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Find us at Heritage Radio Network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from getting real late now, but you know, Telaga 1 o'clock from a bird's pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. We got Dave in the booth.
How are you doing, Dave? Oh, just waiting patiently. Uh guess, oh, not so patiently as it turns out. Uh today's program was brought to you by Emmy Cheese. Specialty cheese from Switzerland made with heart and passion.
Since the early 1900s, Emmy has been a passionate supporter of farmers, cheesemakers, and family tradition. They believe in sustainable agriculture and respect for the people, land, and animals that make their business possible. Remaining dedicated to tradition, they strive to lead the industry in innovation, ensuring they bring you only the highest quality, best-tasting cheese from Switzerland. Emmy is best known for importing more than 80% of the Swiss Gruyere into the United States, but that's not to overshadow their other specialty cheeses, including Kaltbach Cave Age Cheeses, Darcharfa Max, Appenzeller, Tete Moins, and Traditional Emmentaler. For more information, visit M E USA.com.
Hearty har. That was good. That was good. Harha. Well, listen, I don't know anything about our sponsor, but I will say this.
Tetamoan, which apparently they sell, is a delicious cheese. However, most people who buy it in the US don't serve it the way you're supposed to. So Tetamoin is one of those stinky cow's milk cheeses. It comes in a round format. You're supposed to get this thing called a g roll.
Now, g roll is like uh, if you you know, if you've ever worked in a restaurant, you know, you know Nastasia, the spikes that you stick your tickets on when you're done? So it's basically like a it's like a combination cutting board and like menu spike. And you go and you stick the tetamoine right on the top. First you cut the very top piece of the crust off, you go pam! You put it down onto that thing.
You don't have to do it hard. You can do it gently, like, right? And then on top of that on the spike, you stick a flat scraping knife with a handle on it, and you rotate it, and it makes these thin flour-shaped shavings of tetamoine, which you serve. And if you purchase tetamoin in, you know, a cheese shop that knows how to serve tetamoin properly, and what by the way, even if they know how to serve it properly, they don't do it this way. Let me put it this way.
If you buy it in a cheese shop that's that can push a lot of tetamoin so they can serve it this way, because it doesn't last long once it's cut that way. They will pre-g-G roll it for you, pack it in a nice little thing, and serve it to you, like in a container where it's been pre-g-G rolled. But ain't nobody, I've never seen it served that way in the United States. I don't know. I mean, if anyone out there has a cheese shop that serves Tetaman and uh with a Giro, please uh please let me know because that cheese is delicious.
Uh speaking of delicious, Nastasio Lopez just got off an airplane uh yesterday from Barcelona. Yeah, it was good. Yeah? Did you have any delicious ham? I had a lot of ham, yeah.
I hate it a lot of places. Any specific ham that you like? Did you try the one I told you to try? No. I didn't have a lot of time.
I had two days of actual than eat. I know, I just ate, but I didn't remember. And the shitty the bad thing was that every restaurant we went to, we'd order the whole tapas, all the the pages, right? We want to eat everything. Okay.
And every waiter was like, Are you sure? That's a lot of food. And you're like, die. Every single place. Which is different from the Italians because they're like, you know, please eat more, please eat more, please eat more.
Please drink more, please drink more. Spanish like, are you sure? Yeah. Are you sure? Judgment.
Judgment. You're like, don't body shame me. I don't know how you say that in Catalonian. What was this? What about what about the uh what about like uh did you get used to people saying bon dia instead of one of the bon dia?
Anyway, food good. Yeah, food's good. What about uh beverages? You have any good beverages, good wine? What do you have?
I just drank wine. Okay, yeah. No, nothing, nothing, yeah, kava and white wine and red wine. Yeah, just whatever. Everything, whatever, whatever they would pour down your own.
It was like complete bender. You're like, give me all the food, give me all the food. And plus keep pouring. Yeah. Keep pouring.
Yeah, yeah. American over here. Keep pouring. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Uh Dave, how was your week? Uh good. Yeah. You know what I like now that they're actually breaking up? You know what I started listening to last week?
Now that they're breaking up. Big ups. You know the band Big Ups that uh you know Joe used to like be in the booth with Jackie Moscow. That's his band. And uh New York band?
Yeah, yeah, Brooklyn, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So I just started listening to this song over and over again. They have where they're screaming about looking to the crystal.
Oh my god. Look at the crystal. You gotta listen to it. It's called PPP by Big Ups. Check it out.
Anyway, that's that stand for. I don't know. I don't know. That's my classic thing. Even though I know the guy, I only get into a band once they're breaking up.
Apparently they have to go to grad school. Grad school. That's a waste. Right? Anyway.
So I had something uh to bring up. So Nastasia in Spain. Oh, Nastassi, at the bar, I finally purchased my 20-ton uh hydraulic press. Nice. I used it yesterday for the first time.
So I went to the Harbor Freight Corporation, you know, uh uh purveyors of cut rate tools. And you know, cheap quality stuff, you know. But what you do is you look on their website. You know, normally, like when I buy hand tools, I buy what? Nothing.
Oh, yeah, there's a waiter. No, no, no. No, this guy here. Oh, but there is a literally there is a server here. Wearing a diaper as pants.
His pants are a diaper. Like a diaper. I I don't get like a a diaper. And then there's a yeah, I showed him. And then there's another one in a crop top with bright green shorts and glitter all over his face.
Yeah, but Dave, what are your thoughts on uh I already had this conversation on the dive? I have no opinion. You have no opinion on the phone. Strongly pro. You're pro diaper.
No, I I don't like that when I'm looking at it, he's like, what? And you're like, you're wearing a diaper. You know? But this is an actual conversation you had. Well, we looked at each other through the window before you got here.
Yeah. And it's like he's offended that I'm judging that. No, you're making that up. You have no idea what's going on in his head. That's his head.
Actually, and we're not sure if it's a he. Okay. You said he. I know, but I just realized. Okay, but my point is is that you have no idea what's going on in that person's head.
As usual, you are imputing onto them some sort of negative feeling onto you, so that you can get more incensed when in fact you have not had a reaction with this person. And it's interaction, rather. You've not had an interaction with this person, and so you actually you you have nothing on which to base this like theoretical offense. Anyways. Uh okay.
Had a question in from uh Derek Gungle in Windsor, Ontario. Uh Hello, Dave Nastassian Dave in the booth. I only found out about your show last March. Proud to say I've torn through every episode. Oh my god.
What is with these sickos? I don't know. Uh love the show, informative entertainment. I guess they're all only like 20 minutes long, so you know. God damn, Dave.
Boom. You know? You know why? You know why? Uh it's gonna blame the train again?
No. It's it's how much they pay us. Oh, zigzag. Hey, you got a bedroom and a USB microphone? Have at it.
A bedroom and a USB microphone? What's that mean? Yeah, that's like how everybody does their podcast, right? Just on the edge of their bed. Oh, really?
People, you can be rest assured when you hear this show, I have pants on. I like that guy. Look at it. Hey, hey, remember, it's a radio podcast. They can't see the diaper on the on the on the internet.
Okay. I do have it. We're back to the problem, the question now. I do have a small problem I was hoping you could help me solve. There's a local farm that has some of the best corn on the cob I've ever had, and I'd like to freeze some still on the cob to enjoy over winter.
And you know, winter in uh Ontario there is gonna get real cold. You know what I mean? Like real cold. I mean, they have nice, they have nice weather, but once it gets cold, they're right in the middle there, so it's like cold comes down. Anyway, so wants corn in the wintertime.
Um everything I've tried so far so far has left the kernels mushy. I tried blanching them for approximately three minutes. Now, people, I know people like zone out when I'm giving numbers. Remember that number. Three minutes.
Uh try blanching them for approximately three minutes and immediately plunging them into an ice bath. Then used a food saver vac to vacseal them and immediately froze. Result, mushy kernels. I repeated the same procedure, then allowed the corn uh allowed the corn to air dry after an ice bath. Result, mushy kernels.
I've even tried just vac sealing the raw cobs after removing the husk. And yet again, mushy kernels. Is there something I am not doing or something I'm doing wrong? Can I enjoy corn on the cob in the winter or am I completely effed in the A? Thanks for countless hours of entertainment.
Uh keep up the great work. Well, thankfully for you, not countless, because you finished the whole backlog right now. Uh I mean, thankless, you know, though thankful to uh thinkless to you or you know anyone that has to live near you. But uh so the point is this. I looked up for you uh an article, and you can look up this because it is uh what's it called?
On the internet, so it's not uh it's not behind a paywall. Uh and check out Blanchtime and Cultivar Effects on Quality of Frozen and Stored Corn and Broccoli by DM Barrett, E. Il Garcia, G. F. Russell et al.
from the Journal of Food Science. Now, uh interestingly, now when you freeze, uh, you check that out. I'm gonna give you the results of this in a second. But when they're freezing, uh when they're blanching uh and freezing vegetables, you're looking to do a couple of things. One, you're looking to kill off any enzymes.
So in enzymes, it's enzymes that might convert uh might convert, you know, uh sugar uh into something else, or you know, XYZ might reduce the quality of the corn, otherwise, you know, cause off aromas. Well, like so you want to kill those things. Also, it you know, it decreases anything on it that might later on on thaw cause problems, etc. etc. But the key thing is is when you're blanching corn, not only are you doing those things, you're also gelatinizing some of the starch, increasing firmness of the kernel up to a point.
So in their studies, raw corn was the uh least firm, right? And then as they went up in uh in blanching time, corn got more and more firm, and more and more of the enzymes were deactivated, right? Up until six minutes. So if you take a corn in the cob and you blanch it in a high-intensity steamer or in water for six minutes, right? Uh, they did it in a high-intensity steamer.
You probably don't have one, but six minutes. Uh I would go a little longer with a regular home steamer. But uh after six minutes, that was the peak firmness, and it started to go back down again. Um so on your three minutes, you're not gonna have as firm a kernel, and on eight minutes, you're not gonna have as firm a kernel. Six minutes didn't k wipe out a lot of the enzymes that people used to test, but if you actually take the time to read this article I just told you about, it shows that a more uh accurate enzyme assay for something more important in corn, six minutes is actually sufficient for the enzyme activity as well, and that that's your primary concern.
Now, here is what so that's the optimum blanching time for firmness as far as these folks are concerned. But uh that is not uh that is not the hard part. That is not what's messing you up. Uh first of all, once you blanch it, you should, as you said, put it in uh ice water in a bag or not to cool it off relatively quickly to stop the cooking uh from continuing. But your problem, simply put, is this your freeze rate is too slow.
Okay. So what you're gonna want to do is take the corn in the cob, put it in ice water to chill it, let it get down close to freezer, uh, you know, close to uh you know zero, let it let it hover there, and then after it gets to that point, you want to freeze it as rapidly as possible. I pretty much guarantee that what's happening to you is you're getting freeze damage. Okay. Uh so what I would do is put the corn, instead of just wrapping it and putting it in the fridge or whatever else you're doing, I wouldn't necessarily put it in a hard vac in the vac seal because uh, you know, the vacuum itself, if you if you suck air out of the out of the corn and then vac it, you're liable to um cause some degradation of the texture just in the in the vacuum process.
So I wouldn't vac it too hard while it's not frozen. You could do like a very light vacuum or just use water exclusion. More on that later if I have time, which I won't, but so then what I would do is I would use the old super salt and ice technique. So you take and you salt the hell out of ice, and you can't you can't oversalt the ice, right? Up to about a quarter of the weight of the of you take water and and ice, you crush it up, and then you add salt a lot.
Like if you're making ice cream a lot. Because your goal is to get the temperature as far below zero as possible and have it be a liquid, slushy slurry. Put it in a bag in a zipper water and put it in the salt ice bath. And that will freeze it fast as super fast. That's the fastest way anyone at home has to freeze it.
When they're commercially doing this, they blast freeze it. Nastasia is not allowed to talk about it, but when they're freezing her pasta, they also freeze it very, very quickly. The faster you freeze something, the less texture damage you're doing to it. And I guarantee you, all your textural damage is on the freeze. So I would just try to freeze it as rapidly as possible.
And the fastest way, because you probably don't own a blast chiller if you're a normal human being, is to do a very highly salted ice slurry, put them in bags, and you can do a whole bunch because that salted ice slurry is probably enough to freeze a bunch before it starts uh warming up. What do you think it's does? Yep. Stasi's like, and once again, I don't care. Uh you can also read uh Illinois.edu, uh, their web extension has information on corn, but I think they tell you to overblanch it because I think they're worried about uh different set of uh enzymes, but you can read their red read their stuff anyway.
Uh okay. Jerk. Uh uh, we have a question from KM on Mallort. I'm gonna do this one so quickly that I'm gonna get a chance to the other one. Are you familiar with Melort, Chicago's bitter liqueur?
Uh are there any non prank uses, especially cocktails? Uh if you're unfamiliar, I'd have to happy to send a bottle. Uh I do uh know about that, and no, there are no good uses for it. It's not a prank, it's a punishment. You know, it's a punishment shot.
Either you're punishing yourself or trying to prove that. By the way, for those of you who don't know, I don't own a bottle of Malort. I own the Swedish, like the old school Swedish equivalent Beska Drapar, which is like a I'm Nastasia. I made you taste that once. That's that wormwood crap that's like so bitter that you're like every time you taste it.
It has it's supposed to aid in digestion. Uh by the way, you can't get all crunked up, well, you can from the liquor on Malort, but there's not Fujone in Malort, so you're not gonna get any kind of green dragon uh effects if you're thinking you're gonna get a bunch of uh wormwood uh based kind of hallucinations. Uh so uh the answer is no. I don't think you're gonna get any good reasons to use it in a cocktail uh other than just punishment. It's gonna ride over the top of everything, make everything intensely bitter, even in small amounts.
If you want to serve it to someone, serve it to them as a shot and just say, I don't think you can handle it. And then you give it to them. You know what I mean? Uh all right. Got what I have left, Dave.
One more, go. Okay. From Nick in Toronto regarding uh rotary evaporators. It's a Canadian-based show today. You know how you feel about that.
Uh fan of the work, liquid intelligence is required, reading for our bar staff, and the spinzall sees almost 20 hours of use per week sometimes. Congratulations on existing conditions. That's a ball. Uh next time I'm in New York, I'm gonna come. Uh okay.
Uh they uh okay, we took the rota. That's more work in a week than you. Wait, what did you say? What did you just say? What the hell did you just say?
You know what, Dave? I quit. I'm out. People, if you wonder why there's never gonna be a show again, it's because I have to make up for all the hundred hour weeks that I'm doing in existing conditions. And instead, I'm gonna see my family other than doing this show.
Eat it! You are gone next week. I am gone next week. I'm only gonna get to see a part of my family because, of course, Booker refuses to fly to California with me. Right.
Yeah. Took the rotoVap plunge after finding a decent two-liter unit on totovaps.net. Is that a thing? Maybe he meant to say rotovaps.net. And with our first goal being to capture the unique smell of the local silk lily that grows all silkly that grows all over our city.
Our chiller continues to crash, but that's an issue we're sorting out with the manufacturer. Our main issue is when you address in your primer, which is still on the internet apparently. We're losing a ton of flavor without the peristaltic pump to remove the condensate. We have a tool in dye maker pal, uh friend, blah, blah, blah. Listen, I'm gonna tell you how to do it.
So uh what we're talking about is that when you're distilling something, hopefully you're you're dissolving the or getting the aromas into alcohol somehow first, right? Any water-based distillation, unless you're distilling with liquid nitrogen and a cold finger, good luck. I'm just gonna tell you that right now. Good luck. Uh, but assuming you have a chiller that can go low, like minus 20, you want to keep the flour alcohol mixture low in temperature, like like 40 degrees Celsius, right?
And then you're gonna take and you're gonna buy a sphere joint. So the way the rotovap works is is you have a flask, it circulates, it's heated very gently. You put the whole thing under a vacuum, it goes up into a condenser, the condenser chills it, it drips down into a receiver flask. The problem is that receiver flask isn't chilled properly, and so you tend to re-volatilize the stuff and you lose all the aroma. The answer is to put a sphere joint over it, which you can just buy, uh, and then a tube and then to what's called a peristaltic pump.
Uh, peristaltic pump can pump the condensing out. The problem is that the peristaltic pump tends to fail uh because it's not meant to take that kind of vacuum pressure, and you'll get back siphoning. So uh I'll go over my notes and see exactly which tube is the best. They don't last very long. And the one recommendation I would make that I didn't used to do is I would put a uh check valve on the outside of the uh peristaltic pump uh to see whether or not that can stop back siphoning of air through the peristaltic pump because it will eventually fail.
Uh and that's about all I have time to talk about that. Uh yeah, as Nastasi says, next week I will be in California. I hope to go to Death Valley in the middle of the summer and see what the hottest place on earth is like during the summer because I am stupid. Uh also Nastasi and I now have been working together for how long? 10 years.
Crazy. So stupid. Such a bad idea. Nastasi and I have given ourselves 2.5 more years to be happy. Yeah.
Yep. With our business. Uh at least you're being honest with yourself. Yeah, we are. Yeah, two and a half more years.
Because Dave will be 50, right? Yeah, I'll be 50. Yeah. And you'll be like, you know. Yeah, but mentally a combination of the average of two and that.
Right. So you're gonna be like, yeah, it's like, you know, you're the like the average of like you're either you either you're mentally very old or very young. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. What are you?
Uh I'm like permanently like like 10. Yep. 10. That's not true. Yeah.
Well, in some things. Anyway, see it a little bit, 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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