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Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the radio network every Tuesday from I don't know, like 1215, 12, something like this, to about, you know, 1245, like one o'clock from Bernard's Pizzeria in Bushwick. Brrrrklin. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing?
Good. Got Dave in the booth. Good. And Habitual Line Stepper and America's favorite punching bag. Peter Kim.
Dave will talk about the borough he's in with about 10 times more enthusiasm than he, you know, talks about the two of us. That's true. Or Dave in the booth. Brooklyn! Hey, see that person out there?
You know what they're excited to be? They're excited to be in Brooklyn. Do they know who we are? No idea at all. I mean, Brooklyn.
Don't know, don't care. Don't know, don't care. Brooklyn is a bigger deal than any of us. My friend. I'm just noting.
Observing. Yeah, but like I stand by that. What about you, Dave? You know it. Yeah, see what I mean?
Hell, I I don't even like coming to Brooklyn because I prefer to stay in Manhattan. Oh, so sorry about it. Wow. It's not that. It's it's like everyone like it's the people who live in Brooklyn, they're like, I don't really like to go to Manhattan.
I just go there for work. You know what I mean? Like you know what I mean? No one likes to, no one who lives in New York, here's the messed up thing, actually likes to leave like a five block radius. People who don't know this about New Yorkers, we don't like to actually move around within our city.
We all think we like to travel. Yeah. Anyone who lives outside of New York, they're like, oh, you're they're only like 45 minutes away from you. You must see them all the time. And we're like, oh 45 minutes away.
What? You know what I mean? Like, they're like, they moved like 40 blocks north of me, which is what is that, like three miles, something like this? Not even. And you're like, 40 blocks away, they're dead to me.
You know what I mean? It's like that's just how New York works. Yeah. It's pathetic. We are the most provincial people.
Like, we might as well, we might as well be like uh, I don't know, like from the 19th century or something like that. In terms of our, you know, getting around habits. Except for Peter. Peter goes around, sees everyone, does everything. Man about town.
Yes. Yeah. So Nastasia, did you go to the best new chefs event last night? Yeah. How'd it go?
Food and wines, best new chefs with our uh friend of the show, Jordana Rothmont. Was she uh crowded? Yeah, was she I didn't see her. Last time I went with Stas, she left me high and dry. I did.
I like Jordana and then I left. Yeah. Yeah, that's Nastasia doesn't want to ever, she's like me this way, does not ever want to be anywhere alone because I was with Peter. She doesn't really like people. Right.
So here's the thing. Here's the thing. It's not just that Stas doesn't want to talk to other people, which you know, that's her prerogative. She will actually sort of suck my attention or other people's attention away, so I can't even function as a normal sort of social human being around her. Until she has another wing unit, and then yeah, then you're sloughed off.
Sort of. Yeah. Like, you know, like she still manages the shoot. You know the extra hate. The extra ship you get in Gallagher 3.
Yeah. Like that's either you get you get shot off the side, you know, wheely, wheel, wheely wheel, we'll be right back. And then, like, you know, and then like you get shot off the side, she just keeps going. That's right. Gets another extra ship.
Yeah. Dave's my favorite wingman. Yeah, yeah. Right. Well, because like nostalgia looks social next to me.
With the two of us, we're the worst. We show up at a party, we both put like the most disgusted look on our face and get to the farthest corner, find a glass of booze, go to the farthest corner of the room, and just go. Yeah. Well, with you, Dave, so for normal people, the distribution of conversation is small conversations with a lot of people. With you, it's like 99% of your time with the first person you spoke you speak to when you arrive.
Yeah, those are the things that you're doing. And you haven't even like hit the elevator button. You know, you know, I you know, all right, whatever. That sounds about right. Whatever.
All right. Uh so uh what do you you you want you want to actually do a question? Oh, by the way. There's somebody on the phone. There's someone on the phone.
All right, all right, all right, call her, you're on the air. Hey Dave, Nastasha. Uh Peter. Uh this is actually uh sorry, sorry, sorry. Go ahead.
This is Antoine, previously from Booker Tom, Florida. Oh, you moved? Uh I did. I'm in uh Burlington, Vermont now. Wow, huh?
Nice. I mean, that's very different. Very different. I like you, I always hated the heat over there, you know. So I've been there since I was two and could no longer do it.
Are you like one of those drivers who like your foot's either all the way on the accelerator pedal or all the way on the brake? Generally, yeah. Yeah, all or nothing. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. All right. So what so what's going up in Vermont? Uh you know, a lot, man. It's uh really good quality just food from here, year round, you know.
Year come year round, year round. I mean, come on, year round. Vermont, what are they making in the in the dead of winter? You haven't been there in the dead of winter yet, right? I've been here in the dead of winter.
What are they making in the dead of winter that's so great? We have root we have rutabages. Alright, fair. Dairy as well. Oh dairy and here.
Rutabegas. A lot of ferments. I love a good ruta. So I actually had a question regarding bottled cocktails, but with uh carbonating them inside of a bottle. Shoot.
Uh if there's any recommended pressure you do for in there, like all I have right now is um is an easy whiffer, not the actual soda siphon. So I wonder if you're never use never use a soda siphon. What's that? Never use a soda siphon. There's no there's no purpose for them.
Soda siphons serve exactly one purpose and that is to reenact three stooges uh episodes. If you wish to reenact a three stooges episode, the soda siphon is the best tool you can possibly use for it, unless you get the real old fashioned seltzer things. But barring that, soda siphon, fantastic at that. If you want to spray somebody and you want all of the bubbles to be gone from your liquid by the time it hits uh your opponent's face, a soda siphon is the way to go. Other than that, or if you really enjoy cleaning out large bottles that have very, very small necks such that you can't get inside the bottle and clean out the residue of what you've put into it.
If if you if you want to spend all your time doing that, then use a soda siphon. Otherwise, don't so yeah, the uh question at hand is whether you recommend an adding an extra CO2 cartridge to a whipping siphon to bottle a cocktail or or what specifically. So when you're using first of all, like I'm assuming you're doing this for yourself and not professionally, right? Yeah, for myself. Yeah, okay.
Because if you're doing it professionally, this is it's a freaking nightmare to because it's so expensive to use those cartridges. But uh the procedure is you have to do uh a pre-carb with one and then uh vent out and then a s and then the actual carb with the second unit, second charger. So you're into two chargers anyway. Adding a third charger probably won't help you much, right? Um just because of the the the way the thing works.
But the the you really, if you're gonna start bottling cocktails and you don't have you're not gonna do like uh the liquid bread cap, you're gonna do like crown court caps into smaller bottles. I will tell you the way that the very crappy way, hateful way that I do it. I hate it, but here's here's how it works. First of all, the the most important thing in a carbonated um beverage uh in terms of long-term storage is minimizing the head space. You need to minimize the head space in your bottle.
So I can't stress this enough. Headspace is your enemy. You need to leave a little bit of head space because otherwise uh small pluck uh pre plucture, small pressure fluctuations will blow it blow the top, you know, blow your bottle apart. But minimize that head space because trust me on that, just do that. Uh now, so the way that I do it is I usually chill my bottles.
You don't want to over-chill your bottles. If you over chill your bottles like freezer chill them, then it gets so cold that you'll get uh ice crystals on the inside of your bottle and the cocktails you pour in will get little crystals. Those will form nucleation sites in your host. So I would just say I usually will submerse in uh ice water uh for a while. You're like you just totally immerse them in ice water so they're they're thoroughly chilled.
Then here's what you do: you carbonate, and this I would do this with a with uh like a two-liter bottle and a liquid bread cap. Or like do it again again and again. You could do it with an EC, but you're gonna spend a fortune. Do my guy, I remember you you seen uh Willy Wonk in the chocolate factory? It's going to cost him a fortune and five.
Uh that's uh Augustus glue. So anyway, like the point is is that if you have uh you're gonna like I wanted I wanted to do it for like an eight ounce something to bring to the beach. Right, right. Like by the lake, rather. Right.
So here's what you gotta do. You gotta you're gonna carbonate like a good bit, like 30% or more, more than you need, right? Then you're gonna put your chilled bottles into a uh like a half hotel pan, and you're going to fill it up to the top, right? And then once the foaming subsides, keep adding, letting it pour into the hotel pan, right? And then when it as soon as it gets to the proper level, cap it right away.
Don't even wait for the foam to cap it, right? And then re then later on for your next batch, recarb the stuff that went into a hotel pan. That's the only way to get good crown cork stuff. Now, if you're willing to take your EC whipper to the beach with you, which is not a bad call, yeah. Then just do a uh a full charger into your EC, vent, do another charger, shake it, wait, take it to the beach, vent it out, and then you know, enjoy a nice cocktail.
But you have to be willing to take your your EC whipper to the beach. Yeah, I'm not feeling that. No, but you they it's like I highly recommend getting a CO2 tank. Do you have a 20-pound CO2 tank? I do, and it leaked on my way up here, and so I need to get it filled up.
I want to get the whole set up for like a um te rater sort of idea, like you have in the book. Right. What size tank did you have leak on you? Uh this was a 25. Twenty twenty.
Was it what was it in a moving truck? Uh it was in my car with me. What the heck? It leaked dry. You didn't well, first of all, you shouldn't transport full tanks in your car, obviously.
You know what I mean? Like, but uh did you have any problems with getting well, obviously you're alive, so you didn't have any problems with getting poisoned. How fast did it leak? No, it was like a slow leak because I left it open. I guess I left the gauge open before.
So it could have been like before or after. I just didn't check till I I moved in. Right, right, right. All right. Well, get it refilled.
Go to just go to your local welding shop and get that tank refilled, and then I would get a s like a single liquid bread carbon cap and then hotel pans with your bottles and just carb, like I say, 30% more than you need and keep refilling, refilling, capping, then re-chill and recarb in the in the uh, you know, in the one or two-liter the stuff left over and keep going. So that that's how when I need to make uh carb on the road, that's what I do. I'm working on a better system, but I haven't built it yet. And if I was to do it from a keg grater, is there like a recommended pressure you'd have recommended or just what you recommend in the book coming off of that? Yeah, I mean the the like if you're gonna come off of a keg with with a cocktail, it's uh very difficult because of the uh foaming.
First of all, you need to get the cocktail. I'll go with a lower ABV cocktail. You need to get it extremely cold. You need a long, long uh hose. You need to go through a couple of rounds of a cold plate, um, like a couple, like two, three, and then um you need to get a really good uh compensator valve, so like much better than a beer line.
And then still I would put all of your um I would put all of your bottles into a half hotel pan and like fill, fill, fill, fill, fill, fill, and then keep like going around filling and spilling, as I like to say, filling and spilling. Then cap, cap, cap, cap, cap once you have the airspace very, very, you know, fairly small, and then you should get a decent decent, not great, decent level of carbonation. You also like you have to get your lines primed to get rid of any air bubbles in it. So like the first like the first like you know, four seconds off of a pole on your uh any keg system is gonna be real foamy. So you get your hotel pan, you get your stuff in it, you put your your gun over the hotel pan, you hold it down until it stops being like hyper foamy, and then start your fill and spills on the bottles in the hotel pan.
So it's it's it's not easy to do one or two, but it's not so bad when you're doing like 40, you know. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, let us know how it works. Yeah, for sure.
Thank you very much. Now, Peter, Kim, we David, Arnold. We had our uh museums, uh the Museum of Food and Drinks, uh yearly gala. So what was the shakedown? How was it?
That was our most successful event yet. I thought there was a lot of love in the room, and uh yeah, we also announced what our next exhibition is gonna be, which is cool. You were uh you were wrong. There was no love in the room. Oh, right, okay.
Sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah. All right. That was from Dave. Yep.
Yeah, yeah. No, but yeah, that's a little bit of a little bit of a little how much do we raise? Are you allowed to say or not? Yeah, yeah. Uh over 230K.
Wow. Just in one yeah, one night. Not bad. Yeah. Yeah, so now it's time.
Peter's gonna go to the Caribbean. Just keep it. Yeah, so that's right. You know. Peter Peter like is always wanted to learn steel drums.
Yeah. He's gonna learn steel drums. I'm gonna learn bagpipe, and we're gonna go, we're gonna have the world's only steel drum bagpipe band. And I can I can finally afford to replace the screens on my Sears All. Oh yeah, yeah.
Oh, wait, sorry, it's out of stock. It's in my shopping cart on Amazon, but I can't seem to move it. Yeah. No, it's cool, man. I mean, having the jet of flame coming out of my cereiz all is really cool.
No, um, I can't eat eggs anymore. I know, I know. They're all goopy on top. No, man, I think it went really well. We had like just a lot of I mean You have to talk to Jim Leahy about his egg thing.
It's gross. Oh, really? What are you talking about? Tonight is his thing, but what do you mean, his thing? Okay, so Jim Leah's breakfast sandwiches.
So tell wait, first before you do this, tell the story about after the radio show what happened with what I what I call them. They got in a fight about something, and then Dave called Jim Leahy bread man. Hey breadman, and then Jim was like, whoa, I sound it sounds like you're calling me your hole and bread is ass and man is hole. And what did I say? And you said, yeah.
I know. Wow. So go ahead, go ahead. So he serves these breakfast sandwiches in his Chelsea shop. Right.
And the egg is supposed to be scrambled. And it is so bad. So yesterday. Wait, hold up, hold up. First of all, who scrambled eggs do you like?
From people that I personally know. Oh, I don't know. You don't know what scrambled eggs are like? Diner scrambled eggs. So you like garbage scrambled eggs.
Peter, I'm assuming you like French eggs. Both ways I like them. They're just different things. Sometimes I want the soft cook, sometimes I want the root love. So he he boils them for three and a half minutes in the shell.
In the shell. Okay. Then he That's a soft boiled egg. Cracks them. Very soft.
And into a food processor. What's this Roy Orbison stuff in the background? Is that from you? No. Are you singing that in your head?
No. Alright, go ahead. Can we talk about eggs? And then puts oil and salt in there and then just whizzes it. So does it turn into like a like a wait, oil and salt.
But that's probably still really liquidy. It that sounds more like a sauce than an egg. And then one piece fell between my toes one day and I just got two hours. Wow. First of all, what is who did you eat it with?
Mark thinks it's not very good. Right. Is this a I've told Jim yesterday? I've never had I'd like to hear James like Jim uh make the case for this. Go tonight.
What's the theory of it? Is it supposed to be what texture is? Like so it's easier for his staff to scoop out like soft boiled eggs. Soft scrambled eggs. Right.
One that makes soft scrambled eggs. Yeah. I think that's very hard for a staff to do. Here's what I don't like. Here's what let me tell you about the advantage.
Like I always would go not French soft style scrambled eggs on a sandwich because like they extrude and fall over everything. Even if you love them, like let's just for a better word call it mini curd, like the French style scrambled egg, which is the mini curd scrambled eggs that requires low heat and constant stirring. I've never tried this pseudo egg type product. Pseudo egg type product. But like let's just because I can't picture exactly what the texture of what you're talking about is.
I think I can find it. Why don't we just discuss like an actual like on a sandwich you want structural integrity? Right. So omelet style is the way to go. And the best way to do fast omelet style stuff isn't necessarily scoop, is to do like large scale flat sheet folded, not sweet, but like tomato, not that thick, but like that style, like folded bop bop bop up, and then cut into cut into the shape.
This is what it looks like. Let me see. But it's does it's great for radio. Yeah. Nastasi really understands that you people can'm a great okay.
Dave, describe it. I'm the great describer. Describe the dish. Let me see, it does. Let me see.
I'll I will describe for you. And coming around the track. Uh we have uh let me see. So it's a it's a piece of bread. Oh, really?
Breadman makes a piece of bread. It's a piece of bread. Bread man. And uh he's put through it, but he hasn't inserted it all the way. You guys familiar with that with that bamboo, that bamboo toothpick that has the little knot at the end, the little trifle knot at the end of it.
One of those that's kind of green on one side and brown on the other, little you know I'm talking about, like a cocktail pick. He has that, but he's only stuck it about a sixteenth of an inch into the top of the bread. Right. See, the whole reason for that stick is to shove it through the damn bread so that when you're cutting it, the bread pieces uh don't uh fall apart. And when you're picking it up, notably for a club sandwich.
Most notably for a club sandwich, which I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure is one of the top four sandwiches. Yes. Top four, gotta be, top five, maybe. I'd have to go through the sandwiches to be sure, but definitely top two. Yeah, I am the sandwich man.
Has anyone ever been if you let's say you eat bacon in turkey, right? Yes. Has anyone ever been upset when they were handed a club sandwich? I have, because sometimes when a place does a a turkey, uh uh a turkey be like uh club sandwich, they'll do like not like the cold cut turkey, like like board's head, whatnot, but they'll take like actual turkey meat, which is good, but they won't season it. And I I've had so many bad turkey club sandwiches where the turkey meat is unseasoned.
Do you carry it? Do you carry a small toothpick with you? What's that? Do you carry a small ice pick with you? Or myself.
Whoa. Oh, do you I like how uh the first move is just yeah, in my own misery. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's just can you imagine if you if like someone handed you a turkey sandwich, you took a bite, and then you just stuck an ice pick in inside of your head and fell over.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? It's like I've noticed that actually in New York City, like uh diner joints, like you'll all if you get a turkey club, it'll almost always come unseasoned. So I asked for extra salt and I asked for the coleslaw and I put the coles on the turkey. I think I know why this has happened.
Let me mention this. I think I know why this has happened. It's because people are like, there's so much salt in deli meats. I'm gonna make a healthy cloud sandwich. I'm gonna not gonna put salt.
No. Yeah, yeah. No, salt salt the dang meat. Yeah, the club is a little bit of a other thing. No, it is healthy, dude.
I mean, that's what pisses me off. It is stop thinking about food. Like, in other words, I was talking to Shorty about our menu. And like he had a thing. Healthy bites.
It's all healthy. The hell I'm not saying it's bad for you. I'm just saying, you know, like it is what it is. No, I'm not I'm specifically saying that. Don't think about your food as a freaking.
No, you said it's not you in your mind, you're still playing into the game. You've played the game. It's like it's like freaking Jumanji. Once you're playing the game, you're host. Don't play the game.
Don't think about it as a healthy choice or a not healthy choice because you're buying into crap science and crap arguments. I was being flippant when I said that. I'm just I'm saying it doesn't matter. Who cares? It is what it is.
It's a turkey club. I can't. You know why I can't enjoy it. Yeah, exactly. But the reason I care about people buying into it is people who don't otherwise, they do don't otherwise know what's actually going on or think make decisions that ruin the way things taste, have ruined Peter Kim's lunch on multiple occasions, as far as we know.
Based on the case, I've never seen the other part of so defensive on behalf of Peter Kim. This is incredible. Well, yeah, yeah. The other thing that's also in this line is the the lack of the the the uh under application of mayo to a club sandwich. I need like multiple layers of mayo.
Dave, are you that jerk who doesn't like mayonnaise? Whoa, this is in moderation. Listen, a turkey club sandwich without mayonnaise is just I'm not saying you should do a turkey club without mayonnaise, Dave. Wow. This is it.
Here's another thing. I've said it before, I said it again. This is it. Sandwich disassembly people. The moment that they don't give unraveled.
Peter, what do you think about people who disassemble sandwiches? As much as I want to wind you up even further right now, they're the worst. They're the worst! They're the worst. People who disassemble sandwiches are the worst.
Yes. Worst. If you don't like, look, we have done the courtesy of putting on the menu what it is that is on the freaking sandwich. If you have a problem with that, if you disassemble your sandwich, you are calling me an a-hole. You're calling me a breadmate.
What if you get a uh mealy tomato? Yeah. That is the fault of the restaurant. The tomato should be removed, and everyone back there should beat their heads against the wall until they understand what they have done. Yes.
Wow. You know what I'm saying? But the the issue is it like it's because you're sitting there like she's between two parents getting divorced or something. We are so used in this country to the figurative tomato. There's no point in a figure of tomato.
You can go by right now, you can go to my local garbage supermarket, which is a what what's your what's the local source? Well, that's important. Food in Polarium. They went out of business. Food and polium.
There's still a couple left. Yeah. Or like, whatever. Sea Town, Key Market, what like out in uh California, what's your garbage mart called? Uh Ralph's.
Ralph's. You can go to Ralph's in Covina, right? You know, home of Good Burger, and you can walk into almost any garbage supermarket right now and buy a decent hot house, like a compari or a worst name ever, kumato. That's the worst name for a publicly available food product in the world, a tomato. Not to mention cherry tomatoes.
Cherry tomatoes, hard to slice. Hard to put on a sandwich, yes. Difficult to put on sandwich, can be done in a pinch. Yeah. Any one of you out there can get something that has a tomato-y like flavor right now.
Forget seasonality, forget that. You can do that. Or you can buy that mealy styro garbage. What's the point? Yeah.
What's the point? And seriously, retail. I'm not talking like wholesale prices. Retail for $3.99. I can go buy a pound of decent hot house, like Kampari tomatoes, slice one per freaking sandwich.
Did you get you buy the word on the bike ride over here or something? What's going on? I have this amazing image in my head as Dave of Dave at like 60, 7 years old, alone in Union Square, like in a park, just screaming this into the air. Like, you can buy a nice tomato. Why are you buying these garbage tomatoes?
You're the first against the wall if you get these tomatoes. Well, here's the other thing. People want to buy a decent quality, non-one of those Kampari tomato. I had this argument yesterday with someone. Alright.
They want to. I'm like, okay, great. This person's tomatoes, like maybe they're good now. Are they good all year round? Like that's what these hot houses like.
For first of all, there is a tomato, which you want on your sandwich, because for some reason we can't do without it. And I like the tomato. I like a tomato on my sandwich, like one of these comparisons or kumatoes, which is gross. I buy them, it's just why would you call it that? It's horrible name.
But anyway, point being that like that's fine, but you should just mentally distinguish between a tomato, which that is, and the tomato. Right. The tomato is the one that is in peak season from a real farmer out of a real nice piece of dirt, namely Stokes in uh old Tapan, New Jersey. But uh, and two of their, but I'm not even gonna mention their varieties because I need some this year, I don't want you chumps going and buying my tomato. That's how much I'm gonna bogard the tomatoes this year, people.
Well, you know, Dave, it's all because of that genetic modify stuff going on. They're playing with the molecules, you know, the tomatoes, and it's just not natural. Oh, those GMOs, don't get me started. Really don't get me started. Like for real, right?
All right, we're back to the sandwich. Nastasia's phone is like her screen lock is uranus, which is weird. I think we better take a break and reset. We gotta talk about the freaking eggs. After the break.
Coming back. 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. This week we have a question from HRN intern Sam. When cooking faro, she likes to toast it first for extra flavor. However, it's difficult to toast it right after rinsing.
Do you have any tips for quickly drying faro or other grains? Huh. Why not toast it and then rinse it? Like, why not just toast it first and then rinse it afterwards? You could throw it in a low oven and that'll dry it out pretty quickly.
So put it in a low oven, wait for it to get tacky and dry, then you can ramp the heat and do the toast out, right? But all depends on what you're trying to trying to do, but here's a bunch of different reasons to rinse something. One, you think it's filthy. Two, it has kind of extra starch and other stuff on the outside, like products of milling or whatever, and you want to get rid of those for texture reasons on the cooked product, right? So if it's the latter and you're just trying to get rid of something, right?
Uh, or even if it's filthy, and but you're gonna like cook it wet later, then go ahead and and toast it first, then rinse it. Stock up on all your grains. Go to Bob's Redmill.com and use the code cooking issues. That's one word, all caps cooking issues for 25% off your order. And we're back.
Okay, so uh giving Dave a couple sedatives. I were describing uh see the jewelry. Okay, so speaking of sedatives, right? I'm on this new, I don't even remember what it's called. It's called like xylophone or something, some new allergy thing.
Cause two days ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. And it's kind of messed me up a little bit. I took it last night because uh I had this, I've never had this crazy.
I was uh like asleep, fell asleep on the couch as one does. I get up to go to bed, and like I choked my throat was a little bit closed, but not 100%, you know what I mean? Because of season, and like somehow, like I they say the doctor says they think it was Nastas is gonna love this, a phlegm ball. Oh got lodged in my airway, and literally, like, so I stand up and I think I'm fine, and then you you can't breathe at all. It's like someone shoved a cork in your throat.
Right. And so what'd you do? Well, so like I was like, you know how I am, right? I get violently, like, I'm like, I try to breathe in, and uh and all that makes it through is this like tiny whistling noise, but I do it so hard, like popping blood vessels and stuff that like I wake my wife up, Jen from a sound sleep. I'm like, Oh my god.
Like like that, and then like just like trying to get air in, and then like so I'm like, I'm not breathing. I'm like, okay, I've got a couple more seconds before I pass out. And then I went, like, you know, I can't draw the accent, but I take all the stuff that's in me, and I just do like a I do a like a like a Hulk Hogan like like shirt rip, like try to expel anything that's in my lungs out, like, ah, and I got a cough out. Oh my god. And then like after like like one or two of that, I was able to breathe again.
You should be the spokesperson for Musinex. Yeah. I I feel like I am becoming the actual mucus character from Mucinx. Like a kind of like a same position. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My hat color. That's why I'm wearing a hat that's the color of the muciness uh mucanex mucus blob because I'm trying to become that character. So anyway, so I'm on this medicine now. But it does mess me up a little bit. Maybe that's why I'm in a salty.
Do you so that you got the flimball out? Well, I'm alive. But did you see the flimball? No, it was like 2 30 in the morning. I was like, and then like I had such an adrenaline ride.
Can you unlock your phones and went? I thought you just said your phone unlock code on the air. Anyway, uh I had it by the way, Dax just got ripped off by somebody. Did you know this? I have no love for the post office.
I used to work for them, right? No love. Nastasia hates them. What was our famous quote, Nastasia? It should be called USP because there's no service.
That's right. But uh Dax, someone tried to rip Dax off in a in a scam. He's Dax wants to be an entrepreneur. So he's like buying stuff from the you heard of this brand called Supreme. Yes.
Yes. And yeah, so Supreme's dropping stuff. So he buys like whatever he can get from the Supreme drop and then tries to resell it. This is what all of the middle school kids are doing here, like in his neighborhood, and then reselling it. So Dax buys, of all things, a freaking ashtray.
An ashtray. And then he gets scammed by someone who's like some sort of swap. But here's the information. Here's the information. You can now recall a package.
Did you know that? That you just sent. You could be like, you know what? Don't deliver it. Oh, really?
And so we got it back. Nice. Remember when you were who were you buying something from? And the guy was like, just send the money. Oh, we were trying to buy a tractor.
Yeah. Guys, uh, last I checked this show is not called postage issues. Oh, Peter, but that's a good one. Where he was like. Well, Nastasi was like, yeah, Nastasia is very good at this.
Like, if you ever need someone to take on a spammer like double barrel full board, like take Nastasia with you. Same way, like, if you ever need to get around a line and you need someone who has absolutely no compunction about having everyone in the general vicinity wish her dead. Yeah. Take Nastasia with it. But if you want to make friends, don't.
Yeah. So anyway, so back to Jimmy. That's a trade-off. Back to Jim Wayne's sandwich. Here's the issue on this.
I think sandwiches should only be made by people like Peter Kim who actually enjoy eating sandwiches, right? The problem with having the French style uh egg on a sandwich is, as I've said, extrusion. Anyone that makes a sandwich that cannot be eaten without all of the goop extruding out of the sandwich has made a grave, grave error. That's absolutely right. This is why, like, I love the old days of the hollowed out bread so that the stuff stays inside of the side.
Still exists. You've got to ask for it. It's done. You know what Subway used to do that. They subway used to do the V cut hollow out on their bread.
Oh, that's right. They used to. That's right. And it was a higher quality sandwich back then because it didn't leak all over everything the way it does now. Um also excessive mayo to go back to mayo.
You do need mayo on a turkey club, but a lot of those places, they're like excessively goopify. Right. A sandwich is a delicate. That's my problem, Dave. I just don't like excessive mayo.
Yeah, excessive. Yeah, right. Excessive goopiness is good. Plus, like salted veg on your thing if it's salted too far in advance. Right, unless it's a unless it's an inherently crunchy thing like bell peppers.
Right. Which but anyway, but like the my issue is is excessive goop is bad, but between excessive goop and excessive dry, I'll take excessive goop. If you had to go one way. That's absolutely right. Like I think people don't understand every like if you have the top, let's say some idiot just puts mayo on the bottom slice of bread, right?
Then your mouth, the roof of your mouth, which doesn't produ I don't know if you know this. I don't know if you've been alive, but like the roof of your mouth doesn't produce saliva. The bottom of your mouth produces sled. Yes. Yes.
So like if you have an incredibly dry top surface, you bite in, you excoriate the top of your freaking mouth, and it's all that dryness up in the roof area palette section, and unless you have enough moisture to moisten the whole bite as you bite down, it's an unpleasant experience, no matter what the bottom of it's like. That's right. So, you know, it always make sure that this is why always if you're gonna put it when you put your liquidy condiment of choice or a creamy condiment of choice, always at least do the top. I'm a firm believer in bottom as well, though. That's right.
Right? Yeah. And when you have lettuce on a sandwich, right, think about placing the lettuce in a way that prevents the bread from getting soggy because the lettuce is a semi-impermeable membrane. And also thinking friction against surfaces like slippery versus against slippery is not good. Right, right.
This is why I like I like raw onion in a sandwich. You guys, Ron? Yeah, I like raw onion. Jen hates raw inion, thinly sliced. Oh, yeah, thinly sliced, right?
But like a raw onion is a good anti-slip surface in between things like tomato and avocado. Right. Let's just say. Uh, because it it kind of smooshes into them and then locks them in into place. Give your sandwiches a good firm, a good not don't crush it.
I'm not saying crush it, a good firm press before slicing or serving with your hand to lock all the ingredients into place. I think is also a key move. But anyway, so I highly recommend before you serve anything, eat a sandwich and see whether or not the vast majority of the ingredients stay on the bread or whether they end up between Nastasia's toes. And if they end up as sweet Nastasius toes, you have made a grave error. Right, Stas?
Yeah, it was not good. Fine later. I feel sick. Egg toes, toe eggs. All right.
So I heard we got a question in from the room of Much Chatting. Oh, yeah. Somebody in the chat room was asking about a vending machine at existing conditions. Yes, we have one. We in fact have two.
We have Vendo Calrizian and we have Andoni Antonio Venderis. Are the two machines? Because it's a Vendo is the name of the of the brand that we did. So uh we uh bought these old uh soda vending machines and I've modified them to go down to stirred cocktail temperatures so they hover in fact slightly colder so that they stay so they it hovers in and around it hovers between minus four and minus three Celsius, but it's so the drinks stay a solid minus four C. And then we have existing conditions tokens, and you drop the token in, and then you can pull out uh the uh the cocktail of your choice.
What did you pull two? You can't that because it's a real vending machine, like it's a real vending machine. So what happens is is you put the token in, and this is the part because I'm not using the original coin mech that we had to work on. Free vend is not a problem, but putting the you have to put the coin in, then you have to uh make it such that it doesn't accept another coin until someone has pulled it. Then once they pull it, it relocks.
You know what the old school people used to do? The guy was telling me, you know who it is? It's your boy, but I can't mention on air because I don't want you buying the rest of his machines because I'm going to buy them. But anyway, he was saying they're weird people. They're up from like you like I know all you people who you know are from other parts of the country, not from the Northeast.
You think that like you think Connecticut and you think like you think like Greenwich, Connecticut, right? So you're thinking Greenwich Westport, like oh, like you know, with the pinky out and like on their boats and their asscots. No, Connecticut ass cot. Connecticut is like full of like hicks and swamp Yankees once you get in off the coast. You know what I mean?
And we're like, Davis hated on so many people. And let me tell you something. I love the I love those folks. Like they're my people. I love those folks.
You know what I'm saying? But like they're beautiful, beautiful people. That's like that's like you know, like losers. I know, I mean, like, you know, I feel I feel at home with those folks, you know what I'm saying? But my point is that is that we're getting we're getting our soda machine from that kind of crew and not from you know the you know Greenwich, Connecticut, you know, yak.
I forgot the soda with a vending machine. Anyway, so uh so the yeah, the what he said what they used to do, what the kids used to do is they would open the door because it's the old school where it has the door on the side that you can open and then you physically pull the bottle out, it doesn't drop it, right? He said what they used to do is pull the bottle out like a quarter of an inch with a cup and then just pop all the lids off and dump all the first sodas into cups and drink it and walk away. Wow. Because people are garbage.
If someone does that in our bar, don't forget we can see you and we can lock the door. You know what I mean? Uh it's not just me. We have lots of large people working with us. I mean, I'm not a large person, but yeah, but you could kill someone because you have a simian crease.
And anger, so yeah, so we pop Supapipot, who apparently now is like, you know, like doing very well in in Bangkok, right? So I have what's called a semi increase. So a semi increase is there's a line across your palm. So like most of you, if you look at your hand, describe this, Peter. If you look at your hand, you have two lines uh that go across your palm.
I got one. Goes straight across. And it's called uh a simian crease. Which means you're either. Well, it's it's found in monkeys, hence simian, and usually means that you're a monkey, like an like an ape, or meant mental there's mentally mentally retarded, like l like literally, like it's like a sign.
No, I mean I'm talking about the literal medical thing. Like it's a medical thing. Okay. Anyway, so uh so we've always joked about that, basically that I've and so our you know old intern, like we pop, looked at it and said, Oh, in Thailand, that means that someday you will accidentally kill somebody. And he was very serious.
Yeah, yeah, dead serious. Yeah. He's like, you will someday you will accidentally kill someone. He's like, you won't kill them on purpose. Yeah.
I'm like, well my god, it's so specific. Such a specific palm reason. Yeah, you see that happening, Peter. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, he's almost killed me a few times accidentally.
What? Don't know. Things that you do on your own that result in your death are still on you, even if I was the instigator. All right. Johnny uh Johnny Reverie wrote in, hey, Nastasia, Dave, and Dave in the booth.
Nothing for you, Peter. Silent T. He had no idea he was gonna be here. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh oh, but guys, working my way back through the cooking issues catalog. As soon as someone says working my way back, I have this song. And are you gonna give me a burning love inside? No. Yeah, get to it because there's somebody on the phone then.
Uh all right. Uh well, this is gonna take a long time. You want to do the phone? I'll do it. Three minutes.
Do the phone then. Uh okay, well, I would so what Johnny wants to taught me to talk about, well, I'll get to the phone. I have a question regarding uh Dave's research methods. Uh often refer to interesting academic articles and responsible listeners' questions, wondering how you're able to find such pertinent detailed research. Are you just using Google Scholar or do you have access to more uh academic databases?
I break into something called the Web of Science, which is Elsevier's database. Uh I know that they're a gun-running group, but whatever, they have a good database. I also use um Wiley online, and those two have a lot of uh stuff. You can also use JSTOR. Like I have a lot of uh JSTOR has a lot of the older stuff.
Um and you can use something like Google Scholar to get a first couple of hits, but once you get into it and you get good search terms on those, you can download a bunch of stuff and then download the bibliographies, look at it and dig it. That's typically the way I do it. Um but the problem is, like, for instance, you had a question like uh does salting mushrooms earlier in the cooking process dry out moisture? I suspect it does, but maybe you can shed some light on why it does or does not. This kind of problem isn't typically addressed in the scientific literature because and here's the secret the the scientific literature only is written if there's money behind it.
So if there's an industrial problem, if it if you can save a gram of oil by doing it over the course of making, you know, billions of potato chips, there's a lot of money to do research on it. If there's something about fat reduction or some garbage stuff about health, some fake lies about how something is gonna save your life, or something that Dave would be interested in. Or end it, there's a lot of research. But we have to think about the problem that industry wants to solve. And if you can think about a problem that you're interested in that industry wants to solve, there's a lot of science behind it.
Specifically on mushrooms, the answer is you salt them uh as you're cooking them because you really want to get as much uh moisture out of those mushrooms as as possible. I salt and crowd. You can go into my old cooking issues uh blog, which still exists, I looked at it the other day, and look at the post on mushrooms. But I'm a firm believer, the old school French of like fry a single mushroom at the time is totally wrong. Crowd those suckers in a pan.
If you do anything other than crowding them and salting them beforehand, you're an enemy of quality. So just uh go do that. Uh and hope Booker can make it back on the show to talk about his first cooking experience as a pasta flyer. Huh? Huh?
What do you think? He's doing well or no? He's doing well. Yeah. All right, caller.
We have caller, caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hello. Hey. Hi.
Hey, on an old recommendation that you can made some synagogues beef soap, and it is indeed delicious during summertime. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. So you're talking about uh is there anything in it other than just a hibiscus?
Hibiscus, aka sorrel, aka jamaica. What? Sometimes ginger. Ginger. Yeah.
Ginger really good. Yeah. Yeah. That's a staple in my house. So here's my real question.
So I use a baking steel to make crepes because I don't have room for the whole big crepe maker, at least yet. Because it retains heat very nicely. Um and I'm trying to use the riquette as well. Right. But like when I'm spinning the riplette, a little invariably a little bit of cooked crepe gets stuck to the tip of the riplette as I'm spinning it, and then it tears a hole in my crepe.
Okay, so if I'm doing something wrong or what. Okay, so for those of you that don't know, uh raplets, so for those of you that haven't made crepes professionally, but you have had someone try to squeegee your car, right? A raplette is basically a crepe squeegee, right? Now the French Reclet uh raplets, raplette, not racette, raplette, are um, they look like wooden squeegees, right? With a like, and they uh the wood is kind of like made to a little bit of a knife edge, and I'd say they're oh, what's yours?
Like six, seven inches long, the six, seven inches wide. And mine physically a round dowel on a round dowel. Oh no, I don't know. I never use that. I use the one that looks like a like a squeegee.
Squeegee, okay. All right. The one I use looks like a squeegee or a rake. I've never used the round dowel one. Maybe that's your problem.
Uh it gets caught on the interior tip or the exterior. So anyway, so what you do. So like as I'm spinning, like I have a central anchor point, and I try to keep it really level, and then I and I do a kind of a clockwise rotation, and I feel like always a little bit of cooked, partially cooked, gets hooked to the end of it. Right. And as I'm spinning in it, it just tears a whole a big tear across the rest of the crepe.
It's really annoying. Okay, so like typically like the way you do is you have your ladle, you pull your ladle out, and you can see this in doses. So dosif folks don't use anything like that, right, Peter? They just use the ladle, don't they? I don't know.
Anyway, so I don't remember. So you lay you lay you laid a little, you do your the same like you do the swirl that you're gonna do for uh like uh or you don't even really need to if the crepe batter is thin enough, but like the in fact I never used to. So some people you see some people they'll do the um the uh pizza sauce swirl. You know you know what I'm talking about, the pizza sauce swirl? Right.
Uh I don't think I ever used it. Maybe I did a little bit, just it needs to be a little bit flat, but then I drop it and there's literally no force on it. So and you do it fast enough, you're not getting I never really do it after the initial set. So I'm using it basically as the initial wipe around, but not so much, and I maybe I do two, two and a half full revolutions, but I can't ever remember saying I I would have holes in it, but if you're if the batter is cooked enough to f to stick to the uh exterior edge of the raplet, I'm thinking you're doing it too late in the process. Yeah, I'm trying to go fast.
I don't know what that's really annoying. Well you maybe maybe it's cooking real cooking real fast. Try one of the squeegee shape, go look for a squeegee-shaped replet and and see whether see whether that works. And remember, no down force. Are you using any down force?
No down force. And I'm trying to keep it even, but maybe maybe I am. Is it uh is your replet my replets because well, okay, so like my replets would always come apart, so I would keep them kind of moist. Maybe like I don't know whether that actually helps it, but like my replet was always moist. Um try to keep like a bowl of water and keep it soaking in it so that any like little bits that you adhere to it will kind of wash off.
But also, the other thing is are you letting your are you letting your how long are you letting your batter rest? I make it the night before. Okay, so you're letting it rest long enough because it's usually, you know, obviously like it takes the first couple of crepes to get the temperature of your of your thing right, right? And then or if you're using semi-fresh batter, you get those air bubbles and garbage which always cause tears and problems out in the first couple of crepes, and that's when you're really good. It's really the fifth, it's like the fifth through the thirtieth crepe that are good.
You know what I mean? Not like uh, you know, crepes one through five or like you know, family. The Russians really like their crepes, and there's the saying in Russian, like the first they call it bleeny, the first bleeny always sucks. Yeah. Yeah.
Because because crepes and things like it, blinis, like doses are they're steady state operations. You want your you want your your uh heat source to be in a steady state, you want and you want your batter to be in a steady state. And so, you know, that's why same thing with stuff like El Pastor, like tacos al pastor or anything like that, is you you you someone cannot make the best El Pastor if they're not serving a billion units of it a second because it's best when the thing is rotating and it's on a high, steady heat to create that nice flavor on the outside of the meat, but you're continuously shaving so that it never dries out. So certain tricks like like that, certain not tricks, but certain recipes like that really respond well to volume uh and you know, and kind of constant production rather than like kind of one in one out. But anyway, let us know, let us know what happens.
Uh I don't know. Oh, you can't. We're done. I don't know. Well, what do you got?
What do you got? What do you got? What do you got? What do you got? This is my job.
I'm not gonna out them, but it was at a really uh well-established restaurant in Seattle, really nice, been around for forever. And they served these freaking delicious um savory donuts that were deep-fried in bear fat. And I said the chef about it, and he was like, Well, we get it from a USDA approved facility in Colorado where they use sharpshooters to shoot black bears, and that's why we're able to use bear fat in our commercial establishment, which seemed totally like BS to me. You know, here's the thing about uh strange meats. So I what was the name of this was the name of the guy we used to use, Nastassi?
Do you remember? No. So like we used to use this guy that told us everything was on the up and up, and we believed him, and then found out later that he had gotten arrested and done some jail time for being shady. So just look, I'm all look, if you're gonna call bears and you can somehow get USDA certification such that you can get bear fat, great, if it's all on the up and up. But just if it seems crazy, right?
It probably is. Cooking and juice. All right, all right, all right. All right, cooking issues. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network, food radio supported by you.
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