Today's program is brought to you by Modernist Pantry, providing magical ingredients for the modern cook. For free videos, recipes, tips, and tricks. Visit blog.modernistpantry.com. 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. It's Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you, pre-recorded from the Ace Hotel in Pittsburgh, PA! Joined not as usual with Nastasi the Hammer Lopez.
She is not here. She is in New York City. And Dave is also not in the booth because we are pre-recorded from the Ace Hotel in Pittsburgh. But we do have, uh just like last week, the evil cocktail overlord of the universe, Don Lee. Benevolent.
Now benevol now that he's my new business partner, I guess he's supposed to be benevolent. But I thought you liked being the secret evil. The secret evil, the operative word is secret. So we've gone through this before. So wait, uh, you have to refresh me because it's a little late in the evening.
I know you're much more into the kind of uh Star Wars universe timeline. Which like when is he good? Is he good when he's Senator Palpatine? No. Always bad.
Well, when is he theoretically good? When does Amidala still listen to him? When what his name is what? That's why he's a secret overlord in the beginning. He's secret bad.
Kevin, you haven't been introduced yet. Also joined again with Kevin Denton, who is the Illite I I swear to I swear to God. Is that true story, Kevin? It's just national, David. Oh, well, what about Canada?
What about Canada? I think we have, yeah, we have something grandfathered in that I take Canada too. That's two countries. On request. That's two Americans.
That's two countries. Yeah. You've been to Mexico. What about Mexico? It's the best place on Earth.
Do they have their own Kevin Denton or are you the Kevin Denton of Mexico as well? I would imagine they have someone better. Oh, well, Kevin Denton, for those of you that don't know, and you can't call in your questions because this is pre-recorded. But if you could, you could have called in about the bar program at uh WD50 or at Alder about what he's doing uh at Prono Recard now. But you know what uh something we didn't discuss last week, because you by the way, the reason we're doing these pre-recorded is um uh we've all been fortunate enough for the past uh week and a half to be doing a multi-city tour discussing new and interesting bar techniques where Don and I have been doing demonstrations to bartenders in uh in uh Pittsburgh, Denver, and San Diego about kind of new techniques in the bar industry, but also they we've been doing uh presentations the folk good folks from Death and Company and and and uh uh whatnot have been doing presentations on what was their presentation on, Kevin, technically the art of training.
Right, which is actually important. I think people don't people it was actually really good talk. People don't take training, uh they don't take training, it's not they don't take it seriously, they don't think far enough in advance about how important training is, both in a in a culinary as uh standpoint and I guess they do. You know, I would think people take training more seriously in a culinary standpoint, not in front of house, but in back of house. Uh but bar, you know, bar training, I think is an important, important thing.
And it's taken seriously by people who are working as consultants doing multi, like multi, uh, you know, like they're doing multiple bars. They they have to roll out their training because they can't always be there, right? Well, I think you made a good point earlier that like if you really want to know something, you should have to teach someone how to do it, right? If you train someone, then you really have to know what you're doing in the first place. And I feel like those guys really know what they're doing and therefore are really able to articulate good training.
Right. You know what's uh the dumbest saying in the world? Those who can't do teach. That's the dumbest damn saying in the whole freaking world. Like, if you can't, in the culinary world, and in many other worlds, I assume as well, if you can't teach, it means you don't have any idea what the hell you're talking about.
You know what I mean? It's uh I mean I guess there are people who are just non-communic non-communicative kind of savants who are really good practitioners, but you know, the inability to be able to articulate what you're doing and teach the next like group of people how to do it, just means that you're you know, maybe useful for your customers, but you're not useful to the future of the profession. So anyway, I think that's a crappy, crappy saying. And we have new guest today, Brian Bartels. So Brian wrote a book that just came out this uh this year called Um The Bloody Mary.
Now, what's the it's the lore, give me the full. War and legend of the classic cocktail of Brunch and Beyond uh for every little school kid who's ever wanted to aspire to make a Bloody Mary. Wait, so that's the longest title at all time. Yeah, yeah, it's true. True enough.
That's true. So give me some give me some lore and legend. Lore and legend. Uh the book itself, The Bloody Mary book, published by Tenspeed in March of 2017. Uh it basically establishes the background history of the Bloody Mary, uh, how it came to be named the Bloody Mary, and also 50 recipes, three different categories, encapsulating classic recipes, modern recipes, and then hosting party large format recipes.
Um, so give me some quick history. So Bloody Mary, is it some sort of Mary Queen of Scots thing or what? It's not. She didn't drink a lot of tomato juice. One of the four legends is Mary Queen of Scots, which is great, but um at the same time, not the validity of what we uh have come to know today as our our our favorable first cocktail of the day.
So what well, so what's the what's the what's the current accepted history of the Bloody Mary cocktail? It's established in and corresponded with um Mary Warbarton, who is a socialite, a Philadelphia socialite if there ever was one. Amazing name, Warbarton. Warbarton. A very fair family from Philadelphia.
Definitely, definitely rich. I mean, if I had Dexter, Dexter C.K. Haven. Dexter. If I had the $50 to go down to City Hall, I would change my name to Warbart Warbart.
We all would. The four of us could be the four mighty Warbartons. Uh that'd be amazing. Okay, so that's a Wes Anderson film, isn't it? It could be actually the next Anderson film.
Why so why would they name it after her first name, which is you know, nice but unremarkable when it could have been called the Bloody Warbarton. That is a much more badass name. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds like a Scotch trick.
Yeah. So talk. In Prohibition 1927 in Florida, there was a uh that's not where I want to be. It's the golden age. This is the golden age.
George Jessel was a vaudevillian entertainer, comedian, actor, what have you. Um was he any good? Have you seen any of his work in the house? Never seen a single thing that he's done other than his Smyrnoff ads. He was a Smyrnoff campaign ambassador in the 50s.
Really? Yeah. Um how were his ads? Uh his ads were uh he had a little bit of a barrel chest. He had six pack ads.
Yeah, like he looked like uh like a a beefier Bob Hope. Um before Bob Hope was I guess when Bob Hope was skinny at the time, because he was probably alive in 1950. Oh, he was live up and come on, man. How about Bob Hope was alive until like in my life recently? I mean, Bob Hope lived to be a billion.
Yeah. Um listen, Mary Warbarton clearly caused a lot of trouble. Yeah, Mary Warbarton, Florida, some vault villain dude, 20s. 1927, okay. When vodka was not even available.
Um George Jessel claims that he was looking behind the bar after an all night drinking out outfit with uh all of his friends, and they were trying to stay up. It was 8 a.m. and he grabbed bottles behind the bar to make a concoction. I don't believe that this. This is not a story I believe.
It's not a story I it's not a story I wholeheartedly believe either, but uh it gets associated with every bloody Mary story that's ever been like this. Sounds like uh a lie. Don, what do you think? Is this a lie? I don't know.
I I'm just shocked by the Wikipedia fact that Kevin Denton showed me that Bob Hop Hope was born in n in 1903. Yeah, Bob. So in the 1950s, Bob Hope was 50 years old. He was my age. Not even like before 1950.
This man lived to be a hundred. He died in 2003. Yeah, yeah, which to me is yesterday. 2003 for me is yesterday. I would rather Bob Hope created the Bloody Mary to be a very good thing.
Alright, alright. This Vavilian Smirnoff peddler and Mary Warbarton are hanging out, sweating their sweating their tukases off. Sweating their turkeys off in 1927, Florida, and the guy happens to find a buttload of tomato juice behind the bar. Why you would have tomato juice in 1927 in Florida? Only God knows.
Right, okay, so okay, so let's let's carry this improbable story to its conclusion. What happens? He makes all of these he basically assembles Worcestershire lemon juice vodke, which he calls vodki because uh it was a potato uh a rancid smelling spirit that is like this is a horror show, okay. Go ahead. Exactly.
Um he brings all of these all these items together along with the tomato juice, which had just only recently been canned. Um by the Sacramento Corporation? By Cottagen. Um Michigan. And uh once he puts what were you about to say?
Once he puts everything together for Mary Warbarton uh and all of his other friends, everyone deems it an actual acceptable savory drink. They're all talking, drinking, having fun, still up all night, and the drink gets spilled on Mary Warbarton's white dress. And she jokingly says, George, now you can call me a bloody Mary. Um, so is this a weird, is this a weird, like I agree, though. Is this a weird, like, is it just a blood reference?
Is it a sexual reference? Is it like, is it some sort of like Dave family show? Well, I'm just curious, like, no, this is a this is history, so this is history. Talking about, I mean, Duran Duran wasn't a band yet, but like at the same time. Very much not so.
Like, you know. It could have been. Mary Warburton could have been Rio, and she could have been dancing on the sand, but it's all right. Well, I see where you're trying to go with this, but this is one of those stories that to me sounds like uh far-fetched. Well, horse hockey.
You know what I mean? And so, like, also, like, uh, I don't know whether you've ever had a drink mixed by a vaudevillion in the morning when they're hung over in the piss-hot heat. Doesn't seem fair if you know, I mean, like, I'm like, they're the only people that would come up with the combination of tomato and worships, you know, at that time of day. That sounds like crazy talk to me. And a very kind of like not vodka town, like, no one in Florida then was drinking vodka.
No. Like, you know, uh, you know, Martha Stewart wasn't even like alive then, much less drinking. So no one was drinking like like vodka in Florida at that point. And, you know, it just seems very not sort of feasible. No, but the way that the Bloody Mary actually developed and and was eventually um, I think established was because of um Fernand Petiu, uh Pete Petiu is his nickname was.
Uh, Pete Petou. Pete Petiou, uh bartender at the St. Regis. PD Pablo's, like the King Cole Bar. What, the what?
This is the King Cole Bar in St. Regis um in uh New York. He um just off of uh Central Park. Yeah, but that's not extant. Oh, it's still there, yeah.
Really? Uh great martinis. It's like gonna be like a 10-ounce martini, but why would I want a 10-ounce martini? That's a nightmare. Give me two five-ounce martinis.
That's a freaking nightmare, people, the end of the world has happened. Two five-ounce martinis is what you want. But also go for the mural, Humpty Dumpty, uh, beautiful mural. It's one of the sexiest rooms in New York. Yeah, it's it's a great room.
Yeah? Yeah. They recently did a uh anniversary Bloody Mary party a couple years ago. Ostensibly the birthplace of the Bloody Mary. Oh, I thought you just said your boy's two.
Your boy's two rabbit holes here. That's the name of the Bloody Mary. And way them down blame it on Hemingway. It was ostensibly created by George Chessel. Okay, listen.
Pete Petiou was the was the bartender who brought basically what I uh liken to say is if Jessel owned the Cadillac, Pete Petiou took it out onto the highway and developed it. So there's been a hard enough time locating the identity of who created the Bloody Mary. When this guy died, when did Pet You die? Uh, late 60s, early 70s. So claims in 1964 in a New Yorker article that George Jessel created it, but then I developed it.
So Petiu put in. He name calls this Jessel dude. Yeah. So it's Jessel's. No, it's not.
Wait, you're telling me that Jessel didn't even have like any sort of spice in it? Then it's not a freaking Bloody Mary. Exactly, which is why I think Petsy's one who develops exactly. Our modern day version of the Bloody Mary is Petius. It's Petiu.
So I give Peti the credit for establishing the Bloody Mary. I don't know if you know this, but I like listening to David Wandridge, who, for those of you who aren't in the cocktail world, is like the cocktail writer about history par excellence. But uh I enjoy the histories of the cocktails, but I find them almost always to be garbage and unsatisfying. In fact, most histories and most etymologies I find, unless they are they just don't have kind of meaning to me. You have to do it, you have to talk about it.
People ask you for it, but it doesn't really talk about why you think X, Y, or Z thing is important, right? So let's get to the more important meat rather than trying to think of like these knucklehead hungover fools in the 20s in Florida, which why would you live in Florida before air conditioning? Like, why would you live in that? There's no DEET, right? You had no DEET, no DEET.
You had no air conditioning. You could have had DDT. I don't know, did they in the 20s? It's like a 70s, yeah. 70s.
That's 50 years. You're looking out you're living in a place without bug spray and without air conditioning. It's just sketers and gators all freaking day. Palmetto, palmetto bugs, sulfurous groundwater. Like Florida is fine now because we have civilization to override the inherent nightmare that is the flat sandy bar that is that state of Florida, which is a fine place, but not in the freaking 20s.
Is that before after Jerry Seinfeld's uh parents moved there? I soon before. And you know, you know, they have a whole breed of cattle in Florida, the cracker cows that are in fact like these cows that are bred. They're these skinny, scrawny, weirdo cows that can stand hanging out in the humid heat, poor soil, palmetto eating, like bug nastiness that is Florida prior to modern technology. Can they handle uh brackish water?
Are they like the Osabao pig? Because that sounds delicious. Or like the uh the uh San Michelle sheep of the Florida. Maybe I've never had a Florida uh cracker cow. Someone out there why are you railing on cracker cows if you never had one?
I'm not. I think they're awesome. In theory, I've never eaten one. Well, that was that was a foot club, right? No, I never say anything about bad about the cow.
The cow's a tough son of a cow. It's a cow. It's like tough. In fact, there's a whole sub there's a guy named uh Rhett, what's his last name? I forget.
He's a pastor and a uh cow whip maker. And he was vaudillion. He's alive today. Don't make fun of this man. He's a real life human being with children, and he makes cow whips out of nylon because in Florida it's so humid that if you make a leather whip, it will rot into nothingness in in like two seconds flat.
I've been told that kangaroo leather is the best uh leather for making whips. Yes, but they don't have kangaroos in front of them. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that kangaroo leather is the finest whip making leather in the world. This is like, if you don't know that, why am I even talking to you?
Like, if this is not just a freaking given that kangaroo leather is the toughest, supplest, best cracking whip leather that God has ever created, then there is no further discussion for us to have about any subject. That's our sponsor this week, right? Yeah, Kangaroo Leather.com. You know, uh the guy, David Morgan, who made the whips for uh the Indiana Jones movie, uh he He obviously uses Australian kangaroo hide for his uh better whips, sometimes with some kind of BS regular like cow uh belly on the inside uh and just kangaroo on the outside for his lesser whips. But uh the yeah, Australia is the best whip-producing country in the world by far, and it's because they have the best raw materials.
They are the DRC, if you will, of uh whip making. And it's just a known fact. And what's strange is is that all of us as Americans are completely obsessed with the bull whip because we grew up with Indiana Jones and his crappy fedora, which is by the way, wore a crappy fedora. Like, I'm just gonna go ahead and say that. I love myself some Harrison Ford.
He once pushed me aside at an art event years ago, and I was like, ooh, I was shoved aside like a piece of garbage by Harrison Ford. I finally made it in the art world in New York. And um, you know, I love Harrison Ford, but that is not what the like the traditional Australian whip is like. They they use a different style of whip in Australia, and I think since they have the kangaroos, we should probably look at their style of whip because they probably have something to tell us. Just saying.
Uh I don't know how we got on that subject. We were talking about Bloody Marys. Yeah. So my question is, uh, Brian, yeah. Why uh why did you get interested in the book?
Do you like Bloody Marys? In other words, here's my question. So, like, I do a lot of work with cocktails. Sometimes, like, I do a lot of work, but someone's like, Would you order that? I'm like, no.
I no, I would not order that. I would have a glass of rosette instead. So, do you actually order the Bloody Marys? And why is it only a breakfast drink? Is it because it's gloppy and no one wants to drink gloppy stuff at night?
Or what? Well, it was the first cocktail I ever learned to make. I had to learn to make it in order to be a bartender. So that was part of my introduction and a huge part of it. If I wanted to be a PM bartender, if I wanted to learn how to make cocktails, I had to make a Bloody Mary at brunch.
It's part one. Part two was So what's the brunch customer like? Well, in Wisconsin. Well, for yeah, from your side, from the bartender side, what's a brunch customer like? When I was learning to make the Bloody Mary, or what the modern day version of a brunch customer is like.
Yeah, well, your choice. Like, what are your feelings about brunch customers? People are very thirsty, and uh the lack of uh correspondence or communication is sometimes a little gray with uh with people. I uh I understand that you're still trying to wake up. You're trying to shouldn't you know what they want?
You should cut it. They either want a mimosa or bloody mary, Brian. Like there's two things they want. But they want a coffee, they want to they call want a coffee, they want a water, they want like big water. There's water glass.
There's abstractions to like what the request of a brunch of a brunch drinker really wants. It's kind of confusing, but at the same time, you're there to like facilitate any request. So I'm assuming you also had to make mimosas. Why didn't you write the mimosa book? I didn't have to make a lot of mimosas in my 20-year career as a bartender.
I actually didn't have to make a lot of mimosis. What? I feel blessed. What do you what are your thoughts on the bellini? Uh I didn't have to make a lot of bellini's.
No, no, no. Don didn't ask you whether you had to make them. Don said, What are your thoughts on the bellini? I don't think much about the bellini. Oh.
When you don't think about it, or you think it's a garbage drink? I don't think much about it. Here's my point. I think a bellini can be delicious, often it's not. I have the same feeling about Bloody Marys, frankly.
So why don't you tell me why so many Bloody Marys are garbage and how you make one that's not garbage? Good question. Um well to follow up on your previous question, I actually my palate had to evolve. That's how I got to like Bloody Marys and started to engage them a little bit more. What do you think you just called your palate not evolved?
My palate is somewhat, it's constantly being being checked, uh, which is important. But at the same time, um what was your question again? First, well, why do you choose to write a book on Bloody Mary's? And you say it's the first drink you had to perfect. Second, like why, like, what makes a Bloody Mary good, and so many are garbage, and why are so many garbage?
And third, I'll tack on to this. Why is it only a breakfast drink? Is it because nobody wants to drink gloppy drinks at dinner? Um you need him to chime in, Dave has plenty of opinions. By the way, by the way, I don't mean I don't mean gloppy in a pejorative way.
No, no, that's okay. Um I actually feel like the reason I got so involved in it, and the more I started writing about it and researching and and developing the Bloody Marys was um I I actually don't like the viscous, soupy, thicker versions of Bloody Marys. I think the the the bad Bloody Marys are the uh pre-packaged Bloody Marys. If they're housemade, I'm a little bit more um inclined to try them. And actually, in the book tour that I've been doing, everybody's been told been telling me that uh their response to Bloody Marys and how they enjoy them that much more in the last five-10 years has been directly related to um people who are creating them, creating them from like the ground up.
And I think that's important actually, uh, because you're channeling a certain kind of texture and dimension with however you're making your Bloody Mary. If you're using pre-packaged Bloody Marys, um Well, come on, come on, please. I mean, please. You know, please. If you're gonna have a cheese plate, you don't pull out the craft singles.
No. Craft singles are great on certain things, Kevin. Kevin Denton is giving me the stink eye. I'm just saying it's not a cheese plate. If you're gonna make an analogy like that, say something bad at the end.
If it's gonna be X, don't be Y. If Y is superior, like singles are better than most Bloody Mary mixes. I know it's apples or oranges, but in the grand scheme of things, true. What? True which I would eat craft singles before I would eat pre-bagged Bloody Mary mix.
Craft singles any day. Okay, okay. I'm gonna throw out a random, I'm gonna throw out two random ones for you. Okay. One, V8 as a base instead of other stuff.
Hate. Well, I have to backtrack a little bit. I can be not liking V8 or tomato juice. I never drank it. It was a it was something I tried.
I think I tried it when I was a little kid and I didn't like the taste of it. But my pality. You know what I really love a lot? I used to love the weird little cans with the pull tab and the absurdly small teardrop-shaped hole in the V8 can. Yeah.
Alright, go ahead. Those are great. Those are great. Um, no, but V8. This goes to show no one actually wanted to drink it.
Yeah, sucking the V8 out of that can with that little hole. It's thinner, which is why I think people who don't like Bloody Marys are more akin to actually being open-minded about liking stuff like that. It's actually a vast um I'm I'm impressed by like how people feel about like it was a gateway drug to gizpacho for me. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly it.
The thick soupy Bloody Marys, the thin, what about an alcoholic gazpacho? I think I think the gazpacho actually brought me to the Bloody Mary because I never like the Bloody Mary, but I do like Gespacho. Cospacho's delicious. You know what I don't like? Blended gazpacho that hasn't been put through a vacuum to suck the air out.
Gazpacho that looks like a freaking foamy mess. What if uh you're like getting the what is it, the Salmoreño, the one that's made with the bread, like torn leftover bread from the body. That's good. You should still hand chop it and let it soak in. You shouldn't blend the hell out of it so that it's all foamed and airy.
That's like a nightmare. That just means that you hate quality, you hate everything. This is why you cheat and use a blender, but own a vacuum machine so you can suck the air out and get the color back in the gazpacho. This was literally the first thing I taught people how to do in culinary school with the vacuum machine is take tomato puree and stop it from looking like nonsense that comes out of a freaking blender. Yeah, because nobody's gonna be a little bit stuff.
Yeah. It's so gross. Gross, disgusting. People don't like that. Alright, so here's another one for you.
Yep, ready, Brian? Yep. Okay. So I'm playing my wife. Okay.
And you're gonna con you're playing me. Okay. Convince me. I don't I don't like drinking in the morning. I don't want a bloody Mary.
You're a dumbass. Now, convince me. Uh I'm playing you? You're me, yeah. Convince me.
Convince me that like. Oh, yeah. Remember, channel an emotional robot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, but like, alright, I don't understand.
Why do you just not like drinking in the morning? Like it doesn't sound like me. You're asking someone else's feelings. This doesn't sound like me. When we say you don't like drinking in the morning, do you mean alcohol or do you mean all things?
Because I think you drink coffee. Yeah. So, alright, let's. I don't want to drink alcohol. What am I?
An alcoholic? First of all, this is soupy. This is the morning. Do you go to meetings? No, not an alcoholic.
Dave, we have kids. This is irresponsible. Why would I want to do it? Oh, now I guess now you're. I have to break character.
I have to break character now. Why don't you take the Virgin Mary and the Virginia V8? There's tons of vitamins and vegetables in V8. So if we give the kids. Alright, listen, listen.
I don't want to have alcohol in the morning. Why should I have alcohol in the morning? Hmm. Why should you not have alcohol in the morning? Because I do what I want.
Why should you have alcohol in the colour? Is this coming from three bartenders? Here's the point try to convince. Okay, it's a well-known fact that once you're in an airport, there is no time. We're convincing.
Okay, I've got to go. Here, here, it's real simple. If you don't want to drink in the morning, don't do it. No one cares. No peer pressure.
Yeah, but Brian wrote a book on Bloody Mary's, which is a drink you're only allowed to drink in the morning. What do you think about people who are you can drink it anytime you want? What? Listen, if you want it, just you can drink it. Oh, yeah, yeah, a lot.
You're allowed to drink a wait, wait. Are you guys, are the three of you saying that I can walk into a bar in the evening time when the sun has gone down? Certainly, and say, excuse me, I work in the nighttime. This is the morning. Give me a bloody Mary.
Or can I say, I'm a regular person, this is the nighttime for me, and I would like a Bloody Mary. You can, in fact, say that. Wait. So this is yet another barrier to good taste that has been thrown out the window. Like when you're allowed to wear white clothing, when you're allowed to order a gin and tonic.
You may be a poor quality human being. Oh. But you could say it. Oh, well, I can do anything. I can I can shove pencils up my nose, like blockhead, but my I don't.
But you could also drink in the afternoon if you want. But my question is. Because I do what I want. My point is, is that you don't order Bloody Marys at night, do you? And you ever order.
I order Bloody Marys never. Oh, alright, why? Give me a tequila and sangrita. I'm in. Me chilada, I'm in.
Bloody Mary? Okay, so let's have this talk. The man wrote a book on Bloody Marys. So I'm trying to get to. The man wrote a book on Bloody Marys.
Here we have Don Lee, supposedly benevolent, cocktail orderlord, Kevin Denton, Grand Vaziern or otherwise Bruno Ricard, USA. And I have a man that says he doesn't order. What about you, Kevin? Let's be honest. Do you order Bloody Marys?
When I want one. Which is? Occasionally. When? Typically when I want some.
You know what the best time to have a Bloody Mary is on a long morning flight when you don't leave first thing in the morning. Like first thing in the morning, I just want to go to sleep, right? Right. Okay. Uh when you like bored at 8 and you're on like a three or four hour flight.
The thing is, the Mrs. T's spicy Bloody Mary mix is. Is that a thing that exists? Without a doubt. Who's this lady?
Is she related to Mr. T? Me, it's actually Mr. and Mrs. T's.
Really? It was a M. But it is Mr. T. No.
The Mr. T's M. It's nice that they did it together, right? Oh. Well, I mean, that's a character.
Mr. T is a human. It's true. At any rate. I'm Pity of the Fool.
Once you have that, like, sometimes you want that uh chilled, salty, savory thing to sort of press the button that some peanuts or some garbage like cookie is not gonna press. Delta makes delicious cookies. Morning flight, man. When you fly cattle class, you don't get the delicious cookies, alright? You're in the back and you're like, I'm gonna split this Mr.
and Mrs. T's with somebody next to me because 16 or uh 12 ounces is too much of it. And you need to cut it like with a little bit of water. But when it's a little watered down and a little salty and a little savory, that's kind of a lifesaver mid meal, particularly if you're flying and changing a bunch of time zones and you're getting in, like, oh, we're closed for lunch at three, or it's morning where you are now. Like it's sort of a mediator of time zones where you can have a savory thing anytime.
You know when I like it? When I like it best, because I'm not a morning drinker either. I don't like drinking in the morning. Uh, and you know, I don't do brunch that often, and when I do, it's with kids and not with that also. I'm not drinking.
I like a I like Bloody Mary not in a full cocktail format. I like it in a shorter shot format in a group before I'm about to have a bunch of raw bar. Like, because to me, like, those like go together really well. So, like, you're gonna have like the equivalent of a half a cocktail, you're gonna shoot it real fast, and you're gonna have it right before you're about to pound like a whole boatload of like mussels, shrimp, oysters, that kind of stuff. That's a win.
Crab. Crab, if you're gonna have a lot of crab, bloody merry, tomato, delicious. This is a good mix. Sure. You know what I mean?
Sure, if you're a weenie that has to have cocktail sauce with their raw bar, I mean. Did I say I was gonna pour cocktail sauce on my raw bar? You pretty much did by saying you wanted a Bloody Mary beforehand. Uh look, I'm being told that we've already been going. I've not answered a single question, which I have many.
Classic. So we're gonna go to a commercial break in a minute. I'm not saying I have to cocktail sauce on my raw bar. In fact, like if you take the time to dip crab meat into anything, you have wasted time. You just need to shovel like crab meat into your face as fast as you can.
Can we all agree? Can we all agree, for the love of God, that crab is the most superior crustacean that exists. Crab is infinitely superior to lobster. For meat. Yeah.
Lobster shells, I think make a better uh uh stock. Fair, but shrimp heads also make an excellent stunt. Also true. Also, delicious when fried. Yes.
I love sucking on shrimp heads. But for meat, sucking on shrimp heads. Crab is king. Crab. Crab.
Crab. Crab is king. I'm a king. Crab. Okay, by the way, have you ever, have you guys ever had live king crab cooked directly, not frozen?
No. No, I've never been to Alaska. You don't have to. You can spend a lot of money and have uh true world foods owned by the Moonies. I'm poor.
You can work for a company that does it for free. You think I paid for the King Crab when I was working for FCI? I spent all my money on the crack. Kevin Denton, will you buy me King Crab? Kevin, can Prono Ricard buy Don Lee's and Live King Crab?
I'll tell you. And listen, for those of you that haven't had the world's most dangerous catch live, like live King Crab is as delicious as you think it is. It is just crazy delicious. Because crab meat is the sweetest, most umami laden, delicious crustacean meat that can be bought. Do you think masochistic crabs keep butter on them?
Are you familiar? I think I've spoken about this years ago. Are you familiar with the movie? What was it called? Was it called Night Shift with Henry Winkler?
Multiple times. Yes. And yeah, so yes, feed the tune of the mayonnaise while they're still alive, Kevin. That's that's what one should do. And we'll be back with more cooking issues.
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And don't forget to follow Modernist Pantry on social media to keep up with what's new and exciting in the world of culinary ingredients and tools. And we're back! So uh Don Lee has brought us some interesting Kit Kats. What are these, Don? These are uh sake Kit Cats.
What is a white chocolate cake cat that tastes like sake? We know there are two words I don't like together, white and chocolate. You know I was just Chocolate fat. There you go. Kit Kat tastes like sake.
I kind of understand what they mean by the sake, but it's in your finish. I think it might taste like sake. It really tastes like sake. I like it. It's like Nagori sake.
Mm-hmm. Super ricey. Pre shaven. You like that? I really do.
Sake Kit Kat. Good call. Do you know? The chocolate rain fellow Te Zande followed me recently. I put this on my uh Twitter feed.
I did see this. Yes. He has followed 604,000 other people before he followed me. And I later found out, because I kind of called the robot that is Te Zande's Twitter uh machine out on this fact. And he's like, well, if people follow me back, I keep them.
And if they don't, I don't. So that means he probably followed 8 billion people before me. I'm probably literally the last Twitter person on earth that Tay Zonde has followed. But I'm I did go back and listen to Chocolate Rain once because I was followed. He liked chocolate rain.
Good man. Everyone likes chocolate rain. Uh we have some questions. We got ready to answer some questions? Let's questions.
Hey Dave Nastasia, David in the booth. Dave is not here in the booth. Remember, I told you I'm in Pittsburgh. Don, if you're there, nice. Uh and of course, uh, everybody's favorite punching bag, Peter Kim.
Alas, Peter Kim is not here. He's too lazy to come out to Kitchener. He's in Africa. He's in Tanzania right now. Yeah.
Uh he might actually still be in Ethiopia, and when he comes back from Ethiopia, he has a lot to report on because he's will is very interested in the special Ethiopian egg. So in Ethiopia, they have two kinds of eggs, like foreigner eggs, which are like the normal eggs that we have and special Ethiopian eggs, and he's gonna try to run down. He's eaten some uh in the past couple days. He's gonna try to run down what that is. He's also gonna try to tell us uh about interesting foods he had in um uh you can follow him on the Instagram.
He's uh been posting pictures of eggs, right? Yeah, if you want to follow Peter Kim on Instagram, I recommend that. Yeah, he's been posting some egg pictures. Uh anyway, he's not here, so we can't beat on him. Um I have some downtime soon.
Uh I was hoping to have another look at the miracle of moisture management in Comsol. This is the uh program. This is this is Nick Devlin, who uh who I'm working with. Yeah. Uh so we're like look for more uh comsole uh stuff uh coming in the future.
Um and by the way, his wife, uh Naomi, uh, writes uh cookbooks, including uh some gluten-free cookbooks, and worked with my man uh I know never met him, I don't know why I'm calling him my man. Hugh Fernsley Wedding Hall from the Villa uh the River Cottage. You ever know about these books? Yeah, you read any of these books? No.
Good books. Uh anyway, question. I'm thinking about our bar's autumn menu and wanted to include a sherry flip. A flip. Alright, so you're good that we have bar people here.
Because uh I know nothing about the modern flip. Anyway. Uh but I'm mulling over options as far as egg safety for those nervous customers. Uh the internet suggests a minimum of one hour 57 degrees up to two hours for sous-vide pasteurization, you know, low temperature, like in the show. Uh firstly, what are your thoughts on the time?
Secondly, what would the shelf life of a batch of eggs bee after after pasteurization? I've also read they can be harder to whip after you've pasteurized them, and that it might affect the texture of the uh flip, so I'll need to run some tests. Uh looking forward to getting the spins all later this summer and celebrating with the gin and juice at the bar. Um, of course, gin and juice is one of my favorite drinks. Okay.
Don, when we open the bar again, are we gonna have gin and juice again? Are you gonna make me have only old new cocktails? Yes. Which I gave you two options, and you said yes. And one of them's right.
Ah, you guys are the worst people in the world. So, first of all, define for those who aren't bar people a f a modern flip. Don't take me flip dog. Don't give me that. What give me flip?
Define flip. Whole egg, shake and drink. Okay. It's typical base. Give me a typical recipe.
Give me a typical space. I'm a big fan of the Ruby Port in a flip. The uh coffee cocktail, classic drink. Uh no coffee in it. Tastes like coffee.
Ruby port, whole egg. Check it out. So uh another classic drink that doesn't contain its own ingredient, the flaming Dr. Pepper. Lemon Heart, Amaretto.
Do you like that? I was never a Dr. Pepper fan. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You don't like Dr.
Pepper the soda? Listen. Korean upbringing. I didn't have soda until I got to college. I didn't ask you whether when you started having soda, I asked you you don't like Dr.
Pepper? Yeah. I could take it or leave it. Kevin? I didn't have tequila till college, and I love it now.
There you go. By the way, we could talk. Oh, by the way, not to go back because I know we already talked about the Bloody Mary. Why would you ever order a Bloody Mary? No offense.
Why would you ever order a Bloody Mary Mary with vodka when you could just have it with tequila instead? Or gin. Just throw it out there. My preference is mezcal. Or Dr.
Pepper if you're not going to be able to do it. So you do you call it a Marie or you just call it a Bloody Mary with Mescal in it? Actually, there's no name for a bloody bloody with Bloody Oahawkin. Don't they call it a Maria? Isn't that a Maria?
Bloody Maria. Yeah, it's tequila. So now you're gonna be so freaking anal on me. Like me like Mezcal, okay. Maybe it's a bloody Mario.
Mario. Don't get Mario. Don't give it. Please. Like, these people haven't been hanging out with us all week.
They don't know about the Mario brothers, Mario brothers. I think it's an important question that needs to be put out to the world. We're answering a question about egg safety. Okay. It is Mario Kart and Mario Brothers.
They're different. Has there ever been a Bloody Mary flip, by the way? Or a prairie or something? That is freaking disgusting. I'm throwing up in my mouth a little bit.
That's eggs in purgatory, right? If you scramble the egg beforehand and turn it into some sort of like omelet. Prairie to cocktail was predates the Bloody Mary. Please like that's a good one. Alright.
Question. Egg safety. Egg safety. So back to egg safety, Nick. The um one hour is sufficient at 57 degrees once it gets up to 57, but the fact of the matter is, um, salmonella is what you're shooting for.
It'll probably pasteurize earlier than that. Uh I usually do 57 degrees for about an hour. Two hours is not gonna hurt it, or you can drop it. Look, 57 degrees Celsius is like 135 Fahrenheit. And after about an hour, the egg white will be slightly thickened, but not a lot.
Two hours, it's gonna be a little bit more appreciably thickened. You'll still be killing salmonella if you drop it down to 56 after that first hour, and the inside will all already be hot, so you might want to do that. I've never actually run the test of 57 versus 56. I have uh sorry, 57 uh versus one hour versus 57 degrees for two hours. I have run with Kent Ogoto after he got falsely accused of uh of serving raw eggs without mentioning them on the menu at Pegu Club years ago of raw egg versus sous-deed pasteurized egg versus boxed pasteurized egg.
Box pasteurized eggs are a garbage product for garbage people made uh for garbage consumers, they should never be purchased, bought, or used. If you see someone purchasing, buy them or use them, you should uh provide an intervention. Uh you should throw them out and you should excoriate your supermarket for selling them. They're a bad product. But um pasteurized eggs that you make yourself are pretty good, but not quite as good as raw eggs, but it's not that big of a difference.
Um but they're they're totally safe and they keep they keep a long time. I mean, eggs, frankly, keep a long freaking time. So eggs that you pasteurize are certainly going to keep a long freaking time. Uh I would say that you are not affecting the keeping time, you're pasteurizing them, but you're also possibly washing off any waxes on the outside of the eggshell, so that's probably the point is moot. I would just say that you have not affected their keeping uh at all.
Just use it raw. Um, you know, some people are really freaky about it, and um I mean I agree with you, Don. Some people, here's an interesting test that someone can run for me that I didn't. You guys are all familiar with wet dog, right? So, and you take an egg white and you crack a fresh egg white into a drink and you shake it.
Um, after a couple of minutes, you may or may not get, although you often do, the aroma that I call wet dog. Uh, very similar to using transglutaminase, meat glue on something, you get this wet dog aroma. And uh, you know, famously um people put bitters on the top of their egg white drinks, and people do it because it's pretty. No, it's to cover up the stench of the egg white. Uh, and so one way around this is to crack your egg whites a good two to three hours before a shift, let them flash off in a core container, close them, put them uh you know, afterwards you can close them and no wet dog because you flashed off all of whatever the precursors to the wet dog are.
Um but what I've never done is tested whether or not wet dog happens after pasteurization. That'd be an interesting test, wouldn't it? Can you kind of cover it up too with like osmotic uh oils and things like that? If you put kind of like when you put eggs in rice with a truffle and it sort of absorbs that truffly flavor. And before you crack them?
Yeah. I've never heard of this. We talked about it. Tony Canigliero did it, uh, I can't remember the compound, but he was going for the fresh cut gas. He did it with hay, and he did like a smoked hay thing.
And you know, it's like uh a truffled egg, you know, when you put an egg in the thing and fix up the aroma of the truffle. I don't know. Um I will say not osmosis. Osmosis specifically the random movement of water across a semi-permeable membrane. So it's a semipermeal membrane.
But only water, the movement of water. Oh not the movement of anything else. Osmosis is specifically when water moves. So when is it like an aromatic compound? How does that infusion of some sort?
You know, it's picking up something. Yeah, but it's not osmosis. Okay. But all I can say for sure is I've never tested any of this, so I can't say. Where did uh Tony write about this stuff?
Uh in his book. The second one? I think the first one. First one? I heard him talk about it many years ago.
Yeah. Anyway, go look it up. But it's an interesting test. I would like to I would like to test uh and fortunately the person who asked the question, Nick lives in England, so can go ask. But the um it's an interesting question.
I don't know whether pasteurization is going to affect the wet dog uh aroma or not. All right. Let's go to the next question. Uh this is from Matt Zee. I recently got into kegging sparkling water, but right now it's just filtered tap water, which by the way is the best.
You know what? You know what? Like seltzer water should just be ripping purified water. Ripping, delicious purified water. I think uh well, let me finish the question.
Uh I'm wondering if you have dabbled into trying to mimic mineral water from specific sources or any additions to make it taste better. And if so, do you have a good jumping off point? Is it worth it? Any other way to top uh to uh up my fizzy water game, Matt Z. Okay, okay, okay.
Darcy O'Neill from um The Art of the Drink and from his uh well-known uh soda book from like six years ago call uh called Fix the Pumps, which is apparently a boob reference. Did you know that? Boob reference. So when a soda jerks were working, they'd say to each other, hey, he's got time to fix the pumps. You know, go uh check out the lady that just walked in.
But specifically a woman who's stacked. Correct. That's the which I don't really like those references. Scumbags. Scumbags, scumbag reference.
But uh anyway, Darcy used it and he uh he doesn't strike me as a scumbag. No, good man. Yeah. Uh Canadian. Canadian, yes.
But yes. Point being uh that Darcy uh is also in his uh real life work job, chemist, uh, and uh did a bunch of work on researching old articles for airzat's mineral waters. And a lot of the mineral waters have been classified as to their exact mineral composition. Uh and so he has a lot of recipes about recreating these mineral waters, and you can look them up. And uh Martin Larish from Chymos, who uh uh is the famous uh compiler of hydrocolloids recipes called textures or something, also has a comp uh compilation of all of these um water recipes.
Uh I have never had one work. I have bought a bunch of the stuff and tried to mimic, for instance, some waters that I enjoy. So, for those of you, some waters that you can purchase that I enjoy are Garolsteiner. I enjoy garol shiner because I like heavily if I'm I'm either gonna have seltzer with no minerals in it, or I'm gonna go freaking mineral on you. So I like Garolsteiner, I like Vish Catalan, which I think is delicious.
Um I like regular uh Vichy, I like Apollinaris, uh, these are all good waters, and I've tried to mimic some of these waters, and I have been, in a word, unsuccessful. Uh now, let me and Darcy uh points out quite rightly that you have to add things in certain orders, and the solubility is really hard, ba-boo, ba bee, ba-ba. But the way that real mineral waters are formed is deep in the earth in rock under high pressure over a long period of time, sprouting up like you know, under pressure, and then you get them like that, and then in fact, especially carbonated mineral waters, because why would you drink flat mineral water where we are not animals? Like what I can drink any sort of water that's flat. I can drink garbage.
The word for water that is derived from rainfall is meteoric. So any water that is primarily derived from recent rainfall is meteoric water, and if you're gonna drink meteoric water, then just drink tap water unless you live in Florida where the tap water is garbage, or if you live in Hong Kong where the tap water is garbage. Where else? Who else has terrible tap water? People?
Who has terrible tap water? Anyone? You're not gonna shout out your favorite horrible tap water? Los Angeles for a long time. Had bad tap water?
Terrible tap water. Southwest's gonna have some terrible tap. Yeah, Flint's definitely winning right now. Oh, but that I mean that's just you're being mean. Like they like poisoning.
You want to do some like uh fracking water you set on fire water or Cleveland, you mean fire water from the rivers? All long hands. All the uh all the the the old uh you know the the the salt uh oil uh deposits uh so you're saying I'm just spoiled, like I have nothing. Yeah, you are you are you're very spoiled. Um in general.
In general, water rich. We are water rich, like not only does New York have delicious tap water, but we can shower and poop in it and not have to worry about it running dry. You're not you're not a survivor of the uh you know the the great drought of California and the uh the 2010s. No, but I flew over that once and it was crazy looking. You know what I mean?
Like you fly over California during heavy drought time and you're like, this should not exist. My produce should not be this cheap. You know what I mean? It's like all honestly, all I can still think about is the uh the joke that if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. Ah, uh strong.
You know, uh New York. That's one of those things that could also go. Yeah, but anyway, back to water. Uh very fortunate. Uh anyway, meteoric water is relatively soft, hasn't had time to pick up a lot of flavor.
If it has, it's from urine, poop, and effluent. So it's not possibly dinosaur urine. No, no, not if it's meteoric water. That's what I'm saying. If it's meteoric water, if it's recent water, it's like all of the pollution is recent pollution, like bacteria, nasty, nasty stuff.
And you don't want that. This is why you're gonna dig deep. Dig deep. That's right. So you want to get stuff, and this is why certain like marketing fools, like the Fiji people say that their water is X number of thousands of years old.
But if you really want badass water, you have to go millions of years old. And to go millions of years old, you gotta like tap some deep-seated stuff. And if you really want to do that, and you live in the New York uh area, you're gonna want to go to Saratoga Springs. Saratoga Springs has the most badass, non-meteoric, like millions of year old water that you can possibly find. And that stuff is salty and crazy and good in small quantities that don't make you rush off to the bathroom because frankly, highly mineralized water is like uh it's it's like uh Belmont steaks for your butt.
You know, bim, bit-di-b- bim, bit-di-bim, bim, bim, bing, bing. It's like it just boom, makes you want to go like nobody's business. It's like coffee on steroids. So if you made coffee with this stuff, which would taste horrible by the way, don't do it. So don't do it.
But if you have, I have had uh coffee with it. So I drank like the most hardcore of the Saratoga Springs waters, which is Hathorne 3, which is the most highly unmixed water, the most deep earth uh salt water. It's about a third of the salinity of salt of uh ocean water, and that stuff and a coffee is supposed to make you like have to run while you're set on spray to the bathroom to try to get there in time. And I have to report back, not to brag, but I am iron butt. I am iron butt.
I was not this is why you will be patient zero in the super poop, you know, poop exchange. That's correct. We can get we've discussed this before, we can get back to it at some point. Point being I will say that I had those waters when you brought them in. Interesting, right?
I can do like clarification of this. You had the uh the the search for deliciousness that we made with that instead of the salt, right? That's pretty weird. Uh I think if you did bottle it, use it like saline, it would uh be real nice. You it's got a little weird like uh radioactive thing going on in the back of the throat.
Some of them are radioactive from the Polaris, the Polaris spring specifically is radioactive. But the the issue is is that these are formed under very high pressure. So if you if you let those things go flat, all of a lot of the interesting minerals precipitate out. So you're part of the precipitate in this case, and you've the water has died. So it's very hard to take uncharged water not under pressure and recreate the same mix that you would get from the spring.
So the answer is uh I've not had a lot of success. This is a long way to say no. This is a very long explanation to say no. Right? And yeah, at the same time, New York is still like from your resources of the way that you're referencing water, Saratoga Springs being like the best of the best, right?
Like I mean globally. I mean, like I think like I think that Saratoga Springs, they don't bottle, so the stuff that you call Saratoga water is garbage, meteoric water. It's garbage. No offense to them and their blue bottles, but that is not the water of millionaires. That's not what people traveled hundreds of miles or thousands of miles to take the cure in.
That's just like water that was rained a couple of weeks ago. That is not the stuff. What about what about that deep Canadian stuff? I have a years long dream, Don. And that years long dream is to go to the Timmins zinc mine in Ontario, Canada, to go two kilometers deep into a hole in the ground and find the spring, which I happen to know.
I'm told that the water that springs out of it is extremely valuable and can't be wasted. But I also know that the scientists don't capture all of it and that it leaks out at a rate of approximately two liters a minute. And that this water has not gone through the water cycle in approximately 2.4 billion years, and that it's incredibly salty, and that this guy wants to use it in a cocktail, and some freaking Canadian scientists won't let me have it, even though I've emailed her several times saying that I am in fact not a crank, and I'm a real person with real credentials who would like some of her water. Modern-day Ponce Leon, you are the fountain of old, baby. Okay, we have a question from Dan.
For a couple I think I've answered this. I've answered this. So did I talk recently because they don't remember about BPE and rubber made containers? Rob I made. You did.
Alright. Dan, if I've not answered your rubber made BPA questions, text us back. We got a question from Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. And let's see what we got here. Uh hey, Dave, the hammer, and other Dave who's not here right now.
Question from Canada. I know you love us, even though you like to give us plenty of grief. Hey, your brother, you're our brothers and sisters from up north. So, you know, why wouldn't I? Why would we not give you grief?
Do you like to give Canada grief? That's how you know we love you. So, yeah, so how do you know that I don't like you? You never talk about them. Don't think about them.
Yeah, right. Motionless robot, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If I say anything about you at all, it that's like, you know. He cares enough to hate you.
Yeah, yeah. No, I don't hate Canada. Canada, you know what? You know when I hated Canada? Remember that like period of a couple of years?
Remember, here's what I'll never forget this. So, like, you know, American money always kicks Canada's money's butt, right? Like, this is not like this is just our money is historically, in my life, worth more than the Canadian dollar. So, like, my wife and I could go to Niagara Falls, enjoy the better Canadian side of the falls. We have the garbage falls.
The U.S. has the crappier part of the Niagara Falls situation. But you can go over there, and even though you don't have a lot of money, the American dollar is so strong, you're like, woo! You know, yeah, yeah. As many donuts as you want, honey.
Do it. You know what I mean? So, point being that remember a couple years ago when the Canadian dollar reached parody with the American? Oh, yeah. It was beating us for a while.
Yeah. And I was like, this is what we get. This is our punishment. But we're back now. Question.
Yes. Oh, Canada. Love it. I love listening to your show. I've been a semi frequent reader of your blog, and I've been uh happy to have your shows to listen to while I make a small batches of ice cream over here on the west coast of British Columbia.
Keep up the good work. Uh you have a love affair for Crosby's molasses. I do. Crosby's molasses is delicious. Any of you guys, northern people?
Northern people? Northern Card. What? Like freaking Maine North. Well.
Like Nanuk of the North? Main. Midwestern North. Like I'm North Middle East. In Madison, Wisconsin, where you are from, do they have Crosby's molasses on their cheese curds or not?
No. Nor on their browst. Good sir. Brats. Do you eat pasties or pasties or whatever you call them?
No. That's only a Minnesota thing? That's Minnesota. Oh, too good for you. You don't like you don't like a meat pie all of a sudden?
You can send away the flowerest. Alright. Alright. Okay. Question.
Crosby's molasses. What gives? You live in the U.S., so why not get sorghum syrup? I will gladly mail you as much Crosby's as you want in trade for any good sorghum syrup. I've never had good sorghum syrup.
I don't think it exists. But it could exist. It's a traditional like a Philly cheesesteak. Oh, Don Lee does not believe that he has ever had a good Philly cheese steak. I know I've never had a good one, but there might be a good one out there, much like sorghum steak.
Don't be freaking absurd. And by the way, like I don't understand why Philadelphia gets to own the freaking cheesesteak. Cheesesteak is an inherently delicious concept and also very well executed on it on many situations. What could you possibly not like about sauteed shaved steak with melted cheese and sauteed onions on a roll, Don? Well, if you took those rolls and dipped them in jus, you'd have a great French dip, a la Philippe's Los Angeles style.
No, but French dip doesn't have cheese and onions. It doesn't need it because it's delicious with meat and the juice. That's a different sandwich. Thank you, Kevin. Fully different sandwich.
The drippy like juice sandwiches. That's that's like a that's a knife and pork thing, or it's like a multi-napkin thing. Whereas the Philly cheesesteak is great in that you have goopy singles or cheese whiz as processed cheese no matter what. As an adult, I like Gruyra on cheese. Unphilly cheesesteak kind of BS.
I'm not an atheist. I don't, it's not like I said there is no good Philly cheesesteak. I just haven't met the good Philly cheesesteak yet. So I'm I'm open to it. But I think it's like a it's like a thing, and you know, the the good version of it is going to be different than the original thing.
Not saying the original is the best interpretation of it, but like if you're calling something by its name a Philly cheesesteak, is like I just call them cheesesteaks. Kind of an overcooked. I don't add the Philly because I'm not from Philadelphia. I feel like I can make a decent cheesesteak. What's your thought on the chopped cheese?
What do you mean chopped cheese? Chopped cheese. What tells chopped cheese? You never had like the uptown like bronze chopped cheese? Like a bodega?
Uptown. Oh man. Oh wow. The cheese and the we gotta take you uptown, dude. It's like put that.
I guess we got the next episode sort of out. What? Next episode of Cooking and Chees coming to you live from a bodega. A Philly cheesesteak, but it's chopped cheese. Uh Harlem?
Is it Harlem dish? Yeah. Yeah. It's called chopped cheese? Chopped cheese.
You walk in and you say, chopped cheese, please. Yeah, but it's wearing Harvard. Only if you want to rhyme. Oh, but you chopped cheese is the actual dish it's called. Yes.
And it's a cheesesteak that they hack the cheese into the meat. Yeah, it's not a steak, it's uh it's like ground beef, kind of like a like a hamburger patty chopped up. What about you guys? Anyone had this? Who's had this?
You've had this, you've had this? Never. Okay. This is a very trendy thing to have right now. Regional thing.
Well, this is because well, notice I am not a trendy fellow. Judging by your outfit, I don't believe you. So listeners, if you could only see this outfit. Salmon shirt. I have a very petchin salmon shirt.
Anyway, uh, point being, sorghum syrup. I've not had I've not had this chopped cheese. I will try this chopped cheese. Um, what kind of roll is the chopped cheese on? It's like on the hero.
Yeah, it is a hero. Well, please, please. This could mean anything. Are we talking like a thin thing, like you might have a Cuban sandwich on? Are we talking like a meatball?
Sorghum syrup. Sorghum syrup. Now you have me on the chopped cheese. I've never I told you I haven't had a decent sorghum syrup. If I had a decent sorghum syrup, I would call Surly Dave right now and be like, here is my decent sorghum syrup.
Send me as much Crosby's molasses as you can. But I've not. Have any of you guys had a decent sorghum syrup? Never. Is it a traditional sweetening agent?
And so it would be good to get. Do you guys know about the molasses flood? Oh, of course. 1919, right before Prohibition. So my great aunt Annette was alive during that time and remembers it.
She used to work at the Shraff's factory in Boston and was like, it still smelled like molasses in the summertime. She didn't talk like that. She was from Boston. And she was the last surviving of the three maiden aunts on my stepfather's side. And vividly, vividly remembered that because uh she was born in 1909, so she was like 10 years old when that happened.
So that was a legit thing. And she imagine this little old lady in this factory stuffing candies into shraffs uh little uh cups. And the in that doesn't, you know what? It's kind of sad. Recently, the last of that whole generation in my family and my stepfather's family died.
So I have no more connection other than my crazy stories to that whole kind of uh generation. But yeah, the molasses flood was uh amazing. I think it was, if my memory serves me, it was like it got hotter than normal on that day. They'd overfilled the molasses bin, it was a like cheap rate molasses that had a little bit too much water, fermentation started, the uh container was also built poorly, and kaboom. And imagine like, how did your uncle die, Jimmy?
He drowned in molasses. You're like, what? He couldn't outrun the molasses in January? He was kind of slow. I'd like to drop it now.
You know what I mean? Because, like, how do you tell people that your family members were killed by a wave of molasses? Horses were killed by it. A lot of people killed. And interestingly, they had overfilled the molasses because people, it was just prior to prohibition.
Now, it might be a little bit of a canard in that story because the people that owned that molasses tank were one of the few people that were actually licensed to produce uh alcohol for industrial use. And so they could have continued to produce molasses. But well-known fact by everyone in this kind of uh alcohol room here is that uh Prohibition killed Medford rum, which no longer exists, which was drunk by Paul Revere on his ride, and is still commemorated to this day in Medford, Massachusetts by a dram of rum at a particular doorstop. Wayne Curtis told me that, even though like I grew up going to Medford, I had no idea. Wayne Curtis, the rum uh historian taught me that.
Uh, and also Monongahila rum here was pretty much destroyed by prohibition. True story. Uh Rye. I meant rye. When I said rum, I meant rye.
Uh, but a lot of uh good things were destroyed by prohibition. But you know, without it, all the pre-prohibition people wouldn't have a job, would they? Would Sasha have become so famous if there hadn't been a prohibition and a crappy uh interim interregnum years where we had garbage cocktails? Would he have been so well known? I never thought you'd be such an optimist, but you managed to find the bright side to prohibition.
So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Good gangster movies. There's another. True.
No boardwalk empire without prohibition. Yeah. Yeah. You like that, right? You're a Steve Busemi fan, aren't you?
I look just like him. What? I serve to drink the Steve Buseman. It's just a thing that no one ever wants to say. I served a drink to Stevie Semi once.
Good guy. Okay. Second question. As stated, I make ice cream for a living. Recently I've been getting many requests for tiger tiger or tiger tail ice cream, which I understand it is a very Canadian flavor.
Is this true? Well, it sure is crap in an American flavor, I'll tell you that. No one's heard of Tiger Tail. We had to look it up on the internet. Um do you not get tiger tail in New York City?
We do not. The weed that is made do not. No. We don't even get moose tracks. We get moose tracks.
All you have to do is go to Connecticut. Again, New York City. Have you ever walked into a bodega and gotten moose tracks? I don't walk into bodegas at all. Well, la dita.
La. Oh, yeah. You've been proving time and time again on this talk that you are the one percent. I should get I shop, I shop at a fine fair. I shop at a fine fair, which is like right equal to a key foods in a sea town.
Right? Don't give me this crap. I don't have the m I don't have the money to pay the middleman bodega. I don't I can't I can't afford the convenience of shopping right downstairs from where I live, people. Anyway, uh Tiger Tail, Kevin, why don't you tell us what Tiger Tail is?
Uh it's an orange flavored ice cream uh with a black licorice swirl. Uh and it looks really wild. It's pretty psychedelic. It's popular in Canada, but seldom found elsewhere. Uh created by Morgan Carr, according to Wikipedia.
Um black licorice is this thing. Yes, uh quick bet. How likely is it that the person who sent this question created a fake Wikipedia page about the tiger tail? No, come on. 60% It's a non-zero number, right?
It is a non-zero number. Everything's a non-zero number. Uh well, no, that's not true. Every probability is a non-zero number. Greater mostly.
Mostly. Um, surly Dave, uh, none of us, and while I myself live in a box, uh, Don and Brian and Kevin get out a lot. So I'm assuming that this doesn't exist in New York, but here's what I'm gonna say. Americans hate licorice. Let me repeat this.
Americans hate licorice. Uh, and so I don't think it's ever gonna become popular here, but I would like to try it. I really like creamsicles. Orange and vanilla is like a few. Yeah, orange and licorice is kind of just like stomping that in the dirt.
Do you not like lick licorice? Wait, wait, hold on. Yeah, you got a flack from uh the last issue that uh you are a not uh a discerning ice cream eater because you did not call for a specific brand of ice cream. And uh I'd like to come in your defense, Kevin. That uh unless you're buying ice cream for yourself, when have you ever been offered an option of two different brands of ice cream in a like retail establishment ever?
I think it's a it's a not full non-starter. And also I would love to throw in the Kevin Denton eats those crappy unified brand ice cream sandwiches that weigh like you know a half a gram per liter. They're gonna be a few. I've taken to making my own ice cream recently, and I think that's the only way to go. What?
That's not true. Most home ice cream machines are garbage. So I'm gonna do a pitch for Breville and have them, you know, be your next sponsor because their home ice cream machine is pretty dope. Let me ask you a question, Kevin. The ice cream out of your machine, I'm sure it's good the minute it's made, but what about the next day?
Um it's better because then it hardens and crystallizes in a way that I think is superior than store but you lost me at crystals. You lost me on crystals. You lost me with crystals. It's creamy and delicious. We will okay.
I'll tell you what. Here's another question I have for you. This is the other answer. Because I'm a real uh I'm a real butt head when it comes to this. How many minutes, what's your batch time in minutes?
I don't know. Roughly 60. No, dude! Ice cream needs to be frozen in freaking 10 minutes or less. Or your crystal size is too large.
Says the man that usually has liquid nitrogen all the time. Alright, maybe 15 minutes. 60 minutes? That's the hey, listen. I didn't purport to be a few.
Kevin, Kevin. You know, we're friends. So what I want to do is I would like you to force me. I am an honest fellow, and I will have, I would like you to make ice cream and store it for a day. I will come over to your house all the way over in Brooklyn, and I will taste it, and I will see whether or not your stored overnight ice cream is actually as good as someone who spent millions of dollars on an instantaneous uh freezer that can freeze stuff instantaneously and has spent, I don't know, their whole life working on producing like awesome texture that is something.
You know, some of us can't afford that nice million dollar ice cream that you have. One percent. Kevin, Kevin Denton. Kevin Denton works for one of the largest liquor companies on planet of the earth and can get liquid nitrogen delivered to his office any damn day of the week. And can make ice cream as quickly and efficiently as anyone else.
So I don't want to hear it. You know, sometimes things are done best inefficiently. That's why I like a nice slow burn on mine. Listen, listen, listen. All I'm saying is is whenever whenever anyone says ice cream, I don't get to taste it, you ask a couple of facts.
One, what is the freeze time? That's the easiest thing to see. How long do you take to freeze? Because everybody knows the faster you freeze it, the smaller the ice crystals, and the smaller the ice crystals, Don. The smoother the ice cream.
Boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay. Hey Dave Nastasia et al. This is from Connor in Chicago. You've referenced on the show a few times that you used to roast, I still roast my own coffee.
That you used to roast your own coffee using a whirly pop. I like the whirly pop. Yeah. Whirly pop? Yeah.
Whirly pop. I'd like to try it myself, but my popcorn loving girlfriend has some concern that if I use uh our whirly pop, it will be forever tainted with coffee flavor. Is this the case, or will it be okay to use for both purposes so long as we give it a good scrub? Any other roasting tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Connor in Chicago.
Connor, you have a smart girlfriend. That coffee will ruin your whirly pop for uh popcorn. It will turn your popcorn into garbage coffee oil popcorn, and you will not want to eat that. Uh guess what a whirly pop is? Not that expensive.
If you're gonna roast your own coffee, two batches of uh green coffee into roasted coffee in a whirly pop, and you've paid for the whirly pop. The problem with the whirly pop is that once you start you I know what a whirly pop is, right, Brian? Right, Kevin, you know what a whirly pop is? You guys know whirly pop, whirly pop. Once you start cranking that whirly pop, you cannot stop.
And like I am a well-known non-human, and so like I can sit there and just crank the whirly pop until it's done because I don't care whether I have physical discomfort or whether I need to pee, or whether the house is burning down, or whether the dog is peeing or barking, or whether my kids are shouting at me because right now what I'm doing is making coffee. Many people are not like this. And so what happens is they stop cranking it and walk away and then it burns. This is the problem. So I have a 3D uh model somewhere on my Insta Twitter where you can download something that you can convert a whirly pop into a motorized thing for fairly cheap.
Uh and it's pretty good. But um the whirly pop is good, just you gotta keep cranking. Uh I've since moved on. I built a drum roaster that's actually not quite as good as the whirly pop because I uh it's too complicated to get into, but I still roast it on my own. And as a first step into it, uh whirly pop is great.
Uh some people prefer the flavor of air pop uh air po air popcorn popper coffee roasting. So there's basically in the home coffee roasting world, there are two fundamental kinds of people, and they're the people who like drum roast kind of coffee, and those people typically are whirly pop, or if they have money, harvest uh, you know, the the mini drum roasters, and if I had a lot of money, I'd buy a Habes Burns uh or Jabez, I don't know how you pronounced it back when he was alive, uh sample roaster, and then there's the air pop people who are based on kind of the uh civets model of roaster. Um I used to air roast, I know Harold McGee likes an air roaster, but I kind of have a drum guy. What do you guys like? Do you guys even think about this?
What are you? Drum people or drum, Kevin, or you have a feeling on this. Do you like air roasted? Do you like, are you more of an espresso person or more of a uh of a drippy drip pour over drip drip drippy drip drip? Um, you know, I I think I'm more of a working man on the coffee.
I like drip coffee. What does that mean, working man? You know, just turning it into a classic. Because I roast stuff in a popcorn machine. Because you have an espresso maker.
That I bought on eBay was shattered and had to put together, like disassemble completely, like boil in water on the stove that I found on the street and then reassemble. That kind of rich. Anyways. This is what I'm trying to say. America, we have to get past this idea that because I like a particular kind of food that it's a class issue.
Just because I like to drink espresso doesn't mean that I hold my pinky out while I drink it. Although he does. That's also true. Dave Titan. Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Let me see. Got some more questions. One more question. Can we do one more question? We're going long horn really.
Let's see what we got. Let's see what we got. This is from Sean, Sean Andrews. Last week, depending on when you read this, you took a question about a low temperature proxy for dry aging. I've not been able to stop thinking about dry aging since.
So this was someone who did um like a like a warm hold on low temperature for meats to try to kickstart the enzymes uh in meats to tenderize it uh you know relatively quickly. Um the issue of trim loss from formation of the bad kind of crust during dry acing process seems ripe for analysis slash optimization from someone who understands the miracle of moisture management. Listen, I've never said I understand the miracle of moisture management. I mean, I kind of I think I understand it more than most people, but I think that all of cooking is fundamentally uh all of cooking fundamentally boils down to two things. One, getting the temperature right, and two, the miracle of moisture management.
Uh because almost everything, crusts, like tater tots, French fries, uh I mean, name a food, name a food. Uh jelly beans. Moisture problem. Moisture management. It's sugar is hydrophilic.
Right. We'll have to pull the moisture out of the air. So it is in fact actually a moisture problem. All candies are. And how do you think you get that skin on it?
It's Easter Sunday. That's how you get it. Cornstarch. Yeah, moisture management, baby. That's like prime moisture management.
Name another food. Boom. Chicken wings. Chicken wings, obvious moisture management problem. Come on, man.
It's more moisture management. I was trying to give you a softball after jelly beans. Beef jerky. You're drawing it out! Well, you're making my point, but giving jerky.
Everything. Beans and jerky. There is a jerky brand in Denver, and I'm not making this up. It was in the airport. Climax jerky.
So when you're getting on the airplane, you can buy yourself a package of climax jerky if you so choose. Okay. Never want to finish. So uh no, I gotta finish the question. Uh Miracle of Moisture Management.
Side note, please uh write a book on the topic of moisture management and use this title. I'll start a petition if necessary. Listen, uh Sean, nobody else but you and I believe that the miracle of moisture management, Don also believes that the miracle of moisture management is a good title for a book, but we're believe it or not, in the minority. I think uh moisture intelligence. It's the second book in the intelligence series.
The art and science of moisture management. Um I've read Kenji's posts on dry aging, which are pretty good, and I've looked into the literature on the subject, including dry aging of beef in a bag, uh highly permeable to water vapor, and you know, you give the DOI number, which is nice. Uh, but I'm left with the sense that more kind of should be done. Since my wife birth my wife's birthday present uh to me this year is allowing me to create my own dry aging setup, which will include a fridge, internal fan, UV source. The UV source is interesting, actually.
So UV radiation uh on meat will prevent bacteria from growing. But what I hasn't I don't think has been studied on long-term dry aging with UV is the possible rancidity caused by the UV light. Because uh fats are clearly gonna go ran quicker on your UV light than not. So it's an interesting question. And various wireless sensors.
I'd appreciate any thoughts you may have on the subject, including safety optimization and whether or not you personally think it's worth it. Note, I'm probably gonna do it no matter what you think. Awesome, which isn't my favorite kind of person. Uh love the show. Good luck with the spins all and thanks for your time.
So, Sean, I don't really know the answer uh to your question. I'm gonna actually put it out to the readers who've done more, uh listeners rather, who have done more work with uh dry aging. Uh but I'm gonna give it um kind of uh more thoughts. Somebody else had a question. Uh Josh had a question, which Don is telling me I'm not gonna have time to get to.
Uh, but it's about whether or not you can do the old dulce de leche trick uh with honey. No, you cannot. Um so dulce de leche, uh I typically make it because I'm a cheater. Uh I don't make it the grandma way, which is over an open pot stirring for a long time while it concentrates my reaction. I do it by taking sweet and condensed milk and putting it into a pressure cooker, which is the way 99.9% of people who aren't like good normal people do.
Uh and uh the question is, can you do that with honey? Will that happen? Answer, no. Uh, you need a lot of, you need the milk proteins. A bunch of it.
There is protein and honey, but not enough to have the kind of dulce to lecture thing happen. You might have some difference happen, but you're not gonna get dulcetal lecchets. But try it, let me know. Uh, I have more questions, which I'm not going to get to because Don tells me that I'm out of time. And next week, back live in New York from Bushwick, Brooklyn with more cooking issues.
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