Today's program is brought to you by Heritage Foods USA, the nation's largest distributor of heritage breed pigs and turkeys. For more information, visit Heritage Foods USA.com. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. We're a member supported food radio network, broadcasting over 35 weekly shows live from Bushwick, Brooklyn. Join our hosts as they lead you through the world of craft brewing, behind the scenes of the restaurant industry, inside the battle over school food, and beyond.
Find us at heritage radio network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave, our own host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 or 1250 when it clock. From a Bernard's Pizzeria in Bushwick Br Brooklyn. Happy New Year, first uh show of the new year.
Not because Nastasia and I, the our spirit was wheeling. The Heritage Food flesh was weak. Right, Nastasia? Yeah. They're back.
Uh how was your uh long hiatus there, Dave? Not long enough. Oh zang. No, it's true because I went on vacation and got sick, so. Oh, what kind of sick did you get?
Uh it's like a chest cold and then you know going overboard with the mucineks every day. So are are you uh you got a cold. You know, it's been a it's been an interesting flu year because uh a lot of people have been getting the flu even if they got the flu shot. Because it's only what, like 30% effective this year. Yeah, it's something crazy like that.
Uh uh, I haven't gotten the flu so yet. Is there still time for me to get messed up? Nastasia got pretty messed up. I got the pee poo and the vomiting. Pee poo.
I love pee-poo is a great uh is that like uh we use uh here at uh Booker and Dax and Cooking Issues, uh the program. So by the way, just so you know, Cooking Issues, the program is Nastasia and Dave Cooking Issues, the Instagram, and uh what's the other thing uh Twitter thing that's basically just me so if you need to pester Nastasia you want to pest her at Hammer BDX right yeah uh what's your in in Instagram you already want to put your Instagram on blast yeah that's just my name Nastasia Lopez if you if it's if it's like spraying like rainbow death out of the eyes then that's that's her you can tell it's anyways uh so we have two basic things we like to either we like to say that you got the pee poo or we like to say that you know we set your butt on spray those are the two just so you know those are the two official Booker Index uh terms for it so uh well welcome back to us can you give your uh 23andMe story wait which part first of all I want you guys to call in your cooking related questions to 718 4972128 that's 718 4972128 what which part the survey that they made you take oh yeah so my mom got us all 23 and uh me uh you know like uh spit swabs right that so that like kids you did it as well right a long time ago yeah so that I can find out what oh I I am as white as I look like what so what are the genetics gonna tell me oh there's a smattering of some other northern European country in your blood that you didn't know about I'm gonna get the most boring results back I think that is kind of humanly possible like if there you know I mean like I can't imagine kind of anything of interest except for figuring out exactly what percentage Irish versus Scottish versus German I am. You know what I mean? Anyway. Did you get good results when you did it?
What are you? What are you? What do you what do you got? No, I don't remember. I have to look back.
You don't remember what you are? No. You have a freaking lunatic already. I can look at it right now. Dave, have you done this thing?
Uh I have not yet, no. Give the story. So, anyways, so because like, you know, I I go through my life kind of hoping someone will steal my identity so I don't have to use it anymore. Like, I gave them all of my information, filled out all the surveys and participating in everything, you know, that they that they have. And so they're asking me series after series of random questions, like, you know, how many you know times uh a week do you snore?
Answer, I don't know, I'm asleep, you idiot. And then like no, it really is. I guess what they mean is, I mean, I know I snore because my wife wakes me up to tell me to shut up, but like I can't tell that I'm snoring. Whatever. Anyway, that's not the point.
The point is at one point they there must be some sort of algorithm, because they said, and maybe they just got it from my profession, because they said, Does the sound of people chewing throw you into a rage? A rage. And I said, Yeah, yeah. The sound of chewing throws me into a rage, particularly the sound of snack food crunching when you're doing when you're cooking dinner, and nostasi is the same way. But how did they know that about me?
No, but then they said, How often are you angry? And you were like, the minute I opened my eyes. Yeah, I mean, it's no, it's no secret. That we're yeah, fueled on anger here. But like uh, you know, a good, healthy, I think, you know, uh a good, you know, a good healthy anger.
Like uh when the fire dies, so do so do you. You know what I mean? It's like the anger is what can you do that's good. We're we're not uh, you know, we're not really kind of an you know namaste. Oh my god.
Oh freaking mouth noises. Was that real or did you find that on the internet? No is really bad at mouth noises. Everyone's favorite thing bag. Peter?
Yeah. The point isn't. Stop it. Come on. I gotta people gotta listen over here, Dave.
So the the point is it's more like uh it's not that the crunching bothers me at the table because you know I have two kids and it's my job to stop them from eating with their mouth open because I have to send them out into the world and then I will be judged based on their mouth noises. But that's only one thing. The thing is is that when you're actively cooking dinner and someone goes into the pantry next to where you're cooking and trying to get everything to come in. Oh me, eating your me's oh my god. E eating the meat like just walking up to somebody's mise en place and starting to crunch on it.
You know what I mean? Uh it's like, what the hell are you doing? Yeah. What the hell are you doing? You know what I mean?
And and and but like also just sitting there behind you eating like tortilla chips while you're trying to get dinner. And you know that every tortilla chip that they eat is one less bite of the food that you're trying to prepare now that they're gonna eat at the meal. I think I'm not that hungry anymore. Yeah, plus you're not eating, you're cooking. You know what I mean?
And like and like there, it's like that just kills me. It just makes me it sends me into kind of an irrational rage. And I'm surprised that the 23andme people were like, you know, I bet you this is the kind of guy that you know goes into an irrational rage when he hears people crunching on things. Yeah. You know?
Yeah. But you're the same way. I know, yeah. It's not just me. They didn't have that back then when I took it.
They didn't have that kind of survey. They must have gotten your genetic data. And they're like, whoa. We've never seen this profile before. They're like, you know what?
When I sent mine in, they're like, there's one lady. It's comparable. The comparable kind of answers so far. So, you know, maybe, maybe that's the thing. Uh so I want to give a uh quick uh shout out.
I went to so the whole break, right? Just to go show how like you know, not often I get to go out. I think I got to go to like two or three restaurants, including the fact that I flew to San Antonio. I was in San Antonio last week. Uh, but first, right before did you go any good good restaurants or anything over the break there, Anastasia?
No. You, Dave? Yeah, I was in uh London this past week and had some amazing Indian food. Um before you were sick? Yeah, yeah.
Nice. So uh what what you anything of note? Uh just like everything you'd expect. It was a vegetarian place, uh just just all the standard fare. The doll was amazing, uh the curry.
Yeah, it's really, really good. So, in what way better than what you get over here? Because you were over there and having fun, and when you're here, you're depressed and you have to come back and talk to us. Yeah, I mean, the yeah, the travel may have had something to do with it, just the excitement of being somewhere new, but but it was it was definitely top quality. I mean, as good as anything I've had anywhere.
Yeah. Well, it's a definite feeling of mine that food tastes better when you're with people you you like. First, food tastes much worse when you're with people you hate, right? Don't you think so, Nastasi? It's very hard to judge food when you're eating with someone you hate.
Like that time we went to California. Oh my god, am I ever gonna hear the freaking end of this? Anyway, but the uh, and then uh also like if you're having a good time, food obviously uh tastes better. That's why that's why I asked Dave. Uh so I went to uh uh longtime friend of the show, Joel Gargano has a Oh nice, you went.
Yeah, I went relatively new restaurant, Grano Arso, up in Chester, Connecticut, home of uh well, formerly home, he's dead now. A sculptor, uh artist, I should say, Saul Lewitt. Uh, you know, I and I I go up there quite often. It was really good. Had a really good place.
You guys should all go. So he's, you know, doing the uh he gets his wheat from you know the you know that area, and then he grinds it, makes his own pasta. I think he uh I think yeah, he think he uses the Arco Boleno, the same kind of one that uh that the ideas and food guys have, like Alex Nackey have. Uh and uh I thought it was really good. I thought I did a really good job.
And he was he took so this restaurant, right, in in Chestertown, and Chestertown is one of these kind of like you know, cute, it's cute towns. It's like that's that's not my thing. A cute town, like I could care less about a cute town. Do you like a cute town, Nastasi? Yeah, I like a cute town.
You love a cute town, right? I'm in a cute town, and I'm like, why am I here? You know what I mean? Like if I I'm in a cute what is your what is your ideal town look like? I don't really care.
That's the thing. Like, I like I like being you like industrial, like run down industrial. No, I hate that. I like um I like uh what do I like? I like being like in a forest.
I like being like like you know, in a mountain, like in the shade, having a glass of wine. Like that's what I like. Like being in a town. I like a town for like a little while, like a new town. Like you throw me in some sort of town that I don't understand that's new to me, like some sort of new thatching on the roof, perhaps.
And I'm like, I like that roof. I'm grooving on it, I like it. You know what I mean? Or like I'm in a new kind of building that I've never been in before. I'm like, you know what?
I like the way this feels, that fireplace, nice. I groove on it. And then, you know, but like, you know, cute, cute New England town. I mean, how many times have you done that before in your life? Cute New England town.
If you never went to another cute New England town, would you be okay? No. Really? Yeah. I like them.
I like them, but I mean that was like, you know, I'm just where wherever I am, that's where I am. What about you, Dave? Uh I guess. I don't know. That kind of freaks me out sometimes being out in like the middle of pastoral New England or anywhere else like that.
I wouldn't call it pastoral, it's a freaking town. Yeah, but you know what I'm talking about. Like compared to living here in the city, it's just like it's too quiet, it's too dark. Dark? What do you mean, dark?
What do you doing? Sunny New England town. Sunny New England. I guess I'm thinking about at night where it's like too quiet. And they have the lampposts and they're really warm.
What? I don't know what you guys are talking about anyway, I like Chester. I like Chester. I love Chester. I like Essex.
Essex is a nice town. Although you know all of these towns were built up they had like a lot of streams and so there's a lot of early uh mill work in these areas because they had a lot of early industrialization. So Connecticut and all of kind of New England when you know America was was building up agriculturally they had already been somewhat spent right the the land there had already been somewhat uh played out. So it wasn't so good at that point even though there was still agriculture already a lot of the agriculture was moving out of that area and it got built up as industrial and a lot of like the you know the local streams and whatnot that we have a lot of up there were converted to provide power for early industrial mills. And so uh every area had its own thing.
So like Connecticut and Massachusetts and whatnot we built a lot of guns right guns was a big business. Uh we made a lot of tools right uh you know including like famous famous towns like Bridgeport was like the machining capital anyway. So uh and you know a lot of this started pre uh electricity and so they needed power from things like water. So do you know what kind of Chester that whole area Chester, Essex, Chester not so much, but Essex and Deep River uh Iveryton you know what they were known for in a south yeah but yeah and piano keys. So they made like the majority of the ivory piano keys and piano actions and so there's things like piano keyboard so like it's a strange connection and the ivory story is incredibly horrific.
Like horrible. Like really bad. Like such like animal exploitation, human exploitation. So you have this cute little New England towns that are literally founded on misery. Like found like specifically founded on misery.
You know what I mean? Human and animal misery. And and in fact, like uh the ivory was still being handled by um uh slaves in you know, off of the uh uh east coast of Africa, being shipped out of uh like places like Zanzibar and up way past you know what we would normally think of as being uh the slave area, so slave era. So continued that human misery and animal misery, long past what you would think is reasonable. Yeah, anyway, so cute New England town.
That's what's underneath your cute New England town. But I do like it there. Anyway, Joel's restaurant, Grano Arso is a great restaurant, so there was a vegan restaurant, it was an all-vegan restaurant, and the chef who was there, they spent like a zillion dollars on the build-out of this place, right? This is still the same place. Same place.
So they a couple years ago, it got built out as a vegan restaurant, and it was kind of the only vegan restaurant in the whole area. But they spent like a boat ton the build-out. And uh, so the chef who was there, she's like, you know what? I don't really want to live here. I want to go back to California where I can get all the vegetables I want all the time.
So she left, and they're left with this huge build-out. Wow, and you know, they couldn't find an equivalent quality of chef to come in and keep running it. Is so the place shut down. So Joel got to go in and get this place. I mean, I didn't ask him how much he paid because that's rude, but uh, you know, so he got this.
I think he didn't have to do as much as you would normally have to do. Maybe he I mean, I'm sure he did a crap ton of work to open it up, but I'm saying he took over that space, and so I'm glad to see that space is uh going and going well. I I had a uh I had a great meal. I wanna go. Should go.
I went there without the kids, which is nice. Yeah, anyway. And the second place I got to go to uh was interesting, I was in San Antonio a couple days ago at the San Antonio cocktail conference. You ever been to San Antonio, Nastasia? So I went to the uh I went to the Alamo, and everyone says the Alamo is not as big as I thought, but they're just being jerks because the Alamo is gone.
It's just the church is left. So the picture that everyone takes in front of the Alamo is just like a little chapel. The rest of the Alamo's been kind of is as wiped out as all of the people who were there, you know, as as you know, Crockett and Bowie were, and you know, Travis and all those guys. Uh so anyways, so I went to the uh Alamo, which I guess you have to kind of do, but I went to this restaurant called uh restaurant Gwendolyn, and the chef there, uh Michael, I'm gonna butcher his last name, uh So Haki, right? Uh and so this guy has this restaurant, right?
And I c I I had a I had a good time, I was there for lunch. I'd like to go back for dinner sometime, but it he's he has an actual manifesto. He owns a ramen restaurant that just like pumps humans in and out, like it's got like you know, uh whatever it's called, people out the door. But he's got this manifesto, which he gave me a printed copy of. He also does things that like I don't want, you know.
He his sh his sh shtick, right, is no ingredients that were uh available, um no ingredients that weren't available in San Antonio prior to uh when Texas became a state. So like 18 like 46 or whatever. So like that, like any ingredient that they use has to be used has to be available within that San Antonio area era prior to 18 like 48 or whatever it is. And it but he runs it like a Mofad thing, and no electrical tools used in preparation at all. Everything has to be cut by handwork.
He uses gas because you have to, and he has refrigerators because you have to. Scoping out. I need to say that's why I love you, Sus. Anyway, uh, so point is like he has like all of these things, but the the interesting thing, and he has this like crazy manifesto. I I think more chefs need to have crazy manifestos, like some like kind of thing to work in.
But then what's interesting is is that he's not trying to run it. What you'd think he would do then is he's like, okay, well, I'm only doing recipes that would be of you know, work at that time in San Antonio. No. You have to choose something that has an historical historic or cultural or uh seasonal basis, but it can be any culture, any season. Uh not any season has to be current season, any culture, any basis, any era, as long as you can make it with the ingredients that were available in San Antonio prior to 18, whatever, and assuming you can do it without uh, you know, electrified kitchen equipment.
Isn't that isn't that an interesting? Like I say, choosing what the constraints are. And then he's like, he's also like uh also I don't tell why cooks what to make, they have to come up with the dish, but then I just come and if it doesn't meet my standards, it get pun it gets nuked. So he's got this cool kind of like interesting idea. Anyway, so uh, you know, a shout-out uh shout out to uh restaurant Gwendolyn and a shout out to Manifestos.
What do you think about manifestos, Nassasia? I don't know. Like, why not have a manifesto? Yeah. I mean, I don't know that I couldn't function under someone's manifesto.
No. I would function poorly. I mean, for your new bar. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Certain.
I mean, like that they gotta first of all they gotta read liquid intelligence, and I think Don and I are going to write um, you know, certain kinds of things like we ever like well known certain people's, you know, quote unquote manifestos or documents have become legendary in the service industry, right? So Sasha's milk and honey bar uh manual uh was you know widely kind of circulated and um you know thing so yeah I'm sure we'll come up with some stuff. I I'm interested in trying to get people to choose music properly. That's hard. Super hard.
I think I I really I'm very, very anti uh, you know, um automatic. Um first of all, the worst is shuffle. The worst is shuffle. The worst thing you can do on earth is just hit shuffle on on your phone. Like it's just a that's a joke.
What do you think, Dave? Uh yes. I mean, sometimes the shuffle can be better than the human controlling it though. Yeah, but in other words, like assuming like even also, Dave, like you're a professional at this kind of stuff. I think that choosing music, look, people are gonna be more or less talented, right?
But you can also train somewhat people to be able to do it better than they do it now. Yeah, sure. You know what I mean? Yeah, to fit the vibe of the place, fit the fit the vibe of the place. Volume level, volumes, but that's a big one.
But I think the the vibe also the vi like people always choose the music they want to listen to rather than the music that's gonna get people to buy the most drinks. Right, that's a bad DJ though. Right. That's what I'm saying. But I think that can be taught.
Like, in other words, like, oh I like to listen to death metal. Well, guess what? People don't like to sit and have a cocktail or a pizza listening to death metal. You know what I mean? Like it's a good it's a good thing to do if you're trying to get people to leave, if you want them to order the food and get the F out.
You know what I mean? Lynn, yeah, by all means, like you know, crank whatever skinny puppy, voivod, you know, choose whatever, you know, whatever you want, get them out. Uh, you know, some sort of like Finnish or Norwegian craziness, you know, yeah, sure. But like uh people also people don't understand, like Shuffle doesn't understand that oh, it's late night. Don't play that like you know slow sappy crap now because people are gonna fall asleep you need them to you know you need some you need to keep them up you know what I mean so anyway so there's so stuff like that I think we'll write a little uh you know probably write a little manifesto on how to choose uh music yeah and what it would help if more people like you place value on this because as it stands you know a a restaurant owner or bar owner might be happy to just throw on the Spotify shuffle because hey that's free you know I don't have to pay anybody.
Yeah yeah that's true but you know here's my feeling on on that right I think like uh on the Spotify stuff you know what I think that's for maybe I'll see whether you agree as a person in you know more in that field than I am um I think those kind of uh services where you choose a channel are like if you're by yourself or you're in a small group I think they're fantastic to learn new songs that you don't otherwise know discovery discovery fantastic discovery tool terrible like terrible for uh a bar I think you want look if you can't come up with like a roster a personal roster of let's say a thousand songs right from which you can cull decent lists over the course of like or maybe two or three thousand songs you can call a decent list over the course of let's say you know a week then what the hell you know what I mean like it does you don't need all of songs everywhere to make a list that's interesting to your to your customers right you might not be interested because maybe you've heard these songs a lot but you know they're coming to your place for the first time maybe or second time or whatever. You see what I'm saying Dave you see where I'm going with this? Yeah. And so I think it's a mistake to put into your playlist a song you don't know right you know I think it's also a mistake to put in songs that you that you hate because if you put in a song if your staff is not happy with the music that's playing they don't seem as happy and if they don't seem as happy it rubs a bad vibe off on your customers but at the same time you have to also play stuff that's you know comfortable for your customers there's a there's a maximum anger level in the music that I think is allowable and it it's very context dependent. So like you know at you don't at you don't at uh 8 p.m right at 8 p.m when people are still about to go out to dinner you don't play uh sound of the police right you just don't do it right but at like you know midnight if you've just gone through uh you know a bu a bunch of hip hop and you decide that it's time to jump into some like you know old school east coast stuff sound of the police can keep the room bumping and it's not too angry at that time if you've kind of built up to it with a bunch of other songs.
Get my drift Dave and so I think people people need this need to think about this um you know the the real sad thing is is that it's the by far the best way to do music is to have someone live picking music based on what's going on in the room at that time but it's just not feasible it really is not feasible uh in a regular bar. So you have to you know you you have to think about arcs but you know maybe there's some way and Dave maybe we could talk about at some point of figuring out ways to to gently shift playlists in certain directions without having to sit there and cue up each song based on what the room is doing. You know what I mean? Yeah, there must be some kind of like intelligent music service that does something similar. I don't want a service.
I want you to I want like I think the house should have certain things. Like so, for instance, like also like everything depends on the size uh place you have. So a lot of the energy of a bar comes from the bartenders and the customers that at the bar and radiate out to the tables, right? So let's say you like someone comes in and you get a group of people that are from a particular area, right? Like someone comes in from uh oh, I don't know, they come in from Jersey.
From Jersey. Well, I mean, look, it like it depends on what time of day it is, whether I'm gonna go, you know. I mean, Jersey songs are easy, right? You just the Jersey people are are easy to please. You just throw on the Bon Jovi or you throw on freaking Springsteen.
Yeah, you know what I mean? And like, you know, you throw on one song and they're happy, but for you know, for God's sakes, don't put on highway patrolmen or everyone's gonna be weeping into their into their beers and leave your leave your place depressed. But like, you know, but I'm saying uh choose a couple songs. I mean, I think when you're gonna go something like Bon Jovi or or Springsteen, I think that the trick there is to pick a song that bumps hard enough to keep the place going, but isn't the same one that everyone's heard all the time. That's the challenge with that.
But like, you know, you should you should store like a song from every area so that someone if someone comes up you can get them something. You know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? Yeah like you know you don't like you don't believe in that? I think people really like it.
Like when you when someone from San Francisco comes and you play them and you know, I got five on it comes on, right? People are like, Oh yeah. You know what I mean? And then like they feel a little more comfortable that someone played something for them or you know what I mean? You don't believe in that, Dave?
No, I hear what you're saying. Anyways, whatever. How do we the hell do we get on this? How the hell do we get on this? You asked me about manifestos.
That's why I said is your bar gonna have one. Yeah, we're gonna have like a music manifesto. No, we're gonna think we're gonna use the TVs. All first of all, there may or may not be TVs in the bar that may or may not exist that we may have not announced yet. But they're not gonna be any TVs.
There's not gonna be any TV signals. I will not have a bar with TV signals in it. There will not, like I we will not be able to come watch the game at the bar. Like that's not gonna happen. So Nastasia will never come to the bar because she there's only two things Nastasia, three things Nastasia likes to do.
Drink sparkling uh uh rose wine, preferably champagne, but any sparkling rose will do in large glasses in copious amounts. That's still one thing. Yeah, that's that's still one. That's that's one. That's a unitary, that's a uh uh a multi-faceted unitary thing that she likes to do.
Bananagrams. Haven't done that in a while. Yeah, banana gram number two, and then uh like watching some kind of crappy sports thing on on the television ball. Football. Yeah, that's what she likes to do at a bar.
I only like to play bananagrams with real players like you. It would be people who have some integrity, yeah. Uh we have not answered a question. Okay, we'll come back and we'll we'll go through some serious question answering on cooking issues. Heritage Foods USA is a farm-to-table online butcher and found and sponsor of Heritage Radio Network.
Heritage Foods got its start when Patrick Martin's first step foot onto Frank Reese's Kansas farm in 2001. Back then, Frank was the only farmer in America raising true heritage turkeys with recorded lineages tracing back more than a hundred and fifty years. Patrick New Instant Lead found a unique moment, an opportunity to go beyond acknowledging these breeds as being jeopardized and to actually do something to save them. Patrick asked Frank to ramp up production and made a promise to him that if he raised them, Heritage Foods USA would sell them. That was the moment that Heritage Food slogan, eat them to save them was born.
By creating a market for delicious meats from Heritage Breeds, we can ensure they'll be around for generations to come. Plus Heritage Breeds just tastes a whole lot better. Learn more at Heritage Foods USA.com and use the code HeritageRadio for two free pork chops with your first order, brother. Did you get someone who actually speaks that way, or did you imitate somebody else's accent? That that is a former Heritage Foods employee who is from the South, but that's not really his natural way of speaking.
Well, he's a good way of saying pork chop. Two free pork chop. Pork chop, pork chop. Love to two free pork chops, brother. Although I hope that uh, you know, gotta degen got a degender that, Dave.
Anyway, we have a caller. Caller on the air. Hey Dave, this is Andy from Virginia, first time caller. Hey, how long time listener, right? How's it going?
I got a quick question about a chocolate foam. Okay. Where in Virginia? Um uh Shando Valley. Oh, beautiful over there, huh?
Yeah. Yeah. A little cold right now. Yeah, yeah. Um, so it's for an ice cream plate, so I'm trying to stay away from the dairy.
Um, so I'm just doing a one-to-one simple syrup with some Fresno chili and coriander, um, then hitting it with some cocoa powder for the chocolate. And I hit it with some Virtus Whip, um, and it didn't it didn't fluff up, and I also used methyl. Um it also didn't fluff up. I was wondering uh if you give me some pointers. What's the final texture you want?
Um, just you know, something light, uh light and airy. Right. So, like the the I forget I'm gonna forget who did this first, but you know, there was a time let's see whether this is kind of what you're thinking about. Like there was a time, oh five, six years ago, when uh everyone was doing um not everyone, like it was a thing. Aerated chocolate was a thing.
So it was uh I think you know, people had looked at the aero bar. You ever eaten an arrow bar? Love the arrow bar? It's interesting, like I'm more of a crunch guy, so it's not my normal kind of thing, but I had one the other day and actually enjoyable. Enjoyable, but not uh normal.
Anyways, so um aerated chocolate was a thing, and literally what they would do is just melt their mixture out and put it into a uh a vacuum pan, like a food saver vacuum pan, and suck a vacuum on it and then throw it in the fridge to set it, you know, real quick with the vacuum still on it. And people were getting these amazingly tall uh aerated chocolate. So I think Heston Blumenthal did some work with that. I think Johnny Azzini did some work with that. Wiley Dufresne, I think did some work with that.
Um but you know, that's that's one technique. A real interesting technique similar to that is um Alex Stupak did the same thing with ice cream base, and those ice cream bases when they were puffed up almost tasted like ain't like texture, like angel food cake. It was really do you ever have that stuff? It was pretty it was pretty uh I thought it was pretty interesting. And then Wiley, of course, also did aerated foes that way, like fois, foie gras, uh, you know, um preparations.
I forget what hydrocolloid he used for it, but that uh had that kind of like uh cakey kind of uh texture. So I don't know, is it was like was that the kind of thing you were looking for, or more like a standard mousse? Um, I was something something that I could pipe onto the plate that um would give me a little height also. But you want to do non-dairy, right? You said uh I mean, I would just I would just do like a normal, a non-dairy, no, no egg either.
I would just try to do, you know, it's like I haven't looked at it in a long time, but like you know, they uh the texture sample. I can go with the egg. I would just stay away from cream. Yeah, I would just do a standard, I would just do a standard then uh uh like uh chocolate mousse base and swap out uh coconut for the dairy. Uh or or almond for the dairy, but like I I happen to think coconut and chocolate go really, really uh well together.
And I g I said this, I've said this before in the air because my mind really got blown by a um a coconut-based chocolate sorbet back in the in the day. And I said it's like Sharon Sorbet years and years ago was doing a lot of uh uh like chocolate sorbet that I thought was like very I thought at the time I think the recipes changed, but at the time I thought very, very well done. Um and I'm pretty sure that they used coconut, and so whenever I am doing um non-dairy uh things that would otherwise be dairy, my go-to it isn't isn't maybe it should be, I just haven't done the experimentation, uh almond or or anything like that. It's coconut a hundred percent of the time. And I'm you know, I've always been real happy with the combination of uh coconut milk and or cream um with uh with chocolate.
Alright, I'll mess around with it. Alright. Let me know how it works and uh hope it warms up for you down there. I know I haven't been to the Shenandoah Valley since I was a kid. Isn't that where your uh grist mill is?
Yeah. Uh I don't know where that was. Herndon. I don't know where Herndon is. That's where I, you know, we uh like that grist mill that was for sale and we kept on looking at it and then finally someone sold it.
I was like, I'm gonna get rid of and it's gonna get rid of everything in my life, except for my kids and my wife would not have gone with me, and then my life would have been over. But like we remember every couple of days I'll go on that website and look at that grist mill, like working grist mill, it had rights to the stream so that you they couldn't stop you from using the water. It had some sort of crazy deeded rights to the water use based on like the early 1800s when it when it was built, and I was like, I want it, I want that grist mill, I want that super cheap. It's so cheap, so much land, so much grist mill, and like so what? So it was about to slide off of its foundations into the water.
I could fix that. Like, like, you know, if you have nothing else to do, like fix foundations, I mean, you know, you know, whatever. Anyway, that was oh dreams. You want to take another call? Yeah, sure.
Caller, you're on the air. Hi guys, thanks for taking my call. My name's Mike. I'm in Philadelphia. I have a question regarding uh Moscow mule keg.
I've been doing. I can't get ginger to be appropriately clear and still be boldly ginger flavored, and wondered if you had any suggestions. Sure. What are you doing right now? Well, first of all, I'll say I'll say this.
If if you're gonna carbonate, right? Uh typically what I do is I s uh I, you know, peel the ginger, I slice it a paper thin, and then uh I I just make a standard syrup that way because I actually like the flavor of kind of uh cooked ginger. If you don't like it cooked, you can vac infuse a bunch of times or pressure infuse. But if you pressure infuse or vac infuse, you'll tend to throw off more starch, and that makes the carbonation a lot more difficult. Well, you start throwing off cloudy stuff.
If you just do like a light, hot steep with very finely sliced ginger, you can get a very strong ginger profile and keep it very clear. But anyway, so what are you doing right now? So I started doing a really strong ginger tea and felt like it wasn't quite spicy enough. Um so then I was trying to clarify a ginger juice and a centrifuge and hit that with cerebell after the fact. And by the time it was clear, it had lost so much flavor that it was not worth doing all that effort.
I agree. Um and it's hard to clarify. Ginger's hard to clarify. Uh I would uh I would say first of all, like little secret on on ginger, like whenever I do ginger, I always add uh chili to it. Always.
We're doing uh jalapeno in the drink recipe to kind of bump up the ginger already. Right. So like but so yeah, so like you could try to combine them as a if you're gonna have jalapeno separately, you don't need to add, I guess, to the ginger itself, but like I always use um uh I use a red, I always hit it with a red heat, right? So like uh something like um just something that's red because I think the the fruitiness uh of uh the red capsecums, I think helps balance uh ginger out really, really well and integrates better. Like green spicy things, like I love red jalapenos, but most people don't don't get them.
But I love red jalapenos. Like I I eat jar after jar those little cans of the red jalapenos in in uh tomato sauce. I just eat the hell out of those. But um the green ones, while I love the flavor of green ones as well, like I think green won't won't marry as it won't not that it won't not that it won't taste as good, but it won't seem as integral to the ginger. Like if you want yeah, if you I get what you're saying, that makes sense.
We were just trying to do something slightly different to make it our sort of house mule and have it not be just a straight up mule, so to do it jalapeno. Yeah. Have you tried just old school make it a little more vegetable? Have you tried super old school, just like really slicing it thin and and doing the boil up with the sugar in the syrup and then straining it out? I had been cooking down ginger for a while, making a really strong tea um cupboard and letting it steep for a while and then straining all that onto sugar and getting it into a syrup that way.
I would try it with the sugar from the get-go and I don't I don't know whether the key is going like as long as just like slicing it really thin and actually not having not having it break down, right? So the like the more you cook ginger the more the flavor is going to change, right? So like you know I well the way you know the way I always do it is I bring it up and then I I uh you know I I basically bring it up to heat and then turn it off and then just keep um I just keep uh you know finger tasting it. You know and it's like is it there? Is it there?
And I've done that with both with the sugar in the ginger and without so when I'm making sodas and I'm using ginger I usually do ginger without sugar and add sugar separately but um I've done it both ways and the results are slightly different both ways so so I would do it. But the ginger is extremely susceptible to the amount of time that you um that you cook it and and or that's why I was trying to get a more raw syrup and see if I could get the flavor that way but there's just so much sediment coming out of it. Yeah would have any benefit of doing fine sliced ginger and just infusing that into the vodka first than in a syrup. That would that would probably work uh I'm trying to remember whether I have done it. Um I'm sure that would I'm sure that would do something I would play a I'd play around it.
One question I have is like let's say you were to do ISI, right? Um the question is so for instance, I made flash pickled uh like sushi style vinegar, uh ginger rather last week, because I I hate the stuff in jars, and so I always just slice I get a younger ginger that has less fiber in it, right? I slice it super thin, and then I just throw it into uh you know what amounts to a one-to-one sugar uh rice vinegar and then with some salt, right? And because I don't care, I don't care if the crap's pink or not. And then I, you know, I basically pressure or vacuum infuse the sy the syrup into the ginger so that it's ready within you know 30 minutes or something like this.
Um so and I'm trying to think back. That did not throw off any starch, but I don't think I used a vacuum. I think I used a centrifuge to do the infusion. Uh I think I did centrifugal infusion instead of vacuum infusion. I'm just wondering whether if you pull a vacuum on it or if you pressure and let it blast out, whether it's gonna throw off a lot of sediment, because that sediment is really gonna make the carbonation touchy.
You know what I mean? Yeah, so hypothetically, what if I vacuum seal it or do it right in a corny keg hooked up to carbonation to pressurize it with the vodka and then run all that through a centrifuge to get the starch back out of it. Remember, the centrifuge is if you get starch into it, the only thing it's gonna save you is time because it's gotta settle way the hell down. Uh you know, because it's not gonna form a puck unless you put something else in it. But the the something else that will form a puck with the starch will also strip a lot of the flavor out, which will be your enemy.
Right. Uh yeah, no, but I think it'll work. It's I mean, I would give it a I'll give it a shot. And uh Dave, ask the chat room if or I'm asking the chat room if they if they have any uh luck with this kind of stuff. Anyway, you're a here chat room.
Yeah, so we'll see, and then hopefully someone will post something up there and you can see whether they get uh a good result. Cool. Thank you. All right, let us know. Uh tweet tweet me back, cooking issues, let me know what's going on.
All right. Thank you. Okay. So uh Jarvis writes in from Milwaukee. I'm currently fermenting my own peppers with a little bit of fresh garlic bulbs to make my own hot sauce.
I got an airlock and lid container, it's been there since late October. My question is when it's time to blend uh to jar it, should I pr uh and preserve it? Should I blend it with vinegar? Well, that suspend the fermentation process. I just wanted to know my options on making it.
I think uh I wouldn't necessarily I mean there's a bunch of ways you can stop uh uh fermentation. Um but uh you know, like uh ethanol can suspend fermentation. The problem with using vinegar is that the vinegar that you have, unless you have that super high grade Swedish stuff, is probably only four to five percent. And so you're adding something that's very dilute anyway, and uh, you know, you'll slow down and stop anything, but uh even after you kill uh the lactic acid or uh bacteria, the lactobacillus, or you know, and there's probably acetobacter in there. Well, it depends, I don't know how your thing is fermenting or whatever you have in there.
Um, you know, you'll slow it down, but you won't necessarily kill it. And even after you do kill it, the enzymes that are there will continue to kind of change the flavor over time, at least so far uh from what I've read. I would say that the best way to kind of uh mostly halt it, uh I mean remember, so I I don't really know what vinegar is uh is gonna do to it. Um I'm assuming if the as acid content goes high enough, the lac uh the lactic acid bacteria won't be able to operate anymore. I know that uh, you know, you probably don't want to add a stabilizer that you can taste like uh sorbate or something like this.
Um you probably you know, you you know, when you're they're stabilizing things like miso, partially stabilizing, and they stabilize them with low concentrations of ethanol, um, which in conjunction with what else is there stabilizes them. But I would just uh I would just heat them low temperature. So you're not heating them to sterilize them. I would pack them in jars and heat them up to you know about 60 Celsius. That shouldn't affect the texture too much, and that'll stop and kill uh, you know, kill the stuff so it doesn't kind of continue uh any further uh it should you know stabilize.
My change the taste a little bit. I would I would um check the temperature, but I would do something, I mean that would also stop yeast from growing on it as long as it's closed. I would check a small sample first to see whether it does anything untoward to the taste, but that's probably what I ended up doing. Um Russ writes in, hey Dave, wondering if you're still happy with your Orphan Espresso grinder. It looks like they just came out with a production model and I was thinking about getting one.
Uh I'm also in Brazil right now, so if you get around to this before the 19th, recommendations for uh restaurants and brands of cachaça. Uh oh well, it is actually the 19th, but I don't have any because I've never been I've never been down there. Um I never been down there. I'm in uh Sao Jose de Compo uh Dos Campos, so and we'll spend a few days in Sao Paulo. So if anyone out there is from Brazil and wants to give Russ some recommendations right now, uh shoot them on over to the uh what's it called to the uh chat room.
As for the uh grinder, they have two grinders back when I bought them. They had the Lido grinder and they had the Ferros grinder, and the shtick with Orphan is is they make hand-cranked uh coffee grinders that are relatively inexpensive for the quality that they make, but have very, very high quality burrs in them. And so you'll, you know, you for several hundred dollars you could have a grinder that uses the same burrs as a many thousand dollar uh you know grinder that you would use for espresso. And my experience with the Lido was it would be a good travel grinder. Well, it was a pain to kind of crank uh a hundred percent of the time.
And in fact, I hooked it up to a drill. And then when I had the Ferros, uh, you know, I had to modify it somewhat because the way the way it was built wasn't friendly enough to use like kind of constantly, so I modified it to clamp it down to the table. I made a bean chute that went into it. I haven't looked at what they've done for their production model, and it worked great. I really I really liked it, but you know, I was given for for where I was using that, I didn't have my standard.
I use, you know, uh like a Rocky, I know it's not the state of the art anymore, but I use a Rocky at home. But where that coffee setup was, someone gave me a uh, you know, a super auto with a grinder on it, and I thought I was gonna hate it, but I ended up not hating it since I wasn't making the coffee 100% of the time, I couldn't convince other people to make coffee by gr hand grinding with the pharos, so I ended up uh I end up using the the grinder that's in the in the super auto. So um, you know, take that for what it means, but I think it's very high quality stuff, and I'm a fan of what they're doing. This is from Ken Ingber, longtime listener. The question of is food art usually boils down to craft versus art argument.
I avoid these conversations at all costs. That's a quote that I gave, I guess, Surface Magazine, uh, which is true because you know I come from an art background. Don't you hate those conversations, Nastasia? Is it odd? Is it food?
Is it odd? Is it food? Yeah, this is a longer. No, it's not because I'm not gonna he only so he said this was a crucial, and then Ken points out because he's a lawyer, this is a crucial and unavoidable part of the Supreme Court argument, the recent one, on the same-sex marriage versus cake baker case. And so uh if you're interested in how uh like whether or not a cook is an artiste uh like goes into law, just search uh, you know, Supreme Court oral arguments, uh cake maker or cake, and the oral arguments starting at page 11, they go through what is or what is not a an artist.
And so the idea being that if the cake maker is an artist, right, then they then the cake they're making is speech and is therefore protected, and therefore they can withhold it, right? They cannot bake the cake if let's say a same sa someone's gonna have a same sex marriage, they can say, I'm not going to make a cake. So it's first time I seen that like uh that uh someone has been someone has used the definition of what is art to try to uh you know discriminate against somebody so I mean it's kind of fascinating. But what's interesting is they go through in the oral arguments like, well is this is the person who does the floral arrangements are uh could that be an artist? Yes.
Uh the person who makes the ring could that be uh you know could the jeweler be an artist? Well it depends on what they asked the jeweler to do but yes could be an artist. And then the person goes the I forget what justice it was, maybe Ginsburg said, was it was um what about the hairdresser? The lawyer's like absolutely not the hairdresser cannot be an artist. I was like what the hell?
It's like why are you hating on hairdressing? Why why is hairdressing like why is making a cake art but like like hairdressing maybe they you know maybe the you know the lawyer had never watched any like you know interesting movies where people had amazing hairstyles but I mean like how is it like why insult hairstyling that way? Isn't that stupid? And on that my two favorite cases uh involving art and food one Constantine Brancuzi had a sculpture in I in the 20s, like twenty s 1926, 1928, called Bird in Space. You familiar with this?
It's like it looks like it he did it in like bronze, he did it in marble, he did it it looks like a like a like a I don't know, like a it doesn't look like a bird. But anyway like a tall, skinny like tube like a suppository. It looks like a s it looks like a like a like a large suppository on a pedestal. Anyways so um he goes to ship it, right? And the issue was is he was shipping it um between two localities, and the question is are you gonna pay taxes on it?
So most of these cases about uh you know about food or art that are interesting are have to do with tax law. So when the customs inspector opened it up, Custom Inspector goes, I don't think that's odd. I think he says I think he saw like a kitchen utensil or like some kind of a some kind of a thing like that, even though it's much bigger. You can never use it. What kind of kitchen utensil this giant like bird in space, but it got that kind of tax category, and so it was 40% duty at the time on that.
And so they got to a huge court case where they got uh uh Steichen, the photographer was the owner of that particular version of it. And so they went through this huge court case deciding kind of what art is and was it art? Answer was it was art. So you had these old school artists and art critics, including some very very famous ones, uh, come and argue against it being art and some four. So that was an interesting one on is it art?
And the second one was uh a famous case on whether tomato, also I believe tax-based, and you can look it up, just look up tomato court case, on whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. Oh, yeah, you know about it. Nice. Oh, really? So those are my two favorite court cases uh based on either art, and both of them I learned either when I was teaching cooking or when I was in art school.
Uh all right, do I have time to I mean come on? I gotta get one last, one last, one last, one last, come on, one last. Yeah, it's up to Nastasia. Yes, one last. All right, it's up to Nastasia.
Colin Hunter writes in from uh New Zealand, also, by the way, also a uh former bass player, which is nice. Everyone loves a bass player. Uh and also he says from New Zealand the grapefruit is pretty amazing here. One of my favorite ingredients to use. But my impression, uh my impression, uh Colin, is that it's not the same grapefruit we have, that it's the uh the Purman orange, the New Zealand grapefruit, which is an entirely different fruit, which I love.
Even Nastasia likes it. I get to the question. Okay. So uh he says I have four questions, I can get to one though. One I can get to one.
You gotta get to it though. Okay, in New Zealand, we have native uh uh uni sea urchins, they're called Kina. Uh I'm relatively new to dealing with them despite being a California native. I had some trouble with my Kina uh where some of the Rose, Rose, how you like that word, Nastasia? Rose sacks emitted a white milky substance after sitting around for a while in the fridge.
The color also changed and became a little more brown. I wondered what caused this and what I could do to prevent that from happening. Uh I made a number of observations. I wondered whether perhaps the kina were too stressed when I killed them. I did a few tests of the dish before I served it at dinner party, had no problem with any white liquid emission.
What do you think, Stas? Uh I had to leave some of the kina uh out on the bench top alive for a few hours. They were all alive when I killed them and were fresh that morning, straight out of the sea. Uh they would have been out of the water maybe eight hours. I think I stored them in the fridge, uh, but they were left out for some time.
And so then the question is, you know, what happened? Um, you know, can I do anything? Can I do anything better? Okay. This is an interesting question, and uh, you know, I love them, but it led me, it led it basically.
Your question pointed that I didn't really understand a lot about them, and there's a lot of interesting information on the internets about it. And what this had to do, uh, and I you know, I learned learned a lot from kind of looking at the question, is uh my assumption was it had something to do with the reproductive cycle of the urchin. And the short answer in case Dave rips the air off is that's that's true. You were using a sea urchin that was about to go into spawning. So um it turns out that the particular variety that is called Kina from New Zealand goes into spawning in November through March.
And so you were getting a uh, you know, one that was about to spawn, and it's a well-known fact, according to the JJ McDonnell uh corporation, that you can get milky uh roe uh if it's very close to spawning time. And uh at that time it'll have a much more uh bitter taste and it'll be more watery than it would if you get it um at other times. Um so anyway, so super like that's that's what happened to you. But what I didn't realize is that there's so there's so many more varieties of sea urchin than I knew about, and that the spawning cycle is relatively different and can do many different, you know, go through many different uh places. But here's some place here's some things I think you should look at.
You should look at uh sea urchin aquaculture uh wordpress.com and uh see sea urchin uh row the product. Fantastic read. Uh you should also check out um you should check out a guide to sea urchin reproductive cycle and staging sea urchin gonad samples by Philip James and Sten uh Sikavapuo, I can't pronounce that person's name. Sten somebody, uh, where I learned this interesting fact. G I is the gonad index.
And the gonad index is the weight of the gonad, uh the weight of the gonad inside of remember, you're not eating really the eggs specifically, you're eating the gonads, and it can be male or female, and you don't know whether you have a male or female typically unless you put it under a microscope and look at it, but you're eating the gonads. But the gonad index is the weight of the gonad versus the weight of the whole row, uh the whole sea urchin, and it can range from 1% to 20%. So you can have a huge range in the gonad side of a sea urchin. Another interesting fact, Nastasia, is that when you're raising sea urchin, there's no way to know what the size is until you kill it. And so, like they have no one's figured out a way to figure pre-figure out what the size of the thing is gonna be.
Uh, and here's the other thing that's like super super fascinating on it that you should uh pay attention to. So typically, sea urchins, as they're as they're grazing and growing, the sea urchins will uh the gonad size will increase and increase and increase. Right before spawning, uh like a couple weeks before spawning, they've gathered as much stuff as they're as they're gonna gather, then they get ready to spawn. That's when they start building up the eggs. So you can have what happens is is first of all, the size of the whole gonad changes, but then the percentage of that gonad that is storage cell.
Now it's a storage cells, is what you want to eat, right? The percentage of the storage cells is highest, like a month or so, I think, from my reading before spawning. Then it starts building up actual either eggs or sperm cells, and those are more bitter. So the high like the closer you get once it's built up the gonad to its maximum size of storage cells, like that's the peak point, and then from then on, even though the size is gonna keep getting slightly bigger, it's gonna get progressively more bitter, then it will spawn, they'll get they'll lose their texture, the size will go way down, and then it will start building up again. And they'll still be okay tasting when they're small, uh, you know, after they've gone through their spawning, but they'll be unacceptably small.
And so you have to wait for them to build up again. So that's it's all about the uh it's all about the breeding cycle and looking what reading. Reading, it's all about the breeding cycle of it. So look at those uh things. They're actually for me.
If you want to see what I think interesting reading is, read those things on sea urchins, and then we'll see you next week on cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network, food radio supported by you. For our freshest content and to hear about exclusive events, subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website, heritageradio network.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.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.