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Today's show is being brought to you by Bob's Redmill, 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 is just coming to you alive on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn. Uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is going to be here today, but she's not here yet because our favorite, the L train, is of course effed up today, right, Dave? That's what I hear.
Usually I have less problems with uh than the Q, though. Yeah? Well, do you have to take the L a lot? I do every day. So usually the Q is your problem?
Yeah, yeah. I have to take the Q. I have to I have a stupid commute. I have to go into Manhattan and then back over to Brooklyn via the L. That is big dumb.
Can't you just take that uh train of all train, the G's? It like that goes around in Brooklyn all the time everywhere. That would just be an insane no, that would that would take too much time. I think you can tell by his voice that we have Dave in the booth. How you doing, Dave?
I'm doing good, other than the mass transit problems. Yeah. How's your week, Ben? Oh, it's good. Yeah, I had around.
Just kind of getting started, actually. Really? I had a rather eventful week, but I'm not gonna talk about it until Nastasia gets here so that we can, you know, have a. I don't rate. Well, no, I mean I thought all three of us maybe could have the conversation.
Because I was in China, I was in Manila. You know, yeah, you know, doing the stuff. Uh so I'll wait for her to get back to talk about that. Uh in the meantime, you can call your questions in too 7184 wait, 718-497-2128. That's 7184972128.
So uh big news in uh b big bad news. I my bad good, mean okay. So the Harvey Weinstein um uh scandal has you know, as you know, Dave spread and uh into the food world recently. John Besch, uh, you know, from the Besh restaurant group, uh, you know, most prominent in New Orleans had to step down. I did not hear this, actually.
A couple days ago, um, allegations of um uh I I didn't actually get a chance to read ex you know exactly what the allegations were, but be basically improper sexual contact slash uh harassment slash perhaps assault. Uh so he stepped down um and I think it's the first you know kind of big name chef that we've heard this happen to. And uh at the time, you know, at the uh one of the things I read is that you know, the person who's heading up the group now that he stepped down is is you know going uh to all the staff, which you know you should, and and she's saying uh, you know, please please always feel free to step forward, please feel comfortable to uh you know, say something if something happens to you. If you you see something, please feel flee feel comfortable doing so. Um my message to you know, anyone out there who's a professional is don't wait for uh uh this kind of thing to happen in your restaurant or your bar or your restaurant group.
Go out there and now, like at your next staff meeting, take the time, you know, when when we start our bar, you know, this is gonna be a big part of our our staff training. Go out there now and let everybody know that they you know that it's that everyone in your restaurant and bar finds this sort of behavior unacceptable. Let them know that you know that they are going to be taken uh seriously and treated with with respect if they if they come forward and just make that a part of your culture and do it now before it's uh too late and you haven't done it, right? That makes sense, right, Dave? Yeah, absolutely.
And it's also just you know the right thing to do. Yeah. Anastasia uh Hammer Lopez is is now here. We're talking about uh John Besch. I did not hear or read.
I heard a little bit. All right, well, you know, we'll talk about it later since we already talked about it on a. For real? Spreading rumors, sorry. Oh my God.
I mean, that's a different industry. But you know, look, uh one of the things that the primary things, at least in in the in the bar and restaurant industry, is a lot of people hide behind uh hide behind alcohol. I think that's one of the big one of the big issues, right? You mean they blame it on alcoholism? Oh, no, not alcoholism, but they didn't they didn't mean it, they were drunk.
Right, right. No, no, yeah, right. Yeah, and uh and uh you know that's just not act that's not accurate. Yeah, incorrect. You know, uh alcohol is not alcohol is not an excuse uh, you know, when you hit someone with uh a car because you chose to get drunk, and alcohol is certainly not an excuse for sexual assault under any circumstances whatsoever.
Um anyway, enough uh enough of that for today. Um you doing, Nastasia? Yeah. Oh yeah, we we mentioned to the uh so bad. I I don't want to take it anymore.
What what happened? I I never have problems with you. Well, but do you come from the other direction? I come from Manhattan. Oh.
Well, it crawled through the Bedford uh the from Manhattan to Brooklyn. You in that's like a seven-minute I'm assuming most of you have not traveled on the subway with Nastasia, but she believes that the Metropolitan Transit Authority, who's the people that run the subway, she believes that they purposely uh stay too long at the platform just to mess with her. They think, she thinks that that they can speed off somehow, like at three times the rate and don't do it literally just to piss her off. Would you say that's no? I think that they if there is a delay, you should stop the train.
Don't crawl. Crawling makes it crawl. Crawling is infuriating. Have you been in a stop subway with Booker? He'd rather it crawl.
If it's going, it's going. If it stops, he's like, why is it stopped? Why is it stopped? Is it ever gonna start again? Ever?
Is it ever gonna start? Ugh. Well, the honking today. It's honking because there are literally people in the tracks that are working on the freaking tracks. And there's people moving, getting place to place on a subway.
And those people get into the little uh side divots. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, no, I know. I know. But why can't they work at 3 a.m., 4 a.m.?
I mean, presumably they are working at both times. I mean they all had sandwiches as we passed them slowly. So you're saying Peter Kim is now working for the employee. Peter Kim's working for Peter Kim, cooking issue's favorite punching bag, well known for like his nervous reaction to anything is to eat sandwiches. I think he has in like he in his pockets at all times, he has some form of sandwich.
Perhaps a nervous reaction? Yeah, yeah. He was, yeah. At any point, if he sees a sandwich, he'll pick it up, like a moldy egg salad sandwich, as we you know, as we said about the show. Mofad galaxy.
We're like, Peter, why are you eating a sandwich? And even if he's just finished the sandwich, there's always that little bit of sandwich in the corner of his mouth, you just had a sandwich. Yeah, don't right? Every time Nastasi and I Okay, so the the thing with Nastasia and I is that we're uh we're not good examples for for instance when you're filming or whenever everyone's like, oh, we need to break for lunch because they do it for the crew and all this stuff. Everyone breaks for lunch, everyone has lunch, everyone.
I'm like, no, no, just freaking work until it's done. Just finish freaking work until it's over, and either we'll die or we'll eat eventually, right? I mean it's I actually don't get hungry when I'm working. When you're actually working hard, do you get really hungry, Nastasia? No.
I I will realize at the end of a day here that I haven't eaten. Right. If you're I mean, let's take this as a note. If you are getting very hungry while you're working, unless you have actually starved yourself for like a whole day, you're probably a little bit bored. Right?
I mean, like, I get hungry either when I'm sitting or talking or thinking about food a lot. But when you're cooking food, you're not thinking about food. Eventually your stomach eats itself, and then you're good. Are you one of those people? Who at certain No, no, no, no, my wife's not an angry person.
No, like when you don't eat, she gets ugly. Oh, well, no, she means she's very thin. She gets hypoglycemic, whatever. But my point is is that um she gets to the point where she's like, I'm not hungry anymore. Yes, yes.
Like, you know, the if you're waiting to go to a so you go to some place and like it's an hour wait, and you're like, oh, we'll go somewhere else, and the next place is like it's a two-hour wait. And then you go back to the first place and it's an hour, I'm not hungry anymore. Well, is is there like a biological reason for that? I mean, obviously your stomach isn't really shrinking, is it? Yeah, I don't know.
It doesn't ever happen to me. You know, I could always either eat or not eat. You know, it's uh it's never I've never at the point where I could eat. I could I could eat. You know, I could eat.
It's really weird. This man is wearing a diamond engagement ring on his hand. Why is that weird? Because he's a guy? Is it on his engagement gender?
Don't gender norm that, bro. He's looks like he's traditional. What like this Nastasi's gonna continue to stereotype until somebody calls in. Unless that's a woman. Is that a woman?
I I don't I don't know. I'm not uh I have no idea. I have no idea. But listen, I was just in uh as I was saying, I didn't want to talk about it until I got back. I was in China.
I was in uh China in the Philippines. Uh and you were at the farm, right? Up in Chesreak. Oh, you didn't go? I thought you said you went to the farm.
No, I said it was Saturday. Oh, well, we missed the the the the event we go to typically every year at Cesare Casella's uh farm Discovery Farm. Uh well next year maybe if they invite us, we'll talk about it. Did they not invite us? No, they did.
We were just both not. What do you what do you do at Cesare's farm? Pick prosciutto off the trees. Oh my god, can you imagine? Like, imagine if there was a Willy Wonka with cured meats.
That is what? That is what Chesre. Yeah, Chesaree is the Willy Wonka of cured meat. He really kind of is. I'm gonna buy him a purple hat.
The old, you know, we're gonna do the old willy wanna. He would totally wear that. What's the grossest part of Willy Wonka? The original Willy Wonka? Uh what's the gross the chicken head getting cut off?
No. What? The the when they're in the tunnel. No, that's not the grossest part. Because they pee and poop in the bed because he hasn't gotten out of his bed in twenty years.
That one? Yeah, man. I think that I don't like the the tunnel scene. What about you, Dave? See, Nastancia reads too much into it.
There's just too many. That movie is just profoundly disturbing in so many ways. Really? Because my whole kind of life is based on it. My life is based on it.
I love that movie. Yeah, no. Too disturbing for you. Like what do you find disturbing about it? The children getting mangled?
No, that's good. That's okay. I don't I don't know. Just something about the tone of that movie never really rubbed me the right way. Is it the weird asides that uh Gene Wilder makes during the entire film?
Yeah, probably. Now I have all those weird asides going through my. Oh, really? Alright, caller, you're on the air. Well, hi, this is Sean calling from England.
Hey, how are you doing? How's England? Uh yeah, it's good, thanks. Good. Uh so a while ago I had a really delicious rhubarb granita at a r at a restaurant.
It had a nice uh pale pink color and sort of clean taste of rhubarb and it dissolved uh melted nicely in my mouth. And I'm wondering if you have any advice on replicating that experience at home. Hmm. Well, have you in other words, have you tried it and it's been a bad experience? Uh well, I um made a sort of uh full beeh thing with uh stewed rhubarb, but um you know I had a bit too much sort of fibrous material.
Yeah, yeah. And I think the cook the cooked taste wasn't really what I was looking for. Well, okay, so uh raw rhubarb has a very particular uh flavor and uh you either like it or you don't because it retains um the you know it's it's uh ox I think it's oxalic acid crystal so it has a very particular flavor and kind of a stringency and a little bit of a vegetal nature that gets kind of knocked off by cooking um so you could try juicing if you have a juicer you could juice raw rhubarb which I've done I've juiced and clarified uh rhubarb before for drinks but I found that you remember when we used to do that stuff we'd juice it's a rhubarb right on that you never had that Mills and I used to do that and um i i most people I think like it a little bit um a little bit cooked so I think rhubarb is also one of those things like ginger where the taste I think the taste change is rather dramatic from raw to cooked uh and so as with ginger I haven't done a lot of experimentation but as with ginger um you know you you might be able to get to some in-between medium that's really good between the cooked and the um and the raw uh as for the fibrousness obviously uh it's extremely fibrous so you could like I say juice it in which case most of the fiber will end up in the uh you know in in the in the pulp that comes out of the juicer or you could um strain the product through a chinois, but bear in mind you'll lose a lot, especially if it's cooked and you activate the pectin, you'll lose an awful lot of product if you put it through uh through a chinois. Uh if you add a spinz all you could clarify. Once you clarify it, then you have like a clear juice, then you could make you could add some pulp back if you want more body to make a granita or whatnot.
The other choice you could do to bulk up the liquids about it a little bit is to dope it in with some other um other juice as well. So if you did rhubarb, and then you know the classic obviously like trite thing would be strawberry, but you know, it happens to work. Uh they meld meld rather well. And for instance, you could probably get away with some raw rhubarb flavor if you had um something to round out that kind of sharp oxalic note, something like a strawberry with a little bit of sugar, and that'll allow you to cut the fiber down because you definitely in a melting sorbet don't want those long uh thin uh fibers. Now, if you have a vita prep, you can blend the ever-loving snot out of those fibers, and you can probably get most of those fibers chopped into indistinguishable uh paste.
However, it'll be quite thick, in which case, again, you're gonna want to thin it out with some juice and you know the juice of your choice, uh you know, whatever, strawberry juice, orange juice, uh, you know, whatever. Orange, probably not strawberry, something with more of a red feel. What do you think, Mr. Yeah? Anyways, is any of this helpful at all?
What do you say? What was that, Dave? Uh this this line from the Batman movie with Jack Nicholson. He talks about rhubarb? He says never rub another man's rhubarb.
I'm still not sure what that means. I would hope that his rhubarb is not shaped like rhubarb. That would be quite weird. Never rub another man's rhubarb. Wow, that's very strange.
That movie is full of jokes that as like a six-year-old I just did not get. Yeah. But uh also, it's kind of late. Do you guys still have rhubarb over there in England? Uh well, no, I was just uh looking to do it when when it comes in season.
All right. Alright, well, you know what? You know who loves rhubarb a lot? Is uh my son Dax. Uh you know what that this is sounds like a really good this sounds like a good application for the Paco Jet.
I mean, I know most people don't have a Paco jet, but a Paco Jet is gonna beat the ever loving snot out of that rhubarb as well. Probably just make a base and then throw the rhubarb chunks into it and just Paco jet it, and it'll probably come out okay. But listen, anyone in the chat room uh do any raw rhubarb sorbet stuff? Dave? So far no.
I'll put it out there and we'll see what happens. Yeah, chat room. Hook us up, chat room. Hit me up on cooking issues, and if I uh if I have if you anyone sends me some stuff, I'll uh I'll like it or whatever, and then we'll we can come back and talk about it next week. There is one quick question from the chat room.
They want to know if you're gonna sell low quality individual shirts on Amazon ever. Why? Well they're already they're already you can literally buy one right now. You can buy one right now. Uh Nastasi, tell them how to get one.
Uh Shopify.booker and Dax.com. Something like that. Shopify. Google it. Booker and Dax, Google that.
Okay, if you go to Booker and Dax.com, for some reason on the upper right hand corner, it just says LQI. Because we are low quality individuals. And you click, if you go to Booker Dax.com and you click L like LQI, which why would you know that that stands for low quality individual? Why would you know? Now you do.
Well, why are you making them Google this stuff? You're just telling them our URL, Booker and Dax.com. They go to it, they click the thing that says LQI. Whatever. I mean, I thought these were smart listeners, but Wow.
I my favorite though, I I have to say, I I really like the Star Wars enemy equality. You don't like the enemy quality? I thought about it last night. No. Wow.
I wouldn't wear it. I don't know. Why you because to Star Wars? Yeah. Too uh too manly.
Too manly? Mm-hmm. What is it? What the hell's manly about it? I don't know.
Just something masculine or the hell's masculine about it. Maybe because it is Star Wars and you're like Star Wars geek man. Star Wars game man. What? Star Wars geek, mostly men.
You're saying women don't like Star Wars? I would say the majority. Is this another thing? Oh, poll? We're taking a poll.
Yeah. Women out there, do you like Star Wars? I'm sure there's some. England, are you still on the line? Anyway.
Uh yeah, I'm not a big fan. Uh I know. Or Doctor Who. Oh, come on. England.
He has to like the Doctor Who. Do you do you like do you are you one of those Doctor Who telephone booth fans? Uh well, I watched it when I was a kid, but it's a bit cheesy for me. Yeah. Alright, that's fair.
So when I was on the airplane back from China, the turbulence was so bad. The turbulence was so so so bad that uh I couldn't I I couldn't even operate my phone because my mind was up raised. So I had to put on a movie that I knew by heart, and so I put on Star Wars Star Wars Four and New Hope. Yeah, I had to put on a movie that Why didn't you just sit there with nothing? What?
Like sit there in a tube. Sit there in a tube. Where was it over? Uh it was an hour outside. So the interesting thing is, I don't know if you know this, this is not a cooking related thing, so I'll try to keep it short, but the green line that that is on that traces you the path of your airplane is fake.
It's not your actual path. Why? Shocker. But I mean but why not? They know what your actual path is.
They just draw some sort of line. It's like, you know, it's Harold in the green crayon. They just draw a random line between the two points. Because when so right before they don't know where they are, right before the turbulence, you know, I'm I'm flying up and the line goes directly over North Korea. Like directly over North Korea.
And I'm like, what? Like, what? Why would we're threatening they're threatening to shoot down airplanes? Why would we go over? Yeah, well.
I was like, what in the what? You know what I mean? Did you ask somebody? Like what? Who am I gonna ask?
Uh Steward? I'm like, you know what? Of course. And then, you know, I have all these conspiracy theories in my head. You know, I'm like, what?
Yeah, and if you're dumping chemtrails. And for some reason, for some reason, they're not flying at the maximum altitude. Like we you most of my flights that take off out of Hong Kong and go up, they're hovering, you know, around like 30, 32, 34,000. So they're like trying to be turned out. They're like right in the missile zone.
You know, you know, like the the service air missile guys in North Korea are like, I could totally hit that. I could totally hit that. So how did you find out you weren't going over the ocean? Oh, because like as we started getting closer, the line started moving over and over into the ocean, you know, over international waters. I'm like, oh, they just wanted me to have a freaking heart attack.
And then right when the line moved over, and so I stopped worrying about that, like the plane just starts like brrrrrr-b. And like, you know, like the the the washing machine kind of like where you're like back and sloshing around, like like uh like that one. And then um I was like, gosh, man. Because when you have 14 hours left in your flight, you know what I mean? Oh god.
You're like no end in sight. Yeah, you're like, how long can it last? You're like, you know, when when the flight's only five hours, you're like, okay, five-hour flight, I'm in it. You know what I mean? I'm good.
You know what I mean? But like a 14-hour flight in a tube, you know that they're gonna turn off the lights, you can't say anything. You're in a window seat in the very back of the back of the airplane because you booked late. And uh, you know. Uh so I put on Star Wars, and it was like one of those 4D rides at uh at Disney World.
You know what I mean? Where like and it was you know the big well, you don't because you don't like Star Wars, the beginning scene when in when Darth Vader breaks into the rebel ship. It's like I felt I felt it. I felt it. Oh yeah, yeah.
Yeah, when uh C3PO and uh R2 D2 were in that escape pot, like I was like, Yeah, yeah, I get it now. I get it. Oh my god. That's my trick for crappy airplane rides. Just put on something that you just know by heart.
That's good. That was early. No, you know what? I decided that drinking doesn't actually help me in these situations because you try to drink uh you know, it's early in the morning anyway. You try to drink to put yourself to sleep, but all you are is like buzz dehydrated and tired and freaked out.
Yeah. You know? Yeah. So whatever. Like in the evening now, I I'll have a drink or whatever, because why not?
But whatever. No, morning is a little bit much. So yeah, morning's a bit. Although you know what? People believe when they go to the airport that there's no such thing as time anymore.
I don't believe so. No, but people, if you go to the lounge in the morning, people are people, you know, have uh nose drips of Chardonnay at, you know, nine in the morning. They're like, well, it's nine at night where I'm flying to. So you know what I mean? So it's the justifications are worse than the action itself.
Yeah, but I think a lot of it is just nervousness on the plane. I think people are drinking because they're nervous on the airplane, and I just I just and I used to try to do that, but I just don't think it helps. It does it doesn't help me anyway. It probably helps some people, but it doesn't help me. I never fly it's more for nerves.
I don't want to sleep. Yeah, only if I have an aisle seat, though, that I can make it to the bathroom. No, but if you have an aisle seat, you look, let me tell you something about IELT seats on a 14-hour flight. You can't see anything. Well, first of all, yeah, you can't look out the windows.
See if we're going down. Oh, come on, you're gonna know. No, listen, everyone who's afraid of flying knows that if you're at the window and you open the window and you see that you're flying over some messed up clouds, you're like, oh, it's just some messed up clouds. And you can look out in the distance and see what's going on. You're like, okay, it's okay.
No, that doesn't do it. That doesn't help me because I like I still think, oh, there could be catastrophic engine failure because of that cloud. No, come on, I didn't it could be like. What if you see the sparkling night lights at night? You see like houses and it's turbulent, you're like, we're not gonna fall into a house.
Well, you uh probably not. You probably won't fall at all. Right. Yeah. But uh so I, you know, Anastasia and I are window seat, but what I can't stand is the having to get up eight billion times when you're in the aisle on a 14-hour flight.
Because you know that that person who chose the window seat enjoys peeing more than they enjoy their own life. And so you know, I'll hold it in. If I have a window seat, I'm gonna go bladder of steel. I will use my that sounds like a nightmare. I'll use my qi gung skills, which I have none, but I'll use anything that I have to force the fluids back into my bladder, back into my bloodstream until my eyes turn yellow rather than get up.
No, I'm no way. I can't tolerate that. It's a miracle I made it through Blade Runner without having to go to the bathroom. No, I heard it was good though. Yeah.
No? No good? It looked great and it sounded great. I'm like, Do you like the original Blade Runner? I love the that's like my favorite movie.
I heard Rucker Howard is not in this one. No, he's dead. Oh, he's dead? Why'd he die? Didn't you see the original Blade Runner?
No, in the movie he's dead. The Rucker Howard's not dead. Oh, oh, I see. What he's do you mean? He's a robot.
What do you mean die? Can't they just make another one? I I guess, but then it becomes this whole like Yeah, no, it's a whole thing. So uh I'll give you a couple things. I went to when I went to China, I went to the Canton Fair.
Canton Fair is the largest, uh the largest you know, kind of trade fair for yeah, stuff. And uh this one had like bicycles, uh toilets, kitchen wear, power tools, and I was going to look for for our current projects, actually, you know, and for our new projects with Booker Index, which obviously we're not announcing yet because they're new and we haven't done them yet. Um, but uh a lot of knockoff immersion circulators, like a lot of knockoff immersion circulators. I saw the one thing I kind of want, and then I was like, why do I want this? This is stupid.
Okay, do you know how they have waffle makers? Okay. Imagine a bunt cake maker, a full-sized butt cake maker that sits on your counter and flips over so it cooks like so you can get really light area. You pour it into the bottom part of the butt cake thing, it starts to cook, you flip it over, hits the bottom, and then puffs from both sides towards the center. It's actually not a bad idea because you can make, I'm sure, really light airy bunt cakes, and apparently you get fairly easy kind of release.
But I was like, okay, when I make waffles, right? I make waffles when I'm doing waffles. I go in and out of waffles between waffles and pancakes. Now, because I don't have gas in my house, it's waffles, right? But I'll make like oh, I don't know, eight waffles, twice eight waffles twice a week, so sixteen waffles a week for a year, right?
So that's sixteen times fifty fifty. Let's say, let's say I only do it 40 weeks. That's still like hundreds of waffles, right? So even for a year, a waffle iron makes sense. How many butt cakes are you gonna make?
You can make it. If you made one a week for a year, I think it'll be worth it. 52 bunt cakes. Because remember, you have an oven, you have a bunt cake pan, you could cook a bunt cake pan in the oven. So it's the convenience and speed, plus you are giving your counter space up to this bunt cake maker.
I would have totally all you know, all this kind of negative stuff. I would have totally bought one if they had it in 120, but it's only in 220. They don't make a 120 version of the bunt cake maker. Another thing, a lot of smokeless, I'm putting in air quotes because nothing is smokeless, uh, grilling with uh kind of um those kind of quartz lamps and then like weird things. So they had a vertical a lot of vertical rotisseries for small things like hot dogs, corn and shrimp vertical in glass cylinders.
So a lot of that. Saw a lot of um what's the word I'm looking for? Uh to what's the word when you kill the bacteria on the surface of uh on the surface of vegetables? What do you call that? Disinfecting.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. For for fresh veg. Yeah, with ozone. A lot of a lot of a lot of knockoff ozone things, a lot of knockoff uh blenders, a lot of knockoffs, some knockoff vacuum machines. But who uses knockoff kitchen equipment?
No one in the United States that I know of, there's no even venue for it. When you go on Amazon, you can't buy the. But you know, but American words, they must be selling either to an Asian market that I don't know, or to a European market that I don't know. Um, or they're there's they're making the actual name brands. But the problem is is that there was like three or four or five different factories all making the same knockoff.
Very weird. Very strange kind of a situation. Hey, you want to take another call? Sure, call her, you're on the air. Hey Dave, Matt from mystic.
Hey, what's up? So I'm glad you finally got your spinz all. Got the spinzall, it's a miracle. Oh, thank you. Is it working for you?
Oh yeah. Good. Fantastic. Good. My kid uh my kid loves uh clarified spotted juice.
Nice. Oh, that's delicious stuff, especially carbonated. I mean, it just tastes good. What are you gonna do? So what do you got?
What do you got for me? What's the question? Uh I was actually calling in for the guy, there was a guy who called the last time you had a show who made the sourdough bread that wasn't getting enough lift. Sure, yeah. Um you can either do you can either do more folds, right?
You can just put like a a tiny amount of commercial yeast in it. So for those who don't know what we're talking about, uh the caller called in and said that the sourdough bread wasn't getting enough rice. He was using quite a bit, I think, of a relatively old sourdough. So when uh Matt's talking about folds, he's talking about um times doubling the old starter before you use it as fresh, correct? That's what you mean.
Right. Yeah. Uh yeah, that's good advice, I think. You know, it's so you you want I I mean, if you want to go pure with no commercial yeast, obviously if you go commercial yeast, you're reducing the starter load and that's reducing the acidity. But I think it all goes down to the amount of flour that's uh you know lost its ability to hold gas because it's either been eaten or uh or it's too acidic, or some combination of it's been eaten and it's too acidic.
You know what I mean, don't you think? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Nice.
Um yeah, I mean, if he's not a purist, if he you know, if he's not like an absolute purist about using the Levand culture, then like two grams of yeast, like a point like point two percent by weight, uh sort of after the autolized should be fine. Yeah. Hey, do you have a copy of the Modernist cuisine Bread book yet? No, no, that's uh that's out of my price range. I bought a spinzall instead.
Uh no, no. Well, hey, thank you. Uh I'm looking at you know what? You can listen to the Modernist Breadcrumbs miniseries for free though on Heritage Radio Network.org. Oh yeah.
Yeah, but I was uh I'm all over that. Are they busting out any recipes in that? No, not yet. Yeah. Uh yeah, TBD.
I need to get my hands on a copy of that uh uh set of that books. Uh I'm actually interested in because I know less about that than I knew about the subjects in the original modernist cuisine stuff. So I'm kind of you know, this is it's you know weird to say, but I'm actually super interested to look at it. And then when they went at the museum, I only had like five seconds to look at it, and every you know, everyone else was you know had their grubby little paws over it, so I couldn't read it. Did they give them in the museum?
No. No. Anyways. Alright, Matt. You got any uh questions for us?
You're just giving us uh No, that was it. I just want I just wanted to weigh in for uh Dan Dan from Seattle. Uh nice, super. All right. Well, uh anyway, keep us posted on stuff you have with the uh spinzall.
Maybe I'll see you next time I'm up in Mystic. Alright, sounds good. Alright, cool. Um that's what I did in China. I saw some cool holographic displays, but it's not cooking related, so I won't talk about it now.
Chat Room wants to know what you ate there. Uh in China? Yeah. In China, uh I didn't have to have anything super spectacular in China that I've never had before. I'm gonna give myself 30 seconds, not even 30 seconds.
Somebody wants to know if butt cakes was among the things you ate. Butt cakes. I don't know. Is that a I thought that was maybe a reference to an old joke? I don't know, maybe.
I don't know. Butt cakes. Mm-hmm. But cakes. Checking the archives.
Check the archives for butt cakes. Uh but I but I will say this. I will just put it this way. So I when I went to the Philippines, I was in the Philippines for a day, and I was the guest of the Shangri-La Hotel in uh in Manila in the fort, and I did a master class there, and then uh afterwards uh the the you know um um the guys from the curator uh bar in um in Manila took me out uh on the on the town late night because I had a 5 a.m. flight, so you know, basically we went around Manila until 2 and then got in the cab to go to the airport.
And one of the things that they got me was balut. So I finally had balut. What is it? Balut is the uh Philippine uh Filipino egg that is the day before it hatches, they boil it, and then you eat the the chicken fetus. It's a well-known thing.
How is it? So uh it was fine. I thought it tasted fine. I mean, what you do is is you crack the uh top of the egg, you put salt in it, you suck out the juices. I have videos of it.
Uh uh, but um, you know, it's kind of horrifying for people. So my wife looked at it, she's like, that's horrifying, never show anyone that video ever again. So you suck out the you suck out the juices like and then you break it open, and you have there's this like weird calcified blob where all of the waste from the growing bird goes that's hard, and you throw away that calcified blob and you eat the little chiclet ball thing that's left over. And I have to say it tastes pretty good. It's it's it tastes like a mixture of chicken soup, egg, and like gibblet stuff.
Yeah, and so that's worse? Watching you eat that or watching you eat woodcock. Uh I know you love the word woodcock. Watching you eat woodcock. So uh watching me eat woodcock is much more horrific because the blood particles were hitting you in the face.
I mean, the problem with the woodcock was you were getting hit in the face with the blood particles, the goopy, the goopy, totally decayed, because they had hung the woodcock until it was nice and stinky, high as they put it in England, and then uh yeah, spitting those, you know, as you break the bones or crunch the little I can see it like the like it's like a it's like you were at a dentist's office and like woodcock was flying out of my mouth and like hitting you in the face. It was nasty. Maybe it's a good time to take a break. Wait, wait, let me finish the balut. So, for those of you out there who are interested in balut but don't want to taste it, they like do it or taste it.
The closest I think I can say, if you want to mimic the flavor of Balut is uh pressure cooked uh eggs. So if you do, you know, this my standard kind of pressure cooked egg, which is you take uh regular egg, you put it in uh water, you bring it up to a simmer, you simmer it for a couple of minutes to set it, you put it in a you know, close the close the lid on the pressure cooker, take it up to 15 psi, which is second ring, or um I don't know what that is in bar. It's like uh like two it's like uh 1,000 extra millibar, so you know, 2,000 total, depends on how you measure. Anyway, um do that for an hour, let the pressure come down naturally, and when you open it, the eggs will be brown, and the flavor of those eggs with salt is very, very similar to the flavor of balut. The only difference is that uh it's not gonna be juicy, have that soupy thing.
So if you serve that with a little bit of chicken stock, you will have almost a dead ringer for the flavor of Balut. And by the way, for those of you that are wondering, do the feathers get stuck in your teeth? No. Uh are the bones incredibly crunchy? No.
So, you know, you're looking at a fairly accurate flavor representation of what's going on. Should you try to do that? Should you try to do a less uh horrifying looking, uh, easier to produce balloon. Anyway, uh back in a minute with more cooking issues. Bob's Red Mill has been milling whole grains since 1978.
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All right. So Nastasia, I have a problem in that we have so many old questions that I can't remember which ones we answered. I think we should send Dave, I'll send Dave like earlier rather than later, a list and we'll see if we can get someone to figure out which ones I've answered so that I don't double answer the questions. Does that make sense? Wait, do I have to do that?
What am I supposed to do? I mean, you're the one that can search the archives. I can't search the archives. I can't just like search by qu I would have to sit down and listen to every show. No.
Is there someone who's there's gotta be someone who knows? No. You guys. How am I gonna know whether I've answered the question or not? I can't remember whether I ate breakfast in the morning.
I can't remember anything. People ask me questions all the time. Dave, how can you not know what you're gonna do tonight? I'm like, because that's tonight. Like I might not be alive then.
If you have a list of questions, why don't you like check off which ones you've answered? How am I gonna do that on my phone? I don't have like a remarkable tablet. I should print the what I should do is print the questions. And then if I printed the questions, I could check them off, and then we can circle the ones that we don't do.
So going backwards in technology is the solution to this problem? I don't think so. Well, I mean, look who you're looking like. Excel my butt. How am I gonna sit there and check it off?
Hey, easy for everyone else to say, you know. You know, I'm the one that has to sit here on my phone and read these questions. You know what I mean? You should have a contest for chat room or for the listeners. Like, you know, go back, dig back through the archives on your own time.
Yeah, but how yeah. And then I don't know, give them a shirt. Okay. Give them a uh the sh the shirt of their choice. Well, the aforementioned uh enemy of quality shirt seems to be a hot item.
They can't have a heritage radio shirt if they want a hair shirt. Oh sure, they can have one of those too. Yeah? All right. Okay.
Which one? The sleeveless? I can't wear sleeveless shirts. Who do you know that wear sleeveless shirts? Well, we're in Bushwick, so it's true.
But Nastasi, what do you think? I like the weird one with like the the regular show graphic on it, the the weird like 80s, pseudo-80s graphic, but Nastasi doesn't like the pseudo eighties graphic. Because I don't get it. What do you what's to get? It's a s it's a pseudo-80s graphic.
It's nothing to get. It's not a problem. People chat room is saying that you can if you if you want to state the question and then they will respond whether or not it's been answered. But what is it? I'll try to remember.
Oh, you know what? We can put them up. We could that's it. We could put it up on the chat room. Is the chat room only exist when we're here?
No. Well, no, no. So I'll tell you what. They they only exist when you're on the air, though. I'll make you a deal, Dave.
Here's what we'll do. Next week, at the beginning of the show, we'll post the questions, right? And then people can say which ones we've answered. Sure. Sounds great.
All right? All right. So we'll deal with some new questions now. This way I know I haven't answered them. But the interesting thing here is I don't actually have answers for them, so we can just talk about them.
Alex from Toronto writes in, Dear Dave, uh Dave and Nastasia. I've been contemplating buying a half cow or pig and wondered if you had any suggestions for um how to ask the book bo uh how to ask the butcher to break the meat down. I'm hoping to get as little ground meat and sausage as possible uh and as many large cuts of uh meat as possible. Traditional butchery is optimized for bone-in cuts and seemingly waste a lot of meat that can be cooked deliciously in a circulator. Has anyone developed alternate ways of breaking down animals that avoid this waste?
If so, any advice on how I could communicate this request to a butcher who is not familiar with it would be appreciated. Uh thanks, Alex. Well, I mean, one thing I will say is that you can definitely do a lot of bone-in cuts in the uh circulator. So you know, uh all traditional cuts of meat um can be done in the circulator. But I think this is a really interesting question.
I think this is the kind of question that we should um perhaps like defer and re ask, although I have no way to remember when we're because we're trying to set up, aren't we, Dave, our our meat, our meat show, like meat curing, all that. I mean, and butchery goes a lot with that. What do you think? What was the question? So the question is is uh A, you know, I'll be interested if anyone in the chat room has um experience with this, but they're trying to figure out a more efficient way to butcher an animal for sous vide cooking specifically.
But what what show are you referring to? Oh, we're we're gonna do a uh we're gonna do an episode with uh, you know, we're gonna get Johnny Hunter and you know, maybe someone else, and we're just gonna do curing and perhaps butchering questions. Oh, okay. I I missed the pre-production meeting for that one. He is spicy today.
I know, right? Right? It's because we're off a week, you see, you know. Yeah, I'm saving them all out. Saving them all.
Same in all the zingers, you know. Um, look, there's pizza with greens. Nastasia, they're not gonna ever give you pizza with greens. They don't like us, they're never gonna give us pizza with greens on it. Ever.
Um Do you have arugal in your pocket right now? No. We used to. We used to bring it in and you know, we said this before. We used to think we could shame them into serving it to us by pulling it out of our pockets and putting it.
It's cilantro, weird. Anyway, whatever. That's not what the talking about. So um anyway, you can use the other thing is if you if you get traditional cuts that are bone in and you don't want to cook them on the bone, uh, you can cut the bones off and roast them, and it's incredibly delicious. So, like one really good way to do something like a rib roast uh is to get the ribeyes out, do the ribeyes low temp, and then just roast off the bones with the meat on them, cut them and serve them as kind of gnawing bones, and it's quite good.
Or you can um low temp the bones and then flash fry them and then serve them, and likewise they're incredibly good. So m most of the traditional cuts of meat, uh, if you maximize for traditional meat cutting, uh also have good applications um low temp or sous vide. The exception would be, of course, the tenderloin, which unless you I mean you uh I have cooked it low temp and it works really well, but you just have to make sure when you're doing low temp, you just don't cook it too long or it turns pasty. Remember those tests we did with uh with the fillets and how pasty they got when you cooked them a long time? Were you there for that?
They turned to like a even though they're not overcooked, they turn like just paste. Yuck. Yuck. Uh chat room does want to know if you can do a fish butchery slash curing show. Maybe that could be part of the meat show.
Fish butchery. So we want to get some good. Yeah? Yeah. On fish butchery?
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, if you you have contacts for him, you can get him in. Yeah. And is he gonna did can he do a family show? I I asked him once, and he said, of course I can.
All right. Speaking of family show, Jim Leahy's coming on later this afternoon. Really? Yeah. Do you think he'll make it through an entire show without dropping some F bombs?
Absolutely not. Alright. Uh this from Jeff, uh Dave Anastasia. In the past I fat washed gin with avocado oil, and when I put it back in the freezer, the oil rises to the top. The puck is removed, and a simple filtering gives me a workable spirit.
But I am working on a fat washed vodka using coconut oil. The coconut oil is unrefined, organic coconut oil. I'm having a difficult time getting it to separate out, which is weird because coconut coconut fat anyway is so solid. You know what I mean? It's strange.
And coconut oil in like uh coconut milk floats to the top so readily and turns into a puck. It's weird that that the you know um that Jeff's having problems here. But I mean, maybe someone in the chat room has uh some theories on this. The first time I put it in the freezer, it came out like whipped cream. Uh the second time I used the refrigerator, but only a small quantity of oil rose to the top for easy removal, and I ended up putting it through a coffee filter, which is slow.
The last time I tried to just use it without the coffee filter, but tiny oily solids. What do you think of that string of words? Okay. You're okay with tiny oily solids? What if I put the word olestra?
What if I put the word Alestra in your mind? And so now you're thinking of the tiny oily solids after they've gone through your body undigested. Now how does that work? Wow. Alright, Nastasia, you know what?
Nastasia is is going into these classes that are trying to erase some of her anger. Anger, internal anger, but I think some of her internal anger is focused towards things like tree fungus. Yeah, and yeah. Spores? Oh, well, the bat vast majority of it is towards me.
Right. And Mark. I mean, let's not forget and Mark. Uh the last time I tried to uh use a coffee filter, but tiny oily solids ended up sticking to the inside of the glass, and it was ugly. Until my bar gets a spinzole, do you have any ideas for how to get the oil out of the vodka?
Um you gotta use a separate uh sep funnel. Nastasia just gave the correct answer, bing bing, bing. You think I don't listen. I well, uh because you don't. But that's great.
So the uh I would try a separatory funnel. So here's now separatory funnels are rather cheap, but before you invest in a separatory funnel, um please put some of your product in uh in the freezer in something glass, right? So what I'm trying to figure out is is are you having a tough time separating it because of the pouring, or are you having a tough time separating it because it's not coming out of the liquid at all? If it's not coming out of the liquid at all, that's a separate kind of an issue. Um but if it's just that you can't separate it, then if you have a separating funnel, the s the oily stuff will flow to the top and the other stuff will sink to the bottom.
Uh and you should be able to get um a nice uh you know clear product. And if it's not separating at all, then we're gonna have to do some sort of you're gonna have to add some sort of filtering aid. The problem is filtering aids will in fact strip some flavor out of it. So uh, you know, try to use the smallest amount possible of something like bentonite or even maybe gelatin, uh something that will get rid of uh that will just c you know grip on to some of these small particles. Because maybe because it's unrefined coconut oil, it might have water left in it or other particles that aren't pure oil, and that's why it's not floating to the top.
In which case you'll need to fundamentally do a clarifying step on it because the stuff is actually in solution. But the easiest way uh to get the oily part out, the actual oily part, is to um use a separatory funnel. And a separatory funnel is interesting because it's got a little um stopcock on the bottom that you rotate and then you are removing the liquids from the bottom. And then you can swirl it to get the the fats to rise up to the top, and you can let it sit in your freezer for as long as you want and uh rock and roll. But that's what I would try out, right, Nastasia?
Yep. I can't believe it. Nastasia listening. Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. Yeah.
Yeah, crazy. Uh okay. Uh and so this is from uh Ken. We see it's a uh rather long question from Ken Ingbert. Long time no here.
I know. Yeah. Uh so yeah, as he says, long time no pester. I hope you and the crew are well with my Thanksgiving uh coming up. I thought I would pose this question when, if ever, does one use a covered roasting pan?
Uh there are plenty of fond recollections of mom using that thin speckled graniteware covered roaster on the internet, but very little actual information about this. Let's first dismiss those who say don't use any roasting pan, mostly because the sides prevent good circulation. Sure, but sometimes you want more volume below the thing you are roasting. Carrying a hot, heavy turkey or other big roast may be dangerous on a baking sheet, and a roasting pan gives you the pan sauce option, especially if the pan is heavy enough for a cooktop. I'll just interject here.
I use roasting pans a lot, however, I don't have I always elevate my bird above the roasting pan to get that extra kind of um I always elevate it. Now, uh we'll be honest, I've never run the tests, right? I've never tested elevated versus not elevated. So it's hard for me to say really what the difference is. But you know, the underside of my birds are always blonder, underside of my roasts are always blonder, which is why you know I do the old when I'm doing traditional cooks, I do the old school where I start it on the underside, cook it off high for a while, and then flip it over so that I get colored on the bottom.
You know what I mean? Anyways. Um okay. Um back to the back to the question. Um you might say uh that covering the roasting pan is steaming, not roasting.
Okay, so what are the pros and cons of steaming, maybe with uncovering for the last half hour or so? You see discussion points about uh how covered cooking makes meat moister or retains moisture. Is that true? No. No.
Uh I mean it will, it depends. I hold I'll answer all these questions at once instead of going uh to me, moistness is more of a function of the moisture retained uh on a muscular level, which is in turn a function of time and temperature rather than covering. Uh think how overcooked pot roasts can be swimming in liquid, but the meat tastes dry and pasty. Search stew science on Sirius Seat for Kenji's related investigation on this issue. By the way, s uh as an aside, Kenji, interesting thing he posted uh I saw on clarifying old oil with gelatin to filter it as a fast way to get your fry oil back in.
I'll have to run some tests on that because the whole thing of fry oil. So, well, I mean, he's not using a 35 or 50 pound deep fryer. He's like, you know, cooking in a pot of oil, and so what you do is at the end of the night, you leave it in the pot, you stir in a gelatin mix, it settles out into a puck the next day, and then you have the um, and then you have clear oil. It's actually an interesting idea. The idea what I would want to test, and I have I haven't had obviously had any time because I just read this today, but um, you know, the oil breakdown is for uh a number of things.
There's particles in it, right, that lend to off flavors, but the actual um you get free fatty acids. A little bit of free fatty acids in oil is good because it makes the oil more polar, so it means that you can actually get better uh heat contact from your from the oil into the food, which is why hyper fresh oil doesn't work. But uh excess fatty acids have those awful rancid flavors and oil starts to go rancid. So, what I want to know is is can this gelatin trick actually suck some of that crap out of the oil and make it as though it is fresher? Not just that it has less crap in it, but is the oil itself actually fresher?
I don't know. Um Gotta wrap up in a minute. Anyway, so broadly speaking, this is back to Ken. I would like to say steam trapped in the covered uh roaster cooks the meat faster. Um, but you get very little Major Browning until you uncover the roaster.
I'm hoping you confirm or correct me or Shensa shed some entertaining nuance on the subject. One other point, I have not yet tried it, but does manipulating a covered roaster and the associated steam make for better bread? Uh best regards, Ken. Okay, so really really quickly on this and my my thoughts on this. Obviously, cooking bread, this all goes back to this is this is a the miracle of moisture management.
We are dealing with the miracle of moisture management problem right here. Uh if you go back in the 50s, uh people used to make turkey ovens that were essentially covered roasters where it roasted and the entire bird roasted in the um in this contained thing, which is not much bigger than those big old enamelware uh turkey roasters. And they did brown. And the the issue with it is covering a pot does one thing and one thing only. It increases the humidity, it allows the, it allows it it reduces evaporative cooling, right?
So anytime you cover a pot with something with liquid in it, you are decreasing uh the ability of liquids to flash off. You're increasing the humidity, you're decreasing the amount of temperature drop you can get via evaporative cooling, and so you're increasing the temperature. Now, it is true that when when you have uh a lot of moisture on the surface of a of a product, or if you have a lot of more of moisture, let's say bubbling out of a bunch of juices below it. So if you have a a turkey sitting in a pot with a lot of juice underneath, and the juice hasn't solidified or caramelized yet, right? Then that juice is gonna keep bubbling.
As that keeps bubbling, it's gonna keep the temperature uh it's gonna keep um it's gonna basically keep it at 212 at the surface, and it's gonna be harder to brown it because you have to overdrive the temperature to get the surface of the meat above uh the temperature of boiling water, which you need to do. You need to evaporate some of the liquid off the surface, dry off the surface once the surface is dry, whether it's in a pot or whether it's in anything else, it's gonna start browning. So in bread, you get the initial higher temperature and the and the rise, and then presumably the surface of the bread enough moisture leaves the pot such that it can start browning, right? That's how Leahy does his right his uh his pot bread. Potbread.
Thank you. Um in a in a in a cookware situation, all you're doing by covering the thing is increasing the temperature at which it's cooking. And w whether or not it browns is going to depend on whether there's excess moisture left, whether the surface of the meat can be driven fast enough to get the temperature higher. Well, anyway, we we could try to. If if you have more questions on this, we can I can get back into it.
We could talk more about roasting pan technologies because it's getting close to Thanksgiving anyway, and I'm going to talk about how I'm going to do my turkey again this year. We'll get back more with roasting next week, and we'll catch the other questions uh next week on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content and to hear about exclusive events, subscribe to our newsletter.
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