This episode is brought to you by Jewel, the emergent circulator for Sous V by Chef Steps. Order now at chefsteps.com/slash J-O-U-L-E. I'm Damon Bolti, host of The Speakeasy. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network, broadcasting live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. If you like this program, visit HeritageRadio 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 like, well, this time like 1215 to like one o'clock on the Heritage Radio Network from Roberta's Pizzeria. Where, Peter? Uh Brooklyn. Where in Brooklyn, dude.
Oh, at Robert's. Dude, what's the neighborhood in Brooklyn where we are? Bushwick. Well, as you can tell, joined by an ever Peppy Peter Kim, Grand Vizier of the Museum of Food and Drink. Got uh Dave in the booth.
How are you doing? What up, doing good. Alright, good. And we have Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez next to me. How you doing?
Good. So la uh calling your questions, museum related perhaps or not. Uh to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Uh so yesterday was the first day in the closing week festivities of uh Booker and Dax the Bar.
And uh man, I think people had a good time, but man, was it a poop show? We like 86 everything like right away. Like they took the chairs out, so like the bar was three deep. Uh and uh it turns out that n I don't know how to operate the POS system. Like all these drinks, just like it was just like uh I think it was good though.
People had a good time. We had to 86, a bunch of stuff. Um, but uh last night we had uh D came back to you know, our manager D. Canonis came back uh as a guest bartender. We had um Ann Robinson came back, uh Jesse Vita came back, Austin Henley came back and told me an interesting story about uh you will enjoy this, Nastasia, about Damon Bolti.
What about him? So I did I I guess I didn't I I knew it, but I didn't think about it. Southern Teague who's coming tonight, by the way. So if you come tonight, we have like Nick Bennett, Souther Teague uh coming uh tonight to Booker Index, um, who else? Dana Corey, uh forget who I'm not I'm not mentioning a couple people.
I gotta look at Nastasia will look at the list, maybe if she she feels like it. Um tomorrow we have David Wonderich and uh Leo Robochek and uh Don Lee coming uh to the bar, so look out for that. Uh but anyway, so Austin says to me, Austin says, so I was doing uh Damon's show at Roberta's with Southern, because Southern co-hosts, right? Yeah, so he's doing the show, and you know, Damon Bolti's identical twin, which you talk about a lot, Nastassi, you like that factor. Whenever you mention Damon Bolti, you mentioned the identical twinness.
And there are too many freaking food and drink identical twins in the New York City area. There's just too many of them. It's crazy, right? I mean, like, in other words, have you I have not met an identical twin that doesn't have one of the twins working in the food food business. Someone needs to do a study on this.
Have you met any identical twins, Peter, that are not in the food business? No. Is it because we only know people in the food business? You know lawyer people. Nastasi, you know like weirdos, weird non-food people, right?
Do you know any identical twins in that scenario? I I know one. I think about it, I know one. Medicine and architecture. Not food.
Anyway, so Damon Bolti's twin comes in, and apparently everyone reverts is like, hey, what's up? He totally ignores him, pulls Anastasia, like sour face and blasts right past him. And then when Damon walks in, everyone's like, Damon, why are you such a jerk, man? He's like, That was my twin. That was a good story, right?
Good times. Anyway, so uh also turns out also turns out, going back to Booker and Dex, uh, that the the jerks that live above Booker and X, like haven't lived there as long as the bar has existed, and start complaining at like 11 and smashing things into the floor to tell us to be quiet. Now, I don't know about you, but you don't turn blow the whistle down. You know what I mean? If you're playing blow the whistle or any one of those other songs, and you're mixing drinks and your bar is three deep, the correct response is not turn the music down.
The correct response is don't move to New York and live above a bar, moron! You know what I mean? Idiot. Who who does that? Like, that's what I hate about New Yorkers.
Like, not New York, real new, like you just wouldn't move if you if you you are not entitled to change the people who already exist around you. Do you know what I mean? You move into a place, the place is bad because there is uh it's not like it's not like all of a sudden, okay. Look, I've done this a bunch of times, right? I'll move into a place, and the person who lived in my apartment before me is was like an 85-year-old woman who lived alone and never had any visitors because her kids never came to visit her anymore.
She made zero noise her entire life, like, you know, I don't know, didn't watch TV, no cable, nothing. No noise, nothing. She dies, we move in with like the kids and me, and you know, the dinner parties, the family dinner and all this stuff, and everyone gets mad. And you know what? I kind of understand that, except for you live in New York.
Like you're not entitled to your kind of super quiet privacy, nice life. That's why it's New York. Nastasi, what do you think about this? I think yeah. I mean, like, do you I mean, like, there's bounds of rationality, but like living directly above a bar that you moved into.
Did they move in after you were there? Yes. All right, well then. Yeah. Yeah.
Living in the city. Trade offs. Well, it's not a tree. It's like just like, you know, understand what you're dealing with when you move in. You know what I mean?
Like, some people shouldn't live in the city. Like, apparently, these frat weasels who moved in to this, like, I think there's like 30 of them living in this apartment above uh going all uh against frat people. But you know what I'm saying? There's 30 of them living in this place above us. And then uh I don't know, whatever.
Just suck it up. You know what? Whatever. So anyway, Peter, you're on here to push the museum of food and drink. The only 10 years.
What's that? Yeah. Only 100. So we need it in one day. Right.
So we just need two cooking issues listeners to donate 5,000 each. Yeah, and even beyond that, it's the last chance to get tickets to see the exhibition before it opens to the public. And so it's going on until 8 p.m. tomorrow, and we need to cross the finish line of $80,000 by tomorrow. Um I'm super psyched about the exhibition.
We're gonna have, I mean, just to recap, we're gonna have the fortune cooking machine, we're gonna have tastings, we'll be demonstrating some different techniques in Chinese American cuisine. We'll have some awesome menus, giant wall of takeout boxes. Um so yeah, it's gonna be like just you know, awesome show. And so get your tickets on uh chow.mofed.org. And we're gonna we're gonna chain Peter to something, you can just pillory him.
Like that's gonna be one of the things. We will set up a dunk tank with Peter in it. Wouldn't that be awesome? Oh my god, Peter, you should totally do that. Like a Peter Kim dunk tank.
Yeah. You think we can. How is that Chinese? I don't know. It has nothing to do with that.
It's like part of the little side exhibition. If somebody puts in ten thousand dollars, I will set up a dunk tank. You heard anything. Will you get in it, Dave? Hell no.
I will set up a I'll get into it. Bleeping dunk tank, yeah. Family show. I said bleeping. All right.
Pretty soon actually we have the non family show from Johnny Walker coming up. I gotta talk about it first. By the way, Nastasi, you'll enjoy this. Uh the dry the name, this Latin name for for you know the beans with beans. You familiar with it?
You're gonna enjoy it. Fazeolis vulgaris. You like that? All right. Let me get to some uh get to some questions.
If I would be smart enough to pull them up. Okay. Um, this is from Shy. Uh it is well known that old beans take longer to cook than young beans. Why is that?
Well, I thought I knew the answer to this question. And uh it turns out that I don't know the answer to this question. I know you think it's just kind of a a moisture thing, but um that doesn't really explain that doesn't really, I don't think, explain what what's going on. Then I did uh an initial search on the internets, and uh like all every manufacturer and uh like council that tries to sell dried beans will tell you if you store the beans too long, they say in quotes, they will never soften. Now I know that's garbage because you can pressure the heck out of them and soften them.
You could add baking soda and soften them. But then I realized I didn't understand, it's not simply that it's drying out, something else is happening. So I have to I have the the short answer is I have to go um I have to go look it up. And it you know, I'll I'll have to go do some sort of uh you know uh scientific search on the order of um um you know dry beans storage chain storage changes. Like it's always like people who have the money for these sorts of studies are always uh kind of big industrial concerns, and so you always add things like storage, shelf life, dried beans.
You try to hit it as you try to phrase your searches. This is by the way, anyone who actually wants to find their own info, right? Uh you like I I found out um um Ariel uh Johnson who was here uh a couple weeks ago that there is a website, and I'm sure you know all of you guys, all you cool kids out there uh already know about it, but it's um and I don't know like how legal slash illegal it is, but I'm gonna give you guys uh this website in case uh you don't already have it. It's Psy like Science, S-C-I-Hub, H-U-B dot C C. Okay?
That's S-C-I-H-U-B dot C C. And um this website allows you to download uh any almost any scientific paper that is behind a normal like university firewall. Now, it's not as easy to use as uh you know university thing because you need uh a record called the DOI. Now, uh what a DOI uh I don't actually know what it stands for, but it's a long, long identifier that uniquely identifies a particular uh article. Okay.
So how do you get that? So many, many, many of the either the university search engines or even the actual database owners like uh Wiley or El Sevier or these guys will allow you to search and get the abstracts. And a oftentimes you can get this identifier in the abstract, cut and paste it into the Sci Hub page, and boom, the paper pops up. Now, the legality, yeah, I haven't looked it up. I don't know.
What do you think, Peter? If I don't know, is it okay? Can I can I go can I go like Talmudic on this? If I have no idea whether it's illegal or not, it's okay to use it. You're the lawyer.
I think you get one one free pass. That's my official legal opinion. So I get a lifetime free pass on the on using this one thing. Like in other words, like I don't know if this is illegal, I'm not gonna look it up. Bang anyway, it's a fantastic way to go get it.
So um when you are searching for things, in general, the way to find information is to think about think about your problem and try to cast it in the most industrial light possible. So any sort of uh thing that you think that Campbell soup might care about, or anything that you think uh that you know uh you know Nabisco might care about, because these are the people that have money to pay for these kinds of studies. And that's in general how uh I find it. So I've I will this week is extremely tough for me because the the bar closing stuff, but I'm gonna try to look up more on that because it leads me to another thing. When I realized that I had no idea uh what was um going on with the dried beans, it also led me to uh uh a and also talking to and thinking about you know the time that Booker and Dax has been open and every time I've been cooking is the concept of uh drift.
And so and I've been thinking a lot about it uh recently. So you get drift in your your whole life, and what what does that mean? So you have like you come up with a recipe, you come up with a with a technique, you implement it, you teach it, then that goes on autopilot, and just like a game of telephone when you were a kid, you know, eventually there is drift in that technique, and there's drift in the in the end product. And so when you're running a restaurant or when you're running a bar, uh you know, you have to be you have to set um things in place to prevent your products, uh, your techniques, your recipes from drifting too far uh from you know from where you started. Often, I mean, sometimes drift is good.
Sometimes you start with something and the drift actually makes it better. Most of the time that's not the case. And even if it did make it better, you want to know why, and then codify that. So I think you know, a lot of um what I've been thinking about is that that kind of drift and control. And that's I think a couple weeks ago we talked about the Eric Repair story in Nastasia, where you know he has a very specific thing that will never drift, craft Swiss cheese, and so they use that craft Swiss cheese because that's palette drift.
That's about your drift of pallets over time and change, right? And so kind of locking into uh one idea to increase consistency. But the same is true, same drift happens in your own mind. So most of the time, like I know this is you know uh applies to me uh especially, or anyone that you know works on a problem for a small amount of time and then compartmentalizes that and then puts it away, right? And then you tend to think, oh, I solved that problem.
And Nastasia, you know this better than anyone. You've heard me say the same dang explanations like a billion times in demo to demo to demo. Yep. The problem is is that most of the time, you like your actual, you haven't done enough actual work at that beginning section to actually get the real answer, right? And you only marginally understand what you're talking about when you're actually doing all the hardcore work.
So then like two, three, four years later, right, all you have left in your head are the results, and you don't remember any of the caveats to the research that had you come up with those results, typically. So you'll think you have an idea locked down, and in fact, over the years, if you don't revisit it and look back into it again, you turns out you know almost nothing at this point. Uh and so you know, trying to one of the reasons this show is helpful for me personally to do it, is that people ask me questions that make me re-examine, and Harold McGee is awesome at this stuff, constantly re-examining things that you hold um dear or hold as just kind of truths, and re-examining them down to a base level to try to re-understand uh what you're doing and it because alm almost almost always, you know, you were wrong about something. Uh you were wrong about some of your premises or uh something like that. So the the bean thing got me thinking on that because it was something that you know I thought about a long time ago.
Oh yeah, they dry, they dry out as they get older, they get harder to cook. Clearly there's more going on, and I need to go freaking research that thing. And in fact, almost all the questions this week are of that variety, things that I thought uh I knew something about, and then I looked into it only marginally, feeling that I could just come back with a quick snappy-doodle answer, and and it turns out it's a much more complicated problem. I mean, if you leave a dried b bean out, like what humidity level does it get to at the end of the eventually. Well, that's the thing, right?
Let's say you live in, and this is something I don't know. Let's say you live in New Orleans, which is, you know, I don't know, not swamp, that's overstating it, but it's humid, right? So is it going to equilibrate to in other words, uh, even in a sealed environment where you're not uh where you're not losing a lot of moisture, right? I think the beans, they change over time. There's a str I think there's a structural thing going on, right?
So increased moisture absorption, if it's just moisture, this uh could be overcome relatively quicker, uh quickly with a longer cooking time. Or perhaps let's say, you know, you're a believer in this current no soak thing, uh a soak to increase or to retemper back up. But there's no indication on the dry bean. If that was the case, the dry bean council people would say, if you have some old beans, put like a moisture and paper towel in with the old beans for like a couple of weeks and then they'll be good as new again. Because that's how the bean council talks.
Uh have you have you met the bean council? Uh but that is in fact not what they say. I mean, now look, the other thing you have to be very careful of is downloading the new iOS on your phone because it no longer freaking works. I'm trying to reopen the question. What you have to be careful of is that the bean council has uh a vested interest in you throwing away your old beans and buying new ones.
In reality, though, what they should do is tell you how to fix your old beans, because if you fix your old beans and have success, you'd be like, you know what? I actually enjoy cooking dry beans. I will purchase more dry beans. You know what I mean? Where instead you're like, they tell me I should throw it away.
I'm gonna get this package of beans, I'm never gonna cook it, then it's gonna get too hard, I'm not gonna know whether or not it's still good, I'm not gonna sit around and try to cook these dried beans, and then they don't soften and then what, dinner's ruined? No. And then they throw it away and they never buy dried beans again. See? That's my feeling.
My feeling is is that if something appears like it's in your best interest, get people to throw away it and buy fresh beans. Sometimes it's not in your f in your best interest. The best interest is maybe there's an advantage to it. To what? The old beans?
Yeah, yeah, you never know. Well, it's like often. Like we have a question uh coming up soon on uh staling. And that, you know, so that's that's true. That I I love staled bread for other things.
We'll we'll we'll get to that uh in a in a minute. Uh about the new iOS. Have you downloaded it and stuff? I'm not allowed to. Please don't.
Like, I can't. I I was at a wedding uh on Sunday, and I'm like, oh, and then and my phone has been pestering me for weeks. Oh, update, why don't you update? You're going to sleep now. I could tell, can I update now?
And you're like, fine, fine. Jeez. Jeez. You hit it, it updates. And then it no longer operates like a f this is why I thought that when Steve Jobs died that I would be free of this sort of like tyranny of updates.
Um, of yeah, enforced changes to the way that I use uh my device. The horse is like, unless you do something, it's gonna update in 30 seconds. Yeah, right. Like so the ghost of Steve Jobs came back and caused me to not get pictures of my friend's wedding because I had gotten used to the fact that I could go shaboom and like take my phone and it turns into a camera instantly. I went, I did that, and then like sprays a bunch of garbage on the top of my screen.
It's like, press a button to continue. And then I pressed a button, but I obviously I press it too long. And Siri's like, may I help you? I was like, Well, can you take the picture of the you know the bride that I wanted freaking 10 seconds ago and not have it look like I'm texting during the middle of a wedding ceremony by typing on my phone like a lunatic? She was like, uh, I don't understand you, Dave.
You know what I mean? Jerks. Jerks. Um anyway, so uh I heard about that, man. You what a jerk, man.
Texting in the middle of the I know it. What kind of an what kind of a jerk shows up? It was a small, it's a small wedding, too. It's like you don't want it's like weight, man. It's wait.
It's not like it's an important moment. Yeah. It's not like the lady die wedding where I'm one of like eight billion people, and no one's like, you know, who's that idiot texting, and then they draw a bead on me like the snipers draw a bead on me or something like this. You know what I mean? It's the best thing is it it wasn't just like it looked like you were texting somebody, but having a really angry text discussion with somebody.
Oh, yeah, because you know what my face was looking like. I know exactly what you're talking about. Everyone else is like has this like you know, joy and like and then that is like stabbing at your phone. Yeah, that like I'm trying to I'm trying to use my eyes to drill holes through my telephone. Yeah.
Yeah. Nightmare. Okay, shy's second question. Additionally, how uh and why? What?
Why does the starch de gelatinization I assume you mean uh re-crystallization in stale bread cause it to have a chewy texture? And is this similar to moisture loss from whoarm bread exposed to the air? Uh which can also lead to such texture. Many thanks, Shy. No, uh, so moisture like uh staling is not uh moisture loss.
And again, bread staling is a very I'm gonna do the Trump sniff from now on. Uh yeah. Yeah, uh staling of bread is not primarily a David going to jail. Well, yes. Uh but yes.
Anyway, the um uh staling is not uh I mean I'm sorry, like it's not a political show, but that debate was impossible to watch. If you were on either side of the fence, that debate was like so cringe worthy, right? I mean, weren't you just like the whole time I was like, oh, this is my country. Right? Yeah.
Did you watch it, Peter? Yeah. What do you what were you like? Again, like not like don't don't talk about your political side, anything, but what we how do you feel? No, the whole thing is just just painful.
I mean, ideally, what you want is just actual debate on the merits of things that matter. Yeah, no, we're beyond that. What we're way beyond that. We're beyond that. I think, but the thing is, I hate this in-between thing that's like watching, like, you know, it's like watching uh, you know, meet the parents.
It's just uncomfortable. You know what I mean? Uh, you know, some of the moments are funny, but it's an uncomfortable funny that makes me want to put my head in a paper bag. You know what I mean? It's like we just need to have like a jello match between these two.
It's a joke. I mean, it's a it's the kind of thing that people in other countries could point to and say, like, yeah, I mean, it's just a total circus. Yeah, yeah. And it's it's the kind of thing that like John Stewart used to like make fun of other countries. And like, look at the parliament of blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know what I mean? And like, look at the fistfighter department. Aren't these people funny? Ha ha ha ha. Well, now it's us.
Yep. You know what I mean? It's like, wow. Anyway, so uh bread scaling is not primarily a moisture loss, but and I remember. So I I went to my you know, my wife is very anxious for me to finish, and Nastasia is very anxious for me to finish the second book that I'm supposed to be working on.
So I uh I was like, how about this? The importance of moisture management. And and Jen's like, Jen's like, are you an idiot? Or are you what kind of a moron? No one's gonna buy a book on moisture management.
And I was like, I was like, but Nastasia, I mean uh Anastasia, because you also had the looks, I was thinking of you now, because Nastasia's giving me the moisture management look, which is very close to the vegan face. Oh, moisture. Anyway, so I was like, you know, I was telling my wife, I was like, look at and telling you guys on the air, like such a huge percentage of cooking problems in the world are moisture management problems. So everyone's like, That's true. Why did, you know, why is the crust of the meat, why is the skin bad?
Because you don't know how to handle moisture management. Like, why is it? Why is what's wrong with the bread? You have no understanding of moisture management. What's wrong with my pizza?
Moisture management. I don't want Maria to I want to get I want to capture that look on her face. If I tell her if I told my if I told my editor, my yeah, at the publisher at Norton, if I was like, hey Maria, check this out for a book. How about this? The miracle of moisture management.
But see, this is it's all about that. So like people like they think that they they think that they can put like an instantaneous crust on the outside of something and then it's gonna be good. No. You haven't removed enough moisture from the crust area to it get it right. Like, what's wrong with the my fried foods?
Well, you haven't managed, like you haven't managed the balance between moist and non-moist. Same with potato chips, French fries, like almost anything that isn't a braise, and even braises have moisture management problems. Cooking cooking beans, cooking starches. Like why breads stale in the first place, whether they'll go stale quickly, is moisture management in the dough, right? And then how it stales itself is also a m matter of moisture management as it goes out.
So the miracle of moisture management, it turns out that no one thinks that that will sell. That sells even less than cocktail books, which you know, don't sell that well. But i you know what I mean? It's like then you're your your history of writing books will be liquid intelligence and then moisture management. Um the miracle, the miracle of moisture management.
Yeah. That's gonna be on like the $10 shelf. $10 shelf. Do you remember when borders used to exist and they had the like the three dollar? But it was a giant three dollar book about like World War II airplanes?
Yeah, you could also get all sentimental, you know, thinking about like why my face is so tear-stricken after our work meetings. It's the miracle of moisture management. It's mean managing your moisture. Exactly that. I am, by the way, people, in meetings, I am the worst.
I am the worst. I am the most inflexible weasel in a meeting. Like the thing is that we have these meetings at the Museum of Food and Drink where we're talking about the exhibition. Here comes the moisture. So we're all sitting around this table, right?
We're sitting around this table, and we're trying to figure out how to do the best exhibition given the parameters that we have to work with. And when Peter comes to tell me something that he knows I'm gonna disagree with, right? I can tell because here's what here's what Peter does. He walks up, sits down and goes and like deflates like half of his size, stares down at his like 50,000 year old MacBook with half the keys missing, and is like you know, I can just see it. I can just see the shoulders go down a little bit.
And I'm like, Peter, man, I'm not so bad. And then he says something, and in fact I am. In fact, I am. You know what I mean? It's like and I'm not evil, I'm just not, you know.
There goes the moisture management again. Ooh, but like the uh moisture management. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it you know, it works with your colleagues, it works with your bread. So shattering dreams or shattering crust.
Yeah, it's saying the same. Little mismo. Uh so the uh the deal is uh what do you what do you think, Dave? Do you think moisture management could be a book? Um, right?
No. Yeah, I don't know. No. What about the miracle of moisture management? I mean, it does sound miraculous, but it's a tough sell.
It's got three M's in a row. What could be bad about three M's in a row? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody loves alliteration. Yeah, except for people.
If you open something with the word country, do not spell it with a K, especially if there's a kitchen. You're two thirds of the way there. No good. Anyway. Yeah, sure, let's do that.
We'll talk about Brett after the uh after we do the caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hi Dave, this is Jeffrey in uh Costa Mesa, California. How are you doing? How's it going?
All right. Alright. I'm one of the self-hating Californians. Sweet. Nastassi got some blowback on my Twitter account, by the way, uh, about the uh uh who is it?
Someone said at Leapers was like uh California hates you too, Nastasia. Strong. You may have found another. Not true. Oh, nice.
All right, go ahead. What do you got for me? Wait, Costa Mesa, isn't that where they isn't that where the bean place is that where they grow the beans? Is that where Rancho Gordo uh Rancho uh uh Rancho Gordo are you talking about? Oh yeah, they are they there?
Is that where they are? Are you in bean land? Didn't catch the question. Oh like you said Costa Mesa, right? Is that where Rancho Gordo is?
Is that where the beans are grown? Where is Costa Mesa? Uh we're like south of Long Beach, just south of Los Angeles on the coast. Maybe. I don't know.
All right, go ahead. I don't I don't believe we grow beans, but you probably have oranges back in the day, but those are gone now. Really? Why? Because of the citrus greening or just because of economics?
Or water? Too many people. Too many people. Oh. Turns out people are worth more than oranges.
No, we're not. Financial people seem to think. Um yeah. Even in a drought, it's just pleasant here. Kind of disgusting.
Nice, nice. Uh I'm gonna be installing. I'm gonna be installing some uh put foot pedal valves. Nice, good move. And uh the TNS brass ones.
And uh my guys are kind of scratching their head on how to solve the problem. I know you'd mentioned before there's a trick in basically allowing the hand uh cartridge valve to still work out the faucet. So they're they're trying to figure out how to have the foot pedal valve still work when the cartridge valve on the handle is in the closed position, how to how to sort of bypass that. All right, so I've done it. Yeah, so I've done this two ways, and I actually think the way that I did it the first time was better, and I'll tell you both ways.
So the the way I originally did it, and the way that I actually recommend is I physically separate out the um I separate the foot pedals from the um the hand cartridge and I have them mix in the gooseneck. And so what you do there is you get like a bit the base faucet, right, which is either gonna be wall or deck mounted, and then you actually um you don't use the weird swivel fitting there. You just literally put you get all chrome, chrome, uh uh chrome T fitting and then uh chrome nipples, you get to choose the size, and then you screw them together. It was it's easiest if you're doing uh wall mount as opposed to deck, right? Because in a wall mount, your sink uh the wall the flanges on the sink go back to the wall, and then the T can go back to the wall.
You have to and then you buy another flange and you just work out the the size of the chrome nipple, and what you end up with is a triangular flange, right? So you have instead of two flanges going to the wall, you have three that go back. Then on the inside, once you mount it up, you screw the uh you screw the connector in, and then you just go direct on a regular brass fitting, you go a T into that third T that goes into your gooseneck, and then that goes down with check valves to your foot pedals, and now your foot pedals operate completely independently of your uh foot cartridge, it doesn't matter what's going on. That worked fantastically. On my new one, actually, the foot pedals still work fantastically on this one.
On my on my new one, what I did was I bought a TNS unit that came with uh a sprayer arm, right? Now, what I did there is I the problem is most sprayer arms, right? What they do is they sense the uh pressure. Uh and so if you if you push the spray arm and let water through there, uh like a flap valve comes down and shuts off the water to the uh to the regular faucet head. And I don't know if that would work with this.
The one that I bought, the way it works is both the sink head and the sprayer arm can work at the same time, and you have to push and rotate a valve to actually turn off the uh the gooseneck. I hate this system. I hate it because it pushing and turning is such a hassle. If it was one of those quarter turn cartridges, like that would be good. So what I'm looking to do now, you know, now it's a couple years later, is rip off the gooseneck that I have and just screw another gooseneck on there and try to find an actual something that will shut the flow off to the gooseneck that's just a quarter of a turn, and not some sort of push and twist like a childproof cap, which I freaking hate.
But the but the way that that one works is very easy on the hookup for the foot pedals because what you do, and that one is deck mounted. So what you do is you just put your deck mount down, and that TNS one is designed to have a feed-in from the bottom that is the spray arm. So where the spray arm goes in, I think you might have to get an adapter, I forget, but you just screw the T right there, and feed feeding into that T, right, is the mix from your foot pedals and also the spray arm. So it's super easy. Um it's super easy there because you have that central connector going in.
But if you're going to use a spray arm, which I love the spray arm, you need to think of some better way to switch off the uh to switch off the top of the of the the gooseneck. Um the problem with T. Could you see a way that the first option could work in a deck mounted situation? It's possible. I didn't research it because I knew I was moving.
I I I thought I had solved it with the deck mount sink that I bought, but the problem with TNS Brass is that uh I mean I I love their stuff and like it lasts a long time and you can get all the parts for it, but it's not something in general that you can just walk into a plumbing house and get. It's better now, it's easier. Like on uh Amazon, I think carries some TNS stuff and KTOM.com. Store has some of their Yeah, and K Tom. The nice thing about K Tom, at least it used to be, is uh I think they're out of Florida, is that it used to be a pain in the butt because K Tom had the best prices, and so I would call up TNS Brass and I would say, hey, and I would spend like you know, 45 minutes on the phone with them asking about exactly which adapter am I gonna use, blah blah blah blah blah.
And then I couldn't just order it from them because they don't do that way, and then I would call K Tom and be a K Tom, put in an order for this, and then they'd ship it out like a a week later. Um I don't know, I have to look at it and see whether there's some uh uh easy way. Well, it's there are easy ways. In other words, like you you could they they make just a flange, you can buy the flange, and then you can put the T in. The problem is is getting it to space nicely because if you're gonna go deck and you want to drop that T down, it's gonna have to go T and then over.
So, unless you want it to look completely whacked out nutty, right, you're gonna have to have a relatively deep deck because it's gonna have to go out the back of your faucet and down. So now instead of mounting just a regular, I don't know, that were probably like two-inch flange or something like that. Uh you know, you need like a you need like a two and a half to three inch deck to mount it on. Like now you're gonna need that deck plus however like whatever the closest you can space that T over, which is going to be at least an inch. So you're adding like at least an inch, probably closer to an inch and a half, you know, to the depth of your deck on the deck mount situation.
Right. And if you're willing to do that, it's it's like super easy. The one thing I don't know is uh I don't know, and once you do that, by the way, it's super easy to install a sprayer arm on it because now once you have a third thing going down below the deck uh that happens like after the cartridge mixing, then you can you can tee that into your foot pedals and into a sprayer arm. And if you're doing that, right, the sprayer arm functions either with your hand mixers or with your foot pedals. Um the the issue is is that most TNS brass um uh shutoff, like quarter turn shutoffs.
This is what I used to have, right? What they do is is they're designed to exclusively run a uh a sprayer arm, and most of those situations are in dishwash uh pits, and in a dishwash pit, you're always using the sprayer arm and you have to tell it, hey, I want to use the gooseneck. So, and that's the way I used to have it. But if you're okay with the look of that, then it's it's like very easy because you can just buy they buy a separate gooseneck that comes up and it has the the quarter turn shut off for the gooseneck. You leave that on all the time, so the gooseneck is default on, right?
And and then and then and so you can buy a deck mount, uh a deck mount faucet without the gooseneck. You buy the add-on gooseneck, and then you have the tea that comes uh out and down, and then you buy the flange there and hook it into your spray arm and your foot pedals, and you should be good to go. I actually got used to having kind of the weird industrial chrome looking faucet thing, and I actually loved it and liked it better than my system. But it's just a matter of mix and matching with all the TS TNS brass stuff. Okay.
Um I think that's enough to help. Thank you very much. Thank you. Let us know how it works out. All right, thanks, David.
All right, so back to the stale bread. So um it's not uh strictly moisture loss that's happening, right? Uh it's actually uh the uh starch and it's but that's the thing again, it's more complicated. When I went back to look into it, the research has changed, people have done additional research since the last time I looked at it. But in general, what you're looking at is the starches uh are recrystallizing to an extent and the moisture is migrating from uh the starch sometimes to the proteins or into the into the uh matrix between where the starch used to be.
And for instance, reheating the bread uh can cause those things, uh, you know, cause them to reabsorb some moisture, decrystallize and get good again. Once you do that, usually it turns to garbage uh uh quickly afterwards. But yeah, so it's more than just uh it's more than just uh moisture loss. And by the way, the fact that it's a crystallization thing, if you think about it, this is why storing bread in the refrigerator makes you a complete enemy of quality because uh you're increasing the crystallization rate by lowering the temperature of the bread. That's why when you're freezing bread, you want to freeze bread right away because when you freeze bread, it's the equivalent of the act of freezing it alone is the equivalent of at least a day's worth of just sitting out on your counter, and you want to thaw it relatively rapidly.
You want it to be in that evil uh fridge zone for as short a period of time as possible. All right. So before we get kicked off, we should handle uh some Halloween questions. I'm gonna ha uh I should have done this one first and we get the uh the folks in the chat room on with this, and maybe Nastasia has some idea because Nastasia is the the queen of the Halloween uh and Chris. You know what I'm gonna say.
Uh I exactly know what you're gonna say, and that's why I want you to talk about it. Um this is from Matt. Uh hi uh cooking issues crew. I'm looking to make some Halloween slash spooky themed cocktails for Halloween. So two questions.
I'm using fresh Concord grapes, but don't really have a way of juicing them and getting the seed out. Any thought on uh on that without the aid of a juicer, or can I just blend it all and then clear it with some pectanase or whatever? Look, you can blend Concord grapes, but um it's gonna it the the seeds get bitter. So, like uh if remember the time that we tried it and was like uh gross, all the seed particles and the thing was just nasty. After that.
Yeah, but then like I've when I've done it without without the Santha, like I've literally just mashed it like like uh Lucille Ball making wine uh back in the I Love Lucy, you know what I mean? You mash the hell out of it, add your pectanase, uh pectinx ultra SPL to the mash, and then just keep mashing it for a couple of hours, and eventually it will kind of liquefy, and then you press the stuff out in a sieve to get the juice out. I don't remember that working very well. Well, your yield is not as high as what we got, but uh it's uh, you know, it's hard. Those were delicious cocktails we made.
Yeah, the other thing to do if you have kids or interns is get them to seed the dang grapes. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Then you can just blend the stuff. Um those were delicious cocktails, but they were a pain.
It was a pain. The Santa didn't crush the seeds, right? It's all a question of of officer. Yeah, but you lifted the You jiggered it somehow. Well, yes.
But the the issue with mashing, it's it's hard, you need a ma mashing is difficult because uh people want to try to the your your mash efficiency goes way down as soon as the depth you're mashing in goes uh deep and as soon as the area that the stuff you're mashing can move to goes wide. So if you have a deep bucket and you put a masher in to try to mash something, then all of the whole Concord Grapes just move out of the way of the masher as you push it through the stuff down the bottom. Women call men mashers back in the day. Masher! Yeah, what does that mean?
I don't know. I don't know. I mean it means like it's like CAD. Do you know what I'm talking about? In those like cartoons.
I thought we were talking about Concord Grapes. Uh yeah. You know, Nastasia? I I appreciate that. Because that's like that's an old school reference.
Oh, yeah. It's old school. Masher. Do you know how many things are in cartoons that you have no idea what they are and the kids still find them funny? Like all the weird like topical references that nobody like do you remember when Yosemite Sam was uh you remember when Bugs Bunny was supposed to get this guy fearless freep to do the high diving act?
And and Yosemite Sam's like, I'll pay him off all beast to see the hot diving act. I'm not gonna see the hot diving act. Remember that? That's good impressive. Yeah, so like yeah.
He's actually making little pistol motions. Yeah, you have to make the pistol motions. So anyway, so uh the so but there's all sorts of weird topical references in that cartoon. That cartoon was hilarious growing up, but there's no like songs of the time, like open the door, Richard, you know that song? Anyway.
Uh but it doesn't matter. That stuff's still funny as heck, even though you don't understand uh understand the references. Money tunes are timeless, man. Yeah, unlike unlike Shakespeare, where someone has to sit there and tell you what all the references are to what's going on in the Shakespeare. You're like, oh no, I get it.
That was like a current poem that people read. Because he would mash his genitals against females and uh that is disgusting. That is uh who would do that? No, no, no, not Trump. Oh not a political show, not a political show, Dave.
I think we're all on board with who we want, right? Yeah, not a political show. Not a political show. Well, we don't want people around. Not a political show.
Alright. Mash your gendals. First of all, like No, not like they're not out. It's still that's even that's so path, it's so pathetic. Imagine like you're like, eh, is this good?
On a crowded train. On a crowded train like on the subway. That just seems like a not like how is that see that kind of thing can't be an attempt at a successful attempt. You're not attempting to actually get someone to go out on a date with you with that kind of a move, huh? Like, what do you get?
No, I mean, but a lot of stuff like you know, catcalling and all that. It's not like you actually think the person's gonna start turn up and be like, hey, you know what? Let's go and get some dinner. Wanna get a drink? Yeah, really.
Hey, sweet cheeks, like, well, hello there. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I don't really understand. I don't understand, like, so is it really just to show off to your buddies? It's a power move.
Yeah, yeah. Just like it's not a power move or if we're buddy's on a crowded train. Right. I don't know. Well, no, then it's just a power move move.
But you you can you can you can impose your own will on somebody else? Yeah, I think so. I I don't know. I I can't even imagine. But it's yeah.
Masher. That's disgusting. So was that an urban dictionary or is that a real source? Various sources. Nastasia's favorite uh favorite place to look up her data, various sources.
Again, back to Looney Tunes. You remember that when the king was trying to get uh I think it was Yosemite Sam again to cook Bugs Bunny, and he says every every day the same thing. Variety. Remember that? The king wanted and he wanted Haas and Pfeffer as opposed to variety?
Totally meaningless. Do you remember this? I think somebody sand was trying to cook Bugs Bunny. And you need to get it. Is that where Bugs Bunny's like sitting back like it's a hot tub?
Hot tub? In the pop and bubbly hot tub. Dude, do they not have Looney Tunes in Illinois? No, no, no. There's a I I there are episodes where Bugs Bunny is like sitting in a cauldron and like chewing on a carrot irreverently.
Well, maybe it is that one actually. Maybe it is that one. But when you say like like pop bubbles, I'm thinking of that like song. No, that I was just I was doing a reference to Fat Joe. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I moved to Fat Joe from Looney Tunes. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah.
But then what's that song uh Pop Pop Bottles, the other one, the more recent one. Who sings that one? I don't know. Pop bottles. Uh I can't actually sing the lyrics of that.
Any I can't find I can't think of any set of lyrics of that that's appropriate for me to sing. Alright, so we went from Concord Grapes to genital mashing to uh uh Looney Tunes to Pat Joe. Alright, well, let's finish this. Uh any thoughts for uh spooky Halloween cocktails? Uh this is the same question, believe it or not, folks.
Uh the last word looks sort of like a witch's brew, but I'm not sure the best way to really make it pop. I could carbonate it, uh uh, but I'd really want it popping up in your face to seem spooky. Um the other cocktail I'm thinking of making is something somebody made before Concord grape, maple syrup, lemon juice, bourbon, angostar, egg white, shaken, real frothy, and then two drops of Peshodes. Oh, not peixos, man. Come on.
Just dump, just dump cough syrup in it if you're using Peixos. No offense, Paishot's people, but offense. Uh it's good in the sense. I don't mean to interrupt, but I'm gonna interrupt. Yeah, yeah.
That's my classic. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, uh to show vampire teeth marks, all ideas appreciated. Thanks. I like the vampire in the egg foam, though.
That's a good idea. I mean, Peshod, you know, I'm not for it, but yeah, whatever. So uh, okay. If you're gonna do a I mean, everyone's like, oh, this is for kids. Adults freaking love a hunk of dry ice in the house.
Dry ice is what I'm gonna say, yeah, man. Adults freaking love it. And then especially look at the pizza. There's pizza with greens here. The people here will more reports on that next week.
Uh when we ask for a pizza with greens, they'll be like, we don't do that. We don't do that. It's gonna happen. I guarantee you, Nastasi, how much you want to, you won't bet me. And there's like prosciutto on top.
It's like, I love that pizza. So listen, when you're doing, if you're gonna do a punch with dry ice, make sure you don't uh put you don't put um uh dry ice in anyone's cup for any reason, shape, form, whatever. Uh activated charcoal, black, like those super powders that people use for health reasons, which I think is crazy. Uh, but whatever. Uh but you know, uh that goes in drinks.
A lot of people done that, and black drinks are creepy, and if you use enough of it, all your cut all your customers or guests' teeth will become black, which is also really creepy for them. Um garnish with what if you had like uh cobwebs from like cotton candy or something? And this uh what? Cotton candy for cobwebs. It would melt, man.
You could put some on top. That's what I mean, yeah. Uh don't put silly string in your cocktails. Here's another one. Uh Nastasia is been, and and Nastasi and I don't say the name of the book.
I don't want the price to go even higher. But uh Nastasia, we turns out Nastasia is obsessed with this, says she told me about it. I don't remember that. And then I mentioned it to her. Applehead dolls.
Oh, yes. As a garnish. Yes. Yeah, appleheads. Applehead dolls.
So look up the old Vincent Price apple head doll kit. So what you do is you take the winner. You take an apple, you peel all but the top and the bottom, leave that intact, then carve uh like carve a face in it, right? Soak it in lemon juice a little bit if you want. I don't know why it's gonna go brown anyway, but they say to do that.
Carve a face in it, and then soak it in salt for um I don't know, like a salt water for like uh a day or so. And that's to, I think I don't know why everyone does that. I don't some of that's probably just osmotic to pull the water out of the apple, and also probably to help keep it from spurlin as it as it dries down, and then dry that sucker down, like stick it on a chopstick or whatever, and or wire and dry it, uh you hang it or what or stick it up and dry it for a week. If you have a high dehydrator, you can do it quicker. If you buy the Vincent Price the Vincent Price apple head maker literally is like a case that goes around a 60 watt light bulb and probably has caused more house fires than any other Vincent Price branded toy in history, of course, and what's the ultimate cocktail, Halloween cocktail?
The ultimate Halloween cocktail is to make a wine zombie. Uh and Nastasia should post on her Instagram account wine zombie instructions. It's true. Peter, what is your experience with the wine zombie kit? Um I basically drank kamikaze straight out of the wine zombie.
Not knowing it was kamikaze, and then um blacked out. Blacked out, yeah. Yeah. So the way a wine zombie works is you go to your local Halloween shop and you buy a uh you buy a uh a zombie mask and then you put it, you build like a wire armature, you put a zy zombie costume over it with hands, and then you uh just put a punch bowl in there, you drill a hole in the bottom and jam a rubber tube in, and then you uh put it on like a circulator or whatever, a pump. Then you add all of your cocktail to that uh bucket, and then the tube out of the circulator or pump, whatever goes into the mouth of the uh of the zombie mask that I guess you put it over a mannequin head, right?
A styrofoam head and then dumps into the bowl. So it's just a zombie puking, and I think for this a red cocktail is appropriate. Puking zombie blood cocktail punch into and you can have like a hunk of dry ice in the punch bowl to keep it cold as it's circing, and so he's puking into a frothy, like steamy zombie thing. And and the zombie later you're puking into a yeah. Now, Nastasia, Nastasia, you know, uh believe it or not, even though even though she is sometimes a just get her done enemy of quality, it's good enough kind of a person.
That's what this was. No, but you went full on and you did you did a a standing wine zombie and a Santa. And then and zombie, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And but but if you're you're first wine your first wine zombie out the gate, I recommend doing a uh a bust only zombie that you can you know put on a tabletop, like a tabletop mounted zombie. But if you want to go full uh Nastasia and Piper, shout out to Piper Christopher. He said he gave up all IP on that. So well, you still have to give him credit for working on it. You don't have to give him money, but you have to give him credit.
So if you need plans, Nastasia should sell kit plans for wine zombies because uh it's it's wine zombie year, and then the the good thing is is that with a very small amount of repurposing, you can do what Nastasia also did at the Del Posto party, which is the puking Santa. Whereas Santa's puking up mold uh, and that was a hot one. That's very good, like a hot, like a mold uh mold wine. You didn't mold wine, right? Yeah.
Like a glug, like a like a Santa puking up a glug. And Nastasi again took it one level further. Actually recorded uh her friend Phil Bravo making Santa comments like too many cookies, and then like puking up the mole wine. You know what I mean? My best work with Dave.
Yeah. Those are the days. Oh, now you're making me think of uh Archie Bunker song. That's such a good show. On the fan.
Yeah. Better wrap it up, Dave. Alright. So listen, I have some questions I didn't get to. Uh they are on zucchini pieces.
Uh uh, I don't see who sent that in, but it's uh it's about zucchini residue and sticking. And again, much more complicated than I thought. You ever remember I've said this on the air a bunch of times. When you when you skin pumpkins, you get that weird oozy latex that like causes that disgusting skin to f form on on top of your already disgusting skin. You know what I mean?
Yeah. And so it turns out that there are these crazy exudates in cucur bits and and zucchini, cucumber, uh, pumpkin, all cucribits. And some have it more than others, these weird exudates. And so I'm gonna look into that because I think that's an interesting uh uh subject. And I also have to get next week to um ooh, replicating uh other cook's dishes and when it's okay, when it's a rip.
Uh and we have a question on some high-tech equipment uh from Simone Montreal, we're gonna get to next week. What do you want, Peter? And go to chow ch o w dot mofad.org and get your tickets to see Chow, the making of Chinese American Cuisine, and then see Dave, me, maybe Stas. I don't know if she'll be there. Because if you don't, give me the give me the moisture management Peter if we don't make it.
If you don't, then Mofa is just gonna be in so much trouble. No, we'd appreciate the support. So it starts at 30 bucks and up. You can come and see the exhibition. So get out there.
Chow.mofad.org. Thanks. Cooking issues. Thanks for listening to this program on heritageradio network.org. You can find all of our archived programs on our website or as podcasts in the iTunes store by searching Heritage Radio Network.
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