? They don't there's only like uh I we have to look up look up the exact lyrics.
That's not the important part. The important part is that we um I wonder whether we are raising a generation of people with not enough iodine. Probably not. We're overvitamined in everything that we that we consume, right? I mean, as Americans, we're pretty much over vitamined, but it's just something to consider the fact that we have reduced the overall iodine in uh in our diet to the extent that we cook with kosher salt, which for me is 100%.
Or molden salt, which also has, you know, not I don't think it has a lot of iodine in all. I mean it is sea salt, so it should have some iodine, but I use relatively little malden salt compared to kosher salt. Okay. Uh A.T. Dustin wrote in uh showing a uh New York Times article that came out yesterday.
Do you read the Times, Nastasia? No. No. There's an article uh talking about uh how in the 60s the sugar industry paid money to scientists to say that it that articles that were pointing to a do-a review article that said that the um people who were saying that sugar increases uh uh the your risk of cardiovascular disease were uh were wrong and that they were basically being paid by the sugar industry, and so everyone is uh you know up in arms that the sugar industry would do this thing. Here's the thing, and you know, they had like Mary Nessel was quoted in it, uh a guy named Stanton Glantz, who's big known for uh was on the paper actually, because it just got released in I think in Gemma.
Uh and it uh you know was very critical. Uh he was a big tobacco anti-tobacco guy. Here's you know, here's my take on it. What do you think happens? Like, do you like what does what does what do we all think happens here in America or anywhere?
A corporation makes a product, sugar. What do they want? You to buy it. What do they not want? You to think that it is unhealthy.
So clearly, they're going to do whatever they can at to at any point to try to convince people that uh that their product is good, right? And that just stands to reason. And so uh I think you know, the other thing is it's it's paying it out to look, and it is actually really sinister if you read it. Um they weren't paid that much money. It was like fifty thousand dollars in in today money to two scientists to be to publish a review article.
By and large, um every here's what I think. Like, yeah, like their recommendations were the the those scientists' recommendations uh regarding um fat, because they were they were very much uh in kind of the uh Ansel Keys, fat is the bad thing and not sugar uh thing. They probably believed what they were saying. Yeah, they took money, yes, they gave drafts of their paper back to the sugar industry, yes, they did not disclose it. No one disclosed stuff like that at the time.
It was kind of the wild west. Should it have been disclosed? Yes, is it now? Should be, uh often is. But the the fact is is that there is a false belief among uh uh among us that scientists are somehow dispassionate, that science, nutritional science especially, that it is somehow non biased or should be non biased.
Every paper that I have read on nutrition is intensely biased one way or the other. So I'm sure that these sugar scientists didn't go to like, you know, Billy and Joe neutral to write a review article saying that sugar uh you know did not contribute to um cardiovascular disease, whereas uh fat did. Uh I'm sure they didn't choose neutral people, they probably chose people who already believe them anyway. And this is how stuff works now. Scientists have particular views, they're searched out by industry because they have uh particular views, and then money does or doesn't change hands, but even if money doesn't change hands, the scientists still are biased towards their opinion.
And then if a research if a uh if a corporation wants to use their research, uh they will anyway uh to publicize it. So I think the whole thing is wretched. I think uh, you know, this just points out that I think most nutritional science on either side, if there are two sides or five sides, all five sides, is all wretched and horrible because it all starts with with fundamentally, typically of the stuff that I've read, skewed data interpreted through the lens of people that have a preconceived notion of what they think the answer is. Uh and I think you know that's one of the big differences between um you know, people who do long-term predictive studies or like come up with scientific theories that can be easily uh tested and confirmed, and these kind of like large-scale uh multifactorial uh epidemiological studies. Anyway, that's my thoughts.
Um I'm sure some people are gonna think I'm a jerk for saying, but that's just the truth. Bobby White wrote in, so Bobby wrote in about white zin. Uh remember we were talking about white zen when we were talking about that stuff. And he said uh uh many Sonoma wineries now make a dry rose that is labeled as rose without a great breakdown, but it's often just a Zinfandel or an Italian field br uh blend made predominantly out of Zinfandel. Uh there are plenty that taste like a serious wine.
My wife made four barrels of dry Zinfandel rose at work in 2013 and pulled off a barrel for our wedding, which was excellent, though it might be a bit old at this point. I can open a bottle and give it a try and send it in if you're interested, but it should not be hard to find a decent example from Sonoma out where you live. Bobby. Yeah, sure, try it. I would love to taste someone's wedding wine.
That'd be sweet. Taste if it's still I mean, not sweet, dry, but you know what I'm saying. Uh okay. Um let me see. So you do are we ready to get to the cookie tasting, or do you want to do that?
You want to you want to take some questions, go to the break and come back? You tell me. You're the hammer. What do you want to do? I don't know.
All right, so let's do a couple more questions and you decide what you want to do. Um David needs to get in on this too. Because there's too many. Too many cookies. This has like too many.
We're all going down together. So now we're going back to Les Claypool. Nastasia Lopez. First and only time has ever quoted Primus on the air. In fact, it's the first time I've ever heard her.
Yeah, but still, like you hate whenever I quote lyrics, you hate it. Oh God. Are getting cracked in the dark. Anyway, well, like, yeah, it's like unbelievable for Nastasia to my brain. Now I have the whole thing in my head.
So many cookies. So many cookies. All right, so we're gonna taste them. I don't think people do people listen to Pri David. Do people listen to Primus anymore?
Uh yeah, like on the festival scene, I think. Oh my god, what's the festival scene? Is that like uh like Bonaroo, all that nonsense? I thought you meant like they're like a big festival band. When someone says festival, I think Renaissance Festival.
That's where I had my 14th birthday party. At a Renaissance festival? Yeah, nerd alert. Nerd alert. No, no, that's what you need the siren sirens for.
Mm-hmm, meme, m er. Like like those Renaissance festivals are some weird business. Did you get any dates at the Renaissance Festival? You mean like the kind that you eat? Yeah.
Bad dates. Bad dates. Another one of our favorite quotes. Yeah, like our fourth reference to that. Well, uh like not today, just in life.
Uh only because you don't live at my house where it like comes up constantly. Oh. Like like whenever my cousins are over, it's nothing but Indiana Jones references like a hundred percent of the time. Like mixed up, like all the movies mixed up differently, uh, you know, and and sometimes mixed up with other stupid things that we would we do. Okay.
From Alan Snow. Um Hope Italy was good and the centrifuge is uh coming along. Uh last year I sent a question about how to get the pectin levels down before the fermentation of apple to make apple jack. Uh Dave mentioned that he was going to answer the question next week a couple of times, but was too busy. If there's any chance uh an answer uh of an answer because apples are almost here again, I'd be very grateful.
Last year I tried freezing to sediment out the pectin, uh uh for sediment out the pectin, um, but uh still had uh too high of methanol levels uh when it was done in the apple jack was a headache. In the end I rode a vap the results and cut the heads off long. Um the other question I have is is it worth rotovapping a black treble truffle? I've been given one that seems pretty dried out and wondered if truffle vodka might be a way of getting the max flavor out of it uh and a way of storing it for use in dishes. Uh look, it's uh it should work.
Uh like rotovapping the truffle should work. Uh you know, I spoke to the truffle guys in Oregon who deal mainly with Oregon truffles, and they don't um do direct seep stuff. They literally just put truffles in jars with things, but I think that's because they want to use the truffle again later. I don't think since we eat truffles, I don't think there's gonna be anything that you're gonna extract out that's bad uh into the uh into the vodka, and then I think you know you'll get most of those aromatic notes back out when you do uh the rotovap. So the answer is I think you'll get a lot.
I mean, I don't know what in a truffle. I mean, look, most of what's interesting about a truffle is the aroma anyway, let's be honest, right? I mean, that's what that's what most of what's interesting about it. So it should it should work. Uh and I've read some papers online, not specifically with truffles, but on the cold uh on the low temperature vacuum distillation of other mushroom aromas, and it seems to work well.
All right. Uh as for pectin, um the call I remember getting in about pectin was trying to keep pectin uh during the process of keeving, which is uh process making cider where uh you actually induce a pectin gel to form after the juicing procedure to trap um nutrients. And the reason you want to trap nutrients is so that the yeast die before they have a chance to ferment out all the sugars so it uh so so that the cider remains sweet without having to add uh sugar back to it. And for that, you obviously want to reinforce the pectin cause. So what they typically do is they'll add a pectin methylesterase enzyme, which strengthens the pectin, let it sit for a while, and then they will um they will hit it with calcium chloride, uh, you know, if you adding stuff if you're wanting people to add stuff, and then that'll cause that gel to really um firm up.
The gel will trap what it's gonna trap, it'll float to the top, skimmed off, ferment. Uh but your question is quite different. It seems to me what you want to do is just get rid of the uh pectin, and for that I would just use Pectanax Ultra SPL. I don't know, like uh, have you tried that and it's failed? Pectanex Ultra SPL will wipe out the pectin liquid T split, like, and you can add it at the end of fermentation, which is uh, you know, what I typically I've done it both ways.
I've added a pectin. Some people had uh a pectin, a pectin X are uh during the smashing procedure or before crushing so that you increase the yield of juice out of the press. In fact, that's what there's uh there's one called pectinx smash. It's designed literally for that to increase the yield off of apples. Uh alternatively, I mean, you know, and if you're doing a press that way, you can add the enzyme early, right?
I wanted uh my problem was I was kind of it was clarifying uh quickly, it was clarifying beforehand, so I actually let it ferment uh on with the suspended sediment and then knocked it out at the end. And for that, pectinx uh ultra SPL is very good because it works in alcoholic environments. So you can add like a couple of uh milliliters per liter at the end of your fermentation time. It should settle out uh the you know, as long as you as long as it's not actively carbonated, which is going to keep popping the stuff off the top. Once the carbonation level and the CO2 has died down and fermentation is slowed, all of that stuff will settle to the bottom with your yeast, and you should be able to get it get rid of almost all of the pectin.
Now, if you want to kill the pectin early because you think it's producing other products in it, right? So for I don't I don't know this, I haven't looked it up, but if there are things that are producing methanol in your uh fermentation, then I would recommend um juicing, adding the pectin X at the get-go, uh, and then racking, right? And then uh you'll you'll lose some at the bottom, or you can do a separate surf uh fermentation of the kind of stuff that has the broken down pectin in it, and then ferment the batch with no pectin in it uh by starting at the beginning. But even without a centrifuse, you should be able, depending on the apple variety, some apple varieties don't settle very well uh at all. Uh and some apple varieties settle quite well.
But if you're doing a typical um, you know, uh chumming them up in an apple grinder and and pressing them, uh you're getting rid of a lot of the solids anyway. So then hitting it with uh with with um the ultra SPL after that procedure, but before fermentation should work. So I don't know whether you're one of these people that um kills the yeast and then and then allows the wild yeast to do afterwards, but you at least have a day before it really starts ripping and roaring, and that's more than enough time to get the pectin to settle out. Anyway, what do you think? Okay.
You're like, don't. Nastasi's like, don't care. Okay. Uh I got a chat room question if you want to. Sure, what do you what do you got?
Actually, it's more like a request for uh New York restaurant recommendations from both of you. Uh well Nastasia should give the recommendations. No, don't eat out anymore. Since when you have recommendations. When did you stop eating out?
Months ago. Oh, what was the best place to eat months ago? It's probably not relevant anymore. Why? Do they close?
I can't I need to think. What kind of restaurants are they? Where are they coming from? Uh I don't know. They're come they're coming here though, so.
All right, well nice. Well, so that's one that's one out of the way. Um I mean it depends on what you want, right? How much money you're doing. Chicago, I hear I'm getting.
Oh, yeah. It depends on what kind of restaurant experience you want, really. I mean, like everyone's all uh everyone's uh are they still everyone's still hyped up about uh Pasquale Jones? What kind of pill you take, Nastasi? We're on the radio here.
It's pep, pep it up, pep it up, give some answers. Uh it looks like he's already going to Contra, which totally go there. No, Contra Contra is uh that's uh, you know, uh m my my friends uh fabulous, Fabian von Howski and uh Jeremiah Stone. Definitely go there. Where's that?
That is in the lower east side uh on Orchard Street, like down, you know, close to Delancey. Yeah, definitely go there. What kind of food? Uh good. Oh, that kind.
Yeah, no, like so here they have two restaurants. They have Wild Air, which is like a natural wine bar situation where you know you order like uh tastings, uh like plates, and then they have where they they have this incredibly crispy squid thing there, and then uh n next door is Contra, which is their original their flagship one, and that's more of a tasting menu. Where not mean like you know, a a f a flight, like they bring like that you get what you get and you don't get upset. You know what I mean? Uh both excellent.
I've been uh been several times. Yeah. Cool. All right. Uh so good choice.
Um we had a question from Ryan about from St. Louis about comfy. Uh a local chef determined butcher, uh offers comfy chicken leg quarters a to-go. What's a chicken leg quarter? Do they mean the whole quarter of the back chicken, including the leg?
I think that's what they mean. You think that's what they mean? I have no idea what a chicken leg quarter is. I think it's probably just the chicken leg with the thigh and that piece of the that piece of the skeleton in the back. You know what I'm talking about?
Yeah. Like if you were to take a chicken and be like, hey, how about you be four pieces of chicken instead of one piece of chicken? Like that. You know what I'm saying? And so you'd get the f you get the bre two breasts, the two back leg things, and then the back, which you use for soup.
Yeah? Yeah. That's what I'm gonna assume we're talking about. He mentioned they were cooked at 180 degrees Fahrenheit for seventy-two hours using a circulator. I'm interested in replicating this at home, but have not seen any similar time and temperatures of this preparation online.
Is it likely that I misheard the butcher's instructions, or do you think that this time and temperature could yield great results? Also, would you recommend salting before the cook? Thanks for your time. Show's fantastic. Ryan from St.
Louis. Yeah, you're if it's gonna be a Confi, you gotta salt it beforehand, or it doesn't taste like confit, right? So I I would always go through the classic uh cure step with uh herbs and salt before you do uh your confie. And the salt, again, it's not just taste, the texture of the meat. Uh I'm pretty sure, although I have I done it without any salt at all?
Look, salt it. That's what it's supposed to be. That's what a confid is supposed to taste like. Modern confis have a lot lower salt level than old school confis. Uh, because in an old school confie, it was salt and then cooking uh and it was an actual preservation method.
So you're looking at preserving something on degrees. And the salt level in those cases needs to be high enough to prevent the growth of things like botulism. Um there's also, you know, contrary to what people say, uh, you know, a decent amount of evaporation. Not a lot, you know, not a boat ton, but enough, because otherwise it wouldn't be bubbling now, would it? So the uh because that's what is evaporating uh water, the oil's not boiling.
Anyway, so one, yes, salt. Two. I have never seen a recipe that is a hundred when you're at 180 degrees, you're up close to normal confi temperatures anyway, like 185, somewhere in there Fahrenheit. Uh this is in the the 80s, somewhere in the 80s in Celsius land. And uh that is kind of normal Confi temperature, and therefore I would say it only needs to cook for normal confeed time on the order of several hours, or you know, a little more, uh not a little less, a little more, depending uh if you're on the lower side of that temperature.
And as your temperatures drop lower, even a little bit lower, the times are going to extend longer and longer. When I start hearing things like seven forty-eight, seventy-two hours, then I'm thinking you're cooking at a much lower temperatures, down like sixty-four degrees uh Celsius, which I can't convert in my head. Uh, because that's the lowest thing I would confia uh chicken ad still gonna, you know, it's it's but here's the thing. I have tested lower temperature confis in the 64, 65 Celsius range, and those ones you would have to cook for not for 72 hours, but for a long time. And I don't like them because they don't have the characteristic texture of confit.
They're they're good, they're not overcooked, uh, and they are tender, but they're not the same. My guess is that if you cook it for that long, that it's gonna be a little bit mushy. I would never do it for 72 hours. I don't see any benefit. I think you're gonna lose texture at that point.
Uh but that that's me. Um Did I say enough about that? Mm-hmm. All right. So uh should we take uh a short break and come back uh with some cookies on cookie cookie issues.
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So we're doing a cookie tasting uh from uh Judy Malden. And she said to only unwrap them on air. So Nastasia has the mic down by the wrapper so that you can hear the fact that we are unwrapping it. Sorry, what's his name? Gritzer.
Daniel Gritzer is the one that hates the noises? He made them when he was on air. What a what a I'm saying like uh you know. Okay, so there's a note on the cookie. What does it say?
This one is a matcha butterscotch. Matcha and butterscotch. Do you like matcha in general stuff? Yeah? Do you like matcha ice cream or matcha the beverage or any form of matcha?
In any form. Really? I'm quite surprised. Because other people like matcha, so I would assume that you do not. So, Dave, you're gonna come in here and sit down for a minute.
Uh step away from the booth. Yeah, this thing can run itself. Alright. What do you say? He's like, I don't really need to be here, it can run itself.
Okay. So, all right, so here we'll break this into into chunks. Now, Nastasia's had these in her apartment for a couple of weeks because things haven't worked out to the you know what they're supposed to. That's good. Step away from the mic when you're chewing.
Excuse flavor. Alright, going in. It's good. Yeah. I like matcha.
It works. It's kind of light on the matcha, right? Yeah. It's light on matcha, heavy on the brown sugar. Heavy on the, well, that's the butter scotch.
What's the next one? By the way, so she's making these in. So her whole shtick. What is it? What's the next one, Sas?
Matcha cover, cocoa, macadamia, green mango, cranberry. What? This is a second matcha thing? Yeah. Hmm.
Anyway. So her her thing here is she's obsessed with, you know, she we should get her a meeting with uh Christina Tozy because she is obsessed with Christina Toesy. She loves Christina Toesy. So she ba basically she bases all of these cookies on Tozy's base recipe for I forget which one, the blueberry cream, blueberry cream. What's the next one?
We have to, by the way, we have to go through. It does not. This might be uh double. Alright, well get one of the next ones. Alright, so while while you're unwrapping this.
What? Green mango pine nut. You should open those ones. You you open those while I'm answering the question. You're unwrapping these and tasting.
While you're by the way, that is not mouth noises, that is cellophane noises. So I don't want to hear any. Dave, the Dave, our intrepid engineer, is uh is doing that. But we can't all eat at the same time. So Dave, you take a bite of this and you can discuss this as it happens, and I'll talk so that no one has to listen to just dead radio silence of mouth noises, which everybody hates.
Alright, well, while uh David's tasting these uh cookies, uh, and then I'll taste them. I'm gonna answer a question from Nick Devlin. Uh Nick wrote into Twitter before what's a reasonable yield for a Houstino, and Justino, by the way, is when you blend liquor and fruit, uh, and then uh with uh with uh pectanex uh enzyme, it destroys the pectin. You spin it out and the center fusion becomes clear again. What's a reasonable yield for a Houstino?
I'm getting around 85% yield using dried peach at 150 grams of dried peach per liter of booze in a center fusion at 330 degrees, uh 300 uh 300 uh 3,300 G's. I think we got enough of the crinkle stuzz. I'm gonna move that of the mic away. Um I said, look, uh, you know, if you dry fruits out, it really lowers the yield. And it's because if you look at 150 grams of dried peaches, that's the equivalent probably of like 500 grams of uh peaches.
So you're looking at like almost uh you're looking at probably at somewhere on the order of 250, 300 and something uh grams of water loss. So the peach, as you infuse it in the liquor, is going to want to reabsorb uh that that water, and so it's gonna make your yield consequently lower. Also, because you are um you're hydrating it and trying to break it down, the parts that aren't hydrated aren't going to get broken down by your pectinx enzyme that well. So I recommend always doing what's called a remouillage, and in a remouillage, what you're doing is you're re-moistening the stuff and trying to extract out some of the stuff that you missed on the on the first go-around. And you tried that and you said that when you blended the remi back in, it ended up too weak.
So here are my two recommendations. One, you don't want to use a lot. When I'm saying when you're doing a remouillage, it's just a little bit of water, just enough to kind of resuspend it and make it a liquid again, add a little more enzyme, uh, and then that will hopefully break down some of the stuff that uh didn't get broken down before and increase your yield uh dramatically. And also, before your first spin, blend it with the pectinx, wait a while for the stuff to rehydrate again, and then blend it again uh to kind of re-break up what's in there and really get it broken down fine. So waiting is really gonna be your friend.
And uh if you do a remouillage, just a small amount uh and even maybe a little bit of liquor with a little bit of water, or just a little bit of water at the get-go into the dried fruit before you do the blend to try to get some of the water level back up a little bit before you do your um before you do your spin. And so that's what I'm gonna recommend. So how the Dave, how were those uh which ones did you taste? I'm not sure. Well, okay.
I just kinda ate what you handed me. All right, well, so uh we have to be. They were good. Yeah? Yeah.
Um they're a little cold. Where where were you storing them? Uh those two are in the freezer. Oh, okay, yeah. In her heart.
Wow. That was a that was the green mango one. That's good. Okay, yeah, the mango one was the one I just had. No, read the ombre description there.
Oh, I have another cookie. Uh, El Ombre. Chili Pekin, guitar chocolate. Uh no, that's not the one I had. No, you haven't had that yet.
Peanut butter chips and cocoa. So it's a spicy, it's a spicy chocolate. It's a spicy Reese. Okay. It's a spicy recess cookie.
Oh. Is it is it in fact a spicy recess cookie? It's like super spicy? Chili Pekins uh pecking. Is it is a nice uh spicy day.
Well, in a minute, after like I'm done talking, then he can alright, so you ready to talk? He's still chewing. This is the hard part about Judy about cookie tastings on the air, is they take your mouth parts up. It's impossible to talk. What?
I don't Yeah, she did not like the wine tasting, that's true. Alright. So um, let me see. Uh Brandon Hodgkin's uh wrote in, uh Hodgins wrote in about induction in Phoenix. Uh I'm remodeling my you're tasting these and you're letting me know what's going on.
Right. Yeah. Alright, I'm remodeling my kitchen soon, which means I get to pick out a new cooktop. My home is not fitted for gas, so I'm going with an induction cooktop. I want to just use the pavement.
You ever been in summer in Phoenix does? Yeah. Nasty, right? About you, Dave. You ever been to never been.
No? Never been at all? No. I like Phoenix. It's like well, Arizona, a lot of old people, right?
In Arizona. I mean, there's a little bit of Florida of the Southwest. Uh yeah. I mean, especially there's certain there's like retirement communities there, but um they like if you grew up watching Bugs Bunny Roadrunner, it like really looks like that. Right.
Like there really are Seguaro cactuses just like hanging around. So you like the desert and you're into that? I mean it's pretty cool. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Like, and like they're also like if you're into like Yosemite Sam and that kind of stuff, there are literally tumbleweeds flying around on the streets. Like it's like real. You know what I mean? Like not in the city proper, but it's no joke. What cookie is that you're handing up?
This is the MFing jungle. The oh uh is this like uh MFing is uh presumably the uh the curse uh family show. Yeah, and that's uh that's also uh matcha based. Okay. So um anyway, back to back from Phoenix.
This one's for you, Dave. Phoenix also like, I don't know, like the main problem I have with Phoenix is it's in like a bowl-shaped valley, and so it's easy for pollution to kind of get caught down there, but I haven't been there in over a decade, so I don't know if they've taken care of that problem. Why? What is this one? This one's the one with poison it?
No. This is nuclear war cheetos. Oh, alright. Alright, so let's we'll try that. Alright, what was the one I just had?
The M Effer? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was a little sweet. So break break off. This is nuclear war cheetah, which I'm gonna try after I answer this question while Dave is talking about the cookies.
Okay. Um Stad, you could you can make your comments in a second here. Um I do not have gas, so I'll be going induction. I have the oven separate so I can go with a standalone cooktop. I've narrowed it down to two options and was wondering if I could get your opinions and advice.
Uh he's looking at the Wolf CI, which is not stand for cooking issues. I believe it's probably cooktop induction. 36 uh 5, 365, so it's 36 inches wide, five burner. Um and the Bosch NITP triple six. Now, I like triple six uh because of the triple six mafia and of course the double reps.
Satanic, yeah. Yeah. I don't know why anyone would make a a cookware appliance with the number of the beast in it, but although maybe if it sells well, like we should uh think of that for our stuff. We should change it from the the centrifuge to a uh triple six thing. I don't know.
Anyway. Uh so you said Bosch uh seems cool because of the square zones on the side. So here let me tell you the layout because you guys can't see what the hell's going on. Uh I can't either, but I looked at it earlier. So it turns out induction uh induction cooktops look like they've come a long way in the in the past couple of years.
The way that the um the way that the um wolf is laid out is it has uh four normal size burners on the side and then one large burner on the on on the on the left and one large burner on the right. Now what's cool about the wolf is that you can run everything in called bridge mode. So you can bridge the back two burners into one burner, the front two burners into one burner, or the side burn uh you know, the left or the right into into one burner, and they also have what's called boost, so you can suck the power out of the um burner next to it, which you're not using, and jack it into um into one burner, and and it's kind of it's it's fairly powerful. So like uh, you know, the the smaller ones go between 2100 watts, which is still more powerful than any plug-in induction, and 3,000 watts in boost, and the big one goes from 2600 watts to 3700 watts, uh which is good, it's powerful uh in boost. Uh it looks good, people seem to like it.
Um what I'm curious about when you put those things in bridge mode and have two burners running and try to put like a roasting pan across it. I wonder how even the heat is because they look uh it looks kind of like the like the elements are are round, but people seem to enjoy using it. Um the other thing I'll note, and this also goes for the Bosch, is that neither of them appear to allow you to control temperature, which is kind of interesting. They all go by power ratings. And one of the nice things about um induction is if you put proper sensors in now, well, they won't be as accurate as the um the Breville one that I'm using because it they're not gonna have external uh you know, like pop-up sensors like the Breville one does, but you can put like uh something under the ceramic to do basic sensing of temperature, and you could also have a jack so that you could have a temperature monitor monitor it.
I'm just a little surprised that they don't give you a temperature um as well as a as a power, but uh maybe no one does that in a in a cooktop because the Bosch people don't do it either. But it seems like a good unit. The Bosch unit is really, really an interesting setup because what they do is they have a large round uh burner in the middle, and then on the left and right they have uh rectangular burners that are divided into two sections. So you have a like a like a uh uh front and back, left and right, and then a big center one. And the f the the interesting thing is that the layout of them is can also be bridged together so that they're one, you know, either a full left side or a full right side.
Uh you can't do what the um wolf does. Well the wolf allows you to do all four as one, a big 17-inch by 17 inch thing, which would be cool if you had a large cast iron griddle, let's say. Uh but these allow you to do strips uh along the um along either side. Uh and I actually saw an exploded diagram of it, and the actual elements are kind of dual uh oval elements, so it should probably be fairly even over the entire width of that uh element, which is nice. Now that gets me the only downside I really see about the uh Bosch is people seem to say that they don't like uh how the controls work for it.
And since you're gonna be using it every day uh for all of the cooking that you're doing, I highly suggest that you actually use it. I'm gonna say the same thing about the other one. Find someone somewhere that has a unit running that will let you run it. They they should have uh some in here in New York, they even have some places that have all of their cooktops hooked up. But I would be very curious how even the um the the wolf one is when you're using non round pans on those things in bridge mode.
If they're even then fan friggin' tastic. But they draw the burner shapes round, which leads me to believe that the elements themselves are round. Uh I'm also curious to see how even it is uh on the Bosch. If the Bosch had excellent con if people really love the controllers on the Bosch, I'd probably go with the Bosch. But since people seem to really like the controls on the Wolf and not on the Bosch, then I might go for the Wolf, assuming I could get a relatively heating thing.
But I would definitely say you have to use it. It's too big an investment to make to not uh use. Yeah? Alright. So uh Dave, you gotta you guys you gotta start talking about the cookies you tasted while I eat them so that I'm not making mountains.
I'm waiting for you to breathe. All right, I'm breathing. Alright. Um yeah, the Cheeto one, not not a fan. I'll I'm also not a fan of Cheetos to begin with, though, so um yeah, I don't know.
They tasted kind of stale and brittle, and that didn't really work for me. But um I have one here called Fugazi, which is uh getting me really excited. And I think it's like some kind of is is there mint in there? Is there a description of that one? The Fugazi?
Yes. Thank you. Yeah, that one's pretty good. Um I can't find roxan. It's the only one I can find.
You have to put on the red light. I was chewing, or I would have said it for you. Do you don't like Cheetos? No, never did. Any kind of like cheese puff snack I'm not a fan of?
I just had the Pekin. It's not that spicy. The spice builds at the end. Yeah, it's not spicy, it's kind of smoky, but not like a ton of heat to it. No.
Alright, so Nastasia's trying to find the the I don't think that came here. Roxanne now is going through my head. What's in the Fugazi? Oh, because the red hot's red lights? Oreo, cookies, York peppermint patties, and cardamom.
You like your peppermint patties, Nastas? Did you say cardamom? Yeah. That's what that is. There's something else in there.
I couldn't tell what it was. Do you do like your peppermint patties? Do you like them in the freezer or not? No. Really?
Yeah. That was my favorite candy as a kid. Freezer or not freezer? None. Huh.
Are both of you non-freezer candy people in general? Or do you like any sort of freezered candy? I do not. Really? I mean, if it's got ice cream inside of it, then sure.
But you don't like that super hard frozen candy bar thing? No, it's gotta have a little melt to it. Oh, it will melt if you chew it. Not immediately. I like how you I like how usually I'm the immediate gratification guy, and now you're like, must be immediate melt, or it's all worthless.
It's just uh uh you know, I don't want to have something like rock solid that I'm chewing on. It's not it's not ideal. All right. Um hey, Stas, can you do me a favor? Can you check our email and see if Johnny Hunter got back?
Because I asked him if someone asked uh someone asked a question on smoking, and I might put that off for next week because I want to get Johnny's opinion on it. So, Martin, if you're uh listening, uh we're gonna do your smoking question um next week because I just wanna I wanna verify uh something. Wait, do you mean like by 1128? Did you look by eleven twenty-eight? I looked I I didn't look after I got on the train.
No, I'm saying you check now and see whether Johnny got back to us. Well you sound something in 1128 at all. Oh, that yeah, that's it. All right, so like uh I'll I'll I'll read it. I will take a break in a minute and I'll read.
All right. Uh okay. Andrew writes in, I'm pretty new to the show, but I've already learned so much. I was hoping to see Dave at Harvard on Monday as I'm living in Boston right now, but I wasn't able to make it. Anyway, uh I make a cocktail with honey syrup, one to one honey with water.
By the way, one to one honey with water uh is not a uh it's it's that's a very light syrup. I wouldn't go one to one honey with water. Uh you're adding too much water, and I think that's part of you you want six hundred and forty grams of water for every kilo of honey. I'll repeat that again. Six hundred and forty grams of water for every kilo of honey.
And the reason is there are in every kilo of honey, there is already um eighteen uh a hundred and eighty grams of water. Right? Okay. Uh whether you care or not, that's the truth. Uh and lavender infused vodka.
It tastes great, but in order to have the amount of honey flavor I want, I have to add a lot of honey. This makes the drink super sweet. Um I want a clear honey flavor without the sticky, impossible to drink multiple sweetness. I'm also interested in the use of honey flavor and savory dishes without a huge addition of sweetness. I know you guys have answered a similar question with the distillation of floral notes of habanero peppers.
And if you've answered this question before, I apologize. I have a lot of catching up to do in the podcast, but otherwise, any help would be great. Thanks so much, Andrew. Well, you could go for like uh if you want honey flavor without the sweetness, you could do distillation. I'm pretty sure I used to do rotovab stuff of honey, although I can't really remember it.
Um you could also use uh you could ferment out some of the sugars and use a mead that's on the drier side, right? And that's gonna have although the honey notes will have changed. But you one of the main things is like I said, don't do uh one to one to one. Do uh 640 uh to a kilo. And then by adding less water, the entire thing will be shorter, right?
So you're but you're still gonna have the problem because to get us whatever level of sweetness, you're gonna add however much actual sugar from the honey. So the real solution to your problem, I believe, is going to be um finding a stronger honey. So, like, you know, do like a comparative honey taste, and some of them are much, you know, wildly uh more uh assertive than others. So I don't know what you're using. You didn't mention like if you're using something that's relatively neutral, like a clover honey, uh, you know, by switching to something a little more with a little more power, I think you'll uh be able to up up your up your honey game.
Do you remember anything we did with uh with honey? No. I'm sure I must have distilled it at some point, but I can't remember what the results are. Um so do you do you think those the and the thing is the meads once they're fermented don't taste a hundred percent like honey anymore, right? But they're good.
You could bolster it with fresh honey, and then I think it would be like honey pow, but that's expensive. And it's probably hard for anyone who's not doesn't have a source already to find the dry meat, and they're not anyway, something to think about. Okay. So uh could you do me a favor? Can you pull up Johnny's email on your phone so that I can keep the uh the thing up?
Okay, we got a question in from did you taste all the cookies by the way? My stomach hurts. I think I had too many cookies. Too many cookies. What's the one I have in my hand that you handed me, Nastasia?
Um I think that's the Karen. Karen. Did you have Fugazi yet? Uh maybe I have Fugazi. No, Fugazi's down here.
All right, listen, why don't we take a quick break? I'll chew on this read Johnny's thing, and then I'll come back and answer this question. And we are back. Alright, so it turns out, Martin, I am gonna answer your question. Um I I like a lot of times, like if I haven't done uh something specifically, I like to just ask people that actually have rather than give advice out of the blue, right?
So Martin writes in, uh hi Dave. I'm about to build myself a smokerslash dryer to make cold smoked jerky. It kind of sounds vaguely like cold smoked jerky. Sounds like a little there's something vaguely sinister sounding about it. Jerky.
I think jerky. I love jerky. You like jerky. Mm-hmm. That's one of the few things that you actually like.
Do you like do you like the fibers to be short or long? Short. So you like you don't you don't like to have to like rip your teeth off. You don't want to have to like like get dentures. Well, actually, I guess like you you know, you want a jerky that could be eaten with dentures.
That's what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. Denture-friendly. Denture-friendly jerky.
Uh I kind of like it in between. Anyway. Uh I want to put a humid a humidostat and a thermostat into as well. The thermostat is for microbial control, and the humidostat is to ensure that I can reproduce the end product consistently. Uh, and then what do you think my process should be?
Should I do here are the choices in chat room? You can chime in on this too. Because I know you got some smokers out there. Uh, should I do a two-stage where I one cold smoke and then two dry? Or a three-stage where I one hot smoke for microbial microbial control, two, cold smoke it for additional flavor, and then three, dry, or should I uh do the smoking and drying in a very controlled way all at once?
And can you give me tips on the design? And then you ask, what do you think of this smoke generator? And it's a German one, Borneac. So I don't have any experience with it. I don't know anyone that's used it, but I like that word borniak.
Uh, because it sounds like a maniac smoker, right? But it's basically just a one of those uh auger screw feeds where it has like a low temperature uh uh element and it feeds the the stuff past the burner, creates the smoke, and has a long tube so that the smoke can cool down, which seems fine. I'm assuming you're gonna put it into something like uh an old fridge or a box that you're gonna make, and a bunch of people sell controllers for it, and it should be fairly straight uh forward on that. But as for your procedure, uh here's what I I asked Johnny, I was like, what do you think uh on safety? He says there can be an E.
coli risk if the meat isn't cooked, but if you do an acid wash, then you can lower it. The feds, i.e., our federal government, say you have to cook beef through. That being said, it's almost for sure safe to cold smoke and dry, uh, says Johnny Hunter coming in. I also said, look, the real issue here when you're smoking, right? So when you're making jerky, you just season it, you know, do whatever you're gonna do, season it, and then you dehydrate it.
But remember, it's never in an anaerobic environment. So you're never in a situation where you have to worry about um botulism or anything like that growing. The real issue is when you're taking something uh and putting it in an anaerobic environment, which you know, a smoker is, can be anyway, uh, and then um and then not heating it to the point where you're you're going cold, where you're not heating it to destroy botulism, botulism can in fact grow while it's still moist. And then because you're not heating it again afterwards, you're not wouldn't deactivate any toxins that were uh created in the product while it was smoking. That's theory.
I don't know, right? And apparently also Johnny says there's an E. coli well, there's obviously coli risk in beef to begin with. Um so, anyways, what you could do on the botulism front if you really want to keep it cold 100%, is you could just nitrate it, right? And then nitrating is gonna prov along with the salt, that's gonna prevent any botulism growth during the cold smoke phase, and then once you're drying it out, then you're drying it out in an aerobic environment.
You should be fine. Anyway, those are my thoughts. Um we have time for one more, or we uh Yeah, that's fine. All right. So we have a question in and this is actually this is the one that came with a uh a long question alert from Shy.
Because it's more of a follow-up, which uh which I enjoy. Um where are we? Hello, cooking issues. First thing, a while ago I asked how to prevent plums from getting bitter during baking. Because remember, there was there was a problem where uh the plums on cooking uh turned more bitter in a plum tart.
And I said that there's a bunch of people online that have that problem. Um I followed your suggestions and soaked half of the chopped plums in milk uh in milk and the other soaked in water, then drained and baked them. Sadly, the experiment failed as none of the plums got bitter at all. Hmm. Well, that's not really failure because you didn't have bitter tart.
It seems like a success. Although you know what you didn't do, you didn't do a control with no soak at all. Like maybe uh maybe you were leaching out some of the stuff that caused uh the problem. So you didn't have a full control there. Anyway, um the experiment failed as none of the plums got bitter at all.
So I guess it had to do with the variety, ripeness and growing conditions, which it almost uncertainly did. Almost certainly did rather. Uh however, the milk soaked plums did keep a little more solid and firm. Quite interesting. Could that be the calcium in the milk?
I doubt there's enough of it to make a difference. Well, I don't know. Uh first of all, the plum is relatively acid, so I don't know how much of the calcium is gonna be available after whatever happens at the kind of acidic barrier between the plum and the milk. It's a question for someone that's actually studied that rather than someone who's just, you know, making it up as I go along, which is what I would be doing if I said something. Uh but your questions about milk.
First, I really liked brown milk solids that form when clarifying brown butter. Nastas, are you brown butter fan? Mm-hmm. Yeah? I feel like I used to make brown butter a lot, like I guess because I used to make Madeline's a lot.
Do you like Madeline's? Mm-hmm. They're a good pastry, right? Need to be fresh. You know what I don't like?
Everyone remember like it like I mean, I think it was Danielle or someone. They used to hand you the Madeleine at the end of dinner and you would eat it right then, it was like fresh. Like you want a Madeleine to be fresh. I love a fresh Madeline. Anyway, brown butter, but there's always uh so little of those solids.
Is it possible to add plain milk or cream to the butter in order to increase the amount of solids? Um well, no. You mean no. Because you're you need to make the you need to make the you could okay, look. You could add it maybe to the cream before you churn the butter, right?
Uh but the easiest thing to do would probably be just to add milk solids to the cream before you do it because I you don't want to add a whole boat ton of water to extra water in the milk to the um cream before you turn it to butter. But I'm I'm sure you could increase the solids content of uh the butter by uh just jacking the amount of milk solids that are in it. Uh hell. You heck I mean, you might even be able to just add milk solids uh to the butter as it's cooking and just burn them. But it won't be the same.
Obviously that's cheating because they won't agglomerate the same way. Um second, what causes uh some labne cheese, which is I guess the same as Greek yogurt? You like Greek yogurt size? Yep. Do you ever go to the Greek yogurt place that's near your house where they make it and it's like super duper thick?
Those guys who are like some Turkish stuff and some Greek stuff? No. So good. They make really good stuff and they have really good terra masalata. That's like the best teramo salada I've ever had in my life.
For those of you, terra masalata is that Greek thing with like the with like the fish eggs in it, it's kinda creamy. And the stuff that they sell on the supermarket shelves is like rubbish, garbage compared to uh like the rede real deal stuff that uh is made fresh. So if you're in New York and the international if the international grocery is still in business, are they still in business? Do you ever walk by there anymore? I don't walk by there anymore.
Anyway, on 9th Avenue, best terra masalata I've ever had in my life. They also make their own batarga. Do you like patarga? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Anyway, okay. Um the question because I know we're on our way out. Uh second, uh, what causes some labne cheese to be pleasantly bitter? Now I've never noticed bitterness in uh strained yogurt products like Greek yogurt. You ever notice it?
No. Any bitterness? No. I've never noticed it. Uh this is not a flavor I've noticed in other sour milk products, but it's similar to that found in summed age ch Age cheeses.
From uh what I've read, this is related to protein breakdown. I would like to be able to induce it when I make my own strained yogurt. Well, uh again, I haven't tasted, so I can't really say. One thing I can say is that in situations where you're removing a lot, a lot, a lot of the water, uh, and the denser it gets, the more whey you're removing, and whey is inherently sweet because whey has uh more lactose in it. And so maybe what you're noticing is just a reduction in sweetness, which should pump up the sourness because that it's gonna the more sour solids there.
But also maybe that you're picking up on some flavor that is being masked by the lactose. That's my only guess, and it's just a guess. And lastly, for Nastasha on the way out, one more thing. If I remember correctly, Nastasia should be back from Naples. I plan to visit there in a couple of months and would appreciate hearing about your trip.
Anything? Wasn't worth it, don't go. Wow. Nastasia in a really didn't like Naples. What other cities were you there on that trip?
Uh none that none that I would recommend. Wow. Normally an Italophile people, but for some reason. Not a good trip. Nastasia.
Well, you said a b okay. Nastasia had a bad trip. I have been on Nastasia, been with Nastasia on bad trips, people, and she will judge a whole city by whether she had a good time on a particular trip, and it's just who she happened to be sitting next. So Naples don't take it perfect personally. Cooking issues.org.
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