Today's program is brought to you by the Christmas Tree Farmers Association of New York, partnering with Grow NYC to make farm fresh trees and wreaths available at Green Markets. For more information, visit Christmastre's NY.org. 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 heritageradionetwork.org for thousands more.
Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues, coming to you live from Robert's Pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 or 1 o'clock on the Heritage Radio Network. Joined as usual with Nastasio of the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stu? Good.
Got Dave in the booth. What up? And we brought everybody's favorite person to beat on. Peter Kim. Once again here to spread hate and vacate.
The director slash client of and and uh short order cook, as it turns out for the museum of food and drink. Nice. Oh, you guys in your freaking district. Oh my god, so like these guys, Nastasia, right or wrong. They're like, they live in that old school old school office world.
It's like literally 10 people working in this big kind of like lost space. In one space. And they still No walls. No walls. Giant space.
And they still have the same like weird office arguments. Like so you think. Over email. We're copied on them. Someone didn't put away their sauerkraut.
It's like you think you're trying to get away from like offices to get away from that. I've noticed the spoons are stacking up. And I am not copied on these emails. I'm like, Well, here's the funny thing, Dave. Here's the funny thing, Dave.
You don't read any emails that come in, including ones that are pertinent to you. No, but that's a business interest. That's because whenever I yet you respond to the what you call inane dish emails, and you just send me these little needling messages being like kill me, period. That's the reason, folks, that I don't respond to email. If I only got three emails a day and they were important, then I would respond to them.
But instead, like when you never all these. Incredibly worthless. I used to have, I'm terrible in meetings, people. I used to have this tactic in meetings where uh remember this is the French culinary nostalgia? Meetings, like people would start just saying inane things, this crazy and like wasting time, and I would just start going and you'd be you would just start like tapping your hands on the table, and they were like, what is he doing?
He's like, this is what this is what you are doing to me. You're hurling our time into the ether. Hurrying, like I'm a firm believer, people, in never responding to emails. Now I might take it too far, but I think everyone responds to emails too often. There's a there's a mental cost to switching back and forth between tasks all the time.
Maybe this is why people don't ever get anything done. Well, there's something called teamwork, Dave, that requires something called communication. And it either has to happen by phone, email, or in person. So you're saying it's two different schools of thought. You're saying, wait, wait, wait, wait.
So Peter, what Peter is saying is that that nothing ever got done before the age of email because there was no team building back before they had email conversations. Back when back when, back when everyone, yes, where you say, you know what? Like, you don't really need to meet every 30 seconds, which is what email is. An email is a meeting every 30 seconds, right? What you and and it's totally inefficient because you're like, oh my god, what do they say?
Do I have to get angry? How many people do I have to CC? And then you have to craft a response. And then they have a response to the response, and so on and so on. This is how Hillary got her uh classified email issues, by the way.
It's like 18 levels of response. I don't care. Truth. Like these are like long email. And like what's the point?
Like, what's the point? Just be especially people. They all work in the same box. Walk over. Emails, there's a reason for emails.
Literally, people. But these ones are crazy. Literally, they like I am I can reach over, should I choose to, which you know I never would, I can reach over and touch Nastasia on the shoulder. However, at MoFed, they would send an email from me to Nastasi. That's how it would freaking work.
Literally, I could be staring you in the eyes and be sending you an email. Maybe they want to have it on record. To like so it never happens again. The sauerkraut, the spoon, so it's uh Dude, I've never worked in an office where you don't have some of that sort of day-to-day crap. I mean, you just have to.
You don't, actually. Yeah, you do. You actually do not. You could choose to say, you know what, people? I am looking at my email four times a day.
And that's it. Four times a day. Realize that after I respond to you, I'm not gonna see it for another quarter of a day. That probably wouldn't cut down on the flow of useless email, though. Yeah.
Uh well, it would cut down on not the ones, not the external useless emails, but once people net didn't weren't in the position where they felt like they were gonna get a response within ten seconds, that it wasn't gonna be like bing, and you're like, oh yeah, oh wait, oh, oh. You're changing hearts and minds. Here's the other thing, dude. Have you ever like this is especially true in kitchen days? In offices where I'm not saying that offices are bad, but in offices where like productivity is punished, and it's more about like the amount of emails you send that determine whether you're a good human being or not.
In kitchens, this becomes a nightmare because you can't actually sit and have a real conversation with someone because they're constantly being interrupted by texts from from other venues. No one can actually there's a huge chunk of people that just can't get anything done because they can't focus for 30 seconds to a minute and a half on the actual important crap that's being told to them live and instead are focused on freaking uh text. Nastassi, you've seen this a million times, right? Especially with once people are bored at work. Like once you get people who are bored at work, then all they do is focus on their texts.
That's it. Yeah, so in in your mind, there was a golden age when things got done that stopped around the 90s. No. I'm saying like all these tools are great. It's just they're being used by people uh like in a knucklehead way.
I'm saying all these tools are useful. I'm just advocating, like I say, not c being constantly plugged into something that can pull your attention. Maybe maybe you have a job out there, people, that doesn't require you to think. But if you have to think, then being pulled from conversation to conversation every 20 seconds is is not helpful. It's just not freaking helpful.
It's like with cooking. It's like when you're cooking in a kitchen. My wife always says, why is it, you know, what is it that's like what is it about the kitchen that you know you think is hard for people to get? It's hard for people to stay in the flow of the kitchen because they get bored and they get sucked out into other things, and then they lose track of what they're doing mentally, their mental flow of what they're doing in the kitchen. And so, yeah, they burn the sauce.
They don't take the thing out of the freaking oven, they don't have the timings work out right when the stuff comes out of the oven. Because they're a bad cook, well, maybe, but maybe part of the reason they're a bad cook is that they're not focusing on the flow of what happens in the kitchen. Good kitchen work is supposed to have a little bit of that in the flow, zen like, I'm working and this is what I'm doing. I'm not doing some other garbage, right? I'm doing this.
No? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Anyway, whatever. I had to relate it back to the cooking.
So, uh, Peter, why are you here to harangue me uh about something? And be some uh accomplished, I think. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. No, you were gonna harangue me about something.
It's gonna keep coming. Yeah. You're not promoting anything? What? Not promoting the same thing.
Just here to just here to needle you, man. All right. Well, like, so now I'm owed some needling. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh so I just got back, uh, not really, I got back at the end of last week, uh, but I haven't done the show since from Chef Steps. First time I visited Chef's Deps in Seattle, went to uh Jamie Boudreau's bar, Canon. Very uh very nice. Nice place. I think they might have just won some award or something.
I don't know. Great bar. Uh the most ridiculous liquor list I have ever seen in my life. Like the crazy like they like they can't print the liquor list because it'd be like a phone book, so it comes out in like iPad form. To give you an example, they I don't know, I don't know, uh uh, I don't really understand this, but they have a whole bunch of like uh super super old whiskeys, like super old, like from like the 1800s that are like $1,400 a shot.
I asked the waiter, I was like, is that very good, that that that whiskey? And he was like, no. He's like, but when someone like like some like you know, Microsoft or some like you know, tech dude shows up there and makes a giant deal, he's like, what do you got that's really expensive? And then once you spend $1,400 each, this guy bought uh $2,800 worth of uh whiskey, two shots, $200 worth of whiskey. Jeez.
Uh you're gonna love that crap. You know what I'm saying? Like that's the advantage of charging so much for something. The customer is inherently gonna like it because it's too much cognitive dissonance if you feel like, oh, that was not really exciting. Right.
You would have to be so rich. Like you would have to be, you would have to be billionaire rich to be able to be like, you know what? I can be uh I can be entirely objective about this fourteen hundred dollar ounce and a half pour of liquor that I just drank. Yeah, they have so uh Is that the place that has a giant wall of bottles? Is that it?
Uh I wasn't facing a giant wall of bottles. And I didn't look around because that's the kind of guy I am. They have really tall ceilings. I'm that guy that like walks in, sits down and just stares down at his napkin and you couldn't miss this. It was uh I'm thinking of a different place.
Right, Nastasi? So annoying. Were you by yourself? I was not by myself. I was with the Chef Steph's crew.
Yeah. And you're well, he's part of the Chef Steph's crew, your boy M Michael Natkin. Oh yeah. Yeah, and so I said, How did I said Nastasia still loves you? Yeah, the only vegetarian Nastasia likes.
I said uh I said you're still enjoying uh his cookbook. I said, you know, maybe you should write another vegetarian cookbook. Yeah, right? Anyway, well, the only vegetarian Dustas likes is not really that much of a distinction because there's how many people that she likes. Yeah, but if if there's five people that she likes and only one of them is a vegetarian, well I guess you're right.
Like on a percentage. Not really much of a yeah. Alright, fair. Uh fair. So anyway, I went out to Chef's Deaths and demonstrated the spins all.
They seem to they seem to enjoy it. Uh did a uh Facebook live, which I still don't really understand. I don't either. I don't like I don't really understand this Facebook live. I think it's very new.
Right, Peter? It's not that new. It's like six months ago. Yeah, it's kind of new. Why would I want that?
Because people can text in as you're doing it. Actually, that's true. People ask questions. I asked it is useful. It's kind of like this, but with people.
I'm just joking, people. I'm just kidding with you guys. So uh we did a Facebook live about the sort of dish situation that MOF had the other day. Did you have to do that? All five of you chimed in.
Yeah. Oh my god. So uh anyway, so I uh during that, like one and I visited uh Kenji uh can Kenji uh over in San Francisco, saw his digs, uh did the the centrifuge demonstration for him. Here's what by the way, we're talking about the spinzall, which is a new centrifuge I'm selling on uh modernistpantry.com forward slash I'm not supposed to say forward slash, sorry. It's just slash.
It's just slash. It's freaking forward slash. Back when I was a kid, when I was a boy, we had backslashes. We had forward slashes. Now it's just slash.
So uh modernistpantry.com slash uh spinzall. Uh we gotta sell uh frankly, we gotta sell more of these freaking centrifuges people. I think there's a lot of people out there don't know why they would I mean not you people, if you're listening to this, right? I mean, you know why you want a centrifuge. But I think a lot of people just don't get why they would want a centrifuge.
They only think of these modernist kind of techniques. And I'm like, just like being able to make strawberry juice all day all night is like enough for me, or banana justino or any one of them. Would you get one, Peter? Yeah. I it's I mean it's like exponentially cheaper than any other alternative or something like that.
Dave, we actually got a question about the spinzall in the chat. Oh, what do you got? They want to know what would happen if you put molasses in it. Uh molasses is pretty much a solution, so I don't think it would do much to it. Um so that's another thing.
It's like most people uh I what I realize is is that I've used a centrifuge for so many freaking years that like I um I kind of know what a centrifuge is gonna do and what it's not gonna do. But when Kenji said, what should I spin in this, and we there was a bunch of responses to him about what we should try to spin in the centrifuge, I kind of realized that people don't really understand what a centrifuge at this kind of um level is for. Like, for instance, it's not for clearing uh meat stocks, although I'm trying to think of a way to do it. Um it's it's not for that. It's uh, you know, if you take uh milk, if you take milk with cream, yeah, I can, you know, unhomogenized, I can separate it out.
But uh, and if you take cream, I can make uh butter. Uh but like molasses, like I say, is a solution. There might be some crap floating in the molasses that I can get out. But I'll give you some examples of stuff to do uh like see with some sugar stuff. So I did a uh someone wanted me to do chocolate milk, and I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna get a lot out of that.
So I wanted to do I did chocolate cream. I made like a cocoa cream and then uh with some sugar in it, and then I spun it hoping to get cocoa butter. Not cocoa butter, but chalk chocolate butter, you know what I mean. And uh what happened was I got an amazing I got a triple separation. So I got like uh chocolate buttermilk, which I used to make pancakes, it was very good.
Then I got a very light chocolate butter because basically the only chocolate that was in it was in the whey that was in it. And then I got a hyper smooth kind of like cocoa paste, like Nutella, but totally smooth and liquid, which was pretty awesome as well, because it had been totally hydrated. Uh and uh I ended up mixing those back together to make like a chocolate butter, but like a chocolate compound butter. It was really good. So you could do that kind of stuff, or like uh Greek yogurt, like I could take yogurt, I can remove some of the whey, then you do that, you know, um, and you get like a you can either do Greek yogurt or like a yogurt cheese, which I made.
So it does that on that kind of dairy, but it's not it's or for like clarifying juices, but it's not for like breaking stocks. It's not gonna take things that are that don't ever naturally settle or break on their own and make them break. You know, it will spin blood down. I'm told it will spin blood down because it's at the same speed. I got a lot of people asking me about that, I guess to fortify blood sausages, uh or whatever, and that that will work.
But anyway. Here's a question for you, man. When was the last time there was a sort of previously inaccessible technology because of the price point that like seriously dropped like this? The circulator went from about uh two thousand dollars. The immersion circulator went from about two thousand dollars in two thousand and two to about eight hundred dollars in two thousand and five.
Uh mostly as a result, uh Philip Preston um just wanted more chefs to have them, and so the price got dropped. Because when only labs were buying it, labs are relatively inelastic uh market, they're just gonna pay whatever you ask. Um and so when the chef market kind of got big, you know, Philip knew the price needed to drop. So that was kind of the first big price drop. $800 is still relatively expensive, but that was the kind of the first explosion in into the market.
And that's kind of, you know, I'm taking a bigger price jump there with the spinzall. So I'm going from a to eight to ten thousand dollar machine down to like a one thousand dollar machine. So I'm trying to hit some of those early adopters who would have gotten an immersion circulator back in the eight hundred dollar days. Um then WePop Soupypot, bam, uh, who was one of my interns came out with uh the Nomaku, and the Nomaku was, to my knowledge, uh the first commercially available sub $500 uh circulator. And then I think it came in at like th $300 and something originally.
And then Philip came out with one and then you know, a whole host of others have really driven the circulator market way down until now it's hard to get someone to pay more than two hundred and fifty dollars for uh a circulator. And then you have people adding like chef steps with Joule, it's added uh the app and the Wi-Fi capability. And so that market is really expanding. I mean, th that's the one. That's where a previously inaccessible thing has really gotten into um into kitchens.
Uh because the and the reason it doesn't happen very often is that there's not many technologies that are taken from other realms that have like instant and obvious kitchen applications. Um like the you know, Blender was like they have laboratory blenders, but like the blender was intended to be a piece of kitchen equipment. Um so uh you know, and other things are always gonna be inaccessible, like puffing guns or like uh extruders or you know, pasta extruders and things like this. Although past extruders are becoming more popular, but they're at like the three and four thousand dollar level. So it it it's it's there aren't gonna be that many uh ca there aren't that many things that I've experimented with where I'm like, yeah, that needs to be really popular.
Uh immersion circulator was once. People used to say which one of these technologies is really gonna make a big deal. They asked me back in oh you know, oh four, and I and I was like, uh oh the emerging circulator, clearly. You know, and it's one of the very few things I've been right about, you know, uh in terms of uh future predictions. Um and so uh and the other one that I've always wanted, I want if I want a roto vap to be more uh accessible to people, but the f but the reason I'm not building a rotor vap is that although we could make a more accessible rotor roto vap, it still is not gonna have the wide range of use for people that um a centrifuge would, just because it's always going to no matter how uh you know cheap I make a rotor vap, no matter how breakproof I make a roto vap, no matter how bulletproof it is, it's always gonna take like a lot of skill to operate one well and it's gonna take uh a like a fairly steep learning curve.
Whereas with a centrifuge, once you learn how to use it, you're just pumping product out. And so um, yeah, and also like a rotor vap no matter what is gonna require chilling. So you're either gonna have to bust through a bunch of ice or you're gonna have to bust through uh, you know, buy a chiller, it you know, it needs heat, needs all this, needs all this ancillary stuff, like a lot of power. And so um, yeah, uh you know, I always thought the centrifuge is the item that should be available in the kitchen, but what it really needed is someone to design one for the kitchen. Um anyways.
But we're not selling enough of them, so if you actually ever want there to be a culinary centrifuge, and who knows, maybe in you know, ten years if the market or five, six years if the market opens up more, maybe they'll eventually be a $300 centrifuge. Who knows? You know what I mean? Or you know, a $200 centrifuge, but uh we're just Nastasi and I simply aren't making enough of them. Well, right now we're making zero because we haven't been able to pay for the tooling or the or the production run.
But uh yeah, if you don't buy it, we won't make it. Um if I may, I'll say that uh I have the uh luck slash uh misfortune of working with you about as much as anybody else. But I will say that uh yeah, I mean, I can vouch for the fact that uh Dave puts a ridiculous amount of time and thought into this thing. So um if there's anybody who could do it, I mean really this is the only product I really like. Yeah.
Really? It's because also you hate having to run the normal centrifuge too. It's big. Which is true. Yeah.
Um like the l the lit like I'm very thankful that this is not on the list of things Nastasi will never touch again because the list grows every every day. Um so uh not about my centrifuge, but uh so because I'm working on the centrifuge, I'm getting a lot of uh tweets in about this coffee machine. Have you heard of it? Spin? Spin.
And so it's a centrifugal coffee machine. It's actually something I've been interested in. So what spin does is uh they don't show you the inner workings or the guts of it, but what what it is is it's got a bunch of like you know, application hoo-ha attached to it. Uh, you know, you can like make a coffee while you're on the road so that by the time you get home it's cold and ruined if that's what you want to do. I'm kidding.
But uh, or you can wake up and you're you can tell Alexa is it's Alexa or Lexis? What's the name of that? Alexa, Alexa. Yeah. Is that a real human name, or is it named that because it's not a real human name?
I don't know. Anyway, Alexa, bring me some coffee. And so the spin like will listen, or the Alexa will tell the spin. I saw Kenji, by the way, turn on his immersion circulator like that. He was Alexa.
He's like, Alexa. He doesn't talk like that. He's like, Alexa, turn on my jewel. And like and the jewel like turned on and started running. He doesn't talk like that at all.
Wait, so it's it's connected to every single appliance with what Bluetooth? I think it can I think Alexa's just on your network, and so he can probably do a Bluetooth enabled device or a wired l wireless device or even a wired device. I think it's just a question of I don't know how it works to be honest. But anyway, so hopefully there aren't that many people named Alexa. I don't have one.
Yeah. Do you remember uh the Wizard of Oz? Remember the Wizard of Oz? Like when he's like taking off and like Toto jumps and she goes out to get Toto and they're like, come back. He's like, I can't, I don't know how it works.
Remember that? That's like one of my favorite like Wizard of Oz lines. But uh I don't know what I got in that. So anyway, so people ask me about this spin. So what it does is it grinds uh whole beans and then presumably puts the be presumably because I don't know, puts it into the into a basket, dry, spins it up, thereby like evening and like you know, pseudo-tamping the coffee grounds down, and then introduces the hot liquid to the basket while it's spinning and then genera because of the force, uh the theory is it generates the equivalent of a certain amount of pressure.
So by altering the speed at which the basket rotates, it can produce something that is espresso like or drip coffee like. Uh now, a lot of people on the internets are like, that won't work. And and people have asked me, do you think that will work? And the truth is I have no way to know because I haven't tested it, right? So I will say that there is no way I believe it's gonna produce something exactly like espresso, and here's why.
When you were when you were making a puck, an espresso puck, right? You're basically you're trying to create a hydraulic puck that uh it you know compresses extremely evenly. You then saturate that puck, the puck kind of uh inflates, and as you force water through it, the fines migrate to the bottom, uh increasing theoretically, I guess the hydraulic pressure, but at the same time you're decreasing the amount of solids left, so your your uh rate of water goes through uh faster. Anyway, it's like that. When you are spinning a basket and letting the water in at the same speed, your compacting pressure is the same as your theoretical liquid pressure walking through.
Now, an espresso puck, clearly you're tamping with much less force than you are putting water through. So you the equivalent of like maybe 20 pounds of force over the entire uh disc of coffee puck versus 150 PSI uh, you know, of the water pressure coming into it. So clearly there's um a differential there that you can play with with espresso that you're not gonna be able to play with uh with the spin. Um the other thing is I mean that's that's kind of the the main thing. I mean, I so it's gonna be different.
Also, in in espresso, as soon as the pressure is released, it stops. This is actually gonna pull more stuff out of the coffee grounds uh because of the centrifugal force than you would get uh if you um just forced water under pressure. It's a different kind of a situation. Now, I did just as a test take some espresso grinds, mix them with hot water, spin them in the centrifuge for 30 seconds. I got or minute, I got all of the grounds back out.
I tasted the coffee, it tasted fine because I wasn't pushing it through, I didn't get any aeration, and so I didn't have any of the body that you would have in a normal espresso cup. It had some of the espresso flavors that you would normally have, and it had zero grinds in it because you know I was able to spin it fast enough. But I mean, uh the answer is I don't know. I'm willing to ha test out a spin machine if someone wants us to test it out. But I don't know.
I mean, it could be a way to do individual servings well as opposed to like those cups. I've never had a cup based machine that I thought was the greatest thing on earth. You ever had a cup? The worst. Not just bad, the worst.
See, a lot of times, uh Peter, what people are focusing on when they're making those single service things is this, and this is a like not what the way I focus in life, but this is a valid thing. Is this single serving better than what the average Jocomo will make given a system that they have to control? So if you're dealing with like the EC pods, for instance, the question is is this EC pod as good as the greatest espresso that you can make? No. Even the guys uh uh at uh um uh sorry, Ely.
I mean, say EC all the time, but Ely. Uh is the Ely pod as good as the best espresso someone can make? No, it is not. And they will admit that. But is it better than what 90% of the people will make?
Yeah. And so if you're one of those 90% of the people that's gonna make a garbage espresso, then the uh Ely pod is a good solution for you, except for the sustainability and the fact that you're hurling all this plastic into the ether. And the spin, theoretically, if you like the coffee it made, is going from bean to bean to cup. So it's not gonna have any of those sustainability issues. The bra the brevel, by the way, makes the with the automatic grinding stuff, which I was very dubious of, does make a cup better than about 90 what 90% of people would do.
I just think there are so many easy ways to make good coffee that okay, maybe not espresso, but like I don't see why you'd want to use one with a machine. I don't like the word pour over. No. No. Right?
What about an aeropress? And say it with an Australian accent. I can't, can you? No. You hate you you're you have an anti-Australian accent thing though.
Yeah. What about Olivia Newton John's old accent? She's okay. Yeah. I've said gooseneck things annoy me.
Gooseneck? Like when someone says a gooseneck. It just seems really precious when you're pouring the water over the pour over. I understand. Why does why do people say precious all the time?
Well, because Peter used to work for precious moments. Well that's okay. Uh there's the the the greatest moment of my life is when uh Peter brought a picture of of himself in like a precious moments like furry outfit, and it was not for some sort of cosplay thing. It was his parents made him dress up for the Hallmark store where they used to work. Uh anyway.
Okay. Brandon wrote in about carbonation. Hey Bushwick crew, I'm trying to rebuild my carbonation rig with interchangeable adapters. One adapter for the liquid bread carbonator cap, which is the carbonator cap of choice people. Uh, and one for a direct injection into an EC whipper into the whipped cream whipper, uh, I hope, because I don't really like the the soda ones for uh the really just all you need is the whipped cream one.
Uh I have not had any luck getting direct injection from CO tank to work uh CO2 tank to work properly. I've tried pressing a small barbed fitting around the uh EC puncture valve, and some CO2 gets in, but not much. Does this uh EC puncture valve have to be pressed down for proper airflow? Would love any suggestions on how to get this working. Thanks, Brandon.
Okay, Brandon, you're in a little bit of a pickle here. Here's why. Uh you do not need to press on that valve to get it to work. However, when ever when you're putting a uh a cartridge onto that thing, what happens is the cartridge gets punctured, pushes against that rubber rubber grommet, and is injected into the EC under high pressure. Because remember, that cartridge contains uh uh either nitrous or CO2 uh at a normal uh you know temperature in the atmosphere of roughly 800 psi.
So it's shooting in there and it's shooting in a uh a particular weight of CO2 or of nitrous, a weight, not a pressure. And so because of that, the check valve doesn't have to be have a particularly low what they call cracking pressure. And so there's a good five PSI, I haven't measured it in many years, but it's a good five PSI of overpressure uh required to get any flow at all uh through um that EC valve. Uh what I used to do in the day was uh I would build an adapter that actually had the you the cheapest, easiest way to do it if you don't have access to a machine shop or anything like that, is to um take your your barb thing, push it uh against the thing gently, then uh screw, like put some release agent, please put a boat ton of release agent, like do not allow epoxy to get onto your actual EC uh whipper. Cut off, you know, so I'm talking about the thing that you screw the chargers on with, cut that off, and then embed the thing, uh your barb fitting and all that into it and seal the top with epoxy.
This way, when you screw it down tight, you have a fitting that can screw and unscrew onto it easily. But it's never going to be ideal because of the pressure drop you're getting across that. So if you're trying to set your tank to have the correct pressure for carbonation with uh a normal carbonator cap, which is a free flow situation, you're never going to get the same amount when you have to force it through a um through that check valve. And that's going to become even more apparent when uh you're trying to shake and get that last little bit of carbonation in because right there you're driving carbonation in under what is essentially equilibrium pressure. So it's difficult.
Uh the way that I did it when I really wanted to carbonate in uh EC bottles uh from a tank, and I did because when I opened Booker and Dax uh originally, that's how I thought I was gonna do it. I uh I took uh I made a s I took an old EC uh whipper head. You can get them on eBay real cheap that are plastic. They used to make plastic whipper heads for their non-commercial for their home line. But this the screw threads are the same.
I then cut everything off of that thing that I wanted. Um I bought like uh you know screw in valves. I tapped, I I put um basically Bondo on it, tapped it with uh a drill and a tap, and then I cast it in uh I cast it first in silicone to make a mold, and then did a bunch of food-grade polyurethane casts to make a bunch of carbonation heads that fit directly onto uh an EC uh whipper. They used EC brand uh gasket seals, etc. etc.
And that's actually what I was gonna use to open the bar with. But you know, it takes a little bit of work, but I mean, okay, it takes a lot of work, but if you're gonna do it for a living, it's and you really want to do it, it's worthwhile. Anyway, uh that answer that question or not? Yes. Yes.
Uh Julian writes in about sous vide sauce. Hey all, I'm right to ask about making sauces with the liquid left in low temperature uh sous vide bags. I'd like to use this to make a simple pan sauce just mixed with uh stock or red wine, but the delicious sous vide liquid quickly curdles whenever I heat it further to reduce it, leaving my reductions with weird textures. It's beyond weird, it's freaking gross. It looks like well, we'll get into it in a second.
It uh is my best bet to curdle it and strain out the curds. Yes. That was easy. But why don't you take another 10 minutes to answer the question? Yeah, is there some way I can prevent the is there some way I can prevent the protein from curdling or at least get some flavor out of it?
Thanks for any tips, Julian. I don't know actually, um that you not any tips to prevent the curdling that you would really want to do. Like you could probably very heavily salt it or very heavily sugar it. But yeah, the way to do it is to as soon as it comes out, just break it really quickly and then uh strain it. And like it it's just it's just uh protein that's in solution and um it's never been raised to a temperature that makes it um that makes it curdle, and so it comes out and that's it.
Um you know, the same way that if you cook uh uh a fish too high, like uh that liquid will come to the top, and then once the heat hits it, it goes white, it turns white. It's that same sort of stuff. It's the stuff that when you start heating floats up to the top uh as pond scum when you're cooking meats and you gotta get rid of it. AKA family meal. Yeah, yeah, family meal.
Well, you know that story that Alex Guarnicely tells, right? Eating the raft. Ugh. I think about it, I look at it like look eating the raft. Um so anyway, so yeah, so the the quickest, easiest way around it is to just heat it and then strain it.
And as a side note, uh a lot of times when you do that, the liquid will uh actually self-clarify because uh the proteins as they coagulate will hold on to some of the um cloudy bits. Speaking of self-clarify, did I talk about self-clarifying cordials? Yes. Uh, all right. Um there you go.
Don't need to talk about it again. Done. Uh so there you have it. Now the problem with that, of course, is you're gonna lose some of the product when it curdles. There's not a lot left.
So um I don't know whether you want to add some product to it, then curdle it, then strain it. We should take a break. Take a break, take a break and come right back with cooking issues? Ever wonder where your Christmas tree came from? No, you don't have to.
New York State grown Christmas trees are now available in New York City. Trees grown on farms here in New York State are harvested just a few days before arrival to the city. Trees cut close to home stay fresh longer, and trees cut close to home travel less, which reduces fuel consumption of delivery vehicles. Did you know that buying a real tree helps to sustain agriculture in New York State by supporting local farmers and keeping important open space in agriculture production? The Christmas Tree Farmers Association of New York is partnering with Grow NYC to make farm fresh trees and wreaths available at green markets in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan.
So when you shop local this holiday season, you can include the tree in that list. For more information and a full list of locations, visit Christmastre's NY.org. And we are back. So Christmas Tree Farms Nastasia, do you know how uh long it takes to grow a Christmas tree? No.
Seven years. Really? Yeah, it's about seven years. At least so I'm told in Oregon. I know a guy who's a Christmas tree farmer in Oregon, and he was like, Yeah, it's about seven years for the trees to get fully mature.
I have to say, it always weirds me out to see right after Christmas how everybody just chucks their trees. What are they gonna do with it? First of all, I know first of all, I uh you know, I wish we had the Christmas tree farmers in New York here because you are providing jobs for someone. You don't mind wiping your butt with paper and flushing it down the toilet. Instead, you get enjoyment from a tree.
It makes your whole house smell nice, it provides jobs. It's like a low impact uh farming that you can do on on uh trunk of land. Did you get one? What's it? A tree?
No. Did you get one from New York State? I don't I don't have a tree. Why do you not have a tree? I just don't.
I saw a hipster walking down a tree with something that looks theoretically nice, but is not. Here's what they did. They had a big piece of tree that they cut a disc out of. They drilled a hole in the center, then they took their Charlie Brown tree, right? And they shaved off the bottom of the trunk like a cork so it would fit into the hole in the tree.
But this is a far cry from the old time. Old time you had that little wooden cross and you nailed it from underneath. Now that's okay because you're not shaving off all of the xylem. How the hell is this little tree supposed to drink if you shave off all of its xylem? Sad.
Sad. So sad. So hipster. It's such a hipster thing. I'm gonna have something that looks like all old school, but like it's like it's like I'm it's more dead than dead.
It's not see a uh a tree is basically a cut flower. I mean, like you know what I mean? You have to treat it like a cut flower. And would you sit there with so in hand you cut flowers? Would you be like, oh, thanks, and then take the stem and crush it between your fingers?
Depends on I know you're a you're the master of uh what's the book, Nastasia? Uh the Grand Wee flower decorating book. And Nastasia's a firm believer. If she hates almost everybody, have you ever been to the restaurant? Yeah.
Yeah. But anyway, they're flower decorating at the la grenouille. La frogs are feminine? Yes. Okay.
So it's uh the La Grandui. Apparently they have like one of the greatest. Okay, do the say it, say it accents. La Grenouit. Or now say it.
Now say it with uh African fresh accent. Oh, jeez. Do it. No. You're the one that made me do it.
Oh my god, you're not bringing me into the fish. That's where you learned French. Yeah, I know. So you you're name. What?
That's not funny. That's that's not funny. That's true. He learned French initially with uh African accent. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah. How does that sound? Well, you just instead of the huh, you do a roll dar instead. Dave's just waiting expecting. He's not gonna do it.
Peter's not gonna do it. He does a good he does a good accent anyway. But the uh what were we talking about? So flower decorating, that's like that's you actually like it it's it treats every different flower in a different way, the way it's supposed to be treated when it was cut. Yes, back to Christmas tree farms.
Do you remember the first one of the last things we did, the first things we did for Booker and Dax, one of the last things we did was Nastasi and I at the French culinary. Nastassi and I went down and got a Christmas tree, and they're like, this one looks better. We're like, don't care, don't care. Let's we're just smelling the Christmas trees to figure out which one we like the smell of. Took it back up to the French culinary institute and then completely denuded it of uh of needles.
We just took the Christmas tree and just instantly stripped all the new needles off of it, and people were like, What are you doing? What are you doing? Shut up! And then we like distilled the entire tree. Yeah.
We sat there and distilled the entire tree. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Through a rotovap, and then we made like 1,500 pine drinks for MTV. Remember that? Oh, yeah.
It was like MTV, and we did all of those pine things, and that's actually where I was using those EC bottles that I made. I know I wasn't, that was the one where I didn't even agree at an event. No, I that that's no, that's the event where remember all I did was shake. We had one. We had one person who batched one person who I sh uh who added ice to the uh ECs.
I shook all night long, and another person had poured because we were just there was just boom, boom, boom, and we were carbonating on the minute. Remember that? 1500 drinks. Ridiculous. 1500 people, God knows how many drinks.
Yeah. Yeah. Christmas trees. Fun. Uh so our auction went for $2,550.
Alright, nice. That is very nice. We're not gonna call out who who bought it, but uh we uh eagerly wait you coming and sitting down and cooking is remember though, when you show up at cooking issues, you're gonna get dragged into the conversation. It's just the way it works. And also the mud.
Well, no, I mean we're we're nice to guests, I think, except Peter. Uh and we also like to uh thank during the fundraising drive, these people for supporting Heritage Radio Network uh on behalf of Cooking Issues program. Peter, Gregor, Carlos, Zachary, Thomas, Tad, Co. Oh, like him. Remember, he bought us the modernist cuisine book.
Uh he's down in where is he, Texas? Texas, I think. Uh Nick and Mark. Anyway, thanks so much, folks, for uh supporting uh Cooking Issues and the Heritage Radio Network. Um next.
We got uh Matt uh Cholick writes in from Seattle. Dear Nastasi and Dave, uh thanks for the show. My question covers cocktails, acidic things like lime juice, orange juice, and even some sodas tend to really upset my stomach. I'm a big fan of margaritas, though. I mean, who isn't really?
Margaritas are delicious. I mean, as long as you drink alcohol, margaritas delicious. Do you like margaritas, Peter? Love margaritas. Nastasia?
Mm-hmm. Okay. Uh what do you suggest? My question has uh three parts. What do you suggest I use to bring lime juice's pH up to seven?
So I can see what cocktails taste like with lime flavor but without the sour. Baking soda comes to mind, but I suspect that will compromise the drink's flavor. It will, and by the way, you're never gonna get it all the way up to seven, I don't think. Uh I'm guessing sour is pretty essential to the drink's taste, but only loosely correlated with the actual acidity. Uh such that there are substances uh uh such that there are substances packing equivalent sourness to lime juice that leave a drink's uh pH closer to neutral.
Any thoughts of some options? And finally, do you have any ideas for a solid lemon lime juice substitution that I could request at a bar? Asking for a margarita shaking with an an acid uh tablet seems unworkable for multiple reasons. I tried my uh making myself just a quantro tequila and simple syrup uh drink, but it wasn't particularly good, and I don't imagine that it would be. Uh, remember, if you are going to reduce the acid, you have to also uh reduce the sugar by a lot lot.
And if you're gonna make low acid drinks in general, this is not answering your question, but I uh which I will answer in in a minute. But when you're making a drink that doesn't have any acid in it, like an old fashioned, like typically to add brightness to an old fashioned, uh, and first of all, remember it has a minimal amount of sugar. So a two-ounce pourn and old-fashioned is not very diluted and has about a quarter of an ounce to three-eighths of an ounce of normal 50% simple syrup in it. Um to add brightness to that, a twist. And the uh the central oil from like either a grapefruit or a lemon or an orange or sometimes a lime, although I'm not a huge fan most of the time of lime twists, uh, that uh fresh, bright, inherently sit citrus note of those oils gives you a sense of freshness, which is part of what acidity brings is a freshness.
So you should always start by uh if you're gonna reduce the acid, if not eliminate the acid, adding uh twist to things because that's gonna help uh punch up the brightness. Uh also reducing sugar content substantially uh is gonna allow you to use less uh acid. A higher any time you have a high sugar content, you're gonna require more acid uh to balance it out. So if you were allowed to have minimal amounts of acid, like they're in sodas, like you say, you might want to switch to carbonated margaritas because carbonated margaritas have less sugar, uh more water, but less sugar overall and also less acid, uh, and they're delicious. But what uh I would not do baking soda uh because it's gonna make it salty and weird.
I would actually try I was gonna try it myself, uh, but I don't have any left at the house. Sodium citrate. So sodium citrate is uh a uh a salt of citric acid, but it acts as a buffer. And I I did some basic calculations. So the classic margarita spec that we use uh has in it about uh it is about 172 milliliters after it's been shaken and strained and contains about 1.34 grams of uh acid as citric, it's actually a mix of citric and malic, uh, and that ends up being a molarity of 0.04% uh and a titratable uh acidity of uh roughly 0.78.
Orange juice, on the other hand, uh has an acidity of 0.8 of titratable acidity of 0.8. Now, uh I test it uh like if you go on the online and you look up um the uh pH of uh something that has uh uh a citric acid with a molarity of 0.04, uh you get a pH of 2.29. However, orange juice, which has a very, very similar titratable acidity, very similar similar molarity, has a pH of 3.3 to uh almost up to four. And the reason the pH is higher is because not all of that citric acid is going to um uh you know uh deprotonate, it's not gonna um the word's not coming to my mind, it's not gonna turn to acid there, it's not gonna actually reduce the pH uh as much. Um but anyway, so what you're looking at with a margarita is basically the acidity of orange juice.
And so I would just test with orange juice because it's a lot cheaper to test orange juice than otherwise, and I would add two uh your orange juice for every like 172 grams of um of uh of orange juice. If you add about a gram and a half of sodium citrate, you might increase the sourness, but you're definitely going to also increase the pH. You might be able to knock it up like a whole point, which is a log level, 10 times 10 times less uh um acidity. Uh now, you said that I should recommend a pH uh meter to you uh so that you can get one. I don't use them in the bar because it I care only about the the taste, which is correlated more to titratable acidity and less to pH.
But for your case where you're actually trying to reduce the actual acidity, you get a pH meter. Go ahead and get one. If it if me telling you to get one helps you get one, get one. Uh the one I use is uh the X Tech. Uh I pH meter is a little bit of a pain in the butt because you have to um change out the sensors, and once the sensors dry out, they kind of lose their efficacy.
Uh there are some cheaper ones out there now on Amazon that I don't have any experience with. The X Tech is not that much more expensive, and I know it works. So anyway, there you go. What about it? Central oil.
Well, that's a bit like the same twists. Uh caller, you're on the air. Hi, yeah. Um my name is Ryan Lee and I'm calling from Brooklyn. Uh I actually was at Otto uh a couple weeks ago, and you made these two great Italiano staliano.
Um, but I had a question about food mills, which you were complaining about last week. Um so for the holidays, my family makes homemade applesauce. Um, and we like cook down the apples and then throw them in the food mill skins on. Um, but it's a pain in the ass because the skins get stuck under that crank. Right.
Um, so I was wondering if you had any thoughts about other ways to make apple sauce. Well, that's a good question. And so I just did some this is kind of s like related to what you were saying. I just did some experiments uh with um tomato juice and spinning tomato juice to get the paste out of it. And we had this argument with Mark Ladner about food mills and the way he does tomatoes, and it is true that uh tomato done through some form of um strainer like that is better.
The tomato paste was so much better and the juice was so much better. And I'm sure with applesauce it's so much better. I don't know of a good I mean you could pass it through a Tammy, but that's also a pain in the butt. I mean, I mean I could I would just try passing it through a Tammy. Um do you have a you know you can get a big Tammy for pretty cheap and then just a plastic scraper and it's got such a larger surface area.
I mean, how much applesauce are we talking about? We make like uh maybe like a gallon, gallon and a half, but not like a ton. Oh, yeah. Get a big salad bowl and a big Tammy and then just pass it through with a spatula because you're you're basically doing that with a food mill anyway. Like, let's not pretend that a food mill is anything worse than an in a the better than an ineffective scraper on a on a really crappy Tammy that's hard to like open up and clean.
You know what I mean? Right. Uh yeah. I would go tammy on that. Now, uh what I would like to experiment with, but I haven't is there's a bunch of hand crank um uh tomato strainers that are meant for like, you know, old grandma sauce, right?
Now I don't know whether they're any good or not. KitchenAid makes a tomato strainer attachment for people that make a lot of tomato sauce. It might also work for uh applesauce. I don't know. You know, it's designed to let through enough pulp to have like a bodied thing, but to exclude the the larger things.
So it's not gonna be as fine a grain as something like uh, you know, champion, which lets very little through, uh, or even like the brevel juicer, which lets s lets slightly more pulp through. But it's it's a strainer. It's meant to let the you know most of the particulate through, but exclude like seeds and skins and stuff like that. So I would try also, I would I would look into whether they're uh reasonably priced to try. But for a gallon, yeah, and you're not gonna no one's ever said, Oh, I wish I didn't have this tammy when it comes time to also sift flowers.
You know what I mean? Yeah, no, that sounds good. Yeah. Whereas I've heard everyone be like, I wish I didn't have this freaking food mill because now I feel obliged to use it and it was too expensive to throw away, and that's wasteful, and I feel like a bad human, right? I there's nothing but regrets in food mill.
They're pretty cheap on Amazon now. What is food mills? Yeah. They're never cheap. Think of your labor.
Think of your labor, value your time. Food mills are garbage. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, let us know. Uh tweet us back or whatever, let us know how it works.
All right, thanks so much. Thanks. Uh button. Oh, you two. Uh had a a Twitter question in on grinding spices.
Someone wants to know how do I grind small amounts of spices? Because you know, they use the whirly blade blade spice grinder, like the one that we have to grind marijuana thing. No, I'm actually not, because th those uh those are good to carry around in your knife kit if you need to grind something on uh on quickly. That's what I use the marijuana grinder for for grinding spice, uh, you know, that you can carry in your knife kit. But at home, mortar and pestle, man.
Mortar and pestle is the way to go. I think everyone forgets, like, you know, in the this era of high-tech everything, that a mortar and pestle can take down like a single clove into a fine powder that you can put into anything that you want. And so I don't I like it is a pain in the butt to use a mortar and pestle on really large quantities of things because things kind of slide and pop around and stuff like that. But if you can take a small amount of spice and just go with the with the mortar and smash it into a million pieces, right? That's the way to go.
And stop using email. That wasn't on email, I didn't know. Well, none of that tech gathering bring out the mortar and pestle. You should smash your phone with the mortar and pestle. You know.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, uh, Darren writes in about martini madness. Hello, it's Darren. The bartenders where I work uh were recently given a little speech uh about and a push to win a competition called Martini Madness in the Sonoma Valley. And although I have nothing to do with it being a line monkey, I have a few questions regarding the subject.
The only two rules, um oh, that my phone just decided not to hit okay. The only two rules uh are that it is made with an olive, and also that it uses Prohibition brand Spirits, which is a company based out of the area. Uh anywho, I thought long and hard on the olive and the drunkenness responsibly and came up with an idea which requires floating the cocktail, even though I am pretty sure that the clientele are not going to appreciate this entirely. I want to make a sun-dried tomato, orange, and lemon water that is thickened ever so slightly above the average density of vodka around point nine one six. That's the density of vodka, that is true.
Uh whereas, you know, water is one and sugared water is higher than one. Uh so it allows vodka, which is infused heavily with uh manzania olive, I like the buttery flavor, to easily float above it, topped with a thyme oil. Uh the thickening also serves as a textural contrast, as this pairing is a favorite pasta sauce from my family, and I thought the idea of pulling a straw up through the cocktail as you drank it would be a fun concept. So my question is would Xanthan gum or a lightly heated uh gel and low ASOL provide a better texture uh to actually drink while giving the appropriate density to float and infused vodka, or do you have a better solution? Um this is not exactly radio talk, but I would happily set up a payment plan to purchase a spinzall if that is something that could be set up before or after you reach your target goal, be it layo layaway or otherwise.
I can't justify the cost for personal uh to potential professional use at this time, but either way, uh you guys are badasses for bringing such an invention to the market. And if it can do what it says, I can't see why any kitchen wouldn't find a use for it. As we say, verbal Bravo Gram, yeah, from your lips to God's ears there. Um but uh I don't know, I haven't thought about it. You know, we'll we'll see what happens in the future.
If we get it funded and we actually have them in stock, then you know we have a lot more um a lot more leeway. Now back yeah, flexibility, which is not a word nostasi and I use very often flexibility. So to compromise what uh so let's get back to our question. Uh I wouldn't use Xanthan. Xanthan thickened uh like you could ever so slightly put Xanthan in it, but Xanthan has a very particular look to it, a feeling to it that I'd you know that's not so pleasant.
Like uh, I mean, if you're gonna do Xanthan, you want to keep it well under a quarter of a percent. A low ASOL fluid gel, I think would be your best bet, but it has to be really, really light. Um, I'll have you know that uh in it I happen to have, as I told you before, some tomato water sitting around in my fridge, and I took it out of the fridge and floated some vodka on top of it and just did it on the back of a bar spoon and was able to get a pretty good float. There was some mixing uh along the line, but uh, you know, just a good old-fashioned pousse cafe technique was enough to float uh vodka right on top of the tomato water. Um, but if you want to thicken it because you want that textual difference, then I would do low ASL uh gel-an.
Another thing you can do that doesn't jack the sugar appreciably, and you don't want to drink too much of it, you give them the runs, is you could uh hit it with a non-sweet uh or a low sweetness uh sugar product, like isom malt or something like that, but it will increase the sweetness. I've done densified cocktails uh with that or with um you know uh low DE glucose syrup because it adds a boatload of density, uh and you're not actually thickening it, but you're just increasing the density of it, which is I think what you want to look at. If you actually want to thicken it, sure, go fluid gel. But if you just want to increase the density, uh I would go with something like a low DE, like very almost unsweet, almost no sweetness, glucose syrup or um something of that nature. But vodka will float directly on the top of tomato water.
Uh and of course the oil float on that. You just have to be careful when you uh pour it. Right? That makes sense? Yeah?
All right. Uh and we're about to get kicked off the air, but uh lastly we had uh we have nothing else we need to talk about, right? Uh Anthony from Nashville writes in, hey Dave, I just want to shoot you a quick thanks for speaking out against sexual harassment in the hosp uh hospitality industry on the show two weeks ago. As a longtime kitchen worker, I've been witness to many acts of casual sexual harassment, sexism, and plain old bullying in the restaurant. Regretfully, I sometimes behave the same way in my ignorant use, so I know how easy it is to not realize or understand that it's wrong.
No one should ever be made to feel uncomfortable uh like that, especially when they go to work. And I think you deliver that message quite clearly and effectively on the show. I know a lot of bonehead cooks who think that catcalling at the hostess and alcohol addiction are just fun parts of being in the pirate crew. A lot of these same guys, as well as many like them, I'm sure, are frequent listeners of cooking issues and hold you in high regard. So I think it's great that you can use this platform to spread a positive message that hopefully will touch some lives.
Thanks and keep up the good work, Anthony from Nashville. And he says, P. S. I would be super stoked if book two turns out to be the miracle of moisture management, which I doubt it will be, uh, Anthony. I think I know what the next uh book's gonna be about.
We can talk about it maybe next week on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content and to hear about exclusive events, subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website, heritageradio network.org.
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