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Find us at heritageradio network.org. Hello, welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly like, you know, 1245, one o'clock from Roberta's Pizzeria in Bushwick Broklyn. Got a full crew today. We have uh, of course, Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
How you doing? Good. Yeah. Got uh Dave in the booth. How you doing, Dave?
Doing good. Got new equipment in here. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah. That's right.
You sounded really, really strange and different uh this time around. Strange and different bad or strange and different, just strange and different. It's new. It's new. We got we can't be afraid of the new.
Is it like what it sounds like there's like a like a phaser on it or something? Like like I'm about to be in like. I feel like I'm in uh you you you're too young. You know the band The Cars? Yeah.
Yeah. How young do you think I am? I don't know. Cars is like the 70s. So anyway, and I guess 80s.
They're big hits in the 80s, but yeah, I feel like I'm uh in the song Living in Stereo. It sounds like Rico Cassick. I will not. I will not. Rico Cassick, ugly, ugly, ugly done well, right, Stas?
Ugly Done well. Yeah. Ugly done well. Yeah, good for him. Yeah, yeah.
Good for him. Uh joined with we're back to uh take your kid to work life. We got Booker in the in the in the studio. How are you doing, Books? Unfortunately, uh it I'm I I'm glad to be here, but unfortunately, it stinks that I can't be independent yet.
Yesterday we spoke to my neurologist. Yeah. Do you want to tell everyone what uh she said there? Or do you not do you want to keep it to yourself? I can tell.
She said, she said maybe in January I'll be on my own again. Yeah. Yeah, you can't wait, right, to be independent again. You're gonna divorce your parents? Not that kind of independent.
No. I love it. She's not freaking Hermie from uh Rudolph. Independent. Yeah, oh that was Booker doing that, by the way.
That's very strong. So good. I love my parents very much. Why would I leave them? No, he just wants to be able to travel on his own like he like he used to.
Like he can't, he like you know, he has to be accompanied uh, you know, and treated like a three-year-old. Yes, yes, which is not the case. He is not, in fact, a three-year-old. Because I'm gonna be 16 in January. Yes.
You can drive. Oh, yeah. Uh no, you cannot drive in New York City when you're 16, Nastasia, little California girl. Like you have to be 18 to drive in New York City. Wait, really?
Yeah. I didn't know that. I'm from PA. Sorry, sorry. You wouldn't drive anyway, though, right?
No. No, he hates cars. We got uh Matthew from uh Booker and Dax Customer Service. How you doing? Woo!
How are you? Yeah, doing well, doing well. And we have uh Ariel Johnson from uh I guess from MIT now, right? Yeah, yeah. M I T in Cambridge.
Yes, that MIT. Yeah. Booker has never visited MIT because he only goes to above when we go uh up to uh yeah. He's a real Harvard man. Yeah, he totally is.
Actually, what it is is he enjoys the Sheraton Commander, which is truly a classic Cambridge institution. It's the best hotel to stay in when you go to Boston. I do have to warn you though, the elevators are tiny. Yeah, they are. Yeah, but why do you like it?
Because of what? Uh the room environment, the snack lounge. If you're oh yeah, they've got those like fried chickpeas in the bottom. And they let dogs in. Yeah.
Up to 80 pounds, but even though major weighs 85, they still let us in. Yeah, and Booker, I'm like, I'm like Booker, just don't say anything. And I'm writing down 70 pounds. He's like, Dad, Major weighs 85. He weighs 85 pounds.
I've been forgetting. Listen, Booker. Everybody bends the rules a little bit, but it's all about just not saying anything. Okay, but I just forgot. Anyways, the lady the lady in the lobby was very nice.
That's good. Yes, uh, she was very understanding, but it could have gone the other way. You could have gotten someone who is a real stickler for the rules, Booker. And a jerk. And a jerk, yes, that could have happened.
Well, we we I missed you last time you were at Harvard. I think I was out of town, so you didn't get to visit musical media lab. Yes. So, anyways, so uh for your for your pleasure, you may call in your being a 15-year-old questions. You may call in your Nastasia the Hammer Lopez questions, you may call in your Booker and Dax customer service questions, then that's Sears all or spinzall related.
By the way, any uh update from Amazon? How's that doing? No, no. Still afraid of running out of stock. So literally they've sold over half of their current stock in back orders, and they won't just ship them.
What have they told you, Matt? A lot of friends. Nothing. Anything specific? No.
Hey, we can't uh we can't sell them because if we sold them, we run out. So uh, you know, it's not uh, you know, notistical geniuses there. Or call in your sensory and or MIT Media Lab related or uh, you know, uh you know, chromatography, flavor, chemistry, ecology. Any of those questions, uh Terriel? Two seven one eight four nine seven two one two eight.
That's 7184972128. Uh and Dave, just if if we get a caller in, just you know, interrupt me, whatever, and we'll figure it out. I always do. Uh, but uh are we allowed to talk about the thing we just did the other week or not? Yeah, sure.
All right, so I participated in a by the way, this fits with the Harvard. Hogo. Hogo. When tasting rums, you must taste for hogo. Uh anyway, so like uh you want to describe Hogo?
Well, Hogo is one word that people use for the kind of funky taste of funky rums. What's another one? Funk. Yeah, but funk is a little bit. Funk is not really grass though.
Well, I mean, so part part of the problem, part of the problem is that the we have this word hogo and funk, but uh it's not a lot of consensus about like what sort of more specific flavors it's Ray and Nephews and Smith and Cross, right? Yeah, so you just say Ray and tastes like Ray and Nephew Smith and Cross. If it tastes like that or smells like that, if it's in that ballpark, hopefully. Pot still Jamaican rums, yeah, rum fire, rum agricules, right from outside of Jamaica, things like that. But that's more of the grassy.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. So is so the question that we are asking is funk localized to just one thing, or is like grassy funk adjacent? Like what is funk?
Like funk is just to me, more technically, unless you're saying something is funky in the James Brown sense. And by the way, Dax yesterday was like uh talking about dancing. I was like, have you seen James Brown's dance moves? He was like, no, I'm like, this is this is why your generation is doomed to failure. And so I showed him like a bunch of James Brown moves, and he was like, oh my god, James Brown is like amazing.
I was like, yeah. Yeah. And I so there's that kind of like that funk, right? Which comes from kind of funk meaning stinky but like more of an animal stink. More like an arm pity, sweaty, B-O, civic cat stink is really technically when you're saying like funk, it's like animal funk, barnyard funk.
You know what I mean? Not like grass, I mean like you know what I'm saying? It's like funky. That's why funky, I don't like funky. Like hogo means rum-related, like flavors that are hard to describe, like Smith and Cross and like Ray and Nephews.
Right, but so so if right now the best we can do is hogo, it's funky, you know it's like that thing, but not like a specific flavor, then that's not a very satisfying definition of Hogo. Smith and Cross isn't a specific flavor? And Ray Nephe is just a few. Yeah, but like so. When someone says, this one smells of apricots, like that's valid, but somehow this rum smells like Smith and Cross is not valid.
Well, so if it smells like Smith and Cross and it smells like Ray and Nephew and it smells like rum fire, then there's probably some platonic higher level of flavor above that that unifies them. Ate no platonic anything. Remember, love is writing, hate is philosophy, play-doh. Uh but the uh the uh great writer. Love reading that stuff.
Truly. He's completely like, you know, bat bat poop crazy. The world is a cave, and everyone is just watching projections on the cave wall. I mean, yeah, it's like you know, like it's like everyone's like, but don't you believe in the platonic? No, there is no, there is no dog.
Okay, there is no, there is no chair. No, all right. It's garbage. All right, Dave. All models are wrong, but some are useful.
Alright, I'm I'm all down. I'm down with useful. But back to this other thing. But that's why people say instead of apricot, they're like stone fruit. Yeah, but there are, but okay.
So let's say you're smelling a glass of wine and it smells like stone fruit. Right. Like, there are sensory percepts in common between that glass of wine and a stone fruit, and in fact, usually chemistry in common between the two. Yes, agree. Right, but when someone's gonna describe it, like, do you actually anticipate, because I've seen this happen, where someone's like, hexanal.
I mean, like, or do you expect someone to be like, hey, this smells like grassy. I mean, in other words, like, what do you what what's the goal for what's the goal for tasters? Like, that's that's what I'm trying to say. So, in other words, to me, like you want to instruct a bartender on how to taste this stuff. You're like, taste Smith and Cross, taste Ray and Next.
Well, I think I think using the word grassy and everyone meaning roughly the same thing when they say grassy is the most useful thing. Like, probably there'll be some hexanal if they smell something grassy. Right. But it could be something else similar, right? It you know there's other like six carbon aldehydes and alcohols and that's my next band.
Esters. Estra Esther Williams is always playing in the background, and it's six six carbonaldehyde is the band. Right? Too deep. Too deep, too deep.
So anyway, so we were doing you were doing a test to see whether people could distinguish these things, right? Well, a preliminary test trying to see if if funk and hogo is a driver of separating rums from each other sensorially. Well, I'm still analyzing. Data Dave. So we we're we're in this group of uh, I don't know, like whatever it's 20, 20 ish.
We'll say it's 20. More than a dozen. Yeah, more than a dozen, less than 50. Yeah. So anyway, so uh we're in this tasting thing, and Ariel goes, there's no wrong way to group these.
You can group these things any way you want. And then when I grouped them, she's like, oh, that's that's the wrong way. There's no wrong way to group them, but you can't have overlapping groups. That's the way I grouped them in overlapping groups. Groups are distinct.
You know, it's funny. She's like no Venn diagrams. No Venn diagrams. When I was in when I was in grad school studying these techniques, um one of my professors was saying, you know, like we like to do expert panels are like fun to do, but like expert winemakers are sometimes make like the worst panelists because they're bad at following instructions. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Well, I took it as a challenge beforehand. I was like, I knew that I would do it somehow wrong. And indeed I did. All right.
That's why we did it twice. Yeah, the the test, the test you like so nice, you did it twice. Uh okay, by the way, uh, before we leave today, because I know it's approaching Thanksgiving, so I'm gonna go into my pre Thanksgiving spiel. Because we only have what? One more show before Thanksgiving?
Two. We're gonna do a show on the Tuesday before? I think so. Okay, you're we're open, so it's up to you. We're open.
Now we're open. Are you? Uh yeah, sure. Yeah. Uh while we're we doing a pitch for Patrick's Heritage Birds, or is he sold all of his birds so much we don't even need to talk about it?
I don't know. I haven't heard from that guy in a while. Really? Yeah. He's uh he's A Wall on his he should be J Wall M I A.
He should he should be uh, you know, armpit deep in Heritage Birds right now. He may well be. Maybe that's why you haven't heard from him. Should be birding it up strong. Nastasia is a longtime cooker and her mom longtime overcooker of the Heritage Bird, right?
Oh Heritage Cinders. So dry. Yeah, she's well, she's she turkey. The thing is, is like you either gotta take you either gotta cook it right or take it all the way to my favorite word, meat floss. Oh, I thought you were gonna say flavortown.
Oh, flavor town. You know what? I forget uh who did a uh a thing on him, and then people were giving him uh garbage for uh helping you know doing stuff for uh like uh relief for the hurricane stuff. He's apparently like a super nice guy, Guy Fieri. Sure.
That everyone who meets him wants to hate him and is like, oh, he's actually like a good guy. You know what I mean? So God bless him. And he whatever he does with his flavor town nest. Sure.
You know, I would love to see him go do something Guy Fieri in Kyoto. He'd be like, oh this isn't big enough. He's like, he's like, oh, train to Subtletown. Like you know, like he's like, That's like Guy Fieri meets Randy Savage. Yeah, yeah.
Can we can you give uh because I don't really watch the show, so I can't really do his voice. Like in in my mind, I'm picturing the hair, but I I'm just using that voice. But you're gonna be the face stuffing. Yeah, subtle town. Yeah.
Yeah, no, but but the dashi, remember, is like basically flavorless dashi. If it's gonna be Kyoto style, oh pull out pull out the Katsuabushi before it hits the bottom of the pot. Welcome to Settle Town! You know what I mean? It's like let's put armfuls of katsuabushi in and then like pull it out before any flavor is extracted, and then like you know, either like make a stock that we serve to our dogs or throw it away.
Kyoto, settle town. But anyway, yeah, Americans don't really buy that so much. Have you ever seen the fake menu for Guy's American Kitchen? No. It's so I can't read it out loud without losing my yes.
Yeah? Yeah. So what was the acronym you used for it? Sure sugar honey iced tea. Yeah, that's it.
Yeah. Anyway, so I don't really know much about Guy Fieri's Ugh, his work, but I mean I feel like appreciate him as a person. I feel like it's taking kind of speaking of sugar honey iced tea. In the movie Madagascar, um, the zebra uses that in in the movie to replace the S word because Alex is about to attack him. Yeah, and it's pretty funny that Chris Rock replaced a curse word.
Since he is known for cursing. Chris Rock is a great actor. Yeah. Nice. Oh, you know what?
I like his voice. You know who was behind me in my anger class yesterday? Well, please let it be Chris Rock or some crazy non sequitur. Let's go for it. Emma Stone.
Oh. And I asked her to describe Paul McCartney in one word, and she said, nice. And I said, that's the only word you can think of. Why do you even talk to her at all? Why not?
What what would you like? Why would you talk to anyone? Like, I like if I go to a class, like you're like, hey, I know that you're in. By the way, Nastasia goes to a class to increase her anger. Or are you just like yell and do a lot of scream?
Alright, so now I gotta know. Yeah. I mean, she's an actress, I'm sure she's good at yelling. Yeah. Yeah.
If she uses to like, if she has some sort of like role where she needs to yell constantly that she's practicing for? All right. Uh yes, call her. You're on the air. Hey, Dave.
Yeah, I can barely hear you. And tell and tell that skid steer behind you to stop backing up. Messing around. Hey, how's it going? All right, what's up?
All right. I was just calling um Thanksgiving related. Uh I was thinking of doing some uh stuffed mushrooms or something or something. Uh but I want I want a really good recipe as far as that goes. Um maybe something something a little more edgy or uh fresh.
Well, I mean, so like a like like are we talking appetizers here, small things, or are we talking about turkey replacements for vegetarians? Like I haven't thought about stuffed mushrooms in a long time. Ariel, you got any stuffed mushroom action going on? Not recently. I mean, like the trick is right, you know, is uh if you whenever I go mushroom, I like to go like super duper over the top, like mushroom on mushroom on mushroom.
So I'll be like making like a uh you know, you get your dried porcinis and you make like a porcini stock, like a hardcore porcini stock. You know what would be good? Hey, this would be good. What if you did a porcini risotto like like almost like an orancini filling, put it on top and then fried those suckers? That would be delicious, right?
Yeah, yeah. So the trick with the That would be pretty good. Yeah, right? The trick is is to cook down so the part of the mushroom that you're gonna stuff into, or you could just forget the mushroom entirely and just do porcini porcini orancini, which by the way, sounds oh, with the chopped up mushroom stuffing, duck cells in the middle, boom, boom! That is gonna be delicious right there.
That's gonna be delicious. Porcini risotto with like cheese stock with uh the as well as mushrooms inside of the mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just do like risotto style, just cook it a little bit drier, let it set up, right? And then I would put a little uh I would make like a chop up like mushroom of your choice, not something heavy like a porcini, something light like portobello or even regular buttons, cut them up, saute them down into like a nice, almost like a duck cells, like you would use on like a beef wellington or something like this, and then uh just like put a little bit of that in the center of the Arancini ball, take it around, you know, uh bread fry, and watch everyone go, oh my god, mushrooms, ash mushrooms are so good.
So good. Like, don't you think that sounds like it sounds delicious? You made me you made me start thinking. I was thinking about um like a uh fall squash as well, like uh squash risotto with those mushrooms, uh with like some chicken skin on top or something like that. You know what my mom used to make?
That's just totally separate. She used to make a uh a pumpkin-based lasagna. So not a red sauce, a pumpkin-based sauce. And so it's it's fundamentally it's like a pumpkin soup with ri with with ricotta and you know parmigiano, and to to tighten it up, she would toss into the sauce cavitelli along with the pasta sheets so that it wouldn't get too loose. Wow, that sounds delicious.
It was, and she put mushrooms in, so it all ties together. Boom boom boom. All right, so go ahead. Squash, yeah. What do you got for me?
You you're gonna do squash uh risotto? Like a squash puree inside the um risotto, like I don't know, finish it off and then uh with the porcinies and stuff, um, and then top it all off with some uh crispy chicken skin. That's a crunch. I love I love myself some crispy chicken skin. I think people who don't like crispy chicken skin, they they have some issues.
They have some like you know, non-cooking issues, they have more like mental issues. There's people who don't eat chicken. Everybody is entitled to their opinion. That is not true, Booker. Everyone's entitled to their opinion.
It's the the actual correct statement. Yeah, the correct statement is everyone's entitled to their incorrect opinion. That's that's what you're allowed to say. Like if you don't eat chicken skin, that's fine. You know what I mean?
Like you're a vegetarian, like you know, whatever, you grew up slaughtering chickens for a living and you just can't look at them anymore. Uh you know, whatever, yeah. You raise chickens for fighting and you think that using them for food is beneath the chicken. Great. But it's hard to argue that crispy chicken skin is delicious.
I mean, because it just is. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Anyway.
Anyway, tw uh if you make any of this stuff, please uh tweet back on uh at cooking issues and let us know how it worked out. Oh, with with the risotto? Absolutely. With the risotto, so like you you like add wine into it as you're as you're kind of stirring and sauteing it. If you take some dried porcinis, rehydrate them in the wine, and then use the like mushroom wine, it'll be really good.
Ooh, I like that. So I'm gonna play the part of Mills Norrin, like you know, who I used to work with at the French Culinary Studio and talking recently. Nils Norrin, his favorite fun fact was that all of the porcinies. I can't do a Nils Norrin accent right now, I haven't worked up to it, but like all the porcinis come from Sweden and then are shipped back to Italy and sold as Italian porcinis to the Swedes. I can buy that.
Yeah. Yeah, we used to get like a ton in Denmark, like wild forage. And Denmark's like fake Sweden. Now that they're all famous, yeah. Yeah, sometimes they'd get them straight from Sweden.
So correct me if I'm wrong. Denmark is Sweden plus pigs. Right? And it's flat. And it's flat.
Yeah, yeah. But there's a there's a famous, there's a famous like uh story that um sometimes the Swedish police will like pull over a driver in Sweden and they'll like talk to the talk to the motorist and be like, oh man, this guy's definitely drunk. And then they'll realize he was just speaking Danish. Well Danish sounds more German than any, whatever. Okay, why don't we get into this?
I'm just making fun of Denmark because they're riding high on a culinary cloud right now, so they can take it. You know what I mean? The Danish word for porcini is Karl Johanswampa. Wait, Carl Johans Swampa? Swampa's mushroom.
And who's this Karl Johannes? It's his mushroom. Yeah, but who is he? Who's Karl Johann? The dude with mushrooms.
That's crazy, crazy country. Can't believe can't believe that that exists. Anyway, Dave, were you saying something? No, no. Oh.
Alright. So uh let's get to some other cooking stuff. Uh so okay, no information on the Sears all other than that Amazon has quite enough of them. And how Nastasia, how many do we have on the water? 24.
They should be there, but they're not. Sears all on the water. But how like there's another 2400 on the water? Well, they should be there. They should be on land, on dry land.
They're not. But they're not. No. Okay. Uh spinzalls.
We still have spinzalls in stock and uh in uh modernist pantry, so you can get them there, and then hopefully by the Thanksgiving time we'll have them on Amazon. Who the heck knows, right? We're supposed to get another five, six hundred in by the end of the year. Uh I was doing some spinzall work yesterday on you ready for it? Durian.
I was spinning some durians. It has a horrible stench. Yeah, so I went and bought a durian. So uh I've said this before on the air that uh I had this kind of amazing moment years ago when I made a durian custard in a pressure cooker, like strictly by accident. So durian, speaking of funk, animal based funk, right?
Uh animal like funk. Fruit-based funk. Yeah, but with the notes, it it's a it's a fruit that smells like it's got an animal y thing to it. Yeah, right. Sulfur compounds in the case of durian, I think.
I believe so. Yeah. Uh and so as everyone who thinks about this knows, like sulfur compounds, very reactive, weird things happen, right? In general, a lot of these very reactive. Yes.
Yes, yes. So that's why uh when you pressure cook things that have sulfur compounds in them, they change radically. Often they mellow. So mustard seeds, mellow, onions, all alliums completely mellow out in the uh in the pressure cooker. Uh well known fact, um, it happens.
Uh and so what I you know what I once pressure cooked a durian because I was like, oh, this smells like it's sulfur-y stuff. Let me throw the durian into the pressure cooker. And the issue is durian is so thick that it And stinky. Yes, that it cooks down and it carameli literally caramelizes, not like in the my not in the myard sense, like because the temperature actually gets higher than it's you literally pyrolize the it turns the sugar turns brown. Yeah, yeah.
And there's also put there's also waiting, so let me get into it. So it's okay, so I was like, okay, I'm gonna do it now that I have the spinz all, I'm gonna try to clarify the durian so it doesn't scorch when you're reducing it. And so I went and bought a durian, which by the way, they're expensive. They're super expensive. They're not cheap.
They're super expensive. I got 500 grams of pulp out of like a how much did that weigh, Booker, that durian that we bought? Uh five pounds. Yeah. But it seems way heavier because of the spikes.
Yeah. Anyway, so I opened the durian and immediately Booker's like, oh and then I start blending the durian pulp. And by the way, durian is so uh durian has like some sort of stuff in it that makes it incredibly custardy. It like it's got an amazing custardy texture. So it didn't break at all.
So then I added some water to it and it still didn't break at all. So I'm blending it and Booker's like and then I throw it into the spinzole and I start spinning it and Booker's like and he was actually cursing. I told him specifically beforehand we were talking about the durian that he was not allowed to curse on the air because it's a family show but what were you saying without using curses Booker what were you saying about the durian yesterday? It had I was like it stinks in here. And he was like he's like he's like I want to go get nose clips and so anyway so then this guy knocks on my door and he he's like we're looking okay so for those of you that don't know uh my building has been without gas because like some idiot put a screwdriver through the main gas line to the building like you know a couple of months ago and once you put a gas once you ruin the gas line they shut off gas to the whole building and then they have to check every individual line branch and fixture individually before they turn it back on.
A resident did this or a worker worker but my my building is is three elevator black three elevator banks 20 floors each bank right so it's big building and so it took them it I don't even know if they started it weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, weeks to get the permit, right? Because someone's got to stamp the permit. And then they have to test everything. So we might we potentially still are months away from having gas. So this guy comes to the door, and he's like, uh, someone's complaining that there might be a gas leak up here.
I was like, I was like, and I, you know, I went back into my New York mode. So I'm like, gas leak, there's no gas in the whole building. In the whole building, there's no gas. How can there be a gas leak? He's like, oh yeah, maybe they meant over in the in the in the other building, and he leaves.
I was like, hey. It was a durian. It smells like just like gas. And so, like, when Jen, when my wife got home, she was like, oh my God. It was so bad when I was spinning the stuff at night that uh it was so bad with spinning the stuff at night that Jen literally woke up like the stench, woke her up from a sound sleep, and she came out to try to like find out like what the h holy hell is going on in in our uh apartment.
It's like smelling salts. Yeah, but it's a sign of a good durian, right? That it stinks like this. And now here's the messed up part. So it turns out durian has some sort of pertinaceous something in the juice, even once it's treated with SPL.
Is that what makes it stink? I don't know, actually, uh where the sulfur stuff is what makes it stick. I don't know. But the the the smell itself is probably not a protein booker, but the um I don't know what it is, to be honest. It could be enzymatically derived from an amino acid.
Oh, but there you go. Well, you know, that's why you should bring a real scientist on when you talk. Why are the acids so mean? The what amino acids? Yeah, they're so mean to your notes.
They're so uh mean to your notes. Oh, I get it. Uh, very strong. That's is that your first chemistry joke? One of them.
Yeah. So that's strong. Uh Ariel will use that in the future. So uh, anywho, this is what I was saying, you know, like father like son. Yeah.
Anyway, I wish I could come up with something like that. So here's the point. So it didn't clarify uh very well. So I pressure cooked the juice that was left over, and unfortunately, the gaskets in my coon recon are gone, and so it it leaks steam a little bit and it reduced over the 45 minute pressure cooking. And when I opened it, it had characteristic clotting like you get when you pressure cooked milk, which means that it was a protein, there was a protein in it, they clotted together.
It's denatured. Yeah, formed like a raft, almost like a you know, like you know those milk cookies that they those like milk protein, like when you cook down like in the milk skins. Yeah. Yeah. But like crunchy anyway, so it formed that and a really good caramelized durian juice that I had killed the funk on, but it was a little over, tasted a little burnt.
It was maybe like, you know, when you take something like and you take it five degrees too high, and it just tastes a little bit burnt, so it's like still okay, but it's like uh I wish it wasn't that like that. Then I took the durian puree, put it that was left over from the spinning, which was very smooth, obviously, because it was in spinz all. Then I pressure cooked that in a container in water, and it killed the smell, and it was actually quite good. Didn't brown as much because it wasn't reducing, it was in a water bath for the pressure cooking. But so anyway, so preliminary success, but I'm not gonna do that in my house again.
And Jen, I was like, Jen's like, when you open the new bar, Dave, how the hell are you gonna do this? Everyone's gonna you can't cook durian in your freaking goal is to have I want to make a durian old-fashioned. So if you take the kind of like nice fruity notes of a durian and remove enough of the offensive kind of uh funk stuff such that it's not off-putting, which the syrup is not, but it's still characteristically durian. If you can do that, it would make a fantastic, like old-fashioned with like a pineapple garnish, like you know, like a you take like a lily infusion into pineapple, garnish that with like a whiskey old-fashioned with durian syrup, everybody wins. But Jen's like no one will step foot in your freaking bar if it's not and I have to admit, even I was like, my eyes were watering with the stench a little bit.
I was like, man, because when it's spinning, right? When it's spinning, when you're blending it, you're volatilizing all that stuff. And when you're spinning, you're volatilizing all that stuff. So anyway, that was my durian. And Booker was like, I need clothespins, Dad, to shut my nose.
You're you're not being very uh what's the word? Understanding. What are you, Booker? But it smelled terrible. I promised I wouldn't swear on the radio.
You're doing good. Um you said what did you say? So I Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. You can it's okay.
It's okay to hold back. Anyways, you want to take a call? Sure, caller, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, Ariel, it's Nick Devlin in the UK. Hey, how are you doing?
I'm good. How are you guys? Good. Excellent, thank you. Excellent.
I have a Dave, I have a Hustino related question for you. Ah, yes, true. Um we're making uh uh Manhattan style drink with uh a peach infused rye, uh, but with them batching and then holding uh pre-diluting patching and then holding a minus five Celsius in the freezer. And it's going cloudy. Hmm.
After how long? If you had any thoughts. After how long? Immediately or or or uh week, two weeks, and then because we're trying to batch in in reasonable size volumes, but right, and it's just peaches, booze, vermouth. Peaches, booze, pectinex, uh, and then uh coffee americana.
Okay. Um yeah. So typically, um I have ascribed uh re clouding in um spun liquors to uh a couple of things. In in protein based things, it's typically um protein aggregation. So protein that is solubilized, like whey protein, for instance, will aggregate over time in the presence of alcohol, lose its solubility, and flock out and then settle, right?
So in milk washing situations, that's typically what's going on. That's not what's going on in this situation because uh there's not that much protein in the peach uh that wouldn't spin out when you're spinning it out. I think what's happening is dried like fully dried fruits like peaches, fully dried fruits like apricots have so much pectin in them that um even during the spin out, I think there's probably some residual pectin. Pectin is also unstable in the presence of alcohol and over time will join to create a haze or a cloud. I've had that happen making like bitters before with like citrus peel.
Right. So what I would recommend uh is uh hit it with pectinx again. Uh and that sh that should kill any of the residues, unless it's unless it's been functionalized so much that the pectinics can't attack it anymore, and then see whether it settles out on you. If it settles out, I would say it's it's most likely a pectin haze. That m most likely.
I mean it's in fact I think I I don't remember whether I answered it or not. Uh so I'm gonna talk about it again later, but uh Nastasia, I answered that pectin question last week, the person who had the quince problem. Yeah. I answered it. I'll say probably a little bit more about it.
But pectin and alcohol is very uh interesting and you know, um it's a well-known test of pectin, uh, that it will uh it will aggregate and gel in the presence of um alcohol. I don't know, frankly, what the temperature relation is on that, whether the freezer is exc I mean I assume it is accelerating it, but I assume it desolubilizes it because pectin gets less soluble as it gets colder. Yeah, and if it's actually frozen, you'll be like preferentially freezing the water and the pectin will be more exposed to the alcohol. Right. Do you think that could be something?
Especially if it's already prediluted, it's at a low ABV. It could be definitely. Um also remember in a brown, so when you say it hazes, when it warms back up, does it unhaze or is it stay cloudy when it warms back up? It it unhazes. Ah.
So ah, that is a oak polyphenol phenomenon, probably. So all brown liquors, when they're over chilled, haze, and then when they warm up, they'll uncloud. So chill filtering works. Yeah. So um and it could be that the combination of the peach and the thing somehow clouds at a different temperature than just regular Manhattans alone.
But I used to at the bar use as a visual indication of the correct drinking temperature that uh it went it goes from being cloudy back to being clear. And you know, then that corresponds, not because of a physics reason, but just because it happens to correspond to the proper the the coldest proper temperature at which I'll serve in Manhattan. So also like if you're at a if your freezer is minus five, that's a very special freezer. You're using a dipper, uh like an ice cream dipper freezer or something like that. Because most most freezers are going to be rocking around minus 20 Celsius.
Oh no we just we just jerry rigged it with a with a PID controller to turn it on and off. So it does it's not absolutely minus five but it hovers between minus five because minus five shouldn't cloud minus five should still be not cloudy. So it's it's interesting to me that um it could you know it's interesting to me that that happens it could be like some combination of the oak and the I mean they're different phenomena and I don't know I mean Ariel know much better whether those phenomena have any sort of interaction pectin hazing versus the polyphenol like the oak what's it's I don't know what really is but why oak elagitanins? There you go. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh but like do those would it would they interact with the pectin in any way? I'm I'm not sure I know that they interact with protein a lot but like that's how astringency works. Um I would have to look into that more. Do you remember the old detergent ad protein gets out protein?
No I don't it's one of those stupid things. Protein gets out protein. They're like trying to tell you that this this detergent had protein in it presumably some sort of enzymatic garbage that it had in it. And they're like and protein gets out protein. Like that has meaning that's like have you seen this there's this uh there's this advertisement I forget what it's for I don't know let's say it's like moderate to severe plaxoriasis because I have no idea I can't keep track of all the medicines that are advertised on TVs these days.
Yeah it's always moderate to severe something. Moderate to severe something. And they're like, cause six is greater than one. We act on six things. The other one acts on one.
Six, by the way, greater than one. That's why I love advertising. Like written by people who have no idea what's going on with the actual product. I love advertisements written by people that have no understanding of the underlying action of what they're doing. Don't you?
Love it. By the way, Nick Devlin is our com sole and uh our our differential our partial differential equation modeling expert. Did you know that? Experts pushing it, but um I knew he was like a physics person. He's a uh sustainable energy house uh person but trying to make the heat modeling trying to make and and Nick correct correct me if I'm wrong most uh most people uh try to go to high tech when they're doing that and don't don't just do the simple things to make their houses more efficient.
Isn't that what you told me? Yeah that's exactly you were listening. Yes. Yes that can be said so many things in my when I when we met up in person in Edinburgh I was functionally asleep. So it probably looked as though everyone was speaking to a mannequin because I was just kind of like sitting erect but I was in fact absorbing information.
By the way for those of you that don't know me that's the only function that I have on earth is I absorb information and then later can spit it back out. So anyway. So yeah so for those of you that are like you know thinking about spending eight zillion dollars on whatever system to make your house more efficient you probably haven't done the simple stuff. That's that's often true. Yeah I find by the way Nick same thing with cooking I'll have a but so when you were talking about hitting it again with Pec 10 X are you do you think in the diluted state or or uh when I've spun the booze out the first time and then hit it again with pectin and s or just wait, chill, chill it and see what happens or does the booze on its own cloud?
No. I mean, sometimes on some batteries we sometimes see a small amount of haze um okay to me that the that the booze on its own does not cloud leads me closer to the um the uh the oak base stuff being the problem because uh the clouding on an oak-based liquor gets worse and worse at lower temperatures when it's more and more diluted up to a point because the those those tannin things that I don't know what the hell they are that Ariel was talking about, uh are less soluble in water than in alcohol. And so uh they have a tendency to complex um more in the f well reversibly compliment whatever the hell it's doing to make them cloud up uh in the freezer at dilution than pure. That's why you can stick a bottle of uh bourbon in the freezer and it's or rye in the freezer and it's fine, and then once you make a Manhattan and put it in the freezer, it clouds. I don't so if the booze doesn't do it on its own, sounds like and maybe the pectin is ha making it happen at a slightly warmer temperature than it otherwise would, but it sounds like you're really at a uh a temperature-based reversible temperature based issue that has to do with the oak.
That's my guess. But hit it with pectin, either before pectin X, either before or after, and just see. I would just do a small test and and and see. It's a real hassle to have to re spin stuff, but empiricism always trumps theory. Yes, that's true.
Yeah. And that but and that also goes back to you know what we're saying about how people don't do the easy stuff. Same thing happens in cooking. People like all these complex theories, and as Nastasia says, just go in the kitchen and do it. Why don't you just do it?
Why are you asking me all this theoretical stuff? Why don't you just go cook it? Yeah, see what happens. How many times have you said it to me? So many times.
So many times. So many times. So many times. All right, you want to take a break? All right, Nick.
Good to hear from you. We're gonna take a break. All right, come back with more cooking issues. Bob's Red Mill has been milling whole grains since 1978. When you mill whole grains, you get all three parts of the seed: the bran, the germ, and the endosperm.
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Learn more at Bob'sredmill.com/slash podcast. And we're back. We got uh we got uh Booker, we got Ariel, we got Matthew. Although Matthew, you haven't been saying much. Say a word.
Say something. I'm between the mics, it's alright. Between the mics? Yeah. Nice.
All right. So between two mics. So we had a question in from uh, hey, you know what? Ariel might know about this. It's good.
I think I might have addressed it a little bit last week, but we'll readdress it since uh Ariel's here. Kyle writes in about uh cocktail aging. By the way, before we leave, we'll talk Thanksgiving. Just remind me when we have like a little bit of time left, we'll do Thanksgiving. Uh I've been intrigued by uh I think we did do this by Suvi low temp method of mimicking the effects of cocktail aging.
Uh I've recently started tinkering with the concept uh with mixed results. I'm aware that Tony Kiliaro has been doing this technique for many years, and more recently has produced a line of bottled Negroni. What do you think about using Negroni as its own plural there? Bottled Negroni. Would an American would say Negroni's?
Mm-hmm. But it so the Negroni is named after a person named Negroni. Okay, well, yeah, but Italian lady, Nastasia, like Well, if it's a last name, then it would be Negroni's, right? Like if it was a Negroni family, the Italians would still say, well, it doesn't matter. They wouldn't say they'd be like, what's up with those Negronies?
There's no Negrono. Right. There's no Negrono. Negroni is the singular. Well, maybe you should come up with a Negrono.
Do you think I don't think anyone would order that? Uh excuse me, one Negroni is a Negrono. And I'll have one with my Panino when I go to Halvin. Right? I mean, that's like.
Anyone who says Panino, by the way, what are your thoughts on that? I would like a panino. Like have you ever seen that? I've heard it happen, right? Oh yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I should, you know, since when am I the great populist? It's not how I am, but what I'm saying is, like, I mean, a little bit, I guess, but you know. I just think it's weird when someone says it's like it's similar to how for years I resisted using whatever Starbucks Starbucks was trying to tell me to order the sizes. I would Oh, like a grandeur. I would always say I would like a small.
I would say, oh, or like my classic one with well, because I only really get espresso, all I get. I was like, I will have a double espresso. They're like, dopio, double. Dopio, double. And we see how many times they can go back.
And eventually both of us would just stand in silence staring at each other, and the coffee would appear. But no one would give up. I feel like there's situations where you're technically right, but you're a jerk because you're wasting the time of a person who's underpaid to deal with you. Why not do it in crowded places? No, but the thing is your time because they want you to like just use their vocabulary.
Well, but I don't want to be forced into some stupid. First of all, they're all Americans. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to be forced into using some dumb. I'm taking your side.
No, but I'm saying that like the clerk doesn't make that rule. They probably have to say that. But you're paid, like, so let me take a $8 an hour to like argue with you about what they're what corporate is making them say. So in her mind, here's here's what happens. He's like, I come up, she's like, please not, please not, please not.
Yeah, I'll have a double espresso. Oh. Like that. And then because she knows she has to go through it. I feel a little worse for her, right?
Lord, give me strength. But let me ask you a question. What is your feeling on allowing yourself to get look? The Starbucks corporation has made a made a decision you don't enjoy, right? You're not so you're not so angry about it that you won't hand them your cash.
But you don't like it, right? Your only point of interface is with this person. So she is bearing the brunt of it, but I mean, what else are you supposed to do? You could write a letter. Write a letter?
Tweet at them. Tweet? Yeah, when you tweeted airlines when you're like delayed or there's some other problem, they'll usually respond to that. Whatever. I mean, it's a it's a greater problem of like the What if you say to them, I understand this is not your problem, and you're just saying what you have to say, but I will only say double.
And they'll say, I understand, but I have to say this. Well, you can say you could say double espresso, and she says dopio espresso, and you both know what each other is talking about, you can be like, okay with that. It's kind of like if you're in Montreal and like you're speaking English to a clerk and they're speaking French back at you, and you both speak like slowly enough that you know what the other is saying, but neither of you is like such a jerk that you're going to insist that one says one the other way. You're like uh you're like a diplomat here. I like it.
I like it. Ariel the diplomat. So anyway. Yeah. Uh so Tony has been.
So we're back to we're back to Negronies. Remember where we started, aging Negronies. Remember, everyone remember where we started. Tony has produced a line of bottled Negroni that have undergone gentle circulation at low temperature for an unspecified amount of time to ideally to produce a more mellow and subtle. Subtill, subtle, subtle town.
We're going to subtle town, subtle beverage. Uh do you have any suggestions as to time and temperature for circulating stirred and/or built cocktails when the intent is to mimic the effects of classic bottle aging? By the way, built cocktails shouldn't age that much because you haven't really changed the proof appreciably, and you're not adding any wine based stuff. So I don't think they'll change as radically. A built cocktail is not gonna change as radically unless the syrup is fruit-based or has something that's gonna move, right?
So like certain things move and certain things don't move. Like uh you straight aged distillates that are basic just distillates that have been aged tend after they've been bottled to move not very much. Say it's true. They don't move very much. Maybe they move, but not a lot.
You know what I mean? Whereas things that have anything that is uh anything that's still reactive, like fruits or any non-distillate-based stuff, you know, that they tend to move when they're in a bottle and can be changed by the temperature which they're stored, the time at which they're stored, the oxygen level above the bottle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um blah blah blah baddy. Anyway, uh, do we have any times, uh temperatures? Also, do you leave some air in the bag when circulating to allow for mild oxidation or pull a vacuum and remove all air?
My first attempt was, I believe, a too low a temperature or too short of a duration to produce noticeable results. It was a 48 C. My second trial was too high because the bag ballooned up when I was concerned about it popping at 58C. It really shouldn't balloon at 58. Any suggestions or thoughts would be greatly appreciated, Kyle.
So, first of all, like heating wine, so there's wine in an agroni, so I would imagine that heating it is going to produce more matterized, oxidized kind of notes. Uh and the oxygen, what do you think? Yes. But what do you think? What do you any any uh suggestions as to time or temperature or anything like that?
And what do you think the primary uh thing of a jig is with the with the bottle aging these things? The primary like axis of change? Yes. And do you like the bigger? I mean, but bear in mind, bear mine.
So if you're adding you're adding vermouth, like that's already somewhat oxidized. Yes. But we all know what happens to vermouth when you like it can be too oxidized. What what causes the peanut peanut y flavor of like oxidized martini and rossi? Like the classic crappy oxidized, overused vermouth peanut taste.
I wanna say acid aldehyde, but that's you know what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, yeah. It's nasty. I don't like it. Yeah.
Do you like it? Not really. Yeah. And it's turned me off of martini and rossi, which other people seem to still like, but like the the growing up with that kind of half open crap bottle of has ruined the whole that whole thing for me. Right.
But so but you would you still agree that the main axis of change is the vermouth? It has to be, right? Well, you know what though? Kampari moves in the presence of acid. I know this for a fact.
Like in the presence of acid, compari gets much more intensely bitter over time. Now, the not that much acid present, it's just the acid, the fruit acid from the vermouth. Right. But still like a reasonable amount of acid. Right.
What are your thoughts on forced uh temperature aging in wines? Uh who does that? People, so there's a famous guy whose name escapes me because he was famous in the 1980s, who uh had an amazing wine cellar, and his wine cellar was always at a fairly high constant but high temperature. And his argument was that his wines just aged faster than people who stored their wines in normal cellar temperatures. Um, that's why rums age faster in the Caribbean than scotches do in Scotland.
Yeah, it's cold in Scotland. You know what I mean? But but and why and why you can have a longer age scotch than you can a bourbon, although bourbon's also newer barrels, so there's more extractives. It's a double whammy as we say on Francais. But the Well, I mean, so the Arhenius equation says that for every 10, I might be butchering this, but 10 degrees Celsius rays in temperature, you'll double the rate of chemical reactions that are happening.
Yeah, I mean in roughly, right? Yeah. On that order. Yeah. On that order.
Well, that's what this guy was arguing. But so the put the point is they the problem is is that not everything shifts at the same time. So you can't ship you can't sh you can't speed shift most cooking uh things because they're too complicated because the rates don't trace 100% because it's only first order correct. The rates all increase but not to the same degree. Bing dingo.
And that's why also when you're doing uh infusions, when you change the overall infusion rate, you change the you change the resultant because things don't scale like infusion rates of different compounds don't scale linearly with pressure, with temperature, with solvent. You know what I mean? It's so it's like anyway. My point is if you like it, do it. If you don't like it, don't do it.
Okay, we're going to the end, so you better talk Thanksgiving. Oh geez Louise, but I had some pectin, I had a methyl cell. Oh, by the way. Be thankful for what you get. Oh so uh so Justin also wrote in uh uh a while ago with a bunch of other questions, but he was interested in doing low temperature uh evaporation and asked about freeze uh freeze thaw concentration, similar to what's doing with Applejack.
And I went to uh Cuisine Solutions, you know, Bruno Gusseau's uh uh company, uh Bruno Gusot and Cray, you know, the the the guy, the Just Temp guy, you know, who's like doesn't believe in low temperature because he's just tamp. But anyway, so he uh he has this new thing, not new, but it's cryo concentration, where on purpose they're doing freeze thaw and they're spinning it out in things like salad spinners and whatnot, and they're doing freeze thaw concentration on uh on stuff up to a fairly high bricks. And it's pretty interesting, and it's it's fairly it's it's morally equivalent to freeze-thaw agar clarification or a freeze-thaw um or free-staw gelatin clarification because you're ex preferentially extracting the stuff out that melts first, which is why you know why ice one. Yeah, right, but in a non-alcohol base. Because the one that actually that they use, right?
The the analogy that they use is when you buy an icy or slushy or slurpy and you stick your straw in the bottom and just keep on a sucking without stirring, right? You end up with white ice and all of the syrup in your mouth. So, anyway, so yes, you could attempt so I would look up cryo conservation on the cuisine solutions website. Is this Thanksgiving related? It is about to be Thanksgiving related.
I was I here's my pitch. When all of you guys out there are thinking about what you're gonna do for Thanksgiving, take into consideration this idea: two turkeys, two turkeys, two turkeys, two turkeys. One turkey? No. How many turkeys, Ariel?
Zero. No. Two turkeys. First of all, if you're gonna cook a big Thanksgiving, this is for people who are gonna cook a big Thanksgiving. Or turkey skin.
Well, uh, that is actually is that true? Yes, you want to have more turkey snacks. Yeah, more surface. But the the the issue here, the issue is is that big turkeys A are more difficult to cook than small turkeys properly because they're it's just it's the how the way the physics works, and they take longer. But you can cook one if you're gonna cook a l cook a small-sized bird whole, much easier to get a small turkey to be decently done, and we can talk about that later, whether it's brining that just the breast via injection, whether it's low temping, whatever.
You need to bring a whole bird to the table because hello because of reasons, because of America. And then, yeah, yeah, and then and then issues people, but then your second turkey, you break it down into small pieces, and you chicken fry it. Right? And you can cut them into the same sizes that you would chicken fry, and then you have a basket of chicken-fried turkey. If you wanted to, you could pan off or catch torture roast individually, whatever.
But break apart one turkey and serve it piece by piece, cook it exactly the way it wants to be cooked, or rather the way you want it to be cooked, but to its specification. And then just do a smaller whole roast bird that you bring to the table, and you know what? Everyone will be happy. The roast bird they can eat for for leftovers on turkey sandwiches, which is kind of what God wants you to do with the turkey anyway, because turkey sandwiches are so delicious. So anyway, so uh more Thanksgiving questions, but take that advice when you're planning this year cooking issues.
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