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Find us at heritageradio network.org. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? I'm sick. Still?
Yeah. But you don't allow yourself to be sick. I know. I think it's getting me back for all those years. I mean, Nastasia, you don't allow yourself to be sick.
You know what? You know what we say in my family? This means you don't have enough to do. Ooh. That's not true.
Yeah, it's like only you got time to clean. Yeah, if you got time to be sick, you got time to, you know, I don't know, think about being sick. You have you have time to think about your body. That's the first mistake. You know what I mean?
It's like you remember in school, you'd be like, chick, chick, chuk chick, and then the exams are over, and you're like, I'm gonna enjoy the show. You know what I mean? Because as soon as you no longer have a boat ton of work to do, you fade. You know what I mean? As soon as you retire and you don't do anything, you're gone.
You know what I mean? Can we talk about Sears all real quick? Yeah, but to paraphrase Dave, the other Dave. If you have time to lean, you're gonna die. Yeah, that's true.
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. All right, let's talk about Searsols.
We don't know what's going on. They're off, they're on, they're off, they're on. I get people tweeting me saying, Oh, I bought one, and then it's in five seconds later it disappears. It's like some sort of magic mirrors game. It's it's my favorite will they won't they storyline right now.
Yeah? Like your soap opera that you watch? Yeah, this is my soap opera. Oh, nice. Well, uh interestingly, um just bought one and it's shipped to them, and they and sp like Amazon still said, Amazon still said buy the tall yeah, oh, and Amazon is actually calling Nastasia, I mean calling Nastasia right now.
Normally she doesn't take calls. Normally she just text people incessantly during the show, but she's actually taking a call from Amazon. She also has the loudest coat of anybody on the network. Really? Yeah, definitely.
That's a good that's a good uh She does a lot of switching in there. Yeah. So anyway, so Amazon um recommends you buy these the that that's tall skinny tanks uh for your Searsol, which is of course a freaking nightmare. Uh and you know, people then think that I have recommended it, and then uh I get very bent like a pretzel. Anyway, uh long story short, they have a zillion of them.
I think they're fulfilling all the back orders, and then we'll figure out what's going on from there. Calling your questions to 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Next week, we have with us, I'm pretty sure next week. Dave, is that true?
Do you know? Finish the sentence. I don't know. Oh, you mean are we doing a show next week? No, next week we have Johnny Hunter from uh from Underground, you know, collective in uh Madison, Wisconsin coming on.
We're gonna do our cooking issues, meet spectacular. It's gonna be a meat tacular event where we just so over the next week, send in all of your meat-related, all of your meat-related questions. Oh, not just meat, like cured meat, really. Curing meats, smoking meats, smoking cured meats. Also, uh, I happen to know that Johnny puts almost just as a matter of course, puts almost everything in the kitchen through his large uh um meat grinder just to see what'll happen.
Like masa through the meat grinder. I'm sure, you know, I'm sure he's fed all sorts of like weird things through his meat grinder. So if you have any questions on, you know, what what can I do with my meat grinder? Uh calling for that. Was that Amazon stuff?
No, it was not. It was my apartment. Why would Seattle call it? No, it wasn't Seattle, it was an 800. They were calling from an 800 thing.
So you have no word other than the fact that they're fulfilling back orders, and every once in a while the computer allows them to sell 12 and then they go back. I guess, but I don't know how they're doing it there. Yeah. They know that we're very angry. Yeah, uh, tell them the uh tell them the I think it's called their reply email to me is like angry angry customer at Amazon.com.
Like, but it but within a bunch of numbers, so they think I can't see it. No, like the reply, the instant reply to me is uh Oh, it's like the subject. Yeah, yeah, angry, yeah, angry scan, angry scan 29101. That's a good that's a red flag. So uh Dave, you think that's more of a band, more of a song, angry scan?
Angry scan. But don't you think that they think that they know that their customers can see that? And they're like, Yeah, it sounds like one of those internal things, like remember, as we as we said, like the minute you hang up a phone with any human being at Amazon, that person has quit. Yeah, and a new person is taking their no, but don't you think it's not it's like when you put on somebody's check at a restaurant, like you describe the person instead of like the table number. Oh, instead of the table number, you're like butt head on the right.
Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's basically what they're doing to me. Yeah, yeah. But again, they they don't care.
Like the employees there, it's like Pez dispensers. It's like as soon as you open one, it's eaten and chewed up and spat out. Or whatever. You ever been to the Pez Museum? I never never been to the Pez museum.
No, I've asked you to stop every time we pass it. What? This is a lie. No, every time we have gone up to Harvard or gone to your house, I'm like, ooh, Pez Museum. And you were like, mmm.
So you know what it is, right? You go there, you stare at a bunch of Pez dispensers, but then for your whatever 10 bucks entrance fee, you fill up a sack with Pez. Just like a sack of Pez. Cool. Do you like Pez?
They're okay. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'm just Yeah. I mean, like, I I used to sit there, load them very carefully. That last freaking Pez never fits into the Spencer.
Yeah. And then I was just like quick draw McGraw like brrrrrr like shooting those things into my mouth as fast as humanly possible. You know what I mean? See, I like to bite through a whole stack of them and just see if I could do a clean bite all the way down through. Really?
Yeah. Like like a like a kung fu, like brick smashing type of thing. So yours never even made it into the into the dispenser. No, once in a while, but you know. Did you save the dispensers or were you like, what the hell is this?
Don't you think that person's a billionaire? Who? The pe the original. The Pez ventor? Yeah.
I doubt it. Right. I mean, I don't know. Nobody else makes them. Nobody else makes it because Randolph Pez.
I mean, the thing is like how many, like, you know, the patents only last, as you know, for like you know, a very finite amount of time, and Pez has been around a good long. I think, you know, the thing is. That's something you would make. People are like, people are like, you wanna out Pez Pez? No.
You know what I mean? Like a Mistas and I I got a business idea. We're gonna make alternative Pez. We're gonna take on the tops manufacturing corporation for baseball cards. You're probably like the guy who created the Pez dispenser.
There's something useless that nobody wants. So uh speaking of useless ID. Well, speaking of useless uh IES, uh those of you who have purchased spinzalls with our holiday promotion need to set your email crap to we can contact you. Otherwise we can't send you the freaking thing. Like half the people that bought it Well, the thing is we can send it to the address that their spinzall is being sent to.
We're just confirming that that's correct because that's what we're doing. But they won't they can't they don't even see it? But we it will go to that address that you that the spinzel's being sent to. We're just being nice and confirming that that's where you want your enzymes. Yeah.
Like maybe you bought one for somebody else, but you want to keep the enzymes. Whatever. Uh so it looks like I didn't know this because Nastasi just handed it to me because even though it was sent to me, it sent it to her house. We do not live anywhere near each other, people. We have if we did it, it would be like these weird bunk beds or something.
Like th like well, and that infinitely thick would just be like stacks and stacks of stuff like I like like we try to avoid each other basically as much as humanly possible. Although this year we are gonna have a holiday party. Really? I mean, i.e. we're gonna sit down and have a drink.
Rainbow, yeah. Yeah, anyway. Uh James Peterson wrote many years ago, I guess in the eighties, one of my favorite all time cookbooks, uh, his book on sauces, which, you know, at the time won all the awards, and apparently they just and it's one of those books that everybody loves that's read it. And apparently they just came out with a fourth edition. It is much physically larger than the old one.
It's like a large book. Like Nastasia was considering not giving it to me so that she could use it to separate the hot side from the cold side instead of my book is the right thickness. It's the right thickness. This one's too heavy. It looks like there's a lot more information.
The interesting thing about Peterson's uh sauce book from the 80s was at the time the uh kind of the the the shtick that everyone was doing was um for liaison for sauce, they were just boiling straight cream down into like super thick cream. So he had a boat ton of reduced cream sauces in his last book, and I'm curious whether or not since I don't really see that as much anymore. Do you saw it's like super reduced cream sauces? No. No.
Uh yeah, so anyway, so uh I'm interested to see how that book has changed, but it's one of my all-time favorite books, so let's see what happened. Also, I was like, Nastasia before the show is like, hey, can we talk about you know how you make pasta, the pasta flour? She's like, no. I signed a contract. Well, it's like you have frozen, that's it.
Yeah, but you don't want in other words, like I think people would be interested. I mean, the shtick with the pasta is is that uh texture of the pasta is supposed to be similar to the way Mark used to cook it at Del Posto. Yeah. Like, you know, not mushy, not over, but done very quickly without skill, right? Right.
And so, like, you know, I was like, hey, that might be useful for like, you know, Jane and Joe person who wants to make a bunch of stuff in advance and then like take maybe pasta to work with them and then do like a quick finish at work in in the nuke or whatever. And I was like, let you know, maybe we could discuss how you might go about doing this. And Nastasi goes, I am contractually obliged to not discuss this in public. That's true. So she could tell you how to do it.
I could tell you how to do it. But I would then But she won't. I can't. I just give it to it. She could.
I I could, but I can't. I am contractually obliged to not. And she won't. And I won't. And she won't.
You know, she'll blab about any other thing. If you have any sort of secret and you want the entire world to know it, better than using Instagram or I know stuff you don't know that I wish I could tell you about that. Oh wow. Now, oh look at me. Tell me.
Nastasia, you forget, I grew up with a shrink. I'm used to not being able to like I'm used to like, you know, someone coming home at the end of the night and being like, wow, what a crazy day. You would not believe what happened. What happened? I can't tell you.
You know what I mean? I'm used to this. This is like my whole life. It doesn't bother me. Yeah, no, but I wish I could tell you because I know you would get a kick out of some of these things, but I can't.
Yeah. Because you would be the right person to tell. Yeah. Alright. Okay.
So talked about Johnny Hunter while you thought you were talking about Amazon. Uh we did a spins all update. They're in stock and will continue to be in stock. Sears all, we're trying, we're working real hard. Uh Nastasia's got her angry.
What is angry scan? I think the thing that makes me most mad is that in the beginning when we first started selling Sears Alls, certain people were like, this is a useless tool. Nobody will want it. Certain people you mean uh we can't. We're contractually obliged to not say who that was.
But uh now, you know, that's what makes me most angry. Yeah, you know, I want to yeah, anyway. Uh anywho, uh moving on. Um let's get to uh let's get to some questions here. Um let me see.
For some reason my phone decided, you know what I'm gonna do, I think in the new year, my new year's resolution? I'm gonna print the questions out on paper so I don't have to fudge around with the phone. I'm becoming more of a Luddite as I get older. You know what I mean? What about you?
You becoming more of a Luddite? No, I'm trying to be more technology forward. Yeah? Yeah, you you look like it. The Christmas hat's very technology forward.
Yeah. Um anyway, okay. Kevin McHugh writes in. Hello, cooking issues team. What would you recommend as a gift for the cocktail nerds in my life?
They have extensive liquor cabinets and all the traditional tools. I was thinking about a collection of different acids, or perhaps pectanex. Uh this is for a relatively small budget, just a token, small token between friends. I'd be interested to hear uh what to get on a larger budget, though. Thank you, Kevin McHugh.
That's a good question. So um, I mean, look, it all depends on on you. Like uh I should never have a ballpoint pen in my hand during these because I I have the nervous I'm a nervous clicker. Um it all depends on kind of a your friends, so like a lot of bartenders I know are very hyper obsessed with like the shiniest or like the coolest looking or how things look. As for me, I don't care about that so much, right?
So I'm more I'm much more of a function guy. So from a functional standpoint, if they don't already have the Don Lee design cocktail, uh cocktail kingdom strainer, the one with the really fine wire, I would go ahead and get that. Uh that way you're not gonna get ice shards, uh they're not gonna get ice shards in their drink, and they're not gonna have to double strain. If you double strain, you'll kill the foam, especially if you're doing anything that like you know needs a lot of foam. So I highly recommend that.
It's basically the only um it's the only one I use. Uh the other, you know, you could if you want to, you know, it doesn't actually really we don't even actually make any money off of it, but if but the cocktail cube uh, you know, uh would help them texturize uh their drinks better when they're shaking. I would also say that you know, if they don't already have large ice molds, those are also nice. These are all things for for shaking. I never use those cubes for stirred drinks, although I guess you could, they're just but they're like what I mean I'm so used to clear ice that like when someone hands me the like a cloudy ice cube I'm just like no what do you care about that stuff size?
No. You don't already order that kind of drink though. No. You never order like a drink on a rock right no I'm only gonna order champagne at your bar. You're not you're such a bad person.
You're just like a low quality individual all the way around. It's just like you're just like you're just like a rotten, rotten friend. It's like you know what I mean? Like you're that person that like everyone's like do you have a friend who's just like rotten to you all the time and like yeah yeah I got that. You know what?
Because my my life isn't already stressful enough. You know what I mean? Anyways uh that's great. So uh I would get uh you know something like that. Obviously if you have a boat ton of money what should they buy Anastasia?
Tens all. There you go. Uh see what else uh the cocktail but if you want to get an acid kit I think that's a really good uh idea. The issue is is that obviously you're gonna need to give them some recipes. So the the main acids that you know are used in the bar are very very foremost obviously citric and malic those are the two most important by far and then uh after that tartaric and lactic and then after that phosphoric a lot of people if you're buying phosphoric you might want to buy uh you know um Darcy O'Neill's uh Foss whatever it's called Foss called something foss something phos tart or something like that um that's you know his kind of buffered one phosphoric acid is rather difficult to work with because a little bit too much goes a long way it's unique in that it is inorganic and therefore um it has a it doesn't taste like a fruit acid.
It has a very particular taste. And Nastasia does not enjoy it in anything other than cola. Is that correct? You never any bartender serves you with phosphoric acid drank you're like remember when you made that cola with um uh that digestive at Mario's bar and then you put ice in it and I didn't like it. Because it was too watery or what?
No, it was a carbonated drink that you put ice into. Oh, because I put ice into it, but I put into it because I thought the Mario crew would like it more, and you're like, Why have you sold your soul? This is actually completely unrelated to this. You just want me to feel bad. You're like, you just want me to feel like a bad person.
Anyway, uh so you're like, Dave, you hate ice in carbonated drinks like this, so why do you serve it this way? Yeah, but completely unrelated to the topic of this person buying acids for their friend. I mean, not even related, like not even similar. I mean, like they both involve beverages. What we were doing was carbonating, like I forget what it was.
We're carbonating an Amaro. Yeah, we're I forget which amaro it was, and it had a very distinct cola-like flavor on its own with a little bit of acid in it. Maybe that's what you thought of a little bit of acid, and I put it over ice, and Nastasi's like, I hate it. And then and then like I poured on one without the ice, and she's like, good. You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, but that's actually what she was like. Adequate. Doesn't suck. It's like my grandpa, my my uh well, I guess they're both dead now, but like, you know, like whenever you asked him how you know how he was doing. Vertical, i.e., like not dead yet.
Of course, not true anymore. Or like the other thing he would say, which was a lot of times not because how are you doing soberly? Like he always say, you know? He you always had one word or you know, maximum two word answers for anything. Grandpa, why don't you like chicken?
It's foul. You know what I mean? Grandpa, why don't you like mushrooms? Toadstools. You know what I mean?
Like that's like all he would ever do. You know what I mean? So yeah, yeah, he was a joy. Uh a joy. So wait, so what were you talking about before that?
We're talking oh, cocktail acids. So the thing with um phosphoric is I find it difficult to use. Um if you are using malic and citric, uh, that's a very nice thing to get somebody. I would just give them the recipes. Um I would give them a recipe for acid-adjusted orange juice, which is of course 32 grams of um uh 32 grams of citric and 20 grams of malic acid per uh per liter of OJ.
Uh you can include some others like how to adjust grapefruit or how to adjust um pineapple's actually uh you know, I suggest pineapple's good. So you can give those kinds of things. Um the tartaric and lactic you can use to make uh the champagne acid, which is in liquid intelligence, which you can find on Amazon's look inside if you don't want to buy the book. Um so those are good to have. Uh what other adjuncts are good to have?
Like eyedroppers for salt solutions, I think are useful for people to have. I don't know, what do you think, Stuff? You're like you're like, don't care. Don't care. Uh I don't care.
But I think these are good things for people to have. And I would much rather have something like that than um hyper fancy spoon, although I like a hyper fancy spoon. The other thing that some people don't have uh is bar mat. And you want to get a decent bar mat because the bad bar mats, they stink forever. Like I don't know what molds they put it in.
Remember, like when we buy new bar mats, the entire place would smell like new bar mat, which is gross. But bar mats, if pe if the if people don't already have a bar mat, you must have a bar mat. They're awesome. Also, if they have some sort of crappy little lightweight muddler, get them the badass muddler from uh from cocktail kingdom anyway these are good suggestions right remember that event that we worked when they said you they wanted you to make random cocktails in addition to the ones that you were make that you had made customers or the people wanted me to it was at a private residence oh and they're like what they're like they said can you just make whatever somebody asks uh because we have a whole liquor cabinet and you said if Jesus came what did I say if Jesus came down and asked me to baby bird feed him any cocktail that he wanted I would tell him to go F himself what? Yeah I like the idea that baby Jesus is drinking cocktails.
And you're a baby bird feeding him I must have been angry. I don't know I don't know it's a good Davism right Dave I don't know I have I have no recollection of saying that I'm not denying that I said that I just have no recollection of it. Speaking of low quality individuals by the way uh I noticed that I was passing by on the way over here uh taco bell has a rolled chicken taco now and hello that doesn't exist rolled tacos don't exist people they have a different name why would they no no they're like they're like little taquitos enchelado no they're like little fried like taquitos or like you know I was like man you you guys suck rolled taco like they get to think that they invented it you know what I mean like they own that no um okay, uh let me see here. I this is from Julian. I don't know whether I answer this, but I have more to say if I did.
Uh Julian writes in, I live in a small apartment w without a stove hood, uh, but love the flavor of grilling. Are there any ways to grill indoors that aren't completely insane or ways to otherwise replicate those flavors? I miss grilled steaks, broccoli, asparagus, etc. Might have uh answered this already, but I have different answers now. Uh I own and love a Sears all, but it doesn't get me the same big charge, slightly bitter flavors that a hot grill can.
Any tips here? Thanks, Julian. Okay, look. Here's the thing. Like, uh there's what I can reasonably recommend that you do, and there's like the crap that I used to do back when I was young, right?
I mean, I used to do really, really uh dumb things. Let me give me an example. Part of the problem with hoods, or anything in general, when you're trying to evacuate, and the reason why evacuate fumes, not your not your family, is that let's say you open a wooden uh window and you put a uh a fan in the window, right? So that fan is way far away from where you're where you're cooking, and what happens is uh, you know, it the you're taking air from the whole room, and the smoke that you're making is kind of spilling out in all directions. And unless all of that air goes in through the fan, you're pretty much hosed.
And the further you are away from the fan, and the more volume that that fan, because the fan has a certain amount of uh, you know, at whatever you know, pressure it's working at a certain number of cubic feet per minute that it can suck through, right? Uh and so if you're calculating, for instance, in a paint hood, uh, you know, under in a paint booth, you calculate how fast the air needs to get evacuated to suck out all the stuff, and so you look at the area of your hood uh times the um the cu you know the cubic feet per per minute, and you can figure out the linear feet kind of at the top to figure out whether you're in good shape. But hoods don't really work this way, and they don't really no one really calculates uh how many CFM you need um if you're going to do something unreasonable which is what I used to do so when I had my first fryer right uh I you know fryer I there are roughly 90,000 BTUs so a lot uh and they make not just a lot of heat they make a lot of oil uh a lot of oil uh stuff coming out of them as anyone that's ever fried in their house without a hood knows um so uh what I did was is don't do this by the way this is insane it's completely insane I went to Home Depot and I bought the two cheapest cheapest as Patrick would say the cheapest meat I bought the cheapest uh range hoods I could get right two of them brone B R O A N the equivalent to the current model uh 4200 which is 30 inches wide uh and you know takes a seven inch uh round ducted pipe coming out of it and I just zip screwed them together back to back so I just took two range hoods and bolted them back to back so I had a roughly 30 by 30 inch or 30 by 36 inch or something like this square of hood. I then just took those two pipes coming out and put them directly out the window just like took hard pipes boom boom two seven inch uh you know solid pipes and put them right out the window uh and bang that was it and uh that sucker uh completely evacuated all of the fumes from that fryer in addition it melted all of the internal components over the years that I did it of the of the hood was probably completely dangerous by the way the one of the problems with these hoods is that you can get uh deposits on the inside of the hoods, and then those can catch on fire and cause kind of big problems. Uh so I can't recommend it, it's completely unsafe.
But you could make one of these little uh you could take two of these hoods, bolt them together, and put a pipe that fits out the window, slide the window down, roll it up to it, and just boom shoot this stuff out your window, uh, and then put it in your closet when you're not going to use it, but you would be risking fire. The other problem is is if uh you're gonna pipe smoke directly out your window, like charcoal grilling smoke directly out your window, you have to worry that your neighbors might call the fire department on you. This has only happened to me a couple of times, but it's extremely unpleasant to have the fire department come up because obviously you're not supposed to have an open fire in your uh house. Um but I have to say uh that if it worked well for a fryer, it would probably work very well also for a grill. Now, the issue here is that if you have open flames coming out of your grill, you will instantly melt uh all the undersides of your of your hood, and you'll be in oh, I I also I didn't tell you.
I put the hood much closer to the fryer than is advisable. I hung it, I hung it basically as low as I could, um, so that it, you know, that there would be no uh spillover. But the lower you hang it, the more uh heat you have, and the real issue you're gonna have there is fire licking up on the sides of your of your thing. Now, if you built an extremely small fire, put a baffle over it, use like a small hibachi, and you did it, but then you're not uh rip roaring. I'm talking about what you would do if you were a completely unreasonable person.
Now I don't recommend any of you go do this because you might just the fact that I am have not killed myself does not mean you will not kill yourself. You know, my son makes this mistake all the time. Dax makes the mistake of thinking that just because he hasn't hurt himself in the past that he won't hurt himself in the future. Uh the older you get, the more you realize that's just not the case. What?
Wisdom. Wisdom. Wisdom. The problem is that they don't believe you. They're like, you did all that stupid stuff and you didn't die.
You're like, yes, but what I'm trying to tell you is that I was lucky, but they're like, well, I'll be lucky. You know what I mean? People don't learn. People, you can't, this is you can't get your kids or anyone else to learn from your mistakes. You just can't do it.
Isn't that frustrating? Mm-hmm. Anyway. Um super frustrating. You want to take a break?
Uh yeah, that's a good idea, actually. Alright, we'll take a break, come back with Kugnish. Bob's red mill has been milling whole grains since 1978. When you mill whole grains, you get all three parts the bran, the germ, and the endosperm. The bran, or the rough edge, makes up about 14% of the whole grain.
It's the outer skin of the edible kernel. It contains large amounts of B vitamins, some protein, trace minerals, phytochemicals, but most importantly, dietary fiber. The germ is only about 2.5% of the kernel. It's actually the sprouting section of the seed, what's gonna grow into a plant. It's usually separated during milling process because it contains most of the fat and therefore has a shorter shelf life.
The endosperm is the main energy storage unit of the seed. That's where the growing plant gets its energy before it can start photosynthesizing and making its own. It makes up a huge portion of the grain, about 83%. And it's the main source that's used for white flour. When you make white flour, you get rid of the germ and the bran and just have the white endosperm left.
It contains almost all the carbohydrates. It also contains protein and iron and some of the other B vitamins as well. It's kind of what you classically think of when you're thinking of flour. So all that's there when you're milling with whole grains, but when you mill with whole grains, you also get the bran, which is the kind of rough edge and gives the that's what gives that that kind of color to it. Also gives you extra fiber that uh helps you to be regular, and you also get the germ, which adds the fat and the flavor, which we all like from whole grains.
Learn more at Bob'sRedmill.com/slash podcast. Learn more. How long is that? How long is that break, Dave? Nastasi and I are sticking chopsticks through our ears to pop rupture our eardrums so that we can make it through.
How long is that? That was a minute and a half. Jeez. It's not unusual. Oh my god.
So boring. Hey, here's here's maybe it's uh, you know, the the messenger. Oh you wrote the message for him. I didn't I didn't personally write that. Yeah, all right.
So, hey, true fact, I actually do like wheat germ. Do you like wheat germ stuff? No, I don't think so. No? Why?
What about you, Dave? You like wheat germ? Uh, no opinion, I guess. What what context would I be eating wheat germ in? I like to put wheat germ in my pancakes.
In my pancake batter. You know, uh, you know, Paul Adams was here, I guess last week, right? Yes. Yeah. So he's like, you know, now he's doing the the uh magazine, the Cooks Illustrated Magazine.
One thing I learned from them back in uh the year 1993 was add all of that kind of stuff to your batter uh very, very early because it's just like one of the reasons people have a problem is if you mix if you mix in white flour and then a bunch of other stuff like wheat germ and everything, like the white flour is gonna compete for hydration with the wheat germ. The wheat germ's just never gonna hydrate properly. So you gotta do a couple of minutes of pre-soak of uh things like wheat germ or anything like that to non-standard flour to get it to kind of swell, get as much water in as possible, and then you can add the rest of your solids. Little trick. But I love wheat germ in a pancake.
Uh I even sometimes um will add a little bit to the milk base in something like a biscuit. But I love I love the taste of wheat germ. I like it. Um another thing people don't necessarily know, a lot of times people are worried when they're working with alternative uh alternative uh things that that need extra hydration time. So thicker corn meals or wheat germ or any anything that's considered you know difficult to hydrate.
Just put it in the freaking blender because it everyone's worried about developing gluten, right? You're gonna aerate this stuff anyway, so you're not worried about getting too much air in it. You're not making crip. So, you know, uh Dax was making fun of the word crep the other day. He was like, what kind of food do you make?
Crip. Your food's crep? No, crep. He's going on because he's like you know, doing a crap crep thing because it's Dax. And we'll talk about Paris a little later.
Uh but my point being that uh don't be afraid to take your initial base, like uh if you're gonna put wheat germ or anything into let's say buttermilk for a pancake, just put all that crap in there in it with in a blender. Just blend it all and then pour it out, and then of course, don't blend in the main part. The other thing it's true is if you have a little bit of something starchy that doesn't have gluten in it, you can then add your fat or butter directly to that liquid base. And then once you add that stuff to the liquid base in the blender, it's much more difficult for gluten to form when you're stirring in your uh when you're stirring in your regular AP flour. So I almost always, when I'm making batters, I will add any non uh like non-gluten forming and or difficult to hydrate stuff first.
So I usually do a mixture in pancakes of, like I say, wheat germ. I a lot of times we'll add oats, because I also like oats in uh in pancakes. I'll do a very, very fast blend with a little bit of the AP flour. I'll add in the uh butter. At that point, you've really stopped a lot of the gluten, you're not gonna get a lot of gluten formation.
You stir in the uh in the rest of the flour, and you're you it's never gonna toughen up. I've never had them toughen up on me. Anyway, tips about wheat germ since we're since we had such a long thing on wheat germ during the break, I think I'd extend it even longer and have even more discussion of wheat wheat. You know who you got me to like? Buckwheat.
Yeah? I love buckwheat. Oh, your soda was good. Oh, that buckwheat soda was good, right? The buckwheat chai with the buckwheat.
Yeah, that's good with a little lime. So you take your buckwheat, you make a buckwheat tea, similar to, you know how do you like soba or not? No. Yeah. You know, at the end they serve you the little bit of anyway.
So it's kind of like that kind of liquid, but with unused kind of buckwheat, just like a buckwheat tea. Uh, then strain it with uh lime and just a hint of salt, and that makes a delicious soda. Unusual. Like it a lot. Uh but back to the wheat germ for one second.
Wheat germ, because it has the fat in it, you want to store that sucker in the fridge. You want to store your wheat germ in the fridge. You don't want to let it stay on the pantry because it'll go rancid. Rancid. Great band.
Yeah? You're a fan of rancid? Sure. Yeah? Dave, do you pine nuts have uh uh natural rancidity?
Uh all nuts, like many nuts will go rancid. I don't really know how fast pine nuts go rancid, but I know there are pine nuts that come out of the bag rancid. Um I know like certain walnuts go rancid really quickly. You like a rancid nut as much as I uh hate a rancid nut? Well no, someone at the restaurant told Mark that the pesto, she had a rancid meter, she was like rancid sensitive, and that the pesto was definitely rancid.
And I was like, Did you taste it? But then I was like, it must be the pine nuts because nothing else. Uh oil. Yeah, but meaning your pesto has what? Is it straight olive oil or olive oil butter mix?
No, straight olive oil. So straight olive oil, pine nuts, basil, garlic. Yeah. So yeah, the oil can go rancid, but you I think you'd notice that. And then I mean I guess it's theoretically true.
This pineapple, I mean there are those weird uh, you know, like remember Nick Wong got one of those weird pine nuts once that like took him out for like a month. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I never really understood what that was, the crazy pine nut. But yeah, he got a crazy pine nut that took him out.
Um there's another possibility is that this woman's bananas. You know what I mean? Yeah. No one else had a problem with it? No.
Because pretty much everyone can taste rancidity. She might be hypersensitive to it, but I think everyone would notice that there was something off. And you tasted it and you didn't notice anything off. Mark tasted it, he didn't notice anything off. It could also be something specific in her dish.
Maybe. You know what I mean? No one else had a problem that day with the pesto. Here's another thing. Like when you're making pesto, it's not you don't put individual pine nuts over the top, right?
No. It's it's all in there, right? So, like if you had like a couple of rancid pine nuts in there, you would it would totally obliterate the entire batch. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Or rancid or just off, like moldy let that's what I was saying. Remember I I was talking a couple weeks ago about how when I use pistachios at the bar or in restaurant, I make them I make everyone sort them all because the difference between blending unsorted uh pistachios from blending uh sorted pistachios is the difference between something that is not very good and something that's completely incredibly delicious. You know what I mean? Uh I mean, look, it's possible. Or this lady could have just did she was she like otherwise a good customer?
Yeah. Alright. Did you get her something else? Uh she didn't want anything else. Yeah.
Doesn't sound like a good customer. No, I don't think she was a good customer. So why do you say she was a good customer? Which is I've seen bad. So she wasn't bad.
Yeah, oh my god. Uh that's one of the things I'm looking forward to, is uh when we reopen the bar when we open the new bar. By the way, remember the first booker and Dax customer? Yeah, the very first customer was one of the worst customers I've ever had in my life. Yeah.
She wouldn't even let me pour her a drink. Yeah. She stormed out. Yeah. She was angry at me.
Yeah. What did you do? Nothing. She came in and she said uh she'd been waiting, waiting out outside for the door to open on the very first day that we were open. We didn't do any soft openings, we didn't do any friends and family, I don't think.
Maybe we had one friends and family, I don't know, but we had like uh we opened the doors, and you know, she was waiting in line, came in, was angry that she had been waiting in line on the very first day we're open, and then ordered, didn't look at the menu, ordered like uh like I think the equivalent of like a vodka soda, and I was like, Yeah, I'm ha I'm happy to make you that. It's gonna take me like 10 minutes because I have to I have to chill the vodka down. I don't have soda, I'm not gonna pour soda water into vodka, warm vodka over an ice cube, and and that's not gonna be the first drink I'm making at this bar. That won't happen. She's like, I'm more than happy to make you exactly what you want, but it's gonna take me a little bit of time to I have to carbonate it and all this.
She was like, this is ridiculous. She got up and left. I was like, wow. She was yelling at me. Remember?
You were there, weren't you? She was being so mean to me. But you know, it's like start. It's a great start. Great start.
I I honestly went like when she because I, you know, before that, you know, I had d done, you know, a boat ton of events, or you know, gone done, you know, guest things at other people's restaurants or whatever, but you know, that was the first place that I had ever opened, and I was like, this was a mistake. You know what I mean? Like, I should not have done this. You know what I mean? Like, um, anyways, uh, it got better.
Uh closed. Well, we as as I like to say, we lost our we lost our lease. It wasn't that we doesn't it wasn't like people didn't want to come have the drinks. You know, again, contractually obliged to not talk about it. Um Gordon wrote in a long time ago.
So I'm gonna finally get to it. Uh I have some questions for the cooking issues, folks, about methell meringues. Uh, please let me know if there's a better email. Nope, looks like it got to me. Uh so methysol, for those of you that uh aren't hip to it.
Uh methysol is uh one of the hydrocolloids. Uh methell is spelled, it's not methyl cellulose, it's methocel, spelled with one L C E L. M-E-T uh H O C E L. Were you were you singing Method of Modern Love in your head? M-E-T-H-O-D-O-L-H-M-M-E-T-H-O-D O F L O V E.
Remember that song? Mm mm. Isn't that hard at Hollow Notes? I thought you knew every Hollow Notes song. I don't think so.
Yo, Dave, is that is that uh Hollow Notes? I'm not familiar with that. Method of Modern Love. Just look at Google aid it. You googalize it.
So, anyways, so uh Methell is made by Dow. Yeah, it's by Hollow Notes. Yeah, dude. I'm telling you. I have my I have the hollow notes, like it's all in there.
It's all up in the in the in the in the brain pan. So uh it's not actually all methyl cellulose. It's it can either be methylcellulose or hydroxypropo methyl cellulose, but um they are a gr it's a group of hydrocolloids. Yeah. That's all you can do?
You can't give me the M E T H O D. M E T H O D. You gotta give me the M E T H O D. O F L O V E. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Um so uh methyl cellulose is one of the very few hydrocolloids that in fact is not natural. So they take cellulose fibers and modify them. Uh and so they're not all natural. So some people don't use them for that reason, but they have some cool properties.
Um one of them in particular is methylcel F50, is a very good uh kind of foaming agent. Um another uh another cool property that they have is that method of mind. Uh the uh another uh cool thing they have is that when you heat them, they gel. So most things, when you heat them, if they're going to do anything, they'll melt. And when they cool, then if they're gonna do anything, they gel.
Methocell is the opposite. As you heat it, it will form uh a gel. But they all have different kind of numbers and and whatnot, and the gelling ones, like the A series or the S G series, are not the ones you use in uh meringue. Siri was when I started singing that song, Siri was like, Oh, something something I said to Siri makes her think that I want her to pop up. By the way, this is one of the corniest videos I've ever seen.
Oh, really? An 80s video from Holland Oats is corny? Yeah, yeah. Unbelievable. What are they doing?
I can't even describe. You're gonna have to that's probably illegal for me to describe. He's contractually obliged to be a man. Contractually obligated to say nothing. So, anyways, so um so the one that you use for meringues is one called F50, F like Frank 50.
Uh and so, you know, it's a good thing to use if you don't want to use if you want to use a hydrocolloid instead of a protein like VersaWhip. So VersaWhip is um they make a couple different versa waves, so like the competitor to F50 would be VersaWhip. But the cool thing about the F the F50 is is that if you whip something into a meringue with F50, pipe it, you can dehydrate it and form hard meringues, right? They're uh they're they're not hard, is not the right word, right? It starts because they're not super hard, but they're crunchy.
And you can actually make little like macaroni style things. Anyway, so that's that's what we're talking about here, people. Uh so I've heard Dave talk a number of times about why uh a number of times. This is back to the question now that I've explained what methyl cell is. Um I've heard Dave talk a number of times about uh times about Wiley Dufrein's methyl cellulose meringues.
These are made by combining fruit juice or really any liquid and methyl cell F50, whipping into a foam and dehydrating. I haven't been able to find a more detailed recipe for this, and Wiley's WD uh 50 cookbook isn't out yet. Shows how long this question's been in the freaking bank's does. But yeah. But you can't do it.
I mean that book's out now, bin out. What? Isn't it on the blog? I don't know. Is it on the blog?
I'm sure it's on the blog. Or in Chimos's. You can look in Kymos's uh uh textures uh website, you know, that uh Martin Lersh puts out. Uh I tried making them a couple of times, just winging it, but it didn't go well. I hydried I hydrated the methyl cellus described in Modernist Cuisine and then hooked it with a hand mixer and dehydrated it in an excaliber.
It took a very long time whipping to get a decent foam, and I never got the dense microfoam texture of a good meringue. The bubbles then coalesced a lot during dehydration, leaving a structure that was not nearly dense enough, almost completely hollow with very large bubbles. Can you give a detailed recipe for this? Or a couple of specific points. Oh, a couple of specific points I wondered about was whether the methyl cell mixture should be heated when whipping it?
No. Uh what temperature should be used when dehydrating it. I can't remember. I think we used to do 135. The issue is if you go uh too low, they take a long time to set.
But if you go too high, uh over the time that they dehydrate, they can get uh kind of they can go brown and get kind of brown flavors depending on what you're doing. The one that I used to do all the time was passion fruit, and I'll I'll describe it uh in a little bit. Uh and whether the EC Whipper would be a better option than whipping with a mixer, no. Uh should I even expect dense micro-like foam texture? Yes.
Or do these meringues always have a much lower density than typical meringue? They do have a low, they're very micro, the bubbles are very micro, but they're still not dense in the fact in the sense that they're not heavy. They don't have like a lot of uh liquid in them. Uh one application I'm thinking about is using methyl cell meringues and making a macaron-style sandwich cookie. Would they be suitable for that or maybe need some tweaking, like with more added solids?
Gordon. Okay. So we used to actually do just that. We would make uh like a like a like some sort of cream cream filling, I forget what flavor we used to do, and then we would make like passion fruit uh F-50 meringues. You'd pipe them into little half domes, you'd set them, and then you'd make little macarons out of them.
The problem with there's a couple of problems here. Uh I'll give you some advice and then some problems. I'll do that in reverse. I'll give you some problems and then some advice. So the problems are is that F50 uh meringues are extremely hygroscopic, so they suck moisture out of the air and they go soft very quickly.
And since they don't have a lot of mass to them, they uh get soggy real quick. Now there's because there's not a lot of stuff there there. The cool thing about them is that when they are crisp and crunchy, you throw them in your mouth, and as you bite on them, they almost disappear. They just completely go away. They leave almost no residue in your mouth.
They're cool, and you can get punchy flavor. When you're when you are making it though, remember, anytime you're making a meringue, especially with F50, where it's not, as you say, dense. It can be a microfoam kind of looking structure, but it's still not very dense. Uh, when you're doing that, you need to really up the flavor on the liquid because it will not have a lot of flavor because you're putting a whole boat ton of air into it. But we used to store them in the dehydrator.
So when you're dehydrating, let's say you're dehydrating at 135, you dehydrate it just to the point where they're uh they start getting hard and they're a little crisp, then immediately turn your dehydrator down to like a hundred so that you don't get them to brown because you're gonna be holding them for a long time because you need to hold them in the dehydrator for service. Alternatively, you can put them in mason jars and vacuum pack them so that there's no moisture or keep them with desiccants. Otherwise, you there's no way if you're cooking these things in uh a kitchen where it's humid and you leave it out for even like an hour, it's gonna start getting mushy, and then when you serve it, it needs to be served right away. It's gonna be problems. So you need some way to keep them from serve for service if you're going to do them.
So it's hard to do with huge, like high kind of like high run items, or if you're gonna be sending out millions of these over the course of the night. But if you're doing a couple and you can keep your dehydrator running, uh, or you can keep them stored individually with desiccant or in VAC, you'll you'll be fine, and you can definitely pipe the stuff in between. Now, as for the thing, there's a key to your question that leads me to think that you're they're making some kinds of uh uh error. One is you said any kind of liquid, and it's not the case. You can't take straight fruit juice and uh whip it with methyl cellulose, it just won't ever achieve the kind of uh texture you're looking for.
Now, um it is true that for any given uh product that you're whipping, the more uh F50 that you add to it, the denser the foam will be, and the less you add, the bigger the bubbles are, and the more uh coalescing of the bubbles you're gonna get during the dehydration step. But the key that most that to getting a good result is to not use a juice but to use a puree, something that has some pectin, some structure, something in it, something to whip. So the F50 is a whipping agent, so it can help make bubbles, but unless there's a structure there to to hold it once it's whipped up, it's not going to, it's not gonna do uh anything for you. So uh, you know, passion fruit puree is great, any raspberry puree, strawberry, strawberry puree, even though it's raspberry puree, but like for some reason straw, whenever I use I use strawberry puree a lot more than I use raspberry puree, and so whenever I do it, I have to sing a little prints to myself. Anyways, um point being you need some stuff.
So some people when they use uh things that don't have anything would literally throw uh you know dextrins, maltodextrin, all kind of stuff into it just to add bulk so that you uh can whip it. But you it needs to be juice with some bulk. You can also Ooh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry, I was whipping it. Whipping it.
Oh, into shape. I heard some crazy stuff about Devo. Like the people in Devo. Devo. Like Devo.
Uh anyway, so that is my uh those are my recommendations. Don't go over a percent. Anything over about a percent of methyl cell F50, you're gonna start tasting the methyl cell. And uh Nastasia right or wrong ain't nobody want to taste the methyl cell. Right?
You don't want to taste you don't want to taste methacill. I actually don't like those puff things. Even the passion fruit ones? Mm-mm. I don't like the texture.
Why? Because I don't like the sound of styrofoam breaking or ice crunching. Yet another one of those crazy things that Nastasia just does not like. Oh also uh I'm gonna end on one thing in a second but uh we had from Skunk Grunt on uh Twitter asked me about Swiss chard uh and why it tastes dirty and I said I didn't really I don't really get that and then Nick Devlin who helps uh helps me with my uh with uh console the uh differential equations modeling stuff for low temperature cooking and who has a spinz all he looked up and indeed Swiss chard occasionally uh has Josmin in it and Josmin is the stuff that makes things taste dirty and you might know it best from crappy tilapia and your favorite style is what beats beats beats. Anyway so uh on the way out I'm sure Dave's gonna kick us off the microphone in a second.
I just want to put these ideas in your head uh for things you should maybe cook over the holidays things that I've cooked forever right but that aren't necessarily standard anymore. Uh I'm putting this out there I don't know if you were in my house for this does were you there when I did the cranberry pudding so I am a huge fan of old school boiled puddings like British style bo boiled puddings, right? And the one that I always used to make growing up, and this is a great holiday. It's kind of like it's doesn't take any new techniques, uh but it's like super impressive. Is gourmet's best desserts, which came out, I forget whether it was the I think it was the eight, it was at the 80s, because my mom started making it when I was in like junior high.
Uh gourmet's best desserts, and it's a well-known cookbook. Those those who know like the gourmet, by the way, I never told Michael Batterbury about this recipe because he used to hate gourmet, but like I loved that cookbook, Gourmet's Best Desserts, and I used to make a bunch of stuff out of it. But their cranberry pudding recipe and Food Network, you can find online. It's not a direct, it's adapted, but Food Network Online has a version of their recipe. But uh you have to get what's called uh pudding mold.
And pudding molds are a lot of fun. They look like miniature bunt, uh they look like miniature bunt things. Is it maybe being clear styles? Bunt bunt cake holders pans. By the way, someone does sell the bunt cake, uh, the bunt pan, uh the electric countertop bunt pan in the United States.
Should I buy one? Yeah. They're miniature though, they make half-size cakes. What do you think about a half-size bunt cake? That's fine.
You think I should buy one? Yeah. And test it out and just do bunt madness. Put it on the company. Oh, we really have a card.
Well, when we get a card, should I buy one? We'll just do bunt madness, bunt madness. You like bunts? I love bunts. Yeah.
Anyway, so the pudding mold is like a big bunts. You've just got them all today, Dave. I can't you know, like there was a certain point, like I forget when it was, but when like all of a sudden you couldn't quote Sir Mix a lot anymore. I don't know what it was. But I guess if it's bunts.
Is that a holiday? Was that a something I missed? I don't know. Uh but this is a small bunt, so you're saying you wouldn't like it if you're pulling out the mix a lot. I mean, I'll I'll eat any size butt.
So you prefer a big bunt. You can't lie about that fact. I can't lie. But you will you will also you're okay with skinny bunts. You're not saying that you're, you know, you're okay with a skinny bunt.
Absolutely. Okay. All shapes and sizes. Yeah. All right, nice.
I like I like an equal opportunity bunt man. Uh anyways. So the to go back to it, it's like a it's like a it's like a mini bunt uh pan with a lid on it, and the lid uh closes over, and you make them in this case, you take fresh cranberries, you um you blend them. It's got cranberries, eggs, sugar, butter, a load of butter, uh, and a bunch of bread crumbs. And then the original recipe has all dried spices in it, like dried ginger, but you know, you can use fresh ginger.
I do. I put a bunch of citrus zest into it. And so you take this kind of mixture, this agglomeration. There's baking powder, I don't know if I mentioned that. And like nutmeg, all that kind of stuff.
And you put it into the into the pudding mold and you go bop bop bop, and you knock it down so that it settles into the mold, then you click the lid on and you boil it for like two hours. And uh the all the old recipes for puddings, especially there's a lot of puddings that are made outside of molds in cloths, boiled puddings that aren't in a metal mold. And so, like all of those old recipes have you like water and flour, and then tie these like cloths around your pudding mold. All of this stuff's unnecessary nowadays. Just put a string or something in it so that you can retrieve it and put it on top of a rack and then like you know, make sure that it's not floating and bobbing about and ignore any of those recipes that tell you you have to like you know make it look like Marley from uh Scrooge and Marley with you know his jaw tied up with crazy, you know, Christmas Carol kind of stuff.
You know what I'm talking about, Stas? Kind of. Yeah, Jacob Marley, he tied his face together with a cloth, and then he he undid it, and his jaw fell down and freaked out Scrooge. Anyways, forget all of those instructions. You cook it for about two minutes.
Also, the original recipe is a bit of a toothache. Uh, they make a cranberry glaze uh with juice. I recommend making traditional kind of uh cranberry sauce. Just make it a little on the light side because you don't want it to set up a hundred percent. Pull it out, let it cool down.
If you unmold your pudding super hot, the great thing it stays hot for a long, long, long time. If you just take out the pudding mold, tent it, and then let it sit uh for a million years, it'll stay uh warm for the entire length of the dinner. But you want it to be warm when you take it out, but not hot. If it's hot in the middle, it'll collapse. Tell them about that Pink Floyd song when they would say that when you would think about which one?
The pudding part. If you don't If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding. How are you gonna eat your pudding if you can't have your if you're gonna have to pick up the page? And when you were a little kid, you were like, why don't these kids want to go to school? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right. I was I was not the guy. Uh like I didn't understand the whole wall thing until much later. Anyway, back to this, because they're gonna kick us off the air. If you don't eat your meat, don't you love that section?
No. What? What about you, Dave? You like that, right? What about that particular section?
Uh I just I hate the wall. How the hell are you gonna have your pudding if you don't eat your meat? I mean, yeah, it's a good question, but I hate that album. All right, anyway, whatever. Uh I'm Pink Floyd.
I'm surrounded by people who hate that album. Philistines. My wife also hates that album. Anyway, back to the pudding. So uh don't make this the cranberry glaze the way they say it.
Make it more like a traditional cranberry sauce. Uh don't let it cool down until it gels, it sets. Keep the cranberry sauce warm so the pectin doesn't fully set up on you. Then pour that over the top of the pudding after you unmold it. Uh if you celebrate Christmas, rip a piece off your Christmas tree, spike it on the top.
And here's the baller thing. Warm up. If you're gonna do flambey, don't forget you gotta warm your quantro before you flame it, or you're not gonna uh flame it uh aggressively or or write take a um a cup, a measuring cup or something like this. Don't warm it with heat with a flame. That would be a dumb way to do it.
Heat it like in the nuke or something like that, and then light it and then pour the flaming quantro over the top of the uh over the top of this uh cranberry pudding go look it up is extremely festive and very impressive and yet at the same time old school it's so old school that it's new school because ain't nobody make that kind of pudding anymore anyway uh if you try it let me know cooking issues thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network food radio supported by you for our freshest content and to hear about exclusive events subscribe to our newsletter enter your email at the bottom of our website heritageradionetwork.org connect with us on Facebook Instagram and Twitter at heritage underscore radio heritage radio network is a nonprofit organization driving conversations to make the world a better fairer more delicious place and we couldn't do it without support from listeners like you want to be a part of the food world's most innovative community rate the shows you like tell your friends and please join our community by becoming a member just click on the beating heart at the top right of our homepage thanks for listening Mm-hmm.
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