This episode of Cooking Issues is brought to you by Bob's Redmill, an employee owned company that has been offering organic stone ground products for decades. With Bob's Red Mill, you're not just getting quality, you're getting flavor-packed, healthy food that tastes great. Visit Bob'sRedmill.com to learn more and use the code Cooking Issues. That's one word, all caps, cooking issues for 25% off your order. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues.
This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245. Jordan as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? What? Good.
Yeah? Mm-hmm. Got Dave in the booth? Good. Good.
We got longtime friend as our guest. You're gonna want to call in all of your uh Amora Margo or Amori uh what do you call Amore? Don't insult the man. All of your drink related, all of your Alton Brown related, all of your, I don't know, any kind of like if you like very long stirring spoons, you're gonna want to call in your long stirring spoon questions to Southern with us in the uh in the station. Hey buddy, happy to see you.
Yeah, good to see you. And uh if you also have a show on the Heritage Radio Network, you want to tell the people about that? Absolutely. We are uh the speakeasy. Damon Bolti and I air every Wednesday at 2 p.m.
Uh and of course, podcasts on all platforms are at it for that. Yeah. So those of you uh who have you know listened to the show for a long time know that Damon Bolte is a twin. He's one of the creepy. Yeah, he's one of the culinary slash bar twins, one of the many New York identical twins, by the way.
Identical, yeah. Yeah, not one of these like, you know, fraternal twins. Oh, there are differences. Oh, yeah. So what are the differences between the bolties?
I actually don't know. I just assume. There you go. Listen, the new, you know. The new facial recognition iPhone.
Yeah. Damon can open his brother's phone. Oh, that awesome. So that's like a that's a that's a recipe for F U right there. Oh, yeah, man.
Are identical twins' fingerprints the same as well or are they different? I have no idea. I just know it's creepy. It is it is some it is some creepy say to some creepy piss. You see this thing about space the other day where they had an identical twin, one and spent a long time in space, and they came back and they're like, interesting news.
Your genes change when you've been up in space for a long time. The guy's in space had a smile on his face, like, uh, buddy, wipe that smile off your face. You know what that means? You just got you just got mutated, buddy. Right.
It's like so much radiation up there in space. Yeah. Yeah, I did read that actually. Pretty crazy. Yeah, it's crazy.
So uh according to the internet, identical twins do not have the same fingerprints. Man, the internet's fast on this stuff. Yeah. Dave, Dave can type fast. Yeah, yeah.
Dave and the boots. Dave, this Dave, the like Dave here in this side of the uh of the microphone, has uh like marshmallow thumbs, and so I cannot type quickly on a phone. Dave, I just wrote my entire book on an iPhone. You're a liar, who's gonna be. I'm crediting the iPhone in my book as as in to say written on iPhone 7.
Is it one long run on sentence? The iPhone really needs some recognition. Yeah, there's I'm trying to help him out. Yeah. So I was thinking of getting uh an iPad actually to write that because so I can carry it around with me.
Because uh I was like, oh, you know, you can use that stylist, but it's not a mouse. I'm sorry. Like someone my age wants a mouse. We just want a mouse. Is that what you want?
I want a mouse. What do you mean your age? I'm older than you. So don't you want a mouse? Your house.
You're a tech guy. People do people know I'm not a tech guy. I I I I own I own multiple. I mean you hang out with people who are tech people. I own multiple businesses.
I've got a radio show. I just wrote a book and I this is my only computing device, my phone. This is it. You're saying you wrote that because you don't own a word processor? Correct.
Your other word processor is a brother word. This checks out. He never answers my emails. Yeah, who does though, Dave? Oh!
Yeah. So anyway, call in your Southern and/or other cooking-related questions to 718-4972128. Booker wants me to say that. Hold up, hold up longer. 7184972128.
And also, Nastasia, Nastasia Lopez led everyone to believe that Jim Leahy, not that you're a consolation guest, Southern, but that Jim Leahy, the bread guy, was gonna be on this week. In fact, street bakery. In fact, Nastasia, that is incorrect. But it is what? Next week.
Next week. There we go. All right. So we're gonna say too bad I was ready for some deep master baking today. Um I was gonna say that Booker wants me to say that it's no longer take your child to work life because he has a job.
Yeah, he's actually, this is the first time he's working at Costa Flyer without me there. Without without Nastasia there. So safe to say. He's 16, man. He's 16.
Yeah, man, kids grow up fast. I started when I was 14 working. Yeah, but you know, that was when we were it was a different time, Dave. Yeah. That hasn't changed.
You can still work when you're 14. Can you? Yeah, in Pennsylvania anyway. I don't know about here. Pennsylvania.
He's like in Western Pennsylvania. My real forward thinking over there. In western Pennsylvania you can, but only if you're working underground in the mines. All right, so uh so what do you got for us? What's going on, Southern?
I I was just swinging by to say hello. Now you're I got nothing. Now I'm on the spot. You got nothing? Well, I mean I don't I don't have nothing.
What do you have what do you have going on? What's going on in the bar world? Um I just pulled the wool over a shitload of people's eyes and on my uh Instagram. My April fooled the hell out of them. What do you do?
I just posted a picture of a bunch of fresh bottles of juice and a shaker, and I said, uh, we're we're uh we're changing some programs. I never said the words juice, I never said the words uh shaker, but I in my caption I just said program's changing over here. We're really excited to come see us, blah blah blah. And just an absolute crap ton of responses. So for those of you that don't know, like Southern Did you open that?
But did that did you open that? Seven years ago, uh March 21st. We just turned seven years old at Amori Margo. Right. And uh the the shtick, for those of you that don't you need to go, but it it's it's uh it's it's small, so it fills up quickly, right?
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, but uh tell them tell them the basis of the program. So at Amori Margo, which means love and bitters uh in Italian, um or sorry rather rather in Spanish, which is goofy because most of the stuff on my bar is Italian. Um we only serve uh stirred bitter cocktails using lots of amaro and tincture bitters. I have probably have the largest selection anywhere in the world of tincture and potable bitters in a tiny bar that's 240 square feet.
And we for seven years have only stirred cocktails. Um not only have you only stirred cocktails, but no juice. No juice, yeah, exactly. That's part of the program, right? So uh we use uh uh only cane syrup, and we only use that in old fashions.
Other than that, we have no sugar, we don't use any syrups or juices, we don't use uh anything non-alcoholic, really. The only non-alcoholic ingredient on the entire bar is water and that aforementioned syrup. So it's all spiritus spirit forward drinks. So I posted this photo of a bunch of juice on the bar, and people just went apeshit. Well, I think like people are like, you know, why would you go against your shtick after all these, you know, exactly?
There's plenty of there's plenty of places I could go if I want juice. If I want a bee's knees or whatever, I can go somewhere. Wow, wow I wouldn't go there, man. I wouldn't go there. So the uh so it's still Passover.
Really? Yeah, it's like an eight-day thing. Isn't that Hanukkah? I have no listen, you're gonna have a holiday. May as well make it a holidays.
Yeah, yeah. So uh so do you hate it like when peop when people want to say are you a guy who goes all out and says Amari, like pluralized it? Isn't it Amari is the plural? Or do you say amaroes? Are you pissed off either way?
I'm not pissed either way, but uh, it depends on the usage. You know, on the menu since day one, we've had a cocktail that involves eight different amari. Right. And that cocktail is called on the menu the eight amaro sazerak. And people call me out and they say, shouldn't it be the eight Amari Sazerac?
And I say, Well, I didn't eat three beans salad today, right? Three bean salad though is a three bean salad. But you don't say three beans salad. Unless you're Cesare Casella and he says always beans. No matter how many beans are involved, it's beans.
One beans. Beans. What do you mean? Beans. Right?
Yep. The man cannot say the word bean without adding an S to it. But a very, very Cesare beans. By the way, I hope are we gonna are are we you think we're gonna be able to carry uh well you're not you're not working on it, so you don't know. But I want to carry Cesare's ham at the bar.
Yeah, you shouldn't. I told him you were going to. What do you say? He said Don't care. Yeah.
I don't care. Beans. Like uh like anyway. I give no beans. Anyway, so like uh here's the thing.
So the with the Amaro, I'm gonna ask you some questions. Yeah. Why did they ruin Zuka? For those of you that don't know, Zuka is uh like one of these uh class called uh Rabarbaro, which is like a nice uh bitter. Supposedly it's rhubarb, it doesn't taste like rhubarb like you think of rhubarb.
It's it's Chinese rubber, which is a special, you know, a select type of reborn. And they typically use it in a maceration and they typically use it when it's dried. When Chinese rhubarb is dried, it smells and tastes smoky, like it's been smoked, though it has not. Um so you get this real smoky, earthy amaro after you know when you make a rhubarbara. But Zuka in particular is what you want to talk about.
Yeah, so the best known one of these here in the US is Uka. And for years we loved it. And then they changed the damn recipe. What's up with that? So yeah, this is happening a lot with um Amari in general.
Um there, see, I use the plural. Um everybody is getting on board with the notion of cocktails, which of course we created here in the United States. Um, you know, uh the rest of the world still really doesn't make cocktails. They sort of look at us funny when we talk about mixing things. But don't tell the English that.
Yeah. So the deal is, yeah. So the deal is or the Germans at this point. Lots of them, lots of Amari are stepping forward and saying, oh, if if people are gonna use our stuff in cocktails, they need to be stronger because most of them are hover around like 23%, you know, pretty low proof, uh, which has no not enough of a backbone, even though they've got big flavors to stand up in in cocktails. So my I haven't talked to anybody at Zuka, but you know, they changed their recipe and they they basically doubled the proof.
So it's a lot higher in proof, it's a lot hotter, um, which changes how you drink it. Um, but I think they're they're aiming to be included in the cocktails. Just doesn't taste as good as it's like the flavor, of course. It just doesn't taste good anymore. I like a lot of the new high proof ones.
Like I I like the uh even though they had a horrible post, uh the um uh what is it? The uh uh what is it? It's out of my head. Luca. The uh Lucano?
Yeah, Lucano. They they had a horrible Instagram post, like a couple like horrible, like for International Women's Day, it was some like so bad that we're all like, uh I don't know if I can use Lucano anymore. Oh, but I didn't even see this. Yes, just terrible. You see that one stuzz?
No. Anyway, but then uh I was just we're just like they're like, I don't know, it was it was some horrible, like, you know, like one of those like man Ray things or something of a woman as a musical instrument saying we love women, they're amazing, Lucano, or something like that. Like something just something just like you know, off the wall, not cool. But uh they make a high-proof one that I think is actually works really well. They do.
Uh Chinar makes one as well. Uh they came out with one that's uh uh uh 70 proof Chinar C. Bartenders like that. You like that one or you like the original one? I like them both because I can use them differently.
But the thing is what we just said, both, right? So Zuka decided to change theirs and not offer the other one as well. Lucano still offers the one that they've always offered. Chinar offers the one they've always offered. I think that was their Suka's bigger mistake.
So Jack Shram, our once in Future head bartender, yeah. It like he has uh he has some sort of like Zuka sense. So like if he walks into any bar, like he won't even look at the back bar, and he'll sit at a table and then he'll say they have a bottle of old zucca on their back bar up. It's right there. And then like and then like he like he has like an eye for old Zuka.
He once walked into uh a liquor store with me. We were looking for something else, and he was like, They have the old Zuka. I'm buying it all. And he just bought he buys it all for his personal consumption. I wonder if we could, you know, we have some sway.
We could reach out to them and see if they'll you know relaunch the old formula. Yeah, do they have like no like people back pedal? Remember new Coke? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pepsi Clear?
Come on. Did you ever go to the have you ever been to the uh that um uh Omaro like trade show festival they have in Milan? Yeah, I got to go to that um I don't think it was three years ago. Um fascinating because it's not just Omaro, it's also like this giant food festival. So as a former chef, like that that rang my bells as well.
Yeah, problem is it's freaking useless because you're like, hey, it's going to the States and they're like, no. No. Yeah, no. No. Uh no, we're doing this for us.
Uh and it was also like goddamn Disney World. It's it's a massive, massive uh fairgrounds that they hold this thing on. It's incredible. Yeah, we've talked about this on the air before, Stas, but Italians are so funny because they'll drink like as much of that as they want and then wine with their meal. But they're like, hey, chip, we don't want to drink no drink.
Yeah, are you alcoholic? Like if you want to have a cocktail before dinner, they're like, think you're not, but they're meanwhile, they're pounding these DJ Stefs and wine throughout the whole thing, but they don't consider that drinking. Oh, yeah, exactly. It's very cultural. It's very um, this is just h how it's done.
We're not and I think I love I love that, you know. Uh here in America, we say, oh, we get out of work and it's happy hour where we're gonna go somewhere where the drinks are half priced and and double the strength, and we're gonna get pretty wasted real quick, and then go home and eat like a blue box of macaroni and cheese and pass out and and wake up the next day and do it again. Whereas these guys Wow, that's what that's that's your impression of us as a bigger one. Yeah, wow. Uh you know, not the folks who come to the city.
When you go to a Mar A Margo and you see Southern behind the bar, this is what he thinks about you. This is what he thinks about you. No, see, I'm serving the Italian mac and cheese at the bar. Yeah. You know, but but in Italy, uh uh, you know, you have the aperitif hour, which is not an hour.
It's it's the ap aperitif afternoon. You you go to lunch and you have an uh uh you know a comparian soda or uh uh maybe you go so far as to have like a spaliato and then uh stash, you like those. You kind of don't stop drinking these low ABV cocktails until it's dinner time. Hey, hey, oh, whoa, hey! What's that?
I think that's Peter uh trying to speak Italian. What is that? I don't know. What is that, Dave? I don't know.
Something on the internet. Something on the internet. Something on the internet. Oh. That's like Vistassi.
Remember when we're at the airport? We had just gotten back from England, right? No, yeah. That's a separate story. That's not it's not related to what we're talking about now, so we can't we can't bring it up.
Uh well we gotta call her when you when you wrap that one up. All right, caller, caller, caller on the air. Yes. Hi. Um so uh yeah, first time caller, long time listener.
I think I started listening to your show in like 2012. Ouch. Um, I've been going through the archives uh slowly but surely. Um I uh was listening to your show from last week yesterday, and I actually um so your first caller, um talking about wild cheeses, Oswagonda, ayahuasca, right? Oh, are you the person who texted me?
Uh uh not texting me, tweeted me and said that uh she was confusing two things. Because if not, good, either way, good. Explain the difference because I didn't have a chance to go look it up. Okay, so um I'm also glad you guys have a bitters expert on, um, because Ashwaganda is definitely a part of bitters that I've made. I grew up in an apothecary.
My mom's been making bitters since I was like six years old. So um herbal medicine's like a big part of my cooking career. I I've been cooking since I was like 14. Um so Aswagonda is a supplement. It is used to make a wild cheese.
Um sort of like have you ever heard of like yard, that nettle cheese from Cornwall? Yeah. So it's it's the same same sort of process. Uh they use the berries of this stuff that's called uh Indian ginseng in India. It's used all over India.
It uses a tea, it's a long life, like an elixir um supplement. People in the US have been getting really into it because it's like really good at lowering lowering cortisol and stress. It's actually probably exactly what your caller needs to be taking. It has nothing to do with ayahuasca. They're not the same thing at all.
Right, not a hallucinogen. Right. I know. I I I wrote the wrong thing on the No, but that's what she said. That's what she said on the air.
That's what I'm saying. Well, she said it was like that, but she did say that. No, but it's not a it's not a hallu oh, she it's not a hallucinogen. This stuff is not going to send you on a terrible trip. Right, right.
We got a lot of calls and emails about that, so I apologize to the ayahuasca lobby out there. Sorry. Like there is one. All right, so go ahead, caller. It's probably somewhere in uh Silicon Valley.
Is this stuff taste good? My main thing is is this stuff taste good? Um, well, I mean, as a as a as a component in a bitters, um, you know, all mid all bitters are originally a medicine, right? That's that's why they're created. It's it's a way to take the medicinal plants around us and preserve them.
Um and then that is will, you know, slowly turn into the art form that is that it is now today. So what I'm hearing from you is no, it does not taste good. Well, I wouldn't say it's great. It tastes like a bitters, you know. Um, okay, let me give you let me give you an example.
Like, I like I mean, I I like like gens, I like that stuff in the proper amount, like with other flavors. I I like the flavor. It but whereas like uh what's something that I find unpleasant? What's a bitter flavor that I find unpleasant in any quantity? I don't know.
I guess bitter flavors I don't find them unpleasant. I can't try to think of a can you get can either of you guys think of a bitter flavor that's just inherently unpleasant? Like I don't like, okay. I don't like, no offense to Philip Duff, because I know he's worked with them, but farrokinas, the taste of iron in a drink is very challenging. But the iron is not bitter, though.
That's not the bittering agent. It's not bitter. It's iron citrate, so it's not bitter. But that's the thing. I don't know of any bitter notes that are actually just bitter that I detest.
You know what I'm saying? I I certainly don't. I like them all. And that's how I wound up and where I'm at now. I I enjoy them.
But what about the flavor? Like, what about the there are flavors that go with bitterance that make things unpleasant, right? So like some people don't like dusty, like the that dusty note that you'll get in like Sue's or something like this, right? Which a bunch of different agents can produce that. Make that dusty kind of note.
But does this stuff like can it be made into a pleasant bitters? Yeah, yeah, I would I would say so. Yeah, of course. It's uh it's it's a little, it's kind of earthy. Um, it's uh kind of hard to describe what uh what uh what that taste is.
Um tell me the name of it again. Aswaganda. Aswaganda. Also known as uh Indian ginseng, poison gooseberry. Um with a name like poison baseball uh it makes a fruit that looks like a gooseberry, it's got like a husk around it, and that's what you would use to make that wild cheese.
Is it related to the Ashwaganda? Do you is it related to a real gooseberry like a new chuva or I mean is it in fact a gooseberry? Um it is a nightshade. Yeah, they're all night. Yeah, yeah.
Do you happen to know of light shade family? Do you happen to know of any commercially made uh tincture or portable bitters that involve it? Um yeah, they sell them. They sell uh a lot of commercial ashagana. Oswaganda is like one of the top selling supplements in the United States.
It's used by bodybuilders, weightlifters, it's used by all sorts of different people. It's really it's it's honestly it's great for you. Lowers your stress levels. Um elixir of long life in India. But we over here we've started using it for uh like you know, supplement geeks have all sorts of YouTube videos about it.
Go on YouTube and you'll find a bunch of people explaining like all the the uh the minutia. Yeah, I'm gonna check it out. Do you have a uh do you have a short life elixir? That's what Nastasi wants to feed me. Short life.
Yeah, wait, um, so caller, I got I got another one for you. Speaking of short life elixirs, elixirs. Since you are interested in this sort of thing, and I have not tasted it in southern maybe you have. Have you tried the uh rhododendron honey, the toxic rhododendron honey? No.
No. But you guys have heard of it, the mad honey. It's from like Turkey, and then up in the mountain areas, they have a couple of species well, you know, rhododendrons are poisonous, right? So there's a couple species of rhododendron where the uh nectar contains a neurotoxin that wait for it in small amounts. People find pleasant, but in large amounts are problematic, and it makes this I think colored honey.
I I think the honey has a color to it, but it's called like m mad they when they try to sell it to you, it's called mad honey, but there's an actual Turkish word for it. And I think it crosses over to the other side of the mountains as well, but it's like that kind of mountainous area of Turkey where it comes from. It's I mean, it's expensive, but it's not like that expensive because you you're only eating like a sm well, unless you're unless you're dumb, you're only eating a small amount of it, and it's like I think it's like hundred dollars the pound. But here's the thing. I don't think, and this is a good point with herbs too.
Maybe you want to talk about it, caller. I think it's unethical to put something that you think has some sort of bioactivity into a drink if there's even a possibility that someone might have a negative reaction to it. Because look like you're serving someone alcohol, right? Right, already a poison. Right.
But it's assumed that they know how to deal with alcohol because they showed up at a bar and ordered alcohol. If you're selling them like, you know, uh something that can, you know, affect their kidney function, or you don't know what's going on with their body and you don't know how they're gonna react to it. You know what I mean? Some of these herbs actually have real effects on too. Sure, this is why I'm staunchly.
That's why we tinctured them in the first place. Right. Of course. But that's why uh as you know, we work together at the bar too, Dave. Um that's why I'm staunchly against things like uh tobacco bitters.
I'm really staunchly against uh the the green dragon that everybody makes with the with the you know the the the pot bitters. Well, I'm not gonna say who I know who we share in common that makes that and came up with that, but his argument is actually thinking if if I know the person in a couple of things. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm not gonna put it on my drink menu and just put it in people's drinks without especially because you don't live in Colorado. Well, that too.
Yeah. Oh, about cannabis. Yeah, yeah. I wasn't sure what's going on. Yeah, but they that yeah, the green dragon marijuana?
The green the green dragon, yeah, is a is a cannabis tincture. But um I mean, I think that that's you know, like the great thing about the legalization we activated is that it's a very good thing. Like, I don't put anything in my drinks that can fuck with them any harder than alcohol. Oh, sorry, they can my show's not, I'm sorry. I don't put anything in my drinks that can screw with people any more than the alcohol that's in the drink screws with them because that's what they're expecting when they come in, you know.
Right, but I think a lot of people who are getting into making bitters don't think necessarily about I mean, like for instance, like uh Kinchona bark obviously can cause lots of problems if you overdo it. It's thankfully hard to overdo and still make a palatable drink. Exactly, yes. Yeah, so for that one, it's relatively self-limiting. But also it it collects, so you can make a palatable drink at the at the far end of that palatability and then have two or three of them, and then you still get the same effect.
Is that true? Yeah, it piles up. Sweet. Like I don't know, I don't know what the biological half-life. Have you ever noticed that some bitterants actually do have not just in your body but have a uh a palate like reinforcing effect such that it gets progressively more bitter?
Oh yeah. The uh Elcera Novasalis certainly does that. Yeah. Sip one is bitter, sip two is more bit and this is uncommon, right? Uh yeah.
Uh typically you get a you know, you it sort of dissipates, you you get palated or whatever. Elisara Novasalis is a potable bitter. Uh that uh the sweetener in that one is uh the sap from one of the trees where they get the bark that make the thing bitter in the first place. And sap is not sweet. It's sticky, but it's not sweet.
Um but this this bitter as you drink it becomes more and more bitter. Which is uh which is pretty uncommon. Yeah. So uh I had another bitter question. What was it?
Uh I don't know. Let's take a break first. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait. We have a bitters expert on the on a uh tincture expert. Oh, here's one for you.
Here's something I've never been able to figure out. I want anyone in the uh on the uh internets uh who can hear this to help me figure it out. It's it's a we know for a fact that um Aperol and Kampari, if stored in a bottled drink, at least a a carbonated bottled drink with acid, will uh get more bitter over the course of like twenty-four, forty-eight hours. It will get progressively more bitter to the point where it's unpalatable. What it's diluted?
Uh yeah, it's diluted and but we've st you can store it diluted, but as soon as you add acid, you know, like uh, you know, the equivalent of uh the same acid that you would have in um like a gen and tonic or any one of our carbonated drinks. Uh and I've never tested it with lime. We uh we use a mixer mixture of uh mallet uh sorry uh lactic and tartaric acid uh with compari and uh it just g and apparol and it just gets intensely bitter. So we had to, even though those acids don't spoil, we still had to add the acid on pour at service time because otherwise it would go unpalatably unpalatable uh unpalatably bitter. In 24 hours.
Yep. And well, it was it was one of those things where uh you know how I am. Like I was getting like vi like violently angry. I would go in, I would make the drink, I'd be like, boom, I love it. I'm out, and then I would bottle it, and then I would call in the next day, I'd be like, Did you did you try it?
And they're like, Oh, it's too bitter. It's no and then I was like, what? And then finally I went back and tasted yesterday's batch because as everyone knows, you know, we do at the bar life tests, right, to see how long a product lasts, you know, especially if you're gonna pre-batch because you don't want to throw away with liquor. And yeah, it just got more and more bitter. None of us can figure out why.
It's weird. You have have you had any other uh bitter tinctures that if you store them differently, like they get if you suddenly compound two things together, they they go crazy on you. That's really interesting. I I haven't I haven't ever had to deal with that before, but I would like to kind of get into it. You said it's Aperol and um yeah i mean start with compar I mean i would start with compari because i know it happens more kind of aggressively there so just make like a comp make like a like a compari soda right add acid to it so it's like acidic right as though you had squeezed lime in but uh again I use mala uh sorry tartaric and lactic acid uh and then store it taste taste it be like yes this tastes good and then uh store it uh for 24 hours go back and taste it and you can even make a fresh one side by side and the the bit the bitterness difference is like uh is apparently so you're just adding you're just adding just like soda water or carbonated water to compare and then adding some sort of acid that's that's the three yeah and because it's me because it's me I also recarbonate the whole thing because you know that's what I think of course um well that's not a question I can answer but I can ask my mother she will probably know all right well uh tweet it on back tweet the answer on back to cooking issues if you can find it oh last question I tweeted you a couple weeks ago um who is the chef who moved to California you guys had this you we were talking about this chef I don't remember what episode it was on it could have been years ago uh I just moved to California I'm in Venice right now um you were talking about on one of your episodes one of the hundreds um there was a chef who had like this lost manuscript that was about fish um he has one that's available on public domain he was like an early like 19th century chef who moved to California told all the growers he wanted to go this and that and the other thing, and he has like a lot of he made a lot of impact on the California food system.
Who is that guy wait but he's he's a New Yorker who moved to California re like recently in the past five years. Ooh, man. See, Dave, we'll get one of the intimates to look into that. Dave in the booth. This is why it would be nice to be able to search what we've had.
Because I can't remember. Uh I don't remember. Although Nick Mom. Cause I when I was driving out here, I just had you guys on. Like, all right, let's do this one.
All right, let's do this one. All right. And then I heard that on my way out here, and I wanted to talk to uh Chef that I'm working for here about that, and I cannot find the episode. I mean, I know people that have like ancient Thai manuscripts. I know people like WePop had a bunch of old Thai manuscripts, and so we know someone else who had a bunch of Thai, but fish.
So he had a book about he had a book that he wrote that was like his like kind of like his guide to vegetables at the time. It was like the the on food and cooking of his time about like every single kind of vegetable that they had available in America to cook with descriptions of everything. Oh, if you want, well, this has nothing to do with a chef, but if you want like all the vegetables that were available in the New York City markets uh right after the Civil War, you're gonna want to go on Google Books and look up one of my favorite books, the market assistant. And the picture of the guy at the front of the market assistant looks like Bill the Butcher Poole from um Gangs of New York. In other words, like Daniel Day Lewis and Spirit Animal, Daniel Day Lewis, who's whose toughest role is just as a loving father from New Jersey.
Uh but the uh he's like, How do I play this? I just want my kids back. Yeah, well, not even. I just gotta pick up my kids from school. Like, how do you get like how do you get all bent for that?
Anyway, but like, because that's like everyone's life. Anyway, point being uh market assistant is everything that's available, and you can see the crazy diversity of ingredients that uh we had in um the 1800s. I mean, just bananas, you know what I mean? So instead of 18 varieties of Oreo, you had 18 varieties of small bird you could buy. No bananas though, because they haven't been invented yet.
Right. Yeah, well, uh, do you have information on the banana, Dave? Are you a are you a uh a historian of the uh of United Fruit and uh what we did to all of the countries south of us in order so that we could get cheap bananas? Can't say I am consistently. Yeah.
Um, it's it's a horror show. All right, we'll take a break and we can talk about the horror shows of America and how you know the horrible things we've done to other people for fruit. And the banana hostino. Yeah, that's a good one. Coming back with cooking issues.
This episode of Cooking Issues is brought to you by Bob's Red Mill, an employee-owned company that has been offering organic stone ground products for decades. Dave, we have a question from a listener about another Bob's Red Mill product this week. Kathy writes, I heard you talk about the science behind nutritional yeast, but what makes it taste like parmesan while bakers and brewers' yeast taste like, well, yeast. Kathy, I have to say, I haven't done too much research on this. Uh the main difference that I know of between nutritional yeast and regular bake yeast is twofold.
One, they can choose a specific strain of yeast when they're making uh nutritional yeast and doesn't have to make anything rise, so they can choose it just based on flavor. That's one. The second is is that the main difference between nutritional yeast and regular yeast is that nutritional yeast has been heated so that it's no longer active. And I'm sure that the heating, especially you know, I'm not sure what temperature they take it up to, but if they toast it at all, that toasting can bring out a lot of those kind of nutty, cheesy, more parmesan notes, and you're not going to get any kind of active fermentation notes out of a nutritional yeast because it's dead. If you have more questions about Bob's Red Mill products, tweet it to us at heritage underscore radio.
Get your hands on nutritional yeast. Go to Bob's Redville.com and use the code cooking issues. That's one word, all caps cooking issues for 25% off your order. And we're back. All right, I'm gonna do some questions.
We got time for one because there's a show at one. So time to wrap it up. Time to wrap it up. All right, Devin from Seattle, Washington writes in. We're gonna go speed.
Suther, you're gonna have some stuff to say about this. Cookie issues crew. Uh for years I've been wanting to create a juice production and distribution business directed towards bars slash restaurants slash hotels in my city. And recently the time has presented itself to move forward on this idea. That is until yesterday, when the Department of Agriculture and FDA told me that raw juice, the same juice that we make and use in bars every day, can only be sold direct to customer and wholesale juice must be pasteurized.
So here's my question. What? I'm reading. To back that up. I can't, I don't have time.
Could I run my juice through a VAC master and serve the juice within the same day of pressing with similar results as non-pasteurized fresh juice? Specifically, would the VAC master kill enough bacteria to pass lab tests performed by the FDA to be considered pasteurized enough? Answer, no. VACMaster will not kill any bacteria. It's just simply vacuum-packing it.
Other bacteria won't grow. But here's the actual truth is you can sell juice to uh people uh what you have to do non-pasteurized, but for citrus only, you have to get you have to purchase verified tree-picked no-ground fall fruit. That's the first part of the rule. Secondly, you have to uh put in a sanitizer solution that has a proven uh log five reduction in bacteria for the external portion of the citrus fruit, rinse it off. You can then sell that citrus fruit to a commercial place with the label saying this juice has not been pasteurized and yada yada yada.
You can't do that for uh any other juice other than citrus. You can use non-heat pasteurization techniques such as ozone or UV light, but that is a huge pain in the butt, and you still need to prove that you have uh a five log reduction in pathogens. Here is another way around it. You can sell it retail, and then even if somebody buys 80,000 jugs of it, how do you know where they're using it? That's the way Manhattan Fruit Exchange does it here in New York City.
That's kind of what I was gonna say. They sell jug after jug after jug of fruit, and they don't ask you whether you have a really big family or a restaurant. Uh so that's one way to do it. And then of course, it's on the other people. They're doing something illegal, but at least you're not doing something illegal.
All right, very good end. I will I will say also that you know the guys over at Cocktail Kingdom, they tried to put together a similar business and uh they shut it down because of the expense it was gonna cost to go through the pasteurization process. Yeah, for that reason. They were doing that for about a year. You could call up Cocktail Kingdom as a as a bar, restaurant, hotel, and buy fresh juice that would be delivered within 24 hours.
It was amazing. And uh yeah, they got they got shut down. All right, so I didn't I didn't get to the rest of my dang questions. Nope, gotta go. Not even a 30-second question, huh?
Cooking issues. Uh my book drops on uh August 28th. What's it called, Southern? I'm just here for the drinks. Alrighty, buy it.
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