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Find us at heritage radio network.org. Brooklyn. Right. Right. Well, there are people staring at us like, why are you ruining my salad?
See that? What the hell salad are they eating says? Not one that we're gonna have. Yeah, no, no. Anyways, we have as usual with us Nastasi the Hammer Lopez.
How are you doing? Good. Yeah. We got uh Matt in the booth. Hello.
Yeah. You know, I th I hope that people start addressing their questions to Dave the Hammer and Matt in the booth. I love Dave, but it is useful to have two different names, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why he had to go.
Uh so Nastasia, you got anything uh good this week? No. No? No, nothing. I was thinking about this the other day.
Like for those of you that work in restaurants or uh, you know, have a restaurant or bar or whatever. Isn't it nice when you can't be there a hundred percent of the time? The only person who is in their restaurant a hundred percent of the time was um Andre Sultner and his wife. She ran the FOH and he ran the back of the house. And when they weren't there, the restaurant closed, right?
Uh but I think that they had like one day a week when they weren't opened, the test, which was, you know, as a good idea. Yeah, yeah. Good idea. Well, I mean, it's like it's like a, you know, it's a very like in the past philosophy that you're gonna make your living by having a restaurant. You know what I mean?
And that, you know, you are entitled to a day off a week, and you know, you know, that there'd be some constancy with your crew. You know what I mean? It would be more like your house and less like a place of work, right? Anyway, where I was going with this is Anastasia's hilarious. Because people, like she's there a lot at the Pasta Flyer.
If you want to go pester her, I encourage you to do so, even though she does not encourage you to do that. I used to be there all the time. Yeah, well, well, you're still there in the days most of the time, right? Yeah. Yeah, so if you go by, she's always P.S.
She's always hiding in the back. First of all, she does this to me, so I feel like I can do this to her. She's hiding in the back. So you walk up to anyone up instead of the room. Anyone would be like, oh, let me go get her.
Instead of like who are you? Yeah, who are you? No, right away they're like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's in the back. Just go back there by yourself.
Don't even knock. Yeah. Anyway, great. But my thing about it is is that there's like a small, and when I say small, like, could fit in my normal-sized pocket of people that Nastasia actually wants to see. True.
And what's hilarious is that when they show up at her restaurant when she's not there, ain't nobody tell her that they showed up. Always the good ones are there when I'm not there. Oh, it's it's it's classic. Or I could have gone to CVS and my employees are like, yeah, she's not here. Instead of being like, she stepped out.
Wait, I know she cares about you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it. Uh like, you know, though that's the one thing I have to say that Mama Fuku was really good at.
Like Mama Fuku, like, as soon as someone showed up in the door, like that, you know, was like a friend of the house or something like this, it went on full blast. Like high alert, like text messages went off, everything. You know what I mean? Uh so who showed up for you and you rent their own. No, I'm just thinking about it.
Like, like I'm getting the text, although it happens to me all the time. Here's here's the one that pisses me off more. Here's something you might not know, people. Let's say you're friends with uh someone involved in the restaurant business, right? And you show up at their restaurant or bar or whatever, right?
You show up at their place of work, and you don't let them know. They're a friend of yours, like a legit friend, not like there's plenty of people where it's like, you know, like we say hello to each other when we're at the you know, the industry party, so I have a friend who has a friend who has their number, so I'll text them and maybe I could get a good table even though I didn't bother to get a reservation. Right? There's that level, right? And then there's people that are actually your friends.
And if you don't tell them that you are showing up at your place, they will get mad at you. You are not troubling them to tell them that you are going to their place. You are troubling them if they find out you weren't there and they're nervous that your experience wasn't what they wanted it to be. Now, this may sound contradictory because as everybody knows, when you show up by the way, Nastasia, it's a billion freaking degrees in this box, or is it just because I was biking here? Uh, there was they show up at your restaurant and you want every guest's experience to be great, right?
Like, so in theory, like there's, you know, there's no such thing. If you're doing your job right, there's no real such thing as a VIP. Everybody's a VIP. Everybody is special. Right, Sas?
Except here at Robert is. Well, no, everybody's a. Oh, remember that? Yeah. Oh, we can talk about that later.
Uh no, it was. We got told that the other table had something different from us because they were VIPs, which is a huge no-no. That server no longer works here. But I was like, uh not because of me. I didn't, you know, Nastasia and I didn't have anything to do with it, but.
We're like, ooh, what's that? We're like, uh, that's where VIPs. They're VIPs. Shots fire. Yeah.
Not like, oh, we ran out of that, or oh, they got the last one, I'm so sorry, or oh, I will get you that because we actually have eight boatloads of that crap back in the kitchen. No, they're VIPs. And I was like, I was like, we're all VIPs? You know what I mean? Like you something to strive for.
Like, you know, maybe someday you too will be a VIP at Robert's. I know, it's very like old school French aristocracy or like old British thing. It's like, uppercrest only. You know what I mean? It's like, I thought the whole point of the United States, like, false as this promise may be, I thought we were a cat's supposed to be a cast-free system up in this piece.
You know what I mean? But it's like, man. Uh so anywho, uh, so it's true that we want everyone to feel special and we want to make every guess. But when an actual friend of yours shows up, you just want to make sure that nothing bad happened because you have to live with that. Like, if some person you don't know has a bad experience, you don't ever want that to happen, and you stay up awake at night, like thinking about it.
But it's like once they're gone, they're out the door, and maybe they'll, you know, yelp you, maybe they'll say something negative about you. But in general, you don't have to deal with them ever again, most likely. So it's not the same as when your friend shows up, right, Stas? Or like a family member. So please do them the courtesy of telling them that you were there.
You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. So a friend of mine, Guido, he shows up and he goes, and I catch him as he's leaving, because I'm in the office doing work. I'm at the damned restaurant, right? Bar, and like I like, I'm doing some work on the computer.
I show up as he's leaving, I'm like, you know, he's like, he's an architect. He's like, well, you know, I don't expect that I need to be, you know, giving you a tour of my buildings when you know you show up at a building I've designed. I'm like, brother, when I show up at your building, I want to go in the special, like awesome people-only elevator. I want to get taken right to the top and I want a freaking tour. I want the special treatment.
So I expect you to text me the next time you show up at the restaurant anyway. I don't know. What do you think, Stas? Yeah. I mean, we're there anyway.
That's what people don't realize. Yeah. Chances are probably there. Look, here's the other thing, right? So if you're like a Anastasia-style person or a me style person, like you don't have like actual work to do in the sense that like I'm like, there's a problem if I'm clearing the tables.
It means someone didn't show up to work. There's a problem if I'm taking your order. It means someone hasn't shown up. Or if, God forbid, I'm pouring your drinks. Like, unless it's like a special thing, right?
So if I'm there and if you see me, it's either because I'm wandering around going, hello, hello, hello, or I'm like working on research for something, or I'm checking the floor to make sure everything's going smoothly. But a lot of times I'm like behind a curtain doing something intensely boring on a computer, right, Anastasia? So yeah, you know, we're there anyway. Just let us know. And then if we're not there, then if our crew is operating properly, they will text us and be like, yo, this person showed up who says they know you.
Do they know you? Because how many people show up and say they know you, but they don't really know you. Do not call out somebody's name at a restaurant unless they will instantly recognize your name and be happy that they have heard it. You know what I mean? Anyways.
You know, that's the it's the same thing where restaurant, it's a little bit different, but at a at a bar, people think that they're doing me a favor by finishing a drink that they don't like or by sitting there with a drink that they don't like or an item they don't like. We would rather throw away that money, give you something you like so that you come back again. I don't know. Oh, we have a new thing on the menu, Nastasia. What is it?
Vodka cranberry. Oh, yeah, no, I know. Yeah. So we put it on specifically, you know, for the kind of vodka cranberry crowd. But the problem is we don't have enough of the vodka cranberry crowd.
And then last night, at like literally like 20 minutes before closing, 20, 25 minutes before closing, an 8-top showed up. And they were, let's just put it this way, the people we designed this drink for. And they ordered in 20 minutes $400 worth of vodka cranberries. Boom. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom!
And the thing I like about it is that I actually, we actually drink this as shift drink, because we actually like it a lot. But it's like, because we don't, we're not using cranberry juice, we're doing a vodka cranberry houstino and then carbonating the vodka cranberry houstino. So it's it's actually quite delicious. So it's like uh video that. Instagram that.
Uh yeah, you know, I'm terrible at that stuff. Although I did put it on Instagram yesterday. I went to the Goodwill yesterday, because I shop at the Goodwill. In fact, every stitch of clothing I'm wearing right now is from Goodwill because when you have to wear all black every day, who can afford? I guess I could go to Uniquel and just be like, everything black in my size, I'll take it home.
But like who the hell, you know, A, I don't have the time to go to Unique Lo. And the last time I was in a Unique Lo store, I almost had like a seizure from all the bright colors and everything like this. So I was like, okay. Uh I was like, forget it. You know what I mean?
I'll just go to the goodwill, and anytime they have something black in my size, I'll buy it. So I was doing that. I was buying like every black t-shirt in my size there. And then uh on the way out, bacon costume. One size fits most.
So on the Instagram, I have uh I have uh, you know, one of our crew, Damon Harjoe Rogo wearing a bacon outfit. And then another one of our crew, Will Pasternak, took a video of Damon after shift sitting behind another one of our bartenders, Kendra, just eating, eating meat in a bacon costume as though nothing was going on, and she's not noticing anything. She's like firmly embedded in figuring out the numbers at the end of the night. Another thing I'll say. Wait, you have not one, but two callers for this week's uh episode of Fashion Issues.
Alright, cool. Uh uh Matt, remind me after this is done uh that I have to talk about uh getting out of bars when they close. Alright, caller, you're on the air. Caller. Matt, you're a liar.
Caller, you are on the air. Hello. Hello. Hello. All right.
Oh, geez, Louise. All right. While we're waiting, I'll just start talking, and then they're gonna just talk over me. Whenever you guys show up on the phone, just start talking, and I'll stop talking. That's how this is gonna work.
When a bar closes or a restaurant closes, it is a good idea to leave. Right, Nastasia? Yeah. Because you might not know this, but like the people that are there have a whole nother hour of work to do. And it's considered gauche usually, unless you're a close friend, unless they feel comfortable breaking down the whole bar or restaurant while you're sitting there talking to them, like rolling up all the mats, washing everything down, getting everything clean.
If they don't feel comfortable doing that in front of you, you are literally making them wait there longer and longer and longer before they can clean up, get out, have their own after dinner drink or notch and go to bed, right, Stas? Anyway, little known fact. Matt, you got this call? Are they on the air or what? No, they're not.
Oh, hey, call, you're on the air. Hey, Dave, it's Keegan from the. Oh, we got both of them. Wait, hold on. Keegan, you first.
What's up, Keegan? I took one of the things. Hey, um, so I manage a wine store, and every month or so I'll end up with a lot of sample bottles of wine. Right. That I can't consume in like a reasonable time.
And and what you're telling me is they're not high enough quality to give to your you're they're of unknown quality, so you can't just bring them to parties and give them to your friends? Yeah. Uh I will end up with like maybe a case of open bottles, and I just can't find something to give away or something. Nostalgie's like, go ahead, go ahead. Trying to find something to uh like culinary-wise to cook cook with them or something.
Um make a vinegar or something, maybe. Oh, yeah, you can make a vinegar. We gotta get uh Michael Harlan Sir Kell on sometime and talk about vinegar. I don't know if he still makes vinegar. Uh but he used to make vinegar all the time.
But let me ask you a question. Who on earth consumes more vinegar than wine? Like if you can't if you can't drink the wine, what makes you think you're gonna be able to use all the vinegar? Okay, well, actually my question was um so I used to work at a restaurant that used to make this like uh uh red wine sauce that used like a ton of red like liters and liters of red wine and cooked it down like like way, way down. I was wondering if there was something like that maybe I could do at home or um something like that.
Yeah, I was gonna say, uh, do you like beef? I hope, because like, you know, whenever I'm cooking anything with beef in it, you know, red wine by the by the boatload in there, right, Sas? Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, I mean, and you know, in general, like you're cooking off most of the variety. By the way, uh, there's a actually, I know Nastasia hates babies, but there's a pretty cute kid like staring in our window who's so young that they can't even keep their head up.
You know that age where they can't even keep their head in the air? Where it's like they're constantly falling asleep. Like, yeah. Like newborn basically. Yeah, ish, I don't know, like what, like two months?
I don't know. It's one of those things where it's like it's like shaking a little bit like a like a like a like a 1980s animation or something. It's like shaking a little bit and its head's bobbing about. But it, you know, I'm sure there's nothing going through that head, but you know, but it looks like the baby's thinking. I think it's a boy, I don't know, girl maybe, I don't know.
It's in it. I appreciate the neutral color. It's in it's in prison colored clothing. In a prison colored ones. Are we talking like stripes or orange?
Uh no, there's like like one color drab, like more like, you know, like uh, you know, the kind of like grayish prison outfit with no stripes? Yeah. Yeah. Baby's wearing that. So I can't tell like what sex of correctional facility it came from, but anyway.
Uh so back to the wine. Uh the Yeah, I mean, you could you could uh one thing I'll say is I mean, have you ever used flawed wine in cooking? It's wretched. The flaws stay. So like it's incorrect to say that you can use overtly flawed wine in cooking.
It is also incorrect to say you must have something that's terrific to cook with, because that's also false. You know what I mean? Yeah, I guess I'm looking for something like that I can like maybe make and then keep for a while. Yeah. So, you know, you could you can make uh you can make like an awesome like uh red wine beef sauce and then just reduce the hell out of it and then freeze that sucker down and it's gonna last, you know, forever fundamentally.
So would I kind of start with like stock and just add in wine and reduce it? Um I would you take a stock, then you uh sweat your you sweat your veg and whatever else in, then add the wine as the first liquid, then reduce that down to blast off uh the alcohol and to get the reduction going, then add the base liquid, like whatever stock you're gonna use, get to the flavor you desire, add thickener of choice, if any. You might choose not to thicken it. You might choose to leave it as a liquid. Now, if you're using a good quality stock, of course, it's gonna have a lot of body anyway because of the gelatin.
Um so it's it might be thick enough without any any thickener. Then actually a real baller move, if you do that and you and you really, you know, you have a very uh gelatinous stock, is then you can set it, it sets real hard, and then you can freeze it in uh you can cut it and freeze it in chunks. The old school technique that uh what's her name used to do, um, I think it was Julia Childs used to do where she would freeze or somebody used to freeze stock in ice cube trays. Uh the problem with that is is that um I don't find that an ice cube size is a useful size of stock to own. It's like it's not a useful thing for me.
Um but you know, you can freeze it in slightly uh bigger chunks. I wouldn't freeze it in huge chunks because then they take forever to thaw. Another note is that if you thaw, uh they don't thaw nicely, they thaw effed up. So you have to reheat them to kind of re-functionalize the gelatin because the gelatin structure of it will break and it won't kind of simply warm into a nice or you know, thaw into a thing again. It'll thaw into like a gelatin raft and a clear liquid.
So you heat it and just you know, bring it back together and it should come back together. But that should be great and and should last. Where I didn't hear where you said you were from. Where are you from? Oh, I'm from Little Rock, Arkansas.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Little Rock. So I mean, again, though, I would also just throw a, hey, I have a lot of wine party. Like I would show up to that. If someone say, yo, Dave, I have like eight boatloads of wine from the wine store and it's a crapshoot, some of that stuff's good and some of that stuff's bad.
I'd be like, I'd okay. Wouldn't you show up to that, Nastasia? My friends would show up to that. Oh my well, your friends. Your friends would your friends would bring yellowtail to that and then like you know, drink all your good stuff.
Her friends know what the good stuff is, and so they would drink the good stuff and bring bad stuff to replace it because that's the level of friend that Nastasia has. True or false? True. Yeah. That's what I've heard.
No, and uh, yeah, I definitely try to do that. But uh, you know, I I was looking for something else, I guess. So yeah, I'll I'll try that. Um would you do that like um the thing where you recommend freezing in like uh Ziploc bags so it's like flat and thaws fast? 100% like too hard to get out.
No, 100%. Well, because you can just rip it off. That's the thing, a ziploc, you just rip it the hell off. Like the the thing about I'm a huge believer in flat ceiling. The issue with Ziplocks is um if you look at a ziploc, if you if you if you freeze it and they get punctured, it's a pain when they thaw.
But if you use enough gelatin, it's not going to be that much of a pain in the butt. And I wouldn't, you know, flat flat freezing is the way to do to do everything because uh remember both heating and defrosting, like your ability to get heat into the middle of the thing goes as the square of its thickness. So something that is twice as thick will take four times the amount of time to thaw. Um and thawing is actually even more difficult than uh freezing because well not more difficult, it takes probably it takes longer to freeze, but like if you think about it, um ice is a better conductor of heat than uh water is in terms of the time it takes the temperature to get, but but on the other hand, ice doesn't have as uh much uh thermal mass, so it can't deliver as much. I don't know.
I'd have to do some math. I have to not some math, I it's easier just to do the experiments. What I'm saying is it takes a long time to thick uh uh thaw, and the thicker it is that every time you double the thickness, you multiply the thaw time by four. Wow. Okay.
Yeah, cool. Well, uh yeah, that that's I think that answers my question. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Uh good luck.
Let us know what happens. Uh Matt, we got we still got the other caller? Uh nope, they bailed. Man. It's because the first caller took too long.
Oh man, Nastasia's so mean. So mean, Nastasia. Uh maybe they'll call back up. I think they're on like a personal call with you. No, but wine.
I know, but I wouldn't do that. Well, were we talking about before though? We were done with it? Also, I have a break from the I mean I have a question from the chat. Oh, wait, here comes our caller.
Uh caller. Caller, you're on the air. You were on. Hello. Hey, how you doing?
Yeah, good, thanks, man. This is um Johnny Funny from the uh London. Nice. How's London doing these days? Say again.
How's London doing these days? Um currently bright and sunny. I mean, it's about eighteen degrees Celsius. Um but yeah, it's definitely get a bit more autumn autumnal. Nice mistakes.
Alright, so what you what do you got? What do you got? What do you got for me? Um I've got a coffee question. Uh so I have been following, well, uh there's a chap over here called um James Hoffman who has done a few ish um videos with Chef Step, so you might know him.
Right. Um but uh he is currently reviewing a bunch of clear coffee products, and I was thinking um how viable is it to spinzel um coffee and what kind of results you would get, bearing in mind that filter coffee is only ever two percent uh of the beverage would have coffee solids in it. With espresso, you're going up to like 11%. But I was thinking actually there can't be that much in in there to get rid of that would maintain colour or anything like that. So I was wondering if you had any thoughts.
Okay, this is a good question. So you're typic you're saying spinning what style of coffee? Like spinning like an espresso or uh or a drip? Well, I mean, this is it. Like I as in filter you both, like as in espresso has more dissolved solids in it, but then um filter coffee has less, but obviously you would brew filter in a much bigger vat, like you'd be uh you brew it at like maybe a litre or so.
I mean, you can go up to six litres, but espresso you you're looking at 40 mil. So you'd have to make a lot of espresso. Right. Well, so if you look at um and when you say clear, I'm assuming you mean seeth like not without colour. I'm assuming you mean limpids.
Yeah, you I mean if you can do trans transparent or or translucent, that would be amazing. But yeah, it's let's be honest, it's not gonna happen. Yeah, so um okay, so a little bit on terminology. When you're measuring something with a refractometer, let's say, like the Rao technique, and you're doing um and you're looking at total dissolved solids, the keyword there is dissolved, right? And if the if the solids are dissolved, then you cannot remove them via centrifugation because they are dissolved.
It's possible to stratify them, like to concentrate them, but you're not gonna separate them out. Like and you can do that with like a uh like a very heavy sugar stick syrup in a very high gravitational field, like in a strong centrifuge. You can maintain a gradient, a concentration gradient, but you're not gonna spin something out of solution if it's actually dissolved. So if you look at uh so if you let's take aside uh hot brewed beverages and espresso, let's look at cold brew. Cold brew is in fact clear because it contains at least the cold brew that I make, or that even though I don't really like it, or the cold brew that other people make, most of that, or some of it at least, if you look at it, if you pour a thin amount in the on the bottom of a beaker, you can read newsprint through it.
It's clear. You know what I mean? It's it's dark depending on how much extraction you have, but it is crystal clear. Um the problem with uh you know, the problem with espresso, let's say, is that it doesn't just contain um dissolved solids, it contains a lot of suspended solids and emulsified oils, right? Yeah.
Now, it might be possible to spin out uh suspended solid suspended solids and emulsified oils. But like spinzole, I don't think is gonna be powerful enough to spin out a colloid, right? And so I think a lot of the particles in coffee are of colloidal size, meaning they Yeah, they are. Yeah, yeah, they're not gonna come out of suspension very easily. The oils maybe you could get the to separate uh over time.
Now you also might be able to break the suspension using a um you might be able to break the suspension using some form of kind of ionic shift, but that's also gonna mess with the with the taste. An alternate technique is to use kind of uh adsorptive technology. Now I've never tried it, but you know, s you know, the the most extreme version that we would normally use is uh something like an activated charcoal or some kind of bentonite. But the problem with both activated charcoal and bentonite versus the fining agents that you know we use, which typically like titasan kesel salt, is they are extremely uh high flavor stripping uh as well because they're rather, I like to say blunt instruments, right? So they will strip color, they will strip any sort of kind of charged solids, and they do have the ability through adhesion to remove um colloidal size suspended solids for sure.
You know what I mean? Uh but they are going to strip also very, very much so strip the flavor. Now, if you're starting with something that's extremely high highly flavored, like an espresso, you might like the end result, right? I'm just warning you that it will be super flavor stripped uh at that point. So I mean, yeah, the other alternative is to is to switch to some sort of cold brew technology.
Now I've been experimenting with very uh the problem is it's hard for me to do valid experimenting because I just don't like the product. Like I like espresso, and then after espresso, I like uh pour over, and then everything else is like, you know, a distant 95th to those. You know what I mean? So it's like um it's hard for me. Um also remember those guys that were on what's the name of their coffee extract?
They did that freeze-dried coffee. That stuff was dead clear because it didn't have any of the oils in it. I bet you could do a free stall. I bet you could freeze thaw, like maybe a gelatin freeze thaw and you might hold it, it might come out clear. Have you tried it?
The other problem is that the coffee, like the the interesting thing about cold brew is is uh it doesn't appear to to degrade as quickly as um as drip and espresso, probably because there's not much there to begin with. Boom, boom. You know what I mean? But it's like, yeah, yeah. But you know, for some reason, you know, I I was talking, uh, it's gotta be like 10 10 years ago to uh Andrea Ely.
Uh for some reason he took a meeting with me. If he thought he was talking to like a normal, like a reporter style dude, and so I just started peppering him with questions. And uh I I don't even remember his accent, some sort of northern Italian thing. Nastasi could probably make fun of it for me. But he like uh, you know, he was like, well, the stuff starts, you know, um stuff starts uh, you know, auto hydr, you know, auto uh auto hydrolysis or whatever he said, auto, you know, auto destructing as soon as it's uh as soon as it comes out, so it really can't be preserved.
And so I guess that's the reason why people like cold brew so much is because it's so freaking stable. So but by the other hand, like it maybe it's true that the like the the fact that coffee gets so crappy when it's been sitting around for a long time, uh maybe that stuff is also stripped out through like a freeze thaw. So you could try it. I've never tried it. In fact that might be worth trying at the bar just because I don't know.
I'll give it a shot. You never know. You never know what's gonna what's gonna happen. You know what they said? Um so not Andrea Ely, but they had some other person who was running their coffee stuff at the time and she I forget her name.
This is back when Ely was putting a lot of money into uh into having like galleries around where they would you know try to mix art and coffee which I don't really care about. I like art. I like coffee. I don't really need them together. Uh but they I feel that yeah but they um she said that there's a huge difference in letting let's say you're gonna do like a a Shakerado where you're going to or whatever people call it nowadays where you take a shot of espresso and just shake it on ice with or without milk, right?
And everybody knows that's delicious because the espresso has enough body uh especially if you had milk but even without milk it foams quite a bit you know what I mean and so you get a real nice texture out of it. And she was saying there's a drastic difference in flavor and I've never run the test because I'm lazy and stupid and because I don't like the beverage, right? Uh between letting the espresso cool down to uh you know um near body temperature so like you know I don't know 35, 40, whatever it is in Celsius uh before you shake it versus doing it hot and putting it directly on the ice and if my memory serves although this is like eight, nine, ten year old memory. Uh, uh I think she said it's better if you let it cool before you shake it, but I can't remember. Isn't that weird?
That is weird, because all I can think, yeah, that is that is very strange. I mean, the perception of flavor would change, definitely, because obviously the beverage has cooled down a hell of a lot. Um, but maybe there's some more degassing in that process as well. Yeah, maybe. I mean, like, it could be that she that it could be just that when she pours it in hot, she's getting that, you know, a little bit more of dilution and she likes it less.
I don't know how she was a coffee person, not like a science person, like you know, eat you know, yeah, you know, the that that Ely Sun was a science person. So sometimes when someone's not a science person, it's hard to judge whether they're telling me something based on some simple mechanical fact like dilution, or whether it's a more complicated, like the coffee is changing as it cools, and somehow that's better for chilled coffee. So who the hell knows, you know? No, definitely no, definitely. Yeah.
Anyway, cool. Well, thank you for answering my question. That's perfect. Cool. If you get any good results, tweet me, please.
Yeah, no worries. Cheers, man. Thanks. All right, thanks. All right, we're gonna take a break, Matt.
Back with more cooking issues. Piedra Blanca Rancho in San Simeon is the original Hearst Ranch, founded by George Hearst in 1865. George's son was the famous publisher William Randolph Hearst. In addition to being known for building the iconic Hearst Castle, William was, like his father before him, an avid rancher. In his words, I would rather spend a month at the ranch than any place in the world.
Thanks to one of the largest land conservation easements in California history, a joint effort with the California Rangeland Trust, the American Land Conservancy, and the State of California. Learn more about Hearst Ranch at Hearstranch.com. So uh So Matt, we back? Can you can you please find on the uh in the archives? I don't I miss when I heard that Hearst Ranch Grass-Fed Beef was going to be the sponsor this morning, and I didn't know until I showed up.
Uh-huh. Uh, I was like, thank God I get to hear the Hearst Ranch grass-fed beef song. And yet there was no Oh no. There's no, where is it? So wait, it used to be like we had an advertisement.
Yeah, like a song, yeah. Um I don't know. Um And then you had like you had them talking about their abattoir, which I love. I have no idea, but I'll have to go away in the way back machine. Yeah, yeah, go find that and like, you know.
I will pull it out. No extra charge, Hearst Ranch. Yeah, no, we'll play that. It won't even count as a drop, guys. Yeah, yeah.
This one's on us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Um that's lovely. Yeah, see we can find it. Do you want to do a question from the uh from the chat room?
Sure. Okay, here we go. Um testing my reading. Dave, the hammer and mat. And listeners, any experience making Peixode style bitters?
I'm thinking Anise and Wild Cherry Bark, but would love to learn what other herbs and flavors to add, and if it's worth trying to make this style, or if I should just be happy with the existing Peixods Creole style. Okay, so who wrote that in? Uh Pelum Bar 82. Okay, Pelum Bar. I don't know if you're from Pelum Pelum Pelum Bay, the Bronx.
But or perhaps you are trolling me because anyone that has worked with me knows I hate Peyshodes bitters. Ooh, I love this. So I have never. It is useful for the Sazerac, right? But in general, I detest it.
So my classic substitution for Peyshood's bitters. You ready for it? Cough syrup. Like cherry-flavored Robotusin to me is a dead ringer for uh Pesho's bitters. And in fact, uh we used to make um Robotusin sazeracs.
We would call them, what do we call them? We called them Robosacks. And then we would we would make them, and then we actually did a Robotusin flaming sazorak and called it the flaming Mozerac in honor of uh Mo Sislak from uh that was his name, right? From The Simpsons, the bar, the bartender from The Simpsons. Oh, yeah.
So, yeah, I'm glad you asked. I have never researched it because I in fact hate it. Uh, but uh I would look at whatever the ingredients they have in uh cherry-flavored cough syrup are and I would go with that. And if you make a sazzerac with a tiny bit of cough syrup, and you don't happen to have Peyshood's bitters, it is almost a dead ringer, I would say. Yeah.
What do you think? What do you think, Matt? Question answer. Yeah, yeah. Alright.
Um let me get some questions that people send in because otherwise people they'll get mad, right? And stuff? Okay. This is from Joe. Could you uh and Dave, I guess, well, Nastasi, Nastasia doesn't care, so she won't elaborate, but please provide some insight on the development process for the turkey club and existing conditions.
Looks awesome. By the way, I had a great meal at Pasta Flyer about two weeks ago. Really enjoy it. We'll definitely be back. Nice.
Nice. Nastasia's like, nice. She's like, your praise means nothing to me. So mean, Stash. Thank you.
So there you go. See, now that seems genuine. Yeah. That was genuine. For those of you that don't know, that's genuine Nastasia.
Like in between bites of pizza roll. So, uh question is a turkey club development. So we have a turkey club on the menu at uh existing conditions, and the concept behind it was what's wrong with a turkey club? And it's the turkey is what's wrong with a turkey club. Usually it's um either it's like some sort of like when you make turkey breast commercially, you have to cook it to an extremely high temperature.
Uh and also in order to keep it moist, they inject it with preposterous amounts of phosphates and water just to keep it moist. And so in general, that's the bad part of it. And if you just cook a turkey traditionally and rip it up, it's good, but odds are it's gonna be on the dry side. So uh the other problem is is that the you know the turkey isn't the shape of the bread, and so it's it can be kind of problematic. So what we did was is we take turkey, we glue it into a breadloaf shape using uh transglutaminates are when I say we, I mean shorty, like you know, I had input, I was like, we want to make a turkey club.
We because it's you know one of, you know, it's one of the great sandwiches on earth. I'm not gonna get into any discussions over what is and what is not a sandwich, but like almost any top 10 list of sandwiches, if you think about it, turkey club's gonna be on that list. I mean, even Nastasia likes a turkey club sandwich. Uh so we took the uh meat, t turkey meat, glued it into a loaf pan so that it was the shape of bread, low temped it to uh I think we do 66, so it's you know not pink at all, and then slice it into tranches and then uh tranches, what is this freaking finance? So slice it into slices and then that slice fits over the whole piece of bread, so every piece has turkey, and the turkey is moist and we hope delicious, and so that's the that's the main thing.
Otherwise, we didn't mess with it. And in fact, on the description, it's a I I hate it when people mess with something that I that I love, which sounds weird, but unless someone specifically says, yo yo, we messed with this, please be aware that it's called a turkey club, but really it's soup. You know what I mean? Like, you don't hate when people do that, like, hey, Turkey Club sounds great. It comes, it's a soup.
And they're like, Well, you didn't read carefully enough. I shouldn't have to read carefully. If you say it's a turkey club, it's a freaking turkey club. Now, if you say, hey, but it's really it's it's a re it's a ribolito where the bread becomes a bread soup Italian style, and then we have turkey chunks in it, and like a crumbled bacon garnish, and like no, no, no, no. Then just say, like, you know, ribolito a la turkey club or some crib like crap like this.
Don't write turkey club. Okay. Anyway, uh so my point is is that I wanted to write, and j uh, Don and I wanted to write Turkey Club, and then in the description, we wanted to write turkey club sandwich. Because really it's just a classic turkey club. And everybody knows what that is.
You got your three slices of bread, you got your mayonnaise, your lettuce, your tomatoes, your bacon, your turkey, your pepper, your salt, you're done. Right? Nothing else is allowed to be in that. Right, right, Sas? Anyway.
So that was the that was the that was the whole development. Someday, well, next time Don's coming on, we'll have a uh we'll have our we should have a listener, we should have a listener poll. Can we do that, Matt? We can do anything, Dave. I say that not knowing how we would do that, but yeah.
I'm interested to hear what other people's top ten sandwiches are, but I don't want to be trolled. Like if someone says, Do we have the ability to perhaps do we have the ability to permanently ban people who say hot dog? Is there any sort of no. Um we we can build it. We'll make it so.
Yeah, or like we could publicly shame them or something. Definitely we we can publicly shame. That's well within our power. I mean, I want to know like real sandwiches, people, like Cuban, like Cuban sandwich, Turkey Club, Mexican. We can have you record a public shaming message, and I'll just load it up so that it plays 24-7 on the heritage feed.
Yeah, some people might want that though. So they're see this is inviting trolling. Alright, good point. Yeah. Uh greetings from Namibia.
I've attached an article you might find interesting. As you know, uh we scientists have used controlled water baths in the lab for decades. The last 10 years have sent that technology uh have seen that technology become affordable for the home cook. I was there for that. The attached article, Journal of Chemistry Education, details the use of economical home circulator equipment for analytical lab use.
Uh perhaps a bit of the dog wagging the tail. Uh or the tail wagging the dog. Yeah. Uh cheers, uh, Christian. Then I read that, I read the article.
It was interesting. So it is this basically this um the uh in the one of the ACS's uh American Chemical Society, I think, journals, they uh they reviewed, or in essence, they took a home circulator and then ran it through a bunch of tests using NIST certified uh calibration equipment to determine uh how well calibrated they were, whether they could be used in a lab environment. And the answer is they can. So uh I was interested in it. I read it.
Uh as usual, they mischaracterized um they mischaracterized uh the cooking uh you know, someday it's it's not like it's not even that it's that interesting. I you know, because I really get when people go into like historical things over like this person came up with this and this came up with this, it gets I I just I can't get myself to care about it too much. You know what I mean? I care more about like how things work, but yet I could go through that article, which is a good article, and point out how they get the historical advent of the inexpensive circulator and of sous vide and circulators and cooking in general wrong, as everybody does. Uh, but I won't bother.
I won't bother. Uh but it's an interesting, interesting article. One interesting thing I did gather out of it is you know how we tell people to they do insulated and uninsulated. I'm not sure, I can't remember whether they do covered or uncovered, but I've always said, and I hate when I see people using circulator bass when they're not covered. I hate it.
You know what I mean? Like this, you do it uncovered, oh my god, I forgot. Oh, please, Jesus, don't remind me of that party. Oh my god, oh my god. Where you set you set Fahrenheit for Celsius?
Oh Jesus. Oh my god, she's trying to kill me. Uh just even bringing that up, just oh Jesus. The steak I put my hand in uh room temperature, damn water with no top, in a metal pot, used as a door stop when we were supposed to be serving. Oh my god.
Memories, oh terrible memories. Oh my god. Uh so the um point being that um, you know, I've always said and I always hate seeing circulator bass that are uncovered, and it's they evaporate more, and um I always figured there was a temperature difference between the top and the bottom of them because the stuff's evaporating and there's a lot of evaporative cooling. As soon as you cover the bath, you eliminate evaporative cooling because you're not getting a lot of evaporation off, and the headspace above the cover equilibrates rather quickly. So it's you know, it's the same like covering a pot.
Um so I really hate it. Well, the only time I I allow people to have uncovered baths is a reheat bath. So re-thermalization baths are typically uh like five degrees or more below below the cooking temperature. So if something is cooked at 60 degrees uh Celsius, the bath is going to be at 55, let's say. And so for there, a degree up or down doesn't make that much difference in that range.
And when you're doing something for service, you want to be able to go in and out quickly, so it's convenient to have no lid. And that's the only time that I allow kind of uncovered baths. Otherwise, I hate them. Uh also I hate it when people don't separate the product out and so that they can agglomerate together and they don't cook properly, but that's a whole separate show. I could scream and yell about that.
But one minute. Hold up. So uh the point is is that they measured it, and there was, I believe, I can't remember, but I think like a 1.6 degree temperature difference between the top and um the bottom. Uh so that was uh interesting. Oh, uh Jeff Given uh writes in, he goes, uh heard you whimper, I do.
This is to the person who called in. I heard you whimper, I do when Dave asked who does the dishes. Incredible, good work, that's all, Jeff Given regarding the beta male. Uh you like that, Set? Yes.
I don't like beta males, though. Well, that's a terrible thing to say. You're like it is, you're feeding into like a bunch of garbage ideas about gender roles. Some people like beta males, some people like alpha males. I do not like beta males.
I what? Like you're feeding into a bunch of garbage. Why is it a bunch of garbage? Do you like alpha males or do you not like anybody? Yeah, there you go, Matt.
Thank you. I am Najad, I think Najod. A bar novice under Andrew Nichols. Hey, Andrew. Uh, in Amsterdam.
I was hoping you could maybe help me a bit or have some tips. I've entered a competition for which I want to make Granny Smith vodka. I've managed to do so without ending up with apple juice and some vodka by dehydrating and rehydrating with vodka. Now to brighten the color and clarify, I want to do uh by the way, when you dehydrate and rehydrate, it's never gonna be as bright. You can, you have to scorbick the hell out of the apple before you uh dehydrate it.
Anyway, um now to brighten the color and clarify, I want to do milk wash since only since using agar will keep the juice color, since only using agar will keep the apple juice color there. Uh is an art-based uh cocktail, so color does matter. And I would like to be the color of Granny Smith green or uh light variety of that. I read the chapter uh on liquid intelligence on milkwash, but I find it hard to find a proper uh milk uh to apple ratio without losing the crisp fresh fresh apple flavor. Do you have some advice since Google wasn't able to give me any also?
More experienced bartenders here in Amsterdam weren't able to help me any further. Most didn't even know what milk washing is. Uh kindness regards, uh, I think it's Najod uh from Beef State Club in Amsterdam. And P.S. whenever you're in Amsterdam, please come to the bar.
So milk washing, I don't think is gonna do what you want here because uh any sort of wash like that is going to strip color. Uh so you're gonna get a very uh stripped down um very stripped down color on it. Now, obviously, if you want Granny Smith green, you need to keep the skins on, and you're gonna need to make a juice uh with the Granny Smith. Here's what I would recommend. Uh, because I don't think milk washing is gonna get you where you want.
For instance, when you milkwash, by the way, the ratio is always about the same. It's 250 milliliters of milk to uh to a liter of product. The other thing is milk washing isn't going to get rid of uh cloudiness, it will strip out tannins and polyphenols and wood and other things and color, but milk washing is not gonna remove um, it's not gonna clarify stuff. I would look in liquid intelligence, it's there if you have a copy of it, in the apple section, I believe it's in the apple section. I believe it's there, for uh auto Houstinos and look up auto Hustino.
Here's what I would do. I would juice Granny Smith apples. Make sure you leave the skins on, make sure you leave the skins on. If you want it hyper-green, you can even just uh like you know cut out the cores so you have a higher skin ratio and get the skin in there, get it really green. Ascorbic acid the hell out of it.
Okay. Now, get yourself some very, very strong vodka. So stronger than 150, uh, stronger than 150 uh proof, right? So, you know, very high proof vodka. And then add that, add the juice directly to that vodka so that the end result is about uh 100 proof, about 50% um liquor.
If you do that, the high the high uh quantity of ethanol in that will destabilize the pectin in the apple. All of the solids will clump together and drop out of solution, and you can rack the vodka right off the top of it, and it'll happen in a day, and the color will be pure and awesome. Uh, and as long as you have enough ascorbic acid in it so that the green doesn't oxidize, because granny Smith uh takes a good with ascorbic acid like like two, three weeks to start oxidizing if you include enough ascorbic acid in it, you will be able to get a bright green Granny smith vodka. Now, the only problem you're gonna have here is if you have to use a particular company's brand of vodka. If you have to use a particular company's brand of vodka, hit me back and I'll give you some more ideas because using the technique I just told you, you will be, as we say, enfrancais SOL.
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