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Today's show is being brought to you by Bob's Red Mill, believers in good food for all. Learn more at Bob's Redmill dot com slash podcast. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. We're a member supported food radio network, broadcasting over 35 weekly shows live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. Join our hosts as they lead you through the world of craft brewing, behind the scenes of the restaurant industry, inside the battle over school food, and beyond.
Find us at heritage radio network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to 1245 from Remero's Pizzeria in Bushwick Ruck Plan. Joined not as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is like somewhere outside of Rome in Lazio, uh talking to uh some food manufacturers.
I can't say exactly what she's doing. It is not my uh stuff to say, but in her stead, I have everybody's favorite punching bag Peter Cam. I was recently described as the black sheep of the cooking issues family. Nice, nice. Well, one of the question people actually like uh called you out by name, which is nice.
And as usual, we have Dave in the booth. How are you doing? I'm good. How are you doing? Doing all right, doing all right.
Um so yeah, so good. So if you have any questions, uh call them in to 718-497-2128. That's 7184972128. So uh I just got back from uh China. You ever been to China, Peter?
No. Uh wait, what kind of question is that? What do you mean? I'm actually Korean, you know that. I'm actually, you know, American, but I can go to China.
I'm actually I I got an invite to go to Korea in September, but I don't think I can go. No. No, I'd love to go, but uh no. Have you been to Korea? Yeah, I've been to Korea a few times.
How was it? I mean, you know, like first time I went, I was embarrassed of being Korean, so I tried to basically avoid anything. In Korea? In Korea. You were embarrassed about being of Korean descent in Korea.
Yeah. Well, you know. What that was that all about? Well, that was, you know, I grew up in the Midwest. There weren't a lot of Koreans around.
Yeah, but in Korea, presumably there are many Koreans. Right. And so I would. Do you feel like a poser? Yeah, basically, yeah.
No, I I was I was pretty uninterested in being there. I mean, I was. How old were you? Like 11 years old. So you were a dick.
Yeah, basically. Thanks. Yeah. Nothing's changed. Yeah.
So now I'm 36. I'm still embarrassed about being Korean. No, no, now I mean. Nothing we love here more at cooking issues than a self-hater. We love a self-hater.
Self-loathing. All good things come from self-loathing. Am I right? Uh I I'm I I wouldn't know. All good things.
Many good things come from self-loathing. That's more like it. Yeah. Uh so I want to go to Seoul really bad. Have you seen that movie uh host?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah. The hilarious thing about host is I w I was watching it uh and like the depictions of Americans in that is the most hilarious part about it. Because basically, it turns out the entire thing's America's fault from the beginning to the end.
The entire thing's even though America only plays like a minor tangential role in the film. So for those who don't know, Host is this, it's kind of a good movie. You like it? Uh I can't. I mean, you like that style?
Yeah, yeah. Like kind of like monster flickslash like you know, social commentary thing in uh South Korea, like you're in this in this creatures growing in the river. But like every American in it is a hilarious caricature of what it what it means to be an American. Just like straight up, like, you know, like there's a a mariney kind of guy, you know, white dude, who's like, I'm gonna help! I'm gonna help and he end up like hurting everything, you know what I mean?
And then there's like this other like guy at the beginning. It's like uh hilarious, but like is it hilarious that this is what people think of us? Yeah, it's funny. My parents have really conflicting memories of American soldiers during Korean the Korean war. So like my dad loved American soldiers because they'd give him like candy and he viewed them as sort of like saviors who came in.
And for my mom, it was a bit some of that, but then also she was harassed, I think, by soldiers too. So were they originally from South, or were they did they have to come down? The family. What's that? Oh, yeah, they were they were my yeah, my family is from South Korea.
So they didn't have to like flee down to the south. Oh, they fled, yeah. They walked all the way down the Pusan by foot and all kinds of hardship, yeah. Nice, like love hardship. We can't just mess with it.
So it's so wrong. So that's yeah, yeah. Oh god. God Dave, I mean, just such a low-body just ruining everything. Terrible, horrible.
Uh, if if I have a skill, it's to ruin everything. Yeah, yeah. So in it, like it was hilarious, also. So our translator in uh in China, she was like, Oh, I feel sorry for you know, I went to America, I just feel sorry for you guys with the food you have. This is one of the reasons we have a food museum.
And I was like, what are you talking about? So she comes to New York, she eats, swear to God, she eats at an Applebee's and a pizza hut, yeah, and is like, this is what American food is. She's like, you guys don't really have food, good food in America. I'm like, where you know, where do you eat? I ate at Applebee's.
I was like, uh you know what I mean? It's like although, to be fair, across the country, I mean, Applebee's is I mean, it's all over the place. Applebee's is widely consumed, but Applebee's I okay, okay. I've never actually been to an Apple Foundry. Applebee's like I mean, like there's Applebees and Applebee's.
Yeah, yeah. How was it? I mean, it's it's like every other restaurant like it. TJ Friday. Well, is it above or below a TJI Fridays?
I've been to an Olive Garden, so rate it in Olive Garden terms. I would say it's a a little better than Olive Garden. Better than that. What do you think, Dave? I don't know.
I feel like they're all kind of exactly the same. Well, Olive Garden basically is you have the salad and breadsticks and you have everything else. Yeah. Right. What I said, so uh macaroni grill, above or below Olive Garden.
I have no idea what that is. Never been there. So uh I had a guy I was talking with their corporate chef once, and he was like, dude, we don't even compare to Olive Garden. We're so far above Olive Garden. I'm like, all right, dude, all right, macaroni grill.
Like, first of all, who grills macaroni? Now you got me thinking, like, you're gonna make this like macaroni patties, like a mac and cheese patty that's somehow grillable. But yeah, macaroni. I've had fried macaroni and cheese. That's good.
Anyway, uh, point being uh then I was like, listen, if you really want like garbage American food, come back and I'll take you to Golden Corral, where they literally liken you to a cow. You know what I mean? Where you ever been to a golden corral? Nope. Man, that's in the commercial.
They have commercials up here? Or you went down south? No, they have commercials here. They have golden corrals up north, yeah. Oh, I don't I assume if they're running commercials, yeah, they must.
Anyway. Yeah, uh the chocolate fountain. Chocolate chocolate with like like how many levels of air quotes do you have to put around uh the word chocolate in the chocolate fountain? I hate chocolate fountains. Really?
Have you ever used a chocolate fountain? I have used a chocolate fountain, yeah. And uh what what do you hate about them besides for food or other purposes? Ooh, yeah. Um, I mean, they're just disgusting.
Anyway. It's just gross. You don't, yeah, it's not how you want to consume chocolate. This uh, this translator, like, I was like rattling off like all these like you know, kind of like you there's no American cuisine. I'm like, so I stick rattling up.
This is this is still a persistent myth uh around the world, which is kind of crazy. It is true. But the fact of the matter is the cafeteria food at the factory where I was, I was there for the spinzall. By the way, we just sent out an uh um an update. So those of you who are spinball spin spin ball spin spinzall backers, spin balls spinballs, spin balls is awesome.
Like that's a good pachinko machine. That's what we call the spinzall fans, their spinballs, spin ballers, spin ballers. So the uh we just sounded an update, so I got back from the factory. It was like super super good. It was really actually a good uh good meeting over the factory.
But the look in your email box. Nastasia should have sent you out an email this morning if you are a spinzall backer. Uh didn't get to go out. I was like working really a lot, so I didn't get to go out to do anything kind of like super fun or interesting when I was in China, but I did have some weird dishes. Check this out.
Uh Grouper in corn sauce. I told you last time I went to China, I was kind of surprised at how much kind of corn on the cob they eat over there. Those like coins of corn, right? Yeah, those coins of corn. But this one was the weirdest one ever.
It was, you know, cream corn, like American cream corn, right? Like, but this was like whole corn kernels that had given up some of their juice. It was like they'd slightly broken, but they were still like big full of corn kernels, so not like cream corn. In a corn, in acorn starch sauce. Whoa.
On grouper. Wow. On like medallions of grouper, I was like, that's weird. I'm gonna order that. You know what I mean?
I was like, that's crazy. And uh, I mean, I'm not gonna like, you know, I'm not rushing to go get it. And plus, I was having it in in Shenzhen, and this place was focused a lot on uh kind of more like uh, you know, a lot a lot of people in in that area don't like kind of spicy or like even heavily salted food. So I'm just gonna bland. It was bland, but it was interesting.
Like I use someone could make a good thing like that. It was one of the spe chef's specialties. Also, like uh I had so I we ordered frog a different place. We ordered uh frog legs at this uh Hunan joint that we went to in Shenzhen, had some really delicious crayfish actually, really, really good crayfish. Uh and I hadn't had crayfish last time I was in China, so it could weird.
They chopped the tip of the head off, so you didn't have to do you could just literally suck the body out by just picking it up and go that's awesome. Yeah, but like you know, I was also like I couldn't help myself. You know, like uh I love opening any sort of like uh lobster or crayfish-shaped shellfish. I love opening it up like the front of one of those trucks. You know how those trucks the top lift off and you suck off, it was really good.
Because actually, I hate to say it, it's probably better than any crayfish or crawfish I've had down south. It was really good crawfish, not mealy, you know how sometimes crawfish goes mealy in the tail? Really good crawfish. Anyway, the frog's legs, the guy's like, I'm gonna order you frogs legs, thinking he's gonna freak me out. I'm like, I eat frogs' legs, you know what I mean?
And uh, but here's what's messed up. You know how like a lot of Chinese cuisine is hacked up with all the little bone pieces in, and you're supposed to sit there and kind of suck on it and spit out the parts of a small bones or whatever. Hacked up the frog's legs into tiny pieces. So then all you have is bone. Right?
Because a frog leg, I mean, you kind of need the bone there so that you can stick it in your mouth and go hoop boop. Yeah. You know what I mean? That's the motion of pulling the meat off of the frog. And but you can't.
So it's a lot of a lot of spitting. A lot of spitting out of bone pieces. Ugh. Yeah. Do they do that with like really small boned animals too, like um like quail.
I did not have a quail. I mean, obviously they do it with the larger, you know, what we would consider like your you know, average table animals. Yeah. Uh like. It's just like the whole quail, but they don't like it.
Not hacked up. Yeah. But like, yeah, all stuff all hacked up. And then like they do it also like so like I we had a fish stew with tiny with like okay. So like if you're someone serving you a fish head stew, which is delicious by the way, right?
Like, you hack up, you don't hack the fish head into tiny pieces because you need the structure so you can suck the meat off of like where the collar is and all that stuff. All hacked. So I was doing a lot of like spitting, and I'm not used to it, you know what I mean? Like this is this is all gonna be fodder for the video series I've been telling Dave to do, which is gonna be uh a whole you're doing it all wrong video series where he goes around the world telling people about how they're doing their traditional food wrong. See, here's the thing, China.
You're hacking up your fish heads, it is all wrong. You need the structure of the fish head to actually eat it. Like, see, this is uh Peter painting the absolute worst impression of me human. Hold on, let's rewind like five minutes. You were just chuckling at the idea of uh suffering from the Korean War.
So I think I have a little piece of it. Oh, counterpoint. Uh pound. No, but it's not that they're doing it wrong, it's just it's always interesting, like the the cultural the cultural uh differences. Also, like you ever notice, like uh like we've well, no, you didn't go there.
When we went there, it's like amazing amounts of sauce, like broth and sauce left in the bottom of the bowl, and no one was none of the locals were consuming it. Weird. It's just they leave it there. I'm like, what's up? And they're like, Yeah, we what are you gonna do?
That's like very highly flavored. What are you gonna do? Eat that? I'm like, uh, yeah. You know?
I did the unthinkable. I actually made all of the Chinese people avert their eyes while I put the broth over the rice. Huh. Made them avert their eyes because I knew it would offend them horribly. So I don't know, man.
That that wouldn't happen in Korea. I mean just sort of tip the bowl. Yeah. Drink it. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. Had Korean food in China actually once. Yeah. You said it was just like Korean food here.
Just like Korean food here. Only I was in China. Yeah. Yeah. Um anyway, so that was fun.
I did not get to eat out in Hong Kong really very much at all, which is kind of sad because they have such amazing street food. You know what's terrible in Hong Kong? At least where I was the water. The water is healthy, but tastes like like a fish tank. It's just like you know that slightly moldy, that slightly moldy smell of a freshwater fish tank.
You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Sun early. Like that.
Or like, you know, that thermos that you really shouldn't have used again. That you know that? You're like, I found my I found my thermos from uh elementary school. I'm gonna use that. And then it like has that like little bit of like mold funk that was in there that never goes away.
That's Hong Kong water. And in the morn uh at the hotel anyway, and then in the morning they make they made their coffee with that water without filtering it. Oh man. Fishy coffee. Oh yeah, like like fish fish tank coffee.
That's just not right. But why are you saying it's good for you? No, it's not bad for you. It's not unhealthy. Yeah, like it's it's well treated.
Like, you know, whereas in Shenzhen, they told me, Don't drink the water. But the water smelled fantastic. You know what I mean? But I I and the coffee with it tasted fine. And the tea with it tasted fine.
But like they said, but the water pressure I had in my hotel in Shenzhen was, by the way, the best, highest water pressure I've ever had in my life. Because they they must be like crap on the earth. There's n not only is there no restriction, but like I was being beaten into the floor of my shower by the pressure of the water. I was like, I was like, Oh my god, this is amazing. I wish that we didn't have to care about the earth.
You know what I mean? Because it was just like hot. Just like I could I love the idea of you being pinned against the wall. Yeah, boom. And it was like, oh amazing, amazing.
Anyways. So maybe we should get to some uh maybe we should get to some questions here. You have anything uh interesting to talk about? Museum-wise? Anything?
Anything with the museum? Do you want to talk about what the next exhibit's gonna be? You can't talk about what the next exhibition is. We can't, why? No.
We're not why we no, we're not talking about it. Why not? Because that has to be something that we offer to the press. You know, you're horrible at this kind of the press. Yeah.
Oh. We're a media outlet. Oh, see what I'm talking about? You you ever give uh you ever give Dave any love? You ever give the Heritage Radio Network?
You guys are awesome. Okay, so we want the times. We want the times. You know, next it's gonna be like we want like, you know, uh what's the like what's the worst what's the worst media outlet you could think of? Like just the lowest quality media outlets.
They're asking me to to sh like crap on a a media outlet. Yeah. No. I mean it's gotta be Breitbart, right? Yeah, yeah, there you go.
Yeah, yeah. Peter would rather give Breitbart the scoop than you, Dave. How about that? Hurts, man. Hurts.
Right? Yeah. All right, here's some questions. Uh Dave Hammer, who's not here. Uh David and Peter, if applicable.
So you got you got an if you're a little bit more. Foresight for having been our questioner. Yeah. Thanks for all the hard work you do to produce an enjoyable show. It's my dream someday to go to Brooklyn and eat some Roberta's pizza.
Well, it's right here. I'm watching someone almost. Oh, then maybe they just ate the pizza. They're paying their check. Yeah.
How do they look? They look happy. They look like they belong here. There's a there's a like next to this one lady not from around here. Next to this one lady right by her head is that weird kind of it looks like a breath mark, like she's been like breathing on the glass, but it's also looks like it could be like like an oil stain, like someone shot someone in the head whose head was made of oil.
Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Yep, yeah. See that? Yeah.
Yeah. That's weird. Yeah. Uh anyway. Uh I thought a recent Reddit post on uh Sue Vied warrants your comment.
I will provide the link below. Some comments are definitely worth reading. But here's the main post text as well. Now, uh full disclosure, I did not get to read all of the comments or like Reddits or subreddits. Are you into the whole Reddit thing?
Do you understand Reddit? I do not understand Reddit. I don't Dave, do you understand Reddit? Uh barely. You're not a I'm not active on it, but I will read stories on it once in a while.
It's one of those things where like it's where people go to gripe when they don't have a forum to gripe about things, right? I mean, what's it for? I've seen like in depth discussions of like things happening in the news and people tend to really get into it. But they come in of existence and out of existence, right? I mean, they're always there, but like they like pop in and then become how did they I don't understand how it works.
I don't know, I don't I don't get it. Someone tell me, someone tell me. Uh chat room. Alabama aviator writes, dry now uh I did see the beginning of it. So uh this person, Alabama Aviator, was uh working with a ribeye.
So let's just say that the the that the stake he he or he or she is referring to in this uh thing is a ribeye steak. Dry brine the steak overnight with a liberal dusting of kosher salt. This morning, rub the steak with fish sauce, 3% by weight, does not specify which fish sauce, uh, and vacuum seal the steak for a few hours to let it work its magic. Then uh I fired up the ANOVA to a hundred and get this 103 degrees Fahrenheit and cook for 90 minutes. Next step was 115 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour, and then doing 129 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours.
The idea here is that between the fish sauce and the low temps at the start, activate the same enzymes that happen with weeks of dry aging. The low heat, uh, but still much warmer than a fridge environment, essentially takes the process down from weeks to a day or two. The result was mind-blowing, so tender, and that mild funky taste that comes with proper dry aging. And then uh Aaron, this is from Aaron. Aaron's like, any thoughts or concerns with that kind of technique?
Well, okay. Clearly, Alabama Aviator didn't die, right? Because they wrote that post. So they're not dead. Uh however, I would never be able to recommend a procedure um like that.
First of all, let's just look at dry aging, right? So remember the the there's wet aging and there's dry aging. In both wet aging and dry aging, you can allow the enzymes that are present in meat to kind of do their magic to tenderize over uh a large length of time. The the advantages in dry aging are also that you have um uh you don't get what's called confinement flavor, which is the kind of smell. You mean when you open up a bag that's been sealed for a long time, you get that like kind of nasty, like like nasty smell.
Yeah. You know what I'm talking about. It's called confinement flavor, uh confinement aroma. And it's like from the bag and it flashes off. It's because there are bacteria that are growing in there that are producing, they're not gonna kill you, but they're they're producing some funky stuff that will is typically fairly volatile and will flash off.
So you don't notice it once it's been allowed to air itself out and to and when you cook it. So there's that. Uh also in dry aging, you typically lose a good amount of water. So you are intensifying the flavors. So there's two things that are intensifying the flavor in dry aging meat.
One is that you are um actually breaking down the protein and protein breakdown products are more flavorful, right? Uh and you're also getting riding getting rid of water, which is concentrating the flavor because you're getting rid of water. So uh I guess this is like back in the day when people hadn't figured out how to do uh post-finishing on um sous vide stuff, and so everyone was just pulling stuff directly out of the bag and serving it, which is nasty, right? They would do things like dump soy over the top, or in this case, like fish sauce over the top, because what you're doing when you do that is you're adding uh protein breakdown products, and in the case of fish sauce, like straight up funk, you're a fish sauce fan, right? I love fish sauce.
I'm like the Christopher Walken of fish sauce. More fish sauce, ding dink dink dink. Uh you want more cowbell, you know more cowbell. Yeah, of course. Anyway, so the um what you're doing here is uh trying to substitute some of the funkiness of dry aging with uh fish sauce, but I don't see them as similar kind of funks, right?
There's not the fat oxidation products that you get out of uh dry aging in uh in a fish sauce. So I'm I'm always I'm never ever a fan of saying that something is the same as something else. I think you can just say something is delicious, but saying it's the same as dry aging, I just don't buy it, right? Because it's not exactly the same kind of procedure that's going on. Now, secondly, the idea of uh having a steak getting a ribeye, this is getting salted for that length of time, I have my issues with because in most of the tests that I have run, I find that it's not a tenderness issue, but the the actual fibers themselves are more springy and taste more cured when something has been salted for a long time and it's meant to be eaten like a steak as opposed to a braise.
Now I'm reassessing, as I said, some of that uh information in light of what salt is doing to the connective tissue as opposed to what it's doing to the muscle fibers themselves. But in general, uh if you're gonna store something for a long time, like on the order of a couple of days, I tend, and it's something like a ribeye, I tend to not want to salt it because I prefer the texture of steak that hasn't that hasn't gone through that. This is not tenderness, it's just a textural difference. So, like you know, I have my kind of issues there. Um lastly, is this temperature regime where you're clearly incubating uh whatever happens to be now, unless the salt level is high enough on the surface of the meat and along with the fish sauce, the salt level is high enough such that you're not going to have any problems at all, right?
Um it's not uh but it's not a good place to keep meat for that long. I did look up uh, by the way, your and and here's the thing like um the data I was able to find for growing, for instance, botulism toxin, botulinum toxin on meats, you're not gonna get any uh substantial growth on the on the studies that I was able to look up in less than about 10 hours. So this is going to be safe in terms of when it's growing. However, let's say you cook it and then chill it down again. You've created a large number of vegetative cells if they're present.
If you create a large number of vegetative cells, you're also then creating a large number of uh spores as you go through the point at which you uh kill the vegetative cells, which means you have a higher load of spores than you would otherwise. And so any further degradation you have uh on storage, if you don't serve it right away, are gonna be compounded, right? So, you know, technically, in the in the you know, in the um in the post, I think if you add everything up, it's fine because it's under four hours until it gets to its its pasteurization temperatures. But um, you know, it's just something to something to think about. Uh if you're gonna serve it right away, I'd say it's probably not that big of a deal.
But if you're gonna do a cook chill is when I start worrying more about that kind of a practice. Uh 129, do you know what that is? No, no, no. I don't know what that is. Botulism won't grow above about 50 degrees.
Uh anything above 52 when you're killing almost all pathogens, uh, and and you know, anything above that is kind of gravy, but he's like he or she is also not cooking it long enough to do a full pasteurization step when they take it up to 129. So whatever. So I'm gonna say probably won't hurt chew, but is like on the edge of what like I could, for instance, recommend. Although I will try it because I am writing a book on it and it's still, you know, I have time to test this out. Uh other thing I will say um is that at these temperatures, at these lower end spectrum temperatures, you do have a chance, right now, what is it, one in a hundred?
I don't know. It happens to me every once in a while of incubating bacteria that are not pathenogenic, but that do ruin your food. And when you open that, it's not a pleasant funk. It's like blue cheesy, nasty, off. You get you get bags that blow off.
And every once in a while I have people writing into cooking issues asking about it, and it has happened to me, but it's unpredictable. Uh so I just throw those bags away. If you open a bag and it smells bad, you throw it away. And from best I can tell, uh it's not necessarily I mean, like it always happens when you're working in the lower temperature ranges, and it always happens when the bag has been kept uh for a long period uh before it gets up to pasteurization temperatures, but you could be incubating some um, you know, some bacteria that can survive at higher temperatures that aren't necessarily human pathogens, but are spoilage bacteria. And so that's just something to think about as well.
Yeah. I don't know, blue teasy meat could be good. It's horrible. I once uh they uh we did a uh we're doing a low temperature sous vide class at uh the French culinary, and back then everyone was really worried about uh vacuum uh packing, and it was very hard to get a hasset program, so there weren't a lot of people that had done it yet, right? So there wasn't like a good like a workflow for getting a hasset plan.
So a lot of times we would circulate directly in oil. And the other good thing about circulating directly in oil is that at service time you're not effing about with bags. You just go into the oil with tongs, you pull it out, and you drop it. And back in the day, even though they weren't recommended to you know, Philip Preston never recommended that you do it, you know, we were using the stainless steel old school poly science circulator, so you could pretty well, you know, the everything touching it was okay with oil, right? Uh no plastics, no nothing.
So then you just go in with tongs, you pull it out, and then you do your finish. So it's incredibly convenient if you're doing a lot of units in a night, right? Not so convenient for homework, but incredibly convenient uh for doing a bunch of units in terms of like speed of pulling it out and lack of bags and all that nonsense. Um where are they going with this? What were you asking me?
What'd you say? Blue cheese. Oh yeah. So we did a whole uh bunch of uh pork with the skin on. So we're doing the low temperature on the entire uh thing, and then we're gonna fry crisp up the skin later, doing like bellies belly style, right?
Like uh, and um the oil is so thick, right, that it did and when if you ever circulate uh pork in oil or in lard, right, for a long time, you'll notice that you get some fat fractionation. So you'll get like crystals of higher temperature fat growing like stalagmites on top of things and like occluding different areas, but because we weren't getting necessarily a hundred percent well, we weren't getting 100% circulation around it. Um I measured it the next day because of what I'm about to tell you, and it was a good five degrees cooler in these stagnant places than it was uh it was, and that was enough to take me into incubation zone. And in the incubation zone, where instead of being like you know, in the in the mid to high 50s, it was like 50, the entire room stank. Not like a mixture of imagine blue cheese, so now you've offended uh a bunch of people, possibly in Asia, mixed with stinky tofu.
So now you've offended all the Westerners. And so, like, it's just all offensive. There's no kind of right smell to it. You know what I mean? It's just wrong.
So we had to do that. There's somebody in like Kazakhstan who's like, hmm. Mmm, delicious. Delicious. Yeah.
Or, like, you know, we said before, like uh salt rising bread is uh Clostridium perfringians um uh culture, as I believe is some of the redded cassava in your in your favorite uh cameroon. You like that smell, right? When you're used to it, when you're used to it, when you're when someone coming and saying it. But when you walk into a room with pork ain't nobody wanting to eat that. And so, like, you know, I was like, sorry, folks.
You know what I mean? It's horrible. It was horrible. You ever like you ever like work on something, you have something planned like for like you know, days in advance, it's all there, and then you it's just all garbage. Yeah.
It's terrible. Anyway, so blue cheese meat. Blue cheese on meat, good. Blue cheese mixed with butter, like melting into a steak, good. Yeah.
Good. Okay. Uh this is in from Dan in Chicago. Uh cooking issues crew. What time is it, by the way?
We're going to go. 12 34. Yeah. Do a break after this. You want to do a break now, just get it over with?
Uh if you want, sure. All right, we'll do a break. We'll come right back with more cooking issues. Bob's Red Mill has been milling whole grains since 1978. When you mill whole grains, you get all three parts the bran, the germ, and the endosperm.
The bran, or the rough edge, makes up about 14% of the whole grain. It's the outer skin of the edible kernel. It contains large amounts of B vitamins, some protein, trace minerals, phytochemicals, but most importantly, dietary fiber. The germ is only about 2.5% of the kernel. It's actually the sprouting section of the seed, what's gonna grow into a plant.
It's usually separated during milling process because it contains most of the fat and therefore has a shorter shelf life. The endosperm is the main energy storage unit of the seed. That's where the growing plant gets its energy before it can start photosynthesizing and making its own. It makes up a huge portion of the grain, about 83%. And it's the main source that's used for white flour.
When you make white flour, you get rid of the germ and the bran and just have the white endosperm left. It contains almost all the carbohydrates. It also contains protein and iron and some of the other B vitamins as well. It's kind of what you classically think of when you're thinking of flour. So all that's there when you're milling with whole grains, but when you mill with whole grains, you also get the bran, which is the kind of rough edge and gives the that's what gives that that kind of color to it.
Also gives you extra fiber that uh helps you to be regular, and you also get the germ, which adds the fat and the flavor, which we all like from whole grains. Learn more at Bob's Red Mill.com slash podcast. I have Bob's red mill products in in my kitchen at this at this very moment. Oh, what do you love most about them? What I honestly, honestly, what I like the most is that is that you can tell someone to use a product and they can go into a supermarket uh and buy it.
I think that's the best aspect of it. I think it's a high quality product produced honestly at a price that everybody can afford. I know. Actually, one of my colleagues met him. He's on the wall behind you.
Yeah, yeah. And so Peter's like maybe you want to invest in a museum, Bob. You know what I mean? Speaking of, uh well, let's get to get these questions out of the way, and then we'll we'll we'll talk eggs. Peter was wanting to talk eggs uh in the in the break.
Oh, I love eggs too. Who doesn't I mean like I think like you're pretty much a low quality individual if you don't like eggs. I mean, there are people who don't eat it because of veganism. Uh there are people who don't eat it or who can't eat it. Yeah, well, then there's also people who are okay with just eating egg whites.
They're bad people. That's an enemy of quality. And that's a that's not an uncommon thing. That is a common menu substitution option of going to the city. Yeah.
That was like the basis of a whole episode of Seinfeld, wasn't it? Like he couldn't get an egg white omelet and it was like a problem. Well, thank God. Yeah. Like, you know what I mean?
Like egg white omelet is the enemy. It's the enemy. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
It's uh do you watch uh Parks and Wreck? No. Uh so Dax has started watching Parks and Wreck, and the you know, the the character um uh Nick uh Offerman, right? No, he uh the character he plays, he uh he says, uh I hate I hate uh low-fat milk because it's water lying about being milk. I was like, strong.
Yeah. Strong. He's like, the only thing I hate more than liars is non-fat milk because it's milk, it's water lying about being milk, which is true. And same thing goes with an egg white omelet, it's not an omelet. Yeah.
And you can't make an omelet with egg whites, it's not an omelet. I don't want to get into definitional things because I don't want to get in this kind of definitional like, you know, tirade that we always get into. But I mean, I'm sorry. It matters. Egg yolk.
You know, they're they're both awesome. The white is awesome for I don't know, angeled food cake, which I really like. Yeah, you know what I mean? Meringues. Yeah.
Well, yeah, age food cake, meringues, all that stuff. It's good, it's amazing. But like, you know, on its own as an omelet, that just don't cut it. Yeah, in egg form, they should not be separated. Right.
Yeah, do you beat an egg white omelet? What do you mean? To make it fluffy? No, that's like a that's like a reason. No, you beat someone who orders one.
That's like oh dang. That was bump set, and then yeah, they just spiked that one home. I love it. Yeah, nice. I like your volleyball reference.
Yeah. Yeah, it's summertime. Oh my can you imagine anything like more horrific than like beach volleyball? Like I think volley like I like all that sand everywhere. To play or to watch.
Play. I don't know. Like, I don't know. There was an article, was it in the New Yorker uh recently about sand and how there's a particular kind of sand that you have to use for a beach volleyball that uh like allows you to play in a particular way. Really?
Yeah, there's all these sand specifications for like shapes, angles, sizes. I hate running in sand. I'm that guy that if I have to be on the beach, which is a nightmare for me, like a huge nightmare for me. I'm a vampire. I like being near the beach.
I like the ocean. I don't like sand. I don't like sand like like I don't like putting shoes on after I've been at the beach. I don't like the sand in the car on the way out of the beach. Like it anyways, I'm that guy smiling faces.
Oh, this is the worst. Yeah, the smiling faces. I hate that. I like like I like going to the beach for functional things. Like I like to get clams, I like to harvest mussels and whelks.
Uh I like getting crabs. So the beach is purely for foraging. Yeah. That's right. I like there are many beachside greens that I also enjoy.
You're like, you know what I mean? There's like uh there's beach plums, there's beach uh there's rose hips at the beach. There's all sorts of things I like about. Being in the freaking jellyfish? What do you mean?
Yeah, you've used the floor. Anyway, so like I like kelp. Uh I like the actual being in the ocean is fine. It's fine. But like I'm that guy that if I have to be on the beach, I walk immediately to the hard pack sand that's right by the water so that I don't have to have all that sand.
And imagine like when you're playing beach like running in soft sand is a freaking nightmare. Yeah. I guess you gotta be in good shape. Why would you do that if you weren't in the military? Or you're playing freaking beach volleyball where you're running around on dry sand.
You're not really running though. You're just kind of like shuffling around. Wow. Getting some hate now. Yeah.
Wow. I'm not saying it's not a sport. I'm just saying you're not like you're not all out running. Just shuffle around ball. Do you know what takes some more energy than you'd think is uh race car driving.
Yeah. Not that I've done it, but I've got to be. Do you want to put some bets on whether uh Dave Arnold gets to two questions today or you're such a jerk, man? Maybe like somewhere somewhere Nastasia is frowning. Yeah.
No, all the time, everywhere Nastasia is frowning. Yeah, at this rate, Dave, you'll answer all the questions that have been asked. All right, listen, listen, Dan. What year? Oh yeah.
Come on now. Dan, this is why people like when you're on, because like you give and you get. First of all, like I always say, now you're preventing me from asking this car. I was trying to do it and you stopped me. That's what's brilliant about it.
But the that's true. No, no, no. You can use Peter Kim as your crutch. I can and just did. But the uh the like people who give out crap to people need to be able to take it, right?
Right? Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. All right.
Uh for a couple of years I've been using a rubber-made commercial food storage container as a sous vide vessel that I purchased on Amazon. The Amazon description for this product says made of clear, break resistant. I like break resistance. Some lawyer was like, Oh, don't call it the unbreakable or break call it break resistant. Everything is resist breaking, dude, unless it unless it's a Jenga tower, things resist breaking.
Such a dumb. I hate the language that I'm gonna have to use in the spins all manual. I absolutely hate it. Yeah, and I can't wait to wield it back at you. I know, you're gonna make fun of him like the lawyers made me say it, the lawyers made me say it.
You know what I mean? Can I can I real quick just say I love how every impression you do is just like some stereotypical Italian New Yorker? Oh yeah. Like no matter what, no matter who or where. And sometimes he does stereotypical Jewish like mother.
What? Yeah. Well, mother. Oh yes. Well, whatever.
Yeah. Whatever. It's like, you know, you imitate who you're, you know, around, I guess. I don't know. I don't know.
Whatever. But the Oh. Anyways. Uh the Amazon description for this product says made of clear, break resistant polycarbonate. It is also BPA free.
Uh, we'll come back to this. I've recently been told that it is not possible for polycarbonate to be BPA free. Is this true? Have I been duped by Rubber Made and Amazon? Additionally, if the container does contain BPA, has the food I've been using uh sous v eating still been exposed to the BPA as long as the vacuum bags did not also contain BPA.
Dan from Chicago. It's an interesting question. Uh first of all, uh I have to have to get this out of my head because uh whenever someone says rubber made, there's a store, was a store in New Haven that sold um uh drug paraphernalia and waterbeds, and it was called rubber match. And they're the commercial was always like rub a match. And so like like on TV, like they bought those like local access things, and if they they have all of their stuff, rub a match.
So I read that anytime anyone says rubber made, anyone who grew up in like New Haven in like the eighties or nineties will know what I'm talking about. Rubamade. So that's why whenever anyone says rubber made, I have to say that to myself. Well you like fill up your bong from the waterbed? Uh man, I don't know, man.
Uh the last thing you want is someone high out of their mind on a waterbed, like because they're gonna get something sharp and they're gonna stab that freaking waterbed. And uh someone I know, I mean I wonder whether it was Jen, my wife, like knew someone whose waterbed ruptured and like leaked all over everything. It was a nightmare because it went through the floor. Plus, they weigh literally like a ton. You know what I mean?
Well, I've never been on a waterbed. I have, yeah. I miss waterbeds. You missed it? You like you're a waterbed fan?
No, no, it's just interesting. They're novelty. I wouldn't want to sleep on one. No? What about you, Dave?
You ever been on one? Not for decades. Do they even make them anymore? I don't know. Someone have to find out if rub a match is still in business and call up.
They're gonna have to have a resurgence, right? Yeah, you know what would be cool is if you had a um what's it called? You know, like a cornstarch slurry bed? So that you can. Uh uh, it's called a ublek.
Oblek, yeah, an ublek bed. An ubleck bed. That'd be pretty sweet. Oh, Peter, that you could make that. You Peter Peter Kim's Ublek beds.
Yeah. Come on down and get Peter Kim's Ublek beds. 100% Ublek. Only the best Ooblek all around. Yeah, you could be like, get like some sort of like uh a rancher, oobleck, ooblek, ooblek, oobleck.
Like you know, like calling like a like a I'm gonna get an ooblek, ooblek. You know who should we get? We should get we should get uh Hearst uh Hearst uh ranch, Hearst Ranch Oublek beds. That'd be amazing. Like he could use only uh abattoir with uh ooblek bed.
You know what I mean? Get the cow to walk on ublek real slow as well. Imagine like you like jump on the bed, like ow, and then ah uh well so for instance, for those of you that don't know what ooblek is, you mix cornstarch with water, and uh if you stir it very slowly, it's uh it's a liquid. Uh I forget the the Newtonium uh what is it? Is it bingham plastic?
I forget what what it is, but then if you go quickly onto it, it's solid. So the the like it the it's crazy. You know what I mean? So like this, you if you look up Ooblek and uh swimming pool, there are swimming pools full of ublek, and people will run across them like it's dry land, but if you stand still, you just go. Yeah, ooblek.
That's what it's called, right? Yeah, ooh bleck, that's right. Yeah, all right. Uh so back to the actual question. We are gonna answer at least the gonna get the two questions.
I gotta do it. We're already on the second question. Maybe I won't answer it, but we're already on the second question. So already I've I've I've succeeded. So the uh here's an interesting thing about polycarbonate.
Uh literally, polycarbonate is made of two things: BPA and phos gene, right? So for those of you that don't remember uh your World War I history, phos gene was the uh chemical um the chemical agent that caused the most uh deaths, uh chemical warfare agent that caused the most deaths, much more than mustard gas, uh during World War One. So you have uh bisphenol A, which is uh BPA, which is an endocrine disruptor, right? That's why people don't want you to use it. It's an endocrine disruptor.
Uh and you mix that with a chemical uh weapon and you get polycarbonate. Now, uh I hate hate when people say that you take two things that are bad on their own and put them together and they're necessarily still bad, right? Uh, because there are many situations where uh two bad things put together become inert, right? And there's also situations where two good things put together become dangerous. Uh I the the the vein of thought uh like that that I hate the most is like uh there's a book called Deconstructing Twinkies.
Remember this book? In it, and they listed all the ingredients in Twinkies, and this is what all the press picked up on, and they were like, This ingredient, I forget what it was, like I forget what it was. Is also used in explosives. You know what I mean? Oh, I hate that.
I hate that. This is also used as an antifreeze. Yeah. Yeah. Salt's an anti-freeze.
Yeah, right. Right. That's like, you know, what we said, I think it was last week, where you know, uh, people say, I hate it. I hate it. I hate that kind of argument.
It's stupid, it's ridiculous. Uh the world would be better if uh reporters and everyone just ignored any sort of argument that started with uh that kind of a uh thing. Now, if someone said, I took a plastic explosive and put it into your Twinkie, I'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, right? But not that they like that they used an ingredient that's also used in plastic explosives in a Twinkie. To me, that's like a non that's non-information.
Also, Twinkies are delicious. You know, I'll say have you had Twinkie in the past ten years? No. Okay. Twinkies are a great memory.
Yeah. Twinkies could be delicious. A sponge cake filled with cream is theoretically delicious. Yes. Okay.
Uh uh, if you have a Twinkie now, you will still enjoy it because of your childhood memories. But if you handed Twinkie to a third party that didn't grow up with Twinkies and expect them, if they have adult taste to think that it is a well-made thing, they'll be like, nah. Yeah. Fair? Uh I don't know.
I guess. Yeah. I mean, I love them. Yeah. Uh I love the idea of them.
I'll have to try giving one to my wife. Oh, she'll hate it. She's French. Yeah. She she did not like s'mores.
I remember the first time I was like, French, man. So excited to show her the s'mores and they're the worst. I mean, as French goes, she's she's southern, so she's okay, right? Northern, northern. She's northern.
I thought she came from down near uh the Oh, that's where she went to school. She went to school in the south. No, not at all. Didn't she go? I think you said over by Chak Shoes down there in the uh where was she?
Why did she why'd you say she hung out down there and had the immature walnuts and Carthusian mountains, all that crap? I can't remember. Whatever. I thought she spent time in Grenoble, no? Oh yeah, right.
Grenoble, yes. That's in the south. Yeah, but she's from the north. All right. Well, anyway, if she's not Parisian.
Yes. Anyway. But so uh does she also hate peanut butter? She no, she likes peanut butter. Really?
But not on like not as a sandwich. Well, as what? Yeah. What does she like it as? I can't remember.
Well, you have peanut butter at home up there. Does she like Welch's grape jelly? I don't know. Does she enjoy Wonderbread for what it's good at? Uh she does not like Wonder Bread.
Even for what it's good at? Which is for you. For me, grilled grilled cheese. Grilled cheese, PB and J's, and I hate to say this, people. Listen, the BLT.
Well, no, the French, generally speaking, don't understand PB and J as a sandwich concept. Yeah, because they they're not willing to go outside of what they know to be what they want to try to put themselves in the in the shoes of someone else. You know what I'm saying? I think Dave in high school was beat up by a bunch of like French ruffians. I am always had some kind of I used to be a francophone.
There were a bunch of French mimes that's the first time. I used to speak. I'm I have no problem with uh I you know I love French food, French culture. I like peep the people. Yeah, French are fine.
They're okay. Okay, all right. You know, I just am saying. All right, why don't we talk some uh some uh bipe uh what uh so uh that's uh Peter pulling out like you know like Macron? No, I would use the the French accent from here on out uh just to uh aggravate you.
Give me some macron, yeah. Yeah, yes. Give me some Macron. Yeah. You give me the back of the throat.
Um so it's made of uh bisphenol A and phosgene. Uh but the the theory is is that when you put it all together, there's no more free BPA. So what they do in food-grade polycarbonate is they uh make sure that it's all polymerized and that there's no free BPA left, and that's kind of the thing. And these um the food grade things are tested for this, right? They're tested for the levels of free BPA.
So presumably if they're saying it's BPA free, they're meaning that it not does not have any free BPA. Let me give you an example. Glass is made of sand, right? So if you have glass and it's clear, I would say, yes, that glass is sand-free, even though it's made of sand. You know what I'm saying?
Uh but where the analogy breaks down is that unlike glass, which doesn't revert to stand unless it's been pounded by the ocean for a long, long time, uh polycarbonate can break down under uh uh uh regimens of high temperature or in the presence of uh alc alkaline detergents or in the presence of sometimes under uh high ultraviolet radiation, it can start to break down and then can leach uh free BPA. And so there's a lot of um testing that's been done saying that uh high temperatures uh in in BPA causes leaching, uh, etc. etc. And there was one study, well-known study in like uh oh nine or something like this, 08, 09, 10, 2010, uh where they uh literally like gave a bunch of students BPA water bottles with cold water and measured their the the excretion rate of the BPA byproducts you know over the course and showed like a an increase in in their levels versus people that didn't have it. Now, if you search BPA polycarbonate, the uh BPA like uh institute like bought like all of the good Google search analytics.
So the first like five things that you see are bought and paid for by the polycarbonate in the BPA industry. So kind of got to take that with a with a grain of uh with a grain of bisphenol A. But like you know their point is that even if that is true that the level of leaching is far below what is recognized as a dangerous amount. Now the people who say there are people who say that there is no known safe amount of endocrine disruptor I don't know. What I will say is is that you shouldn't wash polycarbonate stuff in um the dishwasher probably uh and if you know if it's going to be used uh for food grade but I don't know where I come I don't know where I come down on the on the bisphenol A.
So you haven't been duped oh and by the way the studies so they did a study that showed that like you know mouse prostates get all messed up and there's all sorts of problems with mice who were being fed uh water out of uh polycarbonate bottles and the pro-bisphenol industry points out this is pointed out correctly whether or not this is it's obviously self-serving that uh rat bottles aren't made out of food grade polycarbonate they're made out of a cheaper grade of polycarbonate and a lot of the art to making plastic resins is ensuring that you have full polymerization so that there's no free BPA. Well in that case BPA there's also you know anything else like a food grade silicone rubber you're sure that there's not a lot of monomer sitting around and and this so it's an art, and then these things are tested. So, for instance, the plastics, we're not using any polycarbonate in the um spinzole. We're using a resin called triton that is not made out of BPA, but uh any anything like that that you put into a food uh item, you send to an independent testing lab to test the material to ensure that it doesn't have any compounds in it that um are not allowed by the FDA for food contact. So it doesn't happen in rat bottles.
Uh and so that that's what they that's what they point out. So short answer, I don't know. Uh the long answer is, I mean, the the the answer to your specific question, which is uh your stuff's in a bag anyway, do I need to worry about it? I'd say no. You're probably, I mean, if you're in an if you're in a zippy, you're in um polyethylene, and I'm uh it's gotta be a decent barrier to it, and you're talking about like watering it down and then watering it down a further.
Think about this. In a water bottle, you have a very low uh volume uh surface area to volume ratio because water bottles are relatively small. In a large uh rub made container, you have a very large volume for your unit of surface area, and the leaching of uh BPA into it's gonna depend on the particular polycarbonate that you have, its particular condition, whether it's been broken down by uh uh damage, UV, temperature, detergent, uh, and then also the temperature, the temperature of the water that you're putting into it, and also the surface area that you have uh per unit water. Uh so all of those things are gonna come into into play. So I'd say you're fine, especially with the polyethylene.
If you're using an actual vacuum bag with multi-layered uh stuff where you have like uh possibly polyethylene and then possibly nylon, I'd say, you know, don't worry about it. What do you think, Peter? Hey, hey man. Yeah, endoquin disruptors. Yeah.
Okay. Brian writes in. Uh I keep hearing Dave talk uh about his take on Idli. What's your secret? How do you make it?
What variations do you bring to it? Do you use an idly uh do you use uh Italy baskets slash molds from the Indian market? Thanks, Brian. Uh I do. I do use those molds.
Uh Peter and I actually went to um the uh Ganesh Temple out there in Queens to try because apparently this is like the best uh kind of doses and uh idlies you can get in New York City. What do you think? Yeah, it was a tranquil morning and randomly at like 9 a.m. two guys storm in, make a beeline to the counter and order everything on the menu. Everything.
But I have to say, their paper dosa was sick. That was crazy good. It was crazy good. So and so that guy gave me some tips. So for Idli, for Idley batter, I use uh so for those of you that don't know, uh or you know, to to paraphrase NWA for all for all you who aren't hip to the fact, but I can't actually say the rest of the rhyme because it's not good.
But the uh so the the idlies are like spongy uh little steamed uh cakes. Yeah. Cakes. Yeah, mini pancakes. Yeah, yeah, that that are uh ooh, pancake.
I never think of a pancake as a cake. Like you would never be like, I'm gonna have, you know, you want some cake? Yeah. Here you go. You'd be like, what?
Yeah. I never think of uh red mill as a mill. Oh no, don't get me started. So anyway, so you have uh these little cakes, uh, and uh they're kind of spongy, they're steamed, they're moist, um, they're they're they're gluten free, right? Uh because they're not made with gluten uh and or not made with uh you know anything that has gluten.
Um, and they're typically eaten as a uh as a breakfast. So uh in the south of India. Okay. So the way you're supposed to make them, and I think very few people make them like this now. Most people I think buy a mix or they use a uh flour and then they add some leavening agent to it.
But the way you're supposed to do it is you're supposed to take um uh idly rice or at least a portion of idli rice, which is parcooked rice, right? Some people put in regular, not parcooked rice, but you know, most people like to add some parcooked parboiled rice to it. Uh and the one I use is a short grain, it's called idly rice, it's actually pretty expensive as rice goes. Uh use that and you soak it, right? Then you use uh uh urod dal, which is the black gram.
And uh I've done it both ways. I've used a pre-hauled stuff, I've hauled stuff that I've soaked. I've also used it with leaving the black hole on. I actually liked it with the black hole on. Uh, and then you can, if you want to, add also soaked fenigreek seeds, you know.
Uh and the fenigreek seeds actually are functional, so it's not just a flavor, but like fenigreeks have a real kind of mucilaginous texture when they've been kind of ground up. So you soak you can soak the fenigreek seeds with the uh with the black gram with the urad dal if you want, but uh but you soak the rice and the uh urad dolls separately because they take different amounts of water, right? So you soak them and then you grind them, you soak them for you know hours, depends on the temperature outside and temperature of the temperature inside rather and the temperature of the water, and then yeah, you drain most of the water off, save it, and then you grind it in a wet grinder. And a wet grinder is essentially uh two stone wheels that spin on a stone platform and grind things to a paste. Now the trick with it is you want to grind uh I grind you grind the urad doll first.
The the reason is is that uh the uradal adds a lot of the structure to the dough and uh to the batter, rather, and it is it it air helps aerate it and provide it like a lot of the like I say, the structure, it's got like the protein in it, right? That that you need, and just I guess maybe also hydrocolides, I don't know. Uh, but you grind it and you grind it for longer than you think. Like I grind it for you know, probably 20 minutes, something like that, until it gets really light, airy. Then you dump it out, then you put the rice in, and uh the urad doll is going to take a lot more water because it's like the that to grind than the rice.
But you add the rice separately, and the rice will help grinding the rice will help clean out your wet grinder because if you do the if you do it in the other way, you grind the fenigrake, by the way, with the ura doll. But if you do it the other way around, then you've got the goopier stuff in it at the end, so it's a pain in the butt to clean out your your grinder. And I would also note clean out your grinder right after you're done. Don't let that stuff dry. Although you know, sometimes even dries it flakes right off.
But anyway, clean it up. So then you mix those two things together and adjust the water content of the battery if it's too dense, uh it's a pain, it doesn't work right, and if it's too uh watery, it'll seep right through your molds because the molds are typically perforated. Uh, and then you let it rise in a warm place until it gets light and airy and tastes fermented, and that's that's basically how I do it. But the trick is is that I've I've actually been getting better at it, so my idlys are getting lighter and lighter and fluffier and fluffier. And the problem is is that one of the things I like to do is I'll put I'll I'll spoon some so these the idly molds look like little like almost like egg poaching cups.
Does that make sense, Peter? Egg poaching cups. No one uses those anymore, egg poaching cups, right? I hope not. They're the enemy.
Yeah. That's I mean, why would you need to do that? Yeah. Anyway, but they used to sell that stuff. Yeah.
So they're shaped like that. So you spoon a little bit in, then I spoon in like a filling. Like, for instance, uh, you could do cheese, you could do uh chili, you could do beans, you could do whatever, and then adding more over the top. But as my idli get lighter, the batter has less ability to hold stuff in it, and so I'm getting starting to get bleed through at the bottom of my idlys with the stuff, but it's great. So you then you steam them for like 10 minutes in a steamer and you pop them out and you have these stuffed that's what's not traditional is the stuffed idlis.
And so then I serve them like I would like I typically do it with like chili, and then I serve them like with like shredded lettuce and sour cream and other stuff as though it was Mexican food. Yeah, and it's good. Yeah, I like it a lot. Uh but so then we went to this place, the Ganesh Temple, and they had the paper dosa. And this have you had a better paper dosa than that?
Never had a better paper dosa. I've never had a better paper dosa. I've also never been to the South India. Uh no, I kind of wanted to go. Peter and I were looking at airline flights because I was like, Man, I gotta go now.
But like uh, yeah, I'm not saying that we've had the be all and end all, but I've had a fair share of them, and this was by far and away the best one. Hard to imagine how it could be better than that. Because it was so delicious. It was the perfect amount of like super crunchy on the outside and soft and on the inside. The texture was just sick.
Yeah, babe. We gotta wrap up in a minute. All right, hold on. So okay, so we asked the guy, we walked up, and for some reason these guys were hip to talk to us about like their dosa, right? And I was like, Man, that dose is good.
What's up with that? It's like, do you use the same recipe you use for uh for idlis? He's like, our secret is we had some chickpea for the crunch. I was like, chickpea for the crunch. Oh, yeah.
Yep. Yeah. Okay. So before we leave, uh what do I have? Like 30 seconds?
What do I have? Yeah, you can have 30. All right. So I was gonna talk to egg uh to Peter about eggs and whether or not, because he's done the European thing and the Africa thing and the American thing about like refrigerating eggs or not, and it's a big pain in the butt topic. Maybe we have you back to talk about that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But uh when are you going to uh Tanzania? June 10. So we probably might not have you back before then. So uh tell me about Ethiopian eggs real quick.
Peter loves eating open eggs. So, yeah, I mean there are these things when you're in Ethiopia in Addis Ababa at least, you can buy two kinds of eggs. One is called Ferrangi eggs, which means foreigner egg, and the other is Habesha egg, which means local egg. The Habesha eggs are tiny, they're extremely brittle. Like you can barely chicken egg.
Yeah, chicken eggs. And you can barely carry them back home without breaking one along the way because they're so brittle. You crack them open though, and they're so thick that you can't even like if you beat it into a bowl, it's hard to you. It's like you need a pastry spatula to get it all out because it won't actually pour out. It's so thick, it just clings to the bowl.
Give me the name of this egg again. Habesha egg. How do they get the shell so thin? They give DDT to the birds? I don't know what it is, but it they're crazy delicious.
They're the most delicious eggs I've ever had. And they're like, I don't know if it's just because they're mostly yolk, but they just have an incredibly creamy um and like super eggy flavor. And so it's it's like a different product almost. Yeah, you know what the nice thing about food is is that like no matter how old you get, there's always like some awesome thing just around the corner. Yeah you know what I mean?
Yeah. Anyway, we'll have you back to talk about when you're back, we'll talk about the eggs. You're gonna do some research on the eggs, you'll get back to us, and then we can talk about whether or not you should refrigerate eggs, etc. etc. Yep.
All right, and and get some good uh food in Tanzania. Tell me what Tanzanian food's all about. Of course. All right, cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network.
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