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Use the code Cooking25 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. Well, really freaking late today. Uh from Robert's P3 and Bushwick Brrrrkl.
Join uh yeah, yeah, yeah. Joined as usual, Mysterio by Nastasi the Hammer Lopez. And Dave in the booth. What up? So we gotta take a break.
Hold on. We'll be right back. And special guest, Paul Adams from uh what are you the you're the grand vizier of online cooking Baron? Yeah. Not online.
All a ma all cooks illustrated. Cooks illustrated. All of it, not the online. Right. You're the editor of the whole thing.
The science editor. Science editor. Oh, the magazine? Yeah. Nice.
And online. And online. All. Yes. All so.
If I have TV also. Oh, cool. If there is content and there is science involved, you are the editor of this. Yes. He's the guy.
Yeah. Alright. The one and only. Uh now you have that pr Prince song going through my head. But he wasn't Prince at the time.
He was that squiggle shape. When that song came out. My name is Prince. You know that song? You know that song?
But actually he says my name is Prince, but wasn't that on the album where his name in fact was not Prince? Where his name was Symbol. Yeah. Yeah, where his name was The Artist Formerly Known As. I believe that that was spotted a discrepancy.
I believe that was the first album where that happened. Dave. Are you trying to say you just outsmarted Prince? Uh I would never say that. I would never I would never ever say that.
I used to sing that song to myself in German. How does it go? I don't remember. You remember that. I'm sure you remember.
Yeah, you do. It's a lie. Uh I people see right through that. People, I have lied to you. Uh I do.
I do I do in fact remember it. Uh well then, let's go. Uh there einsen einzig. No, no, no, no. Kaiser Prince.
Yeah, yeah, no, no, I like uh no no no no no no, not gonna do it. You did it. Yeah, yeah. Verletz mich! Injure me.
Where he says hurt me, hurt me! You know that song? German's just not sexy enough for Prince. Oh, so sexy. Germany.
I don't know. I've made it up. I would always say I would always just say funkish, yeah. Und ich bin funkish. Funkerschen.
Heiser Kunst, der Einz und Einzig verletzt mich. My friend is in Berlin this week and she's staying at Pension Funk. Oh, nice, I like that. Well, funk, you know, like uh that I forget what that means. It has something to do with the telecommunications, right?
No, it means funk. No, it doesn't mean funk. Also, I forget whether it I never remember and these days I can't remember anymore whether I can't tell whether I'm supposed to use a mech or a mirror anymore, you know. I know. It's been like so long.
Did you do German back in the day, Paul? Yep. Yeah. A little bit. You can't remember that stuff, right?
Because the great thing about German, a great thing about learning German is is it's fundamentally completely rule-based. So for a rule-based person such as myself, it's incredibly easy to learn. Also incredibly easy to forget. You're a rule-based person? I mean Isn't isn't time a rule?
Time is not on my side. No, it is not. But the the no what happened to me today was I was going to be my normal amount late, and the subway was like, hey, you know what? Why don't we just not stop it flushing? Which is the stop that I get off here.
So you're blaming it on the subway. Uh blaming it on the rain, actually. Uh there is no rain. There's no rain. Uh I mean.
It's all my fault. I mean, that's the thing. It's all my fault, but I'm not telling you. That's all I wanted to hear. Yeah, if I asked me telling you, you know.
Thank you. You're growing up now. How I messed up, but yes, like or like, you know, what miscalculations I made. At the end of the day, it's all my fault. Um interesting fact, Paul.
Nastasia, I'm sure does not care. And I don't know, Dave, whether you'll care, you have to tell me. But uh when I was a kid, I am one of the last generations that grew up with red pistachio nuts. Do either of you guys remember red pistachio nuts? Totally.
I remember the bags of them, but we didn't buy them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So like they were phasing out, you know. Paul clearly remembers them, Dave does not.
So in the 70s and mid 80s, right? When you bought pistachio nuts, they were red. I'm not talking like like rosy. I mean completely soaked, dyed red with red food coloring. Like so much so that, and I used to, but I mean pistachios, let's face it, pistachios are the best nut to like in terms of like flavor.
I mean, pistachios are good. I mean, like we can have an argument. They're great. Pistachios are great. Juicy.
They have a good taste. They taste like pistachios, which is a win. You know what I mean? But conversely, a bad pistachio, one that's been shriveled or moldy or has its sweet aflatoxin on it, is like one of the worst things you could put in your mouth. Like one of those shriveled pistachios when you get one in your mouth is like a horror show, right?
So it's like shriveled nuts in your mouth, never good. Whoa, family show. What? What are you talking about? Why do they dye them red?
Well, that's where I'm getting to. So this dye also was not very high quality dye, Paul, if you remember. It was like it would come off on your hands. Well, it depends on what you look for in a dye. Well, I look for it to say.
In those days, you wanted them to come off in your hands. Really? Yeah. I mean, my hands were like half the thrill of eating pistachios. My hands and face were perpetually stained red because also I'm too lazy to pick them apart with my hands, so I grab it with my hand, place it on my tooth, rip it open, spit the other shell out, suck the nut and go.
Right. So I I I was red all over. I was like suck the nut and go. Oh my God. I was like Nastasia Lopez was the time we got FNDC blue number whatever it was, dye, and I told her not to touch it, and I came back from lunch and her entire face was blue, like she was freaking Violet Beauregard from Willy Wonka.
It was amazing. Uh but so like I used to uh I wish I had taken photos here. You shouldn't have touched it, and I said I didn't. And she's like, go look in the finger. Uh yeah.
And like that's also like my that was my favorite part of um the modernist cuisine. The original book was the story they talk about in the submarine. Remember that? Yeah. Remember that, Paul?
No, I don't. So it's the best part of the book. Yeah, it's the best part of the book. And so what happens is is they're recounting a story of that uh naval doctor did where they got everyone on the submarine to come in for a checkup, ostensibly, of their posterior portions, right? To I don't know what they were like what they lied and said they were testing for.
Really all they were doing is swabbing the sailors' butts with uh phosphorescent dye. They then waited like a day or two and then went around their their buttholes. Yeah. Yeah, with phosphorescent dye. They then went around the sub with a with a light, with a black light, and were looking for the phosphor, and the entire inside of the submarine like lit up like a freaking Christmas tree with a black light.
So like and like when I read that, I was like, oh, people, they gross. By the way, it's not sailors, it's people. You know what I mean? Like, uh, so like and everyone assumes, oh, it's you know, this is the classic Nastasia mistake. She's like, my germs are okay.
It's everyone else's germs that are no good. And everyone thinks that it's like prisoner's dilemma of germs. And so the entire inside of the submarine is completely coated with with uh poop phosphor, which is an amazing. I mean, clearly the best clearly that's the only takeaway from all of modernist cuisine that Nastasi and I had was poop on the submarine. Alright, so we gotta take a quick break.
Gotta finish pistachios. So pistachios were always dyed red, and here's what happened. I read about it. So pistachios that we used to get were from Iran. That's where the majority of the pistachios were grown.
They were imported into the United States. And the traditional harvesting method to get pistachio nuts in um in Iran left uh blemishes on like stain, literal stains on the outside shells of the nuts. And so because Americans in the 70s, and I guess before, or maybe even Iranian uh consumers, I don't know, didn't want to buy nuts that looked stained, probably with human fingerprints or something else equally horrible to go back to the poop story. Blood blood, they stained them bright red because the bright red apparently covered up all the stains and it was all good. Uh so enter when um the revolution happened in Iran, they took the hostages, there's an embargo on Iranian nuts.
Uh and for a while Californians were dying them like the Iranians did. However, the methods of harvesting used in California do not cause stains on the nets, and so everyone was like, we don't need the dieties nuts no more. And that's why pistachio nuts aren't red any longer. Alright, we'll take a break, come back with more cooking issues. Hey yo, Nastachia, it's time for our Bob's Red Mill moment where I put your cooking improvisational skills to the test.
This week's secret ingredient is all purpose flour, meaning it has all purposes, any purpose. You want to clean your car, all purpose flour. Nastasia, tell us what you'd make. Um, I would make chicken picata. What?
That's what you call out AP flour for? I would have no other use for AP flour in my house other than putting it on chicken. You wait, let me get this straight. Yeah. You literally have no reason to have flour in your house other than that.
Other than to you're not like not only are you not gonna bake with it, right? But but the only thing that you ever put a coating on before you fry up is chicken. Yes. And not even like fake salting boca. Like I love a chicken.
Do you ever make the fake chicken salting boca? You know salty boca alla Romano, right? The veal cutlet with the prosciutto and the and the sage. It's called salty boca because do you remember Italian? Because what?
Something in the mouth. It jumps in the mouth. Thanks to Bob's Red Mill for supporting cooking issues. Visit Bob'sRedmill.com to shop their huge range of products. Use the code cooking25 for 25% off your order.
That's cooking, no space, the number two, the number five. Alright, so more on this. Some more on this. Nastasia. I have no idea.
Nastassi. Oh yeah, we can edit it out half of the diatribe where we're yelling at each other. But well, I mean, then if I didn't, the ad would be longer than the show, especially with your arrival times. Oh. Times.
Time. Well, no, you showed up early. Well, I don't know when you showed up. Oh, I meant like just Dave over the course of forever. Oh, freaking Hustino on a stick, man.
You know what I mean? Like, you know, you know, you you live here over a river. Anyway, my point is that uh I don't what do you mean you don't know what that means? We we literally have to travel over a river to make it here. I don't yeah, whatever.
Anyway, so like like over the river and through the freaking woods. Anyway, point being uh that Nastasia, one of the things Nastasi, I don't think you've played this ad yet, but one of the things Nastasi was supposed to do for Bob's Red Mill was uh faro. And I made it hold on a second. I pronounce it pharaoh to bother Nastasia, even though I know it's pronounced faro. Just just to tick her up.
Is it? Because I've I keep hearing both. It's far. It's faro. Alright.
Anyway, but like, like when you use it foreign ingredient that's not really fully like Americanized yet, you use the original pronunciation until proven otherwise. No, Nastasia? Mm-hmm. Anyway. So, and say it like Chesray would say it.
No. Come on. No, tell the story. Anyway. So Nastashi.
So, like uh Nastasia comes in and pretends to have cooked something with Faro. Like, I had done all these recipes like I was supposed to. She comes in and her pretend recipe was the worst pretend recipe on earth. No, she made a different one. So she takes like this photo.
She takes there's a photo. We can prove it. She can tweet it out of what she made with Faro. Uh she chooses my two least favorite things. Chunks, huge chunks of just a hacked up eggplant, which I love eggplant.
No, they were the mini ones. Okay. Alright, that's more of a win. And summer freaking squash. Like just chunks of summer freaking squash and far.
And I guarantee you. And fridge cheese. Did you grow those? I like how fresh cheese. Yeah.
I like how Nastasia has a whole category, fridge cheese. It's like the cheese that's been sitting in your fridge for a month. So it it went in as, let's say. It went in as, let's say, camembert, and then just becomes fridge cheese. Yeah.
How did how did it taste? And turns out you should spend some time thinking about what you cook. Oh, go figure. Oh, also, Paul brought something. I think Paul brought something for it.
Who brought this? This is stuff to drink. I found it. You found it? I took that from the studio bar.
Yeah. Uh, all right. But Paul has two things that he's here to pronounce. I thought Paul's specifically pushing nothing. Alright, Paul, what are you promoting?
I'm not promoting it, but I've been investigating dihydromericetin. Oh, yeah, me too. Oh yeah? I'm just kidding, sorry. Basically, inspired by Dave opening his exciting new bar.
I went there and there's an interesting cocktail menu, and I wanted to try all of it. But beverage alcohol has an intoxicating effect, which prevents you from having as many cocktails as you would otherwise want. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What? Wait, wait.
I'm just messing with you. Alright, go ahead. Alright, so give the name of the compound again so people can get their fingers back on the Google. Get your finger on the Google key right now. Dihydromericetin.
D-I-H. Like two hydros. Y D-R-O. Well, dihydro they can get. Dihydro.
Two hydro. Well, Maurice, like like Maurice. D H M is the slang. But Maurice spelled like spelled like Maurice? No, Moricetin spelled like Mersine.
M Y R. Like named after the plant family. Yeah. E-C-T-E-I. I can't spell on the air for some reason.
Yeah, yeah. Where do they get this crap from? Amazon. The internet. No, no, no.
Okay. Where did the internet get it from? Amazon. Where did the Amazon? Amazon the jungle or Amazon the Bezos.
Bezos. I call only call him Bezos. I don't care how he's supposed to be pronounced. He's Bezos! Ampelopsis.
Grossa something plant or Hovenia Dulcis. It's from traditional Chinese medicine as a hangover cure, but recently the West has started investigating the active ingredient, which is called dihydromorisetin. But it's a legit old school TCM thing. Yeah. Okay.
And uh on the on the street, the kids are calling it what? D H M. D H M. Is it is it G R A S to throw another uh acronym into it or no? Generally regarded as safe by the U.S.
uh pharmacopia. Only by default. I don't think it's been. Wait, so that we're allowed to play, Dave? We're allowed to rip on uh on Mary Poppins.
Like, yeah, like Darth Darth Disney, Darth Disney is okay with us, but we can't play any songs that we want. Anyway, all right, wait. Don't worry about it. All right, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it.
I'll talk to legal. Yeah, yeah. Alright, so go ahead. So so we get this stuff. So I purchased a jar of capsules of diagonal.
But in other words, I can't serve it at the bar because it's not generally regarded as safe, right? I was suggesting that you should have surreptitious touts coming up to customers, giving it to them so they can order more drinks. Right. You should deny it. Right.
My point, my point is that as a res a theoretically responsible person, I cannot serve it to a guest because it is not on the list of ingredients as generally regarded as safe by the United States of America. True? I don't know if it's on the list. Okay, okay. So go ahead.
So your tests, what has happened? So I decided to try this stuff for the first time, and I had a couple of capsules of it, and I went to How far in advance? Existing conditions. Um 30 minutes in advance. Okay.
And I had like eight cocktails. Who is your bartender? I have to talk to them about this. I don't remember a thing. Was there a bartender?
No, and I Nastasia Yeah, that was self-served night. Observed me, and I was, yeah, not perfectly. Uh Nastasia's cocktails. Nastasia was like, the more drunk other people get, as long as they get more sullen and silent, the better they appear to her. So like, Nastasia, there's nothing in Stassi loves more than a silent, sullen drunk.
Because she can just sit there next to them without interacting, and they'll slowly sag into themselves like a persimmon slowly, slowly bleding and dehydrating into its own flesh. And that is her favorite dinner date. True or false? That's false. Oh, come on.
So, okay, so you had eight cocktails, and what was the what was your And I was okay. It was the equivalent of having maybe four cocktails without dihydromeris. And they weren't like you didn't order only stepbacks or non-alcoholics. I didn't have a single non-alcoholic or low alcoholic cocktail. Yeah, water.
You had water. Yeah, so sparkling. For those of you that are wondering, this is not some sort of uh we don't serve miniature cocktails at existing conditions. We it's as we say, in general, you get the full two-ounce poor. Right?
We have some lower alcohol drinks, and we have a lot of non-alcoholics. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. So your your first test is you say, a success.
A mixed success. Ethanol has sort of a complicated way of intoxicating you, involving various different neurotransmitters, and it felt like some of that was inhibited by the dihydromerizatin, and some of it was not. How was uh how is the morning inhibited? Um the morning was fine, but my mornings are unpredictable. I there's no reliable link between drinking and feeling hungover for me.
Sometimes I really do, and sometimes I really don't. So we need to find someone, anyone out there, I mean, I can't suggest that you do this test because again, I haven't done the research Paul has. He can suggest that you do it. But uh They definitely studied it on rats. And what happened to the rats?
They died. It works great on rats. In rats, to test drunkenness in rats, there's uh property called L-O-R-R, which is the lack of writing reflex, where you get the rat drunk and you turn it upside down and you see if it can turn itself upright again. And so a drunk rather that's a technical term for effing with a rat. Yeah rat tape dihydrom residin dramatically reduces the lack of writing reflex in a rat.
Alright what we need here is we need someone you need like a regular person. Yeah yeah someone who someone who doesn't have some I volunteer do you do you normally get hangovers Dave? Do I get them? Yeah. Oh my god yeah all right so yeah I'm in my 30s.
Well so come to the come to the bar but I can't provide you with the uh Paul will provide you with so I drink for free yeah show me show you're fucking Dave in the booth bleep that out sorry sorry people you're Dave in the booth we'll I'll spot you your cocktails um yeah but um okay moving on to Paul's second thing all right what is it is this my thing yeah well we came up with it together but yeah you present the problem okay but hurry because I gotta answer one question too. The problem is no I'm not gonna present the problem because these are so just say say what an idea they decided. When you go to existing conditions beyond the amazing and highly intoxicating cocktails there's also Dave Arnold milling around and if you have any questions he's right there and he will tell you the answers to all your questions and this is sort of a profit opportunity that needs to be exploited. So I think Dave should set up a little consultation booth in the back. You mean like Lucy's lemon?
Yeah, that's exactly what I think. 15 minutes with Dave 100 you get a free cocktail to drink during your 15 minutes with Dave. And you can write it off if he's helping you with your food and drink business. I will only quote Lucy during the entire time. You have pantophobia.
I will always call people Chuck, no matter what their name is. Yes. You know what I mean? Don't you think that's a good idea? I don't know, man.
I think that's a great idea. Like we've spent our lives giving people information for free. So now is the time. Well, speaking of time away from when you should be entertaining customers in your bar. But that is the entertainment.
Asking me some dumb asking me some questions. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So check this out. This is like one of my better, uh better like podcast ramifications that happened. There was a couple in New York City yesterday, last night.
I'm on the phone, I'm with Nastasia. Nastasia and I are having one of our many, many intensely unpleasant conversations with uh our contacts. Our contacts over in Shenzhen in China with uh with our factory stuff. And someone literally hears me yell on the phone, you know, gee, damn it, that's the most ridiculous thing. Like yelling, like just like going off on the phone as they're walking past, had no idea where existing conditions was, and says, I know that voice.
Comes into the bar. That's a win. I know that joke. Like a siren call. Yeah, yeah.
Alright, let's do a question real quick. Real quick, very quickly, I should say. Yeah, I'm trying to teach my kids proper proper grammar. Yeah, get going. Alright.
Greetings, cooking issues crew from my stuffy condo in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada, near Vancouver. I'm a longtime listener, first time emailer. Just finished fully catching up on all 300 and some episodes. Oh my god. Sounds brutal.
Yeah. It's like it's like a free. By the way, real quick interjection. I listened to the very first episode of Cooking Issues the other day, and it is like night and day. What do you mean?
You just open like so NPR, like low-key professional, and like it's just it it it sounds like a completely different Dave. What's better? Go on. Uh he's like uh the NPR. Yo, one time, like two or three years ago, we we said, should we do a more welcome to cooking issues?
No. No, that's a hard no. Yeah, all right. Yes. All right.
Not sure what I'm gonna listen to while I get my house cleaning done, toying with going back and starting over from episode one. No. This is what I told. So, anyway, whatever. This is why I tell Dax all the time.
Find new things. Life is too short. Find new things. Uh, anyways, my friends and I travel uh to the Oregon coast every year, and we traditionally make a cheese fondue. Ready, Nastasia?
Cheese fondue. You like cheese fondue. I will say this also. Whoa. The person who called in with the Koji question, we don't have an answer yet.
Is that your alarm for 1 p.m.? No, that's Nastasia, like ordering shoes on Zappos. They're like, Where there's no one at the address to pick up your shoes. You're literally gonna go and I need you for fondue, Nastasia. You're the fondue lady.
Hi. Oh, Jesus. So much for not taking calls on the air. So, Paul, you'll have to stand in for Nastasia. You'll have to do your best mean.
I love fondue. Alright. I hate fondue. Alright. No, she likes fondue because it's Swiss.
She likes Swiss things? She likes Swiss things. Huh. Yeah. Good to know.
Uh, hates biscuits, loves Swiss things. Uh we also uh do this during the Super Bowl, so I guess it's a twice per year event. So as long as you get to my question by the end of January, uh, we're in good shape. Uh while we're making fondue this time, I realized that we didn't have any cornstarch, which is what most slash all the online recipes call for, so I subbed in flour. None of the recipes I found, even the serious eats one, explained why cornstarch is generally used instead of flour.
I did a cursory search online but found a lot of conflicting opinions and people listing the properties of each thickener without really applying it to the scenario of cheese fondue. Uh melting shredded cheese that's tossed with the starch uh into a high acidity uh added wine situation. You with me so far, Paul? Yes. Okay.
Um I found it difficult to get the flour subbed fondue to get the right consistency. It was quite thick, which is unusual. Usually you have to use more flour because it's got less thickener because it's got all that extra garbage in it. Ash and protein or I mean I've heard different ratios, but it's anyway, it's not one to one anyway. Um it was quite thick and the cheese wasn't blending nicely with the reduced wine.
I eventually got to the consistency where dipping was possible, but it didn't have the same velvety texture it had in the past and seemed perpetually on the verge of breaking. I did cook the wine down and added the cheese gradually over 20-30 minutes on low heat. I used slightly more flour than was called for in the cornstarch. There you go, that's proper. Maybe I added too much, probably not.
Any thoughts on why cornstarch is the preferred starch here? Or is oh or is it? Could other starches be used? Uh thanks for pumping out an entertaining show. My house will be dirtier without your podcast.
Uh also, if you guys are still keeping uh tabs on uh the demographic stats, I'm a 32-year-old female who hides all kitchen tech purchases from my disapproving husband. All right. Alright! That's what I'm talking about. This from Dana.
Uh pronounced Dana, not Dana. Anyway, uh, so uh okay. So I the the the short answer is flour should work. I don't know. The main difference is between flours, for instance, wheat starch is a form of purified f uh flour.
So the main difference between regular flour and a pure starch is simply the fact that starch is pure starch and flour has other things in it like protein, ash, um things like that. So uh any certain starches will perform differently. Cornstarch has a lot of things going for it. Cornstarch is extremely neutral in flavor. Cornstarch is extremely cheap.
Cornstarch uh doesn't clump as badly as some other starches. So it's easy to toss the shredded cheese or the cheese cubes in cornstarch to keep them separated while they're melting. Then as they melt out, the cornstarch will functionalize rather quickly and you get a nice fondue. Also, cornstarch, because it doesn't have a lot of other stuff in it, is relatively clear, so it's not going to cast a haze over your um over your you know fondue that you might get uh if you're using flour, because flour has much more of an opacifying effect because it doesn't uh it doesn't fully, you know, once the starch gelatinizes, there's still stuff that's not dissolved that's in AP flour. Now, uh other starches are great uh and can be used in even smaller quantities.
For instance, arrowroot starch. Arrow starch works well in fondue. Uh I haven't tested a lot of other starches. I'd be worried about some starches, things like potatoes swell tremendously, so maybe it'll make it too thick. I don't know.
I've never used potato starch in a fondue. Um I think a lot of the flour, like this are the arguments about flour, go all the way back to Escalphier. So Escolfier wrote in his famous uh, you remember what a scalpheus book is called, Paul? I forget. Anyway.
Uh so Scoffier wrote that in the future we will not have to use flour for thickening because we're going to have all of these kind of purified starches. So he was very prescient in that way. And his theory was that when you're adding flour to something that's going to be cooked, uh, so you either want to cook it for a half of an hour to get rid of the raw flour taste. I'm making air quotes in my hand here. This is his his words, not mine.
Or you want to add it at the very last minute in the form of a bermani, which is where you mold butter and flour together into like lumps, and you throw those lumps in to provide a quick thickening right as it comes up to the boil. But Escoffier was very much opposed to any kind of cooking between just bringing it to the boil and cooking it for like half hour, 45 minutes to cook out the flour taste. If you read roux recipes where people are making roux, which is not the same as a fondue, but if you're or bechamel recipes, things like this, all of the old school recipes will advise relatively long, slow cook times of the flour, presumably to get rid of that flour taste that they say. I have not necessarily fully experienced what they mean by this flour taste, but it's also possible that the non-dissolved, non-starch stuff was giving you some textual issues in your fondue. Any thoughts on this, uh, Paul that makes a lot of sense, Dave.
All right. Um Nastasi, you like cheese fondue? Like, do you make it ever? Or do you just like it? You prefer other Swiss people to make it for you.
I prefer to have lots of people, yeah, around. But you don't make it. Yeah, okay. But you don't ever make it. You have other people make it for you.
Yeah. Where do you get it? Other people. Other people. Other people's homes.
Other people's homes. I can't recommend a fondue parlor in New York. Uh there used to be a bunch. But well, but so back on this, so like the modern way to so like obviously when you're making a fondue, uh you want to get the right consistency. You also, I mean, uh the traditional fondue is about using a cheese that melts quite well.
So, like, you know, a lot of fondues traditionally you're using some form of gruyere-like, conte like thing, right? Uh you need the right balance of aged and fat and everything together so that they melt together properly. Uh the wine is there because you need a like uh a certain amount of acidity to get to a uh you know to emulsify it properly. But the the the key thing, if you want the no-fail and you don't mind using new technology, uh look, uh the older I get, the more I am not interested in riding the edge of failure on a constant basis, right? So it's like already the stuff that I do, like I'm on the edge of failure all the time.
So why would I, you know, leave myself to the vagaries of how the cheese happens to be today or how my burner happens to be today, about whether or not I'm gonna end up with a gluey mass or not, right? Or what is the exact acid uh amount that's in my wine because too much acid's bad, too little acid's bad, right? You need to get the right pH, everything needs to be right. So I would highly recommend that you cheat and you just add to your fondue what the chef's desk people and the modernist cuisine people do, they add um what they call melting salts, so sodium citrate, sodium hexametophosphate. This is gonna give you a big insurance policy to prevent against uh graininess in your fondue.
Likewise, uh, you know, if you're gonna make the fondue of the Americas, which is queso, right? Um if you're making queso, queso typically doesn't require, you just use more cheese, doesn't require a thickener. If you don't add too much milk or cream to your queso, it doesn't require any thickener at all. But no matter what cheese you're using, you should use you know some sort of American-style government style cheese. Add some Velveeta to it because it comes with enough emulsifying salts and ability to emulsify a tractor trailer of of queso.
So like you can do several pounds of uh you know regular government cheese or American cheese and a little bit of Velveeta, which is much more expensive, and Rotel, and get yourself, I mean, that's the fondue that I make on the regular, especially for Super Bowl. Everybody, everybody likes case. I gotta wrap it up. Wait, you're saying you don't like queso, Dave? I like queso, but we gotta wrap it up.
All right, okay, I'll give you this on the on the way out. Ready for this? So yesterday, real quick, actually, let me just say uh I gotta give a quick shout out to Ann Robertson, who was the person who put me on to the first episode of cooking issues and uh also contributed to the station. So thank you. Thanks.
Thank you. So uh on the way out, check this. Yesterday, Nastasi, do you have your food handler's license? No. You should go get it just in case.
You don't want to. Because that would be the last frontier, and I don't, I want that to be like, I do everything else. It's good for life. Anyway, I went up to to take the test yesterday. I think you can do it online.
You no, you take the classes online, and then you have to go in person to take the test. Okay, so first of all, I I was gonna go on a rant, but we don't have time about how wrong the the rules are, how incredibly wrong the rules are. So I'll save that anger for later. So I'm up there and it takes forever to take this freaking test, right? So it like the test itself, 10 minutes.
You know what I mean? Like maybe 15, right? 50 questions, multiple choice, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. So if you're good at standardized tests, you're in, you're out. Sure.
And and you know, that's what I am good at in life, the standardized tests. You know, everyone's food handling. Okay. Anyway, so I show up, it I sit in the in the back of the room, and unfortunately, you have to register by row, so I'm waiting 45 minutes where you're not allowed to use your cell phone or do anything just to get the test into my hot, sweaty hands. Right?
It's raining, so I have my raincoat, my hat, whatever, nightmare. So uh I finally I get the test, I rip through it, I run up, they go to grade it, and she's like, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I was like, you must have aligned the answer key wrong. She's like, nope.
I'm like, listen, this is you, not me. I like I look at it and I'm like, you're using the wrong answer key. So it turns out she was using the wrong answer key. She goes, pretty confident, huh? I'm like, mean, yeah.
I mean, this is what I do. Like, there's nothing else in life that I'm confident about other than my ability to take your standardized test. Food school. Like, here I am. I'm like, oh my god, I have to go on the air tomorrow and tell everyone that I failed food school.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, uh, back next week with 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.
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