This episode is presented by Henry's Wine and Spirit. You're listening to Heritage Radio Network. We're a member supported podcast network broadcasting over 35 weekly shows live from Bushwick Brooklyn. This year, we're celebrating 10 years of food radio. For the past decade, we've been taking you behind the scenes of farms, restaurants, breweries, school cafeterias, and more.
It's been 10 years, and we're just getting started. Find us at HeritageRadion Network.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from you know whatever. To like one o'clock from Robert's Pizzeria in Bushwick Brooklyn.
Not joined today with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, because she's got a fancy meeting with the buzzer fly abutness and can't make it all. But we do have Jack Shram, Wacko Jacko, Crazy Jack, head bartender of existing conditions. How are you doing? I'm doing well. For those of you listening at home, uh Dave doing the intro is just as exciting in person as you imagine it would be.
And Matt in the booth, how you doing? Him doing an intro is like it's like staring at a blazing hot sun. You just can't look away, but it's not good for you. Oh no, it's horrible. I I I have a serious condition at this point.
Every once in a while, Dax's dirtbag buddies are like, Can you can you do it? And I'm like, no. They make you do the intro? They made me do the intro. An occasional other of the things that cause Dax has been on before, so that's why he knows about it.
So then occasionally they'll make me do like that, or like he has one or two of my all of my impressions are the same. Yeah. Oh no, no, you have one voice. It's just a good one. Yeah, yeah.
So but Dax somehow and his dirtbag buddies seem to think that there are different versions of this. And so they're like, do this one, do that one. I'm like, Dax, they're all the same. It's the same guy. It's the same.
That means you tricked them. They haven't caught on to the to the gag yet. Yeah, right? Yeah. There's something about Dax Make Your Dad yell.
That's just it's so good. I had someone once make me do it on the street. Not not like, you know, someone I know, not like a random person. Like someone I know is like, you know, can you do it? Can you do it on the street?
I'm like, no, no. Fine. Of course you do it. Because yeah, yeah, yeah. If I go back and listen to episode one, is it like, was it a fully formed idea and delivery right from the get-go?
I don't know. I don't know. There's been like eight billion episodes. That's why at the for those of you, I don't know how this works when you're listening on the internets, but like when we have the earphones on in here in the uh studio, I call it, I guess you call it. The container shipping container that we've been doing this out of since time immemorial, uh, they have a a pre-roll on, and you know, today, for instance, do you know about Henry's Wines and Spirits?
Although that's Jack's middle name. Did you know that? It's true. I did not know that part. I do not know Henry's Wines and Spirits.
Where is that? Uh is it Bushwick? But it's also on the internet. All right, so listeners, challenge for you. We need you to go back through every episode of Cooking Issues, and we need a Dave Intro power rankings.
I want to know the at least the top ten. So at one point, you know, uh, we were like, well, if people are gonna take us serious. Oh, wait, back so the pre-roll, they're like 10 years, and we're just getting started. And I was like, Oh, that's depressing. Yeah, right.
So just getting started. Oh my god. Ten years and our best episodes are behind us. Yeah, life is long. Okay, so the uh the uh not really.
So then um it's real fast. Trust me, people. Too long. Uh wait, so at one point, you know, years and years ago, I was like, well, maybe we should, you know, in the interest of being taken more seriously, maybe we should do, you know, more of an NPR. So I did a couple NPR style, you know, I imagine only outrage.
Well, it was like I I forget like I can't do NP, I can't do like there's always a little more bounce in my voice than you get out of NPR. So it's like, you know, but something like, hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. I'm Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues. You know, and everyone was like, no. That makes me wildly uncomfortable.
Yeah, yeah. They're like, no, don't so canceled. They're like, go back. Do the weird one. Well, when did you switch from the like the crazy punk rock song intro?
You know who you know who wrote that? Who was that? That was Joel Gargano from uh Grano Arso restaurant in uh in Chester, Connecticut, back when he used to live in the haven that is new. There you go. Uh do you know?
And we said this in the radio many times. Do you know that I'm the new Haven of Bosses? What what what does that mean? What the hell does that mean? Well, everybody hates working for me, and then when they leave me, they're like, he wasn't so bad.
And it's just like living in New Haven. When you everyone who lives in New Haven wants to get out. I thought it was because you were full of like high tier but truly second tier, like B plus tier pizza. I thought because you might die. Uh all of this also is true.
Uh by the way, but but just for the record, you know, Jack is, you know, part of the, you know, new uh the the current guard, I should say, not new, but the current guard of kind of food New York food and drink intelligentsia. Okay. Like, you know, went to NYU in food studies, you know, works at what I think is one of the better bots. It's okay. And uh, you know, general man about town spends a, I would say Foolish, stupid.
A large chunk of your income on food and beverage. Yes. Yeah. Would rather be homeless as long as he could shower enough to be allowed into the restaurants of his choice. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Anyway, so um, always smells clean. I will say this. Always smells clean at work. So I I'm guessing he is not actually homeless.
In fact, I know his roommate who also used to work at Booker and Dax, now works no man, supposed to come work with us, and Nomad was like, We don't want you to go there, so we're just gonna hide. No no bad talk about Nomad. Nomad's a lot of nomads work in a great place to be. I'm I'm loving the nomad. I'm just saying like they have the ability to offer him so much that he wouldn't come work for us.
Yeah. In terms of, I guess, responsibility, I don't know. I don't know. Oh uh yeah. He he's got a good thing going there.
He's happy. So his name is Joe Smith. He's not related to any of the Joe Smith characters that you'd see in movies, but I like him. Oh, yeah, great guy. But he's a liar though.
He where he comes from, near where he comes from, there is a he says carbonated spring out of the ground that is locally known to you know, in whatever high mountain town he's from in Colorado or whatever in the heck it is. Colorado, right? Yeah. And he's like, Next time I go back, I'll get you some. And oh, and he did not.
He did not. Liar. Clearly. Liar, chump, liar. I'll get on him about that.
Speaking of, I really wish Nastasia was here because uh some of you may know that both Booker and Dax, my two children, have the same birthday. And yesterday, they both one turned 17 and one turned, they're not twins. Oh, now I feel the worst because I called you and I said, say happy birthday to Booker. But I didn't say say happy birthday to Dax. And it's only because I saw things on the social media, like, what the hell, Nastasia?
You're just gonna blow up Booker. Well not I know that Booker worked for her, but still. Well, and to be fair, so they used to have their party on the same day. So it used to be what I would do is I would have a I would have a make your own pizza party, and everyone make their own pizzas, and you know, my oven used to get up to like it's a long, I also I haven't talked about this on air. I had to I had to unhot rod my oven, and it was it was freaking depressing.
For those of you out there with regular ovens, I feel your pain now. You know, like can you fill me in very quickly on what you had done? Oh, had done what he did. What I had did. So like uh what had happened was uh I I completely bypassed, well, first of all, also known to some people who actually you know listen to like the deep backlogs of here, um the moron that installed my wife did not allow me to do the plumbing in my new place, okay?
New meaning like five years old, right? Now, uh a number of things really pissed me off. And if any of you are gonna get plumbing done, quarter turn valves. That's the one thing I'm gonna say to you. Oh, yeah.
Quarter turn valves. Now you don't have to have the ugly ones with the giant handles. They make small angle stops with quarter turn valves. But at some point in your life, unless you're a complete garbage person who never uses their equipment, never uses faucets. At some point in your life, you're going to have something break.
And I'm assuming that you're the kind of person that doesn't just have the stock thing out of the Home Depot that you can replace in 20 seconds that you have something decent that you have to wait a day or two to fix, or maybe you don't have, you know, uh 500 bucks to have someone show up and fix your Bosch dishwasher or you know, 1200 bucks to get a new one brought the next day. You know, I'm just guessing. What you're gonna want to do is be able to turn your water off and on. Now, valves, the regular old twisty ones with the crappy, with the crappy plastic uh shaft that you have the oval shape that you turn over and over again. I have never met one that hasn't broken.
I have never met one that hasn't broken. Here's why. They suck. They were invented by a holes and perpetrated on us because the person who invented them hates people and knows this one fact. They won't break year one or year two.
But that's not when your other stuff's gonna break. It's the long con. It's the long con. They know they're laughing. There's a group of plumbers sitting down somewhere day drinking right now, laughing at the fact that the thing that they installed in your house 10 years ago is currently shafting you, right?
And this is why I hate but because listen to this people, quarter turn valves are on average, you ready for it? 50 cents to one dollar more apiece. 50 cents to one dollar more apiece. And how much an hour are you paying that plumber to put that in? Okay, that's an aside.
So I don't even know how I got into this. We were talking about plumbing. Oh, oh, how much? So he the guy had not was not used to installing commercial. For those of you that know, I bought a wolf oven.
I shouldn't probably say this is gonna be used against me someday in a court of law, but I bought a wolf, I bought a wolf oven specifically because wolf ovens make both commercial ranges and home ranges. And if someone came in and saw my range, I could plausibly say it's wolf. It's wolf. It's a home range. What do you Oh my God.
What do you mean? What? I had no idea. How could I me, I have possibly known. It's a home range.
You know what I mean? Like that's that's what I was, you know, in my mind singing. So I said to the plumber guy, I was like, hey, plumber guy, I'm not doing gas anymore. Too many people have blown. This is after a couple buildings had just blown up.
And uh I said to him, Guy, listen, this is a commercial range, not a residential range. And what that means is, and I handed him the regulator, you must install this regulator between the gas line and the range, right? Preferably one for the oven and one for the range, so that uh, you know, so that it regulates the pressure because commercial ovens need that, right? Yeah, and he didn't. He just didn't do it.
And so what that meant was is that that I had the flames coming out of my uh range were prepos just preposterous. Preposterous. Like uh, I used to I I have a collection of like nine uh Tolst you know Dol Sotes, the uh Korean stone bowls. Yeah, yeah. I've had them for decades.
I love them. Everyone should own them. If you don't own, here's what you do. Go buy one. Just buy well, if you like eating by yourself and you're a hermit, buy one.
Otherwise, buy two. Buy two. Buy four. Well, but you might not know you like it. Uh you need to have a gas range.
Oh. Well, then I'm out, unfortunately. Well, it's the worst thing about my apartment. You need to have a really bad thing. Right.
Well, we'll figure it out. Although maybe they work on it. I don't know if they're magnetic. I don't think they are. I don't think they'll work on induction.
We can work on it. We'll figure out a way to do this. It's a little bit more than a little bit more. Yeah, I got electric. We'll make an electric tulso hot box.
I want to make a hot box for tulsots. Anyway, so the point is you heat these suckers up and you need a good kind of a flame to heat them up to about 600 degrees, is what I do. You pour a little bit of oil in the bottom, rice, smash, sauce, arrange the things in a circle, crack eggs, herbs over the top, done. You would not believe how many people can't understand that simple flow. I'm like, this bowl is round.
You are going to put rice in, smash it as though it was mashed potatoes out, sauce, stuff around in piles so that it looks like a nice composed salad y kind of thing. Egg in middle. Is there another way that you would arrange that bowl? Egg on the bottom. Absolute inverse.
Yeah, but that no, you can't. No, but then you end up with mound on the top. You can't? Then you end up with surprise. No, but it would be a hard one.
No, it's a delicious delicious surprise with carbon on the bottom. With sad rice that's dry and not crispy. Listen, if the people involved weren't my family, I would have choice words to say about them. But the point being that the flames were so high in this damn range that uh it would heat up six. I I hit up six stone bowls in like five minutes flat.
From from from room temperature to 612 on the IR thermometer on the thing. I was like, I was like, the thing would rip. It would rip so hard, Jack. Rip so hard that uh that I used to uh trip the thermals in my uh vent, in my hood vent. That's how hard this sucker ripped.
You could stick your hand up in my kitchen and be like, ooh, that's that's warm. You know what I mean? Like, and so what I what I did was is that now the problem with that, by the way, and the reason why it's not a good idea, safety, yeah, blah, blah, blah. But the reason. Yeah, jerks.
But the jerks, jerks, but the reason is that um because there wasn't a regulator on it, it was putting out maximum gas. So if you have something set to a certain level and you turn on another burner, there's no more gas being supplied. And so you'll get a drop or you'll get a flame out, or at low thing, it wasn't able to be stable. No, no gas height was stable. So when you install a regulator, it supplies a constant pressure of gas to the oven, no matter what the demand is, because unlike a residential stove where I have a tiny pipe going to all the burners, I got a big old pipe going to all my burners, right?
And you're supposed to regulate the pressure into them such that the pressure's always the same. So my range was no good for anything other than toll sods, but what I did was I was like, these thermometer, uh, the thermostats in an oven, you really shouldn't hack it the thermostat in the oven. The way to deal with a thermostat in an oven is to just bypass it entirely. So what I did was is I put, yes, I'm about to use this term again, a quarter turn gas valve, right? Is that how you controlled the temperature of your oven?
Well, so what I did was is that in uh my my my last apartment, which I had for over a decade, my oven was incredibly incomplicated, uh complicated. It was completely electronically controlled with uh three different with three different elements, one gas, two electric, run off of a multi-point Watlow PID controller, like completely hardcore with a gas thermal, you know, a gas uh um valve uh solenoid valve, click, click, like it was like hardcore. And every time people would come over, your oven's so hard to use. I don't understand your oven. Why can't you have a normal oven?
I was like, why can't you learn to use a bottle PID controller? Jerk! And why not just have you help them set the oven to whatever come to your house and just do whatever they want with your oven. People complain all the time. People come to your house with potlucks, whatever.
They're like, I just want to heat this casserole. How do I do it? Your oven. I'm like, duh! Don't touch my oven.
I was like, well, that's the thing, right? And so I just got sick of it. And you know, and also Jen was like, even my wife was like, this oven's ridiculous. Can't you just have like a normal person oven? So and then and then new one came around.
I'm like, you know what? Fine, fine, fine. Here's what's gonna happen. There's gonna be the thermostat. I'm not gonna bypass the uh the gas safety, right?
So there's a gas safety in the bottom in case your pilot blows out, it turns off the oven. Whatever. I'm leaving that as is. That seems like a good one to leave. Good one, right?
So that but then what I'm what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna put uh a sh like a uh a shunt, a bypass valve. So you know, like people that bypass their mufflers, they have like a yeah, so it's like that, but for your gas. So I'm gonna- You are Will Farrell's character from old school. Wow, I don't even it's a long time. So anyway, so what happened is I just had this quarter-turn valve, and and then I could either use the thermostat like a normal person, or I could be like, oh yeah.
And just go. And then like my oven, if I wanted it to, I throttled it with that, with that valve. Yeah. Uh whatever. You know what I mean?
Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Lined with stones.
And like because there's so much gas dumping into that thing. See, i if you have a small amount of gas in your in your oven and you put too much rock into your oven, it just doesn't have the ability to heat that kind of thermal mass up to the temperature you want in a reasonable amount of time. Yeah. It's gonna take hours. I did not have that problem.
You know what I mean? But like uh, you know, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark when uh when the when the arc is on the Nazi ship and the swastika burns out because God like like you know, wood burns the side of the crate. Yeah, that kind of started happening to the cabinets that were near the oven. So Jen was like, no, and we got in trouble when the gas got shut down, so I unhot rodted it, put it back on normal thermostat, and I added the proper regulator to it. So now it's a normal stock commercial oven, so it does get up to like 500 degrees.
But 500 degrees. What are you gonna do with that? Well, Monday, what in pizza land, what am I gonna do with 500 degrees? Nothing. Do you know what I had to do?
First of all, what I'm used to is I cheat, by the way. I've said this before. When I make a pizza, I cheat. So and and what do I mean by I cheat? Like, I don't want to sit there and if you're a talented, what do you call them?
What's the word pizza? Pizza Iolo. Pizza Iola. If you're talented, one of these weasels, right? You can you can make a pizza and like leave it there for a while, then pick it up on a peel and put it into your oven, right?
But yeah, I'm not that guy. I don't do it that often. So I used to have the problem, I don't like a a boat ton of crap on the bottom of my pizza. Yeah. Right.
And I like to use a fairly wet dough, and so I would always run into if I let a pizza stay there too long, it's staying there forever. It would yeah, it would stick. Yeah. Or the worst is getting it off the peel and you go shagunk into the oven and it goes and you're like, ah, right? It's garbage.
It's garbage. So my cheat, my cheat, I think I've said this on the air before, is I buy the uh I buy the parchment paper and I just throw it right on the parchment paper with no release. Here's the secret though, if you're using a high temperature oven, ready for the secret? Yes. What you gotta do is you gotta trim like with within like uh you know an eighth to a quarter around the crust with shears it'll go z just like cut off the paper.
If you leave the paper flapping in the breeze, it will catch on fire. It'll catch on fire. Yeah. Uh if you don't, it'll char a little around the edges, but it's not a big deal. And if my if your oven's really ripping hot, which mine used to be, what I would do is like, you know, 40 seconds into the cook, I would I would just pull a peel and pull the paper and everything's good.
Okay. And so, you know, I wasn't doing uh, you know, DOP style because frankly, that's not the style I do. I like it kind of more cooked all the way through. Yeah, a little bit more creaspish, you know what I mean? I mean, not like you know, cracker crisp, not grupo style, but you know what I'm saying.
Like anyway, so but uh I know a pizza shouldn't take more than two minutes, you know, three minutes to cook. Yeah, these pizzas were taking forever, Jack. So much so that I so much so that I have a brevel oven, brevel toaster oven. So I would do the pre cook, zip them out, and then toss them into the toaster oven on toast to finish while I was throwing the next one in because who has that kind of time to wait? Who's gonna wait seven minutes for a pie?
No one. And so then the next thing I'm gonna have to do is I'm gonna have to start making them giant and get a big peel. You know, right now my peel is maybe only 14 inches across or something like this, but I'm gonna need to make pizzas the size of the house, you know, the size of a full sheet tray. If I if everyone's gotta wait like 10 minutes of pizza. Like cook it like a pan pizza.
I guess I could. You could I mean I guess that's a a valid style. I guess. Anyway, so that's what I used to do for their birthday parties was uh the the thing, and then every time Jim would be like, Don't make too much smoke this time. Like, the smoke is what the smoke is.
Yeah, it is what it is. No, just become Prince Street pizza in your home. Yeah, well, with the giant cup with the cup cupperoni cup, yeah, yeah. The cupperoni. I had it once.
You need to reheat that sucker when it's getting doughy and in when you're gonna be able to do it. Oh, it's real sad. No, but you that's why you just eat it standing outside in front of the shop. Yeah, but what what are your thoughts on foods? I mean pizza should be a food that I think stays good over.
I understand that certain things have a window. Yes, right. But certain things, the window is so small that I think it impugns the entire variety of food. Tempura, for instance. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I like tempura. I say this and I've gotten people yelled at me many times. Uh, but I'm not like that's not to me like the be-all end-all of frying.
No, it's good. It's fine. But it has to be handed to you from the fryer and you need to eat it. Yeah, you need to burn your mouth, you hit it, and then the hot juice hits your mouth and you're burnt, and you're like, That's why you gotta be like myself, and I'm assuming you, where you've never waited for food to cool for your entire life, so you just have a layer of just horrifying mangled skin in your mouth, so you just aren't affected by temperature. I know, but it is unpleasant.
My hands can still tolerate more than my mouth. That's funny because I am the opposite. It's gotten so bad that my mouth can tolerate more than my hands. This is because you've taken ramen eating too seriously, and you've consistently burned your mouth on ramen. It's not just ramen.
It's actually mostly pizza because I'd get the full cheese glue to the roof. That's the worst. The flap doodle that the second uvula of skin hanging down from the top of your mouth. Oh, back to pizza. I will say this.
Uh this is how we got into this. Uh, as one of the uh, you know, uh older generation of pizza eaters, back in the in the early 90s, in the 80s and early 90s, New Haven pizza was better than anything else you could get. Yeah. In other words, and what do I mean by that? It was New York style, but better.
It was a better, not like New York dollar slice stuff. Because nobody was doing it down here. Right. It did what what happened is is that the world grew around them and they did not. Still a very high quality pie.
Like Frank Pepe's was great when we went. It's fine. Yeah. Uh here's uh here's here's here's another thing I will say, and I I I don't think I mentioned this last week, but I have a line on the cheese steamer. Ooh.
For those of you that don't know Connecticut, Connecticut is the land of the steamed cheese. Forget the steamed cheese burger. I have no use for it, but steamed cheese makes halloumi look like a joke cheese. Like, you like halloomie jack? Yeah, it's good.
Matt, you like halloumi? Yes, sir. Halloumi good cheese, right? That's like in that the motto halloomy good cheese. You like queso para frieir?
Yeah. Yeah. Either with or without a natto, although mostly without. Yeah. I like cheeses that are good.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But those are good fried. But steamed cheese, see, people are like, why don't you serve halloomie? And I'm like, well, because I don't frankly trust the people I'm serving it to. Right?
They're not gonna eat it fast. They're not gonna eat it fast. And when Halloumi cools down, I get real sad. Yeah. You know, so I have a pile of rubber in front of me.
Yeah, halloumi, for those of you that don't know Halloumi, get to know Halloumi. Uh full stop. Yeah, that means or you know, if you want to stay, you know, on this side of the water, get yourself some queso parafruit. And these are, you know, salted cheeses that have the benefit that they get soft and have a great texture, but they don't melt out completely. Now we're not talking like fried mozzarella, which melts and you're using a bread encasing to keep it together.
We're talking about the cheese itself can be grilled or pan fried, yeah, and it gets like a crispy brown outside, slightly sweet, awesome, like texture on the inside, little oil on top, not that it necessarily needs it, but I like a little salt, a little some stuff. Good. Good. Great, good. Love it.
Yeah. Great. But when you cool it down, I hate it. Now, it gets squeaky, but not in the good cheese curd squeak way. You're like, man, I wish I had eaten this when it was hot.
Yep. So if you are doing this, and you can control how fast you eat, because presumably you can, then I'm all for it. But people at the uh at the bar, didn't someone say why don't we serve Haloumi? And I looked at them, I was like, I do not trust our guests to eat Haloumi. And I don't trust them not to blame us.
For oh, this product isn't good. It's like, well, you waited 10 minutes to take the first bite. Right. Jerk! Yeah, but uh and there are many things that I don't serve for that for that reason.
Uh it's a just a lack of trust I have. And the same thing goes for uh, like same thing goes for we this is like a multifacet. Well we've gotten to this argument from many ways, but the point being that the steamed cheese that they make in Connecticut is made with a mild I hate to use the word cheddar because it's not really mean whatever. Maybe the curd was cheddared in a technical sense, but you know what I mean? Because it's a technical term, people.
Uh but it, you know, they they steam it and it gets puffy, and then when it cools down, it just turns back into cheese again. It doesn't turn into an abomination. So Connecticut steamed cheese is I think fantastic. And I I I have a line on the cheese steamer. Is there a restaurant in Connecticut that's doing the steamed cheese but a griddled burger?
Or do they only steam the burgers and the cheese? People who live in uh South Central Connecticut. Because that's the answer. That that you know what, Jack? You you are a hundred percent correct.
Yeah, steam the cheese and then a uh flat top burger. I think Kenji Lopet Lopez Alt might have mentioned this once, although I got in a huge argument with him yesterday regarding MSG. But uh, I mean, not personally, it was over Twitter, nothing's real over Twitter. Yeah, but uh he might have mentioned that once, but that is the answer. Yeah.
Steam cheese is the shiz knit. It's delicious, it's great. Perfect texture for a burger. Yeah, fantastic. Um, so I used to do the pizza party, the make your own pizza thing.
Kids liked making their own pizzas, you can make a reasonable size, blah, blah, blah, it's good. But Booker doesn't like homemade pizza because I would add stuff to the sauce, like you know, I always grind anchovies or whatever. You want it to taste? Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Oh my god, I mean did I tell you about the pizza I made?
Which one? Okay, yes, you did, but you just oh my god, oh my god. People, for those of you that don't know, uh this is the best name of any product ever. Neonata. Neonata, which means newborn.
Oh newborn. It's like a it's like a Calabrian fish paste, but it's not a paste of large fish. It's tiny fish in oil and red pepper. Yeah, Calabrian chilies. Yeah.
So it's Calabrian chilies and tiny, like small, like smaller than white bait, like tiny, tiny fish. I would say new newborn fish. There you go. Neonata. And neonata is there are condiments, and then there's neonata.
Right. And we serve it at the bar, but the and you can buy it in Brooklyn by the case, which I did. So I bought a case for the bar, a case for myself, and a case for my stepfather for Christmas. And we use it, uh, you have to come buy our you know, our palm deragon, our delicious fried mashed potato fritters, which are great, by the way. And they come from Belgium, but these idiots in Belgium that tell the story.
Matt, have you heard this yet? No. So these idiots in Belgium, they're not idiots, they're just morons. They're just cult culturally idiots, jerks. So they made these potato croquettes, which is really what they are.
It's potato, on it's like mashed potato and onion, uh, piped and fried. So what is that? Delicious. Yeah, but right, but it's uh so it has ridges in the in the tube shape, right? So they're little, they're little, they're narrower than a tater tot and and long er.
Not long, long gurr, yeah than a tater tot. Um actually not that much longer than a tater tot, they're just narrower. You're looking at like a a two-inch tube. Like three-eighths of an inch wide. Yeah, yeah, ish.
Okay. So you you guys getting the picture. Yeah. So point is that there's ridges in the side of the tube. So these Belgians, these Belgians who make it, and by the way, the reason we sell these is because we didn't want to invest the labor to do the French fries.
And I couldn't bu find a frozen fry that I thought was acceptable. And not only that, but my partner Don and I don't even agree on what a good French fry is. So much so that like I had second thoughts about opening the bar with Don because it got bad. Yeah, I mean, and we're gonna have the French fry wars. If anyone out there is a potato farmer, like the plan is this.
Don believes that a thin French fry, like almost a shoestring fry, is what a good fry is. And I'm like, at that point, just by like Andy Capp's sack of fake fries, it's like shoestring fries out of right out of the fryer, like doused in some sort of like, you know, what Jack, what's your favorite agra dolce? Uh Heinz tomato ketchup. There you go. The greatest aggro dolce.
You know, or or like in mayonnaise or something like this is good, but when they cool off, they kind of suck, right? And he accuses me, therefore, uh, because I think that those are not the good fry of wanting giant steak fries, which I also think are bad. Yeah. I mean, I enjoy all fried potato products, but to me, the ultimate French fry is is between between and including, so greater than or equal to three eighths of an inch and less than or equal to uh half of an inch in cross section. That is where I am.
And for those of you that do millimeters, you know, multiply uh, you know, multiply by 25.4. Uh, but the point is that you know, to me, those French fries can exhibit a nice inner texture of cooked potato, right? And I appreciate it. Right. And can have a crispy exterior, right?
And you get everything, not just like crunch. Crunch, I'll get a potato chip or the aforementioned Andy Cap fries, which I eat them, but they're garbage. Yeah, well, yeah. But I eat them. Yeah, they're good.
Yeah. Anyway. So uh we could not agree even on the style of fries. So what we're gonna do, uh, this is I say we're gonna do this. We want to do this, but you know, if we get like a minute, you know, free.
We want to find a potato farmer, maybe in Idaho, I don't know. We want to buy this farmer's entire field of potatoes, right? For the year, or a field. Yeah, like we go to this person, we're like, yeah, yo, how about we buy like I don't know, like four acres? I don't know.
I don't know. I don't even know how many we don't know what yields on. I don't know how many pounds per. But I do know that with my French fry techniques, the yield of French fry off of potatoes is roughly 50% because you get a lot of moisture loss on the process. Anyways, so buy them, and then we hire one of the two big firms to process it the way we want.
And then those, and but we do them two ways, Don style and Dave style, and then we just see who's fry reign supreme. For those of you who, you know, were uh what's it what was that called? Uh most extreme elimination training. No, I oh yeah, the original, yeah, the original. Yeah.
Anyways, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh so good. Assassin's the plan. So in the meantime, Josh, Shorty, our chef, found us because he knows these Belgian weasels that did the potatoes for Joe Robichamp back when Joe Robichon was alive and still doing his bondage SM stuff. Great chef.
Never had his food, though. Me neither. Never went to one of Robichon's restaurants where he was working. I knew some of the people that work for him. Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Weird dude, though, right? I don't, I honestly don't know. Anyway, Joe. Like he had a good name, though, right? I appreciate anyone who's uh mashed potatoes are equal parts potatoes and butter.
Yeah, yeah, and uh and uh Bruno Gusot, you know, Bruno Gusseau, the uh the Sous vide uh the father of Jusqueton, low temperature cooking, as he calls it, sous vide. Uh he um he used to work he one of the first projects he did with high-end food was for jouet robouchon uh for the SAF train. Anyway, I digress as usual. So this potato company out of Belgium made the made the potatoes for Joe Robichon when he wasn't you know making them himself, I guess. Uh and they make this potato tube.
Now here's back there's a long end around to two things. I still have to talk about the pizza I made. And secondly, just so you just so you know, I keep in my head somewhat what we're talking about. These potatoes, they call them churros. Now they are not churros, they are that shape.
Well, kind of. They are the shape of that in the sense that stuff that you put out of a uh Play-Doh Fuzzy Pumper Barber Beauty shop are actual dreadlocks. They're not. They're small extrusions of things. You know what I mean?
Or like, you know what I mean? It's like they are they are not the right size for a churro, and they are not made of dough. They're not made of a flour-based dough. It's a fried item extruded from a star tip. That's right.
Is icing a churro? Is it is icing fried? I don't know. It has some of the criteria of it. The only criteria it doesn't have is uh there's actually more starch.
Well, that's not true, there's potato starch, but there's cornstarch in a uh in the I don't know. You're right on the fry. I could make a fried icing. Is it then a churro? If you if there's some cinnamon involved, I I you yes.
If I pipe, if I if a hot dog has ridges, is it a churro? How many things can we churro? Let's do it. Nothing. Let's do it.
They're not churros is my point. Like, they shouldn't be called churros. And so Don calls them palm d'aragon, is a nod to our friend John Darragon, who has Who is a churro aficionado? Let's just leave it as churro aficionado. So anyway, so uh we make a neonata back to the pizza.
We make a neonata sauce that we serve with these at the bar so you could taste neonata if you don't want to bother sourcing it because it's it's pretty hard to source right now unless you go to this one store, Calluccio Brothers in in Brooklyn. Don't buy it all. If you buy it all and I can't buy it anymore, I will ask them who bought it, I will find you and kill you. But um there it is. Yeah, but this sauce, I put like half of a jar on it on the pizza in lieu of sauce.
That is an intense amount of neonata. I mean, not for you know, yeah, non-jamokes, but it's for a jamok. And then and then I know, I know, I don't want to hear about it. You know, cheese and fish. You know what?
Uh I mean, I grew up with Catholics, I'm not Catholic, and I don't believe in these Lenten law things. So I put a little parmesan on top, yeah, cooked it off, and then fried egg, fried egg, fried egg, fried egg, Friday. Oh my God. Oh my. That was the money pizza.
Even Dax was like, Dad, that's the money. That's the money pizza. That's the money pizza. So I think we actually made it back to where we needed to uh discuss that. I should get to some of the questions that were on the air.
Oh, and then for Booker, though, he doesn't like pizza, as I said, so I had to do a sushi party for him. And Nastasia came over to the party, which is how you heard about it. Yeah. Long end around to where we got from. And so I wanted to have her on today.
By the way, last night, do you know that she did a vegan dinner at I saw that? She did a vegan dinner at the beard house. So for those of you that have always wondered what Nastasia Lopez's vegan face looks like. She had to do a vegan dinner and she posted on her Instagram account a picture of her with what she calls is her vegan face. And I have to say, there is a sous of vegan face in this in this picture.
However, there is also a healthy dose of hate and rage. Yeah. Because vegan face is usually just disgust. You don't see vegan face plus inner rage and hate at the same picture. So if you want to see what that face of Nastasia Lopez looks like, just check out her Instagram.
And I realized that you might have to know her a little while before you even understood like kind of like what was going on behind the literal facade. Yeah. Oh. So anyway, so I was like, hey, uh, uh, she I was like, so what do you know, how's this sushi? She's like because I made the rice, right?
I, you know, I was she was like, not good. I was like, why? Too much vinegar tastes like Jiro. Jerk. And I was like, I was like, well tastes like Jiro is an insult.
Yeah, I know. I was like, so strong. It did not taste like Jiro people. It maybe had more vinegar than she is used to, but it wasn't like hard kernel center, like sucking on a sucking on a warhead. Anyway.
Oh, look at this Jiro hatred. Oh my god, her Jiro hatred was so strong. Oh man. Loved it. Loved it.
Well, you know what? I think also she was just bent that she felt that like Jiro and I both rushed her at that meal. And you know, Mark was having such gastrointestinal distress because of um because he had just gotten back from getting food poisoned. Oof. This episode is presented by Henry's Wine and Spirit, a go-to shop for anyone interested in natural wines and boutique spirits.
There's a large selection of everything from orange wines, pet gnats, and reds from around the world. Whether visiting the shop in person or online, looking for a gift for a loved one or that everyday dependable bottle, you're sure to find lots of interesting wines at Henry's. There's free shipping on orders over $300 on the website, Henry's dot nyc, and case discounts when you visit the store located in Bushwick. Cheers. My name is Jennifer Leutzi, and I'm the host of Tech Bites, where we talk to innovators and influencers in the food tech space.
You can find Tech Bites wherever you listen to podcasts and on Heritage Radio Network.org. Thanks for listening. Uh, question in from Marcel Reed Jacques from the Hudson Valley. Um, who, by the way, uh is as a PS for because Nastasia likes to keep track of this stuff, lives with his girlfriend, and they buy and are uh gifted equal amounts of kitchen equipment. So you're looking at kitchen equipment parity across the couple, which I that's good, which I appreciate.
Uh and this person mistakenly says, Hope I can get myself a wine Santa soon. Watch out what you ask for. That's not a mistake. That's not a mistake. They meant that.
Yeah. They don't understand the ramifications, the implications yet. Yeah. Okay, so to the question. Dave recommends chilling meat after sous vide before the sear off so that it doesn't overcooked and retains its juices.
I think it's more complicated. We'll get into it. However, I frequently struggle with getting the final temperature hot enough when doing it this way. Uh, for instance, tonight I seared a thick sirloin steak after uh sous vide and chill for steak a poiv. Oh my god, I haven't had steak a poiv in a long time.
Yeah, I love steak a poiv. I always put pepper in my steak, but like with the sauce with the with the uh steak a pois sauce. I always just go like if I if I have the option to you know choose your sauce at the steak, I never go up. But you should I gotta go back. Do you know uh can I tell you a steak a poiv piece of information?
Yes, you can. I had steak up poiv the night I was engaged. Wow to my wife. Where? Uh at a place called Herald's, which is no longer in business.
It was run by he was front of house, his wife was back of house after the original chef, they both run it, and the original chef had died, or it was uh 80 something, he quit. She took over back of house, he ran front of house. Fantastic service, fantastic place. He was, I believe, I think both of them were Viennese, and they used to get recent CIA grads. This is in uh upstate New York in Stormville, and then I guess he died, and so they closed the place down.
Oh, that's too bad. Or she died. I think they're both dead now. But yeah, I when I graduated college, I went there. When I got engaged, I went there.
This was the guy that uh taught me this lesson about service. Um so I try to tell people at the bar, they don't really. Here's a problem if you work in service. You don't take the time to understand what other people are feeling, right? So you have an interaction with a bunch of uh, you know, guests when they come in.
It's hard for you to put yourself in their position and realize that they're in a major transition, that they don't understand the way your system operates, yeah, that you know they want to feel special. Here's what this guy did to make me feel special. I called him with an inappropriate request. I called him because Valentine's Day had fallen through, and I got engaged on Valentine's Day P. S.
And um, so I wanted to take Jen to a nice place. It fell through, so I called him, being like, because I figured it's upstate New York, how busy can they be? And so I said, you know, is there any way I can get in? It was like a couple days in. And then he was like, no.
But he didn't say no. What he said was he said, there's nothing I would like more than for you to come to my restaurant on Valentine's Day. But if you were my own brother, I could not get you a table. We are so full. I'm so sorry, sir.
Then I was like, what can you say at that point? Nothing. Yeah. See? He took into account the fact that he realized that I really wanted to go.
Yeah. And he impressed on me that he really wanted me to come, but there was really nothing he could do about it. And he's kept kept your business, I'm assuming. Yeah. Until the day he died.
Yeah. Anyway, so back to Steak Upwell. By the time the sauce had been made in the pan to drizzle over the steak, the steak was cold. Uh steak was cold. It was delicious, but sadly cold.
How do you recommend? Sadly cold. How do you recommend? That's like Nastasia's motto. Um, she's happily cold.
The people around her are sadly frigid. How do you recommend figuring out how to get that serving temperature right without overcooking? And is there a recommendation serving temperature that can be measured with a thermometer amount of time? Thanks. This is an interesting question.
One of the main problems with low temp cooking in general is this not wanting to overshoot, but getting the getting the temperature warm enough, especially on a sear, um, especially on steak that you don't want to overcook it. There's a number of ways you can accomplish it. One, you can uh, and this is what I normally do on a steak, is you don't want to do low temperature on too thin a steak. They just they just move too quickly one way or the other. They get cold too fast, they get warm too fast.
It's like a skirt just cooked fast and hot. It's delicious. Although when I do when I do skirt, here's what I do on skirt to tenderize it a little bit, I'll long cook it low, take it all the way down to fridge temp, pull it from the fridge, and then treat it like a raw skirt steak, and then it's not chewy on the inside. It's always at least cooked, but you're not ever gonna overcook it because you're cooking it like a normal steak. Yeah.
So all right. Uh, but on uh on a thicker steak, also, so that you don't overcook on the sear, it helps to pre-sear uh your meat before you do the long cook because it means that you'll get um a level of crust much faster on the second sear than you would if you were going from no sear. That is the reason. There's also some flavor development during the cook, but the one of the main reasons is is that your second sear, which you must do after you cook it, it's going to get a much crisper, nicer crust much faster. Okay.
That's the thing people miss. They're like, should I sear it before? Should I sear after? Both jerk. But if you have to do one, do it after.
But if you can do it before, it is helpful. Now, if you have the time, uh, get a thick enough steak, a thick enough steak, and I can post some point if I have um I the program's broken, but I can I can try to find it again. Um, like how much of a temperature rise you get on a thick steak. You get very much less temperature rise on a thick steak than on a thin steak. So in general, I try to shoot thicker than an inch.
If you're thicker than an inch, usually you can do a sear and get away with it. What I do is is you can either take it directly from your this is kind of a pain in the ass when I'm about to tell you, you but pain in the butt. You can either take it in the bag and actually put it into cold water for two minutes. Let's say you're gonna sear it for two minutes. If you put it in cold water for two minutes and force chill the outside, you then when you sear it, you're not overcooking the center too much.
So you can take it from cooking temperature, force chill it in cold water, like cold cold water for two minutes, and then sear two minutes on a side and you'll be even again. But it takes some practice. I wouldn't do this, I wouldn't do this, you know, for a lot of people. It's also a pain to do for a lot of people. It's more of a two-person thing.
The other thing you can do is this. Um, my the way I cook steaks now, especially rib ribeye, which is my favorite steak to cook, is I'll ramp it up to 55, right? I'll take it up to 55, I'll hold it at 55 for only like 40 minutes, 45 minutes. And then I'll drop it to, I actually drop it to 50. Sh I drop it to 50.
But if you're asking me, I drop it to 52, but I actually drop it to 50. And then I hold it 52, 50. I hold it there for uh like let's say I hold it at 52. I'll hold it at 52 for like three or four hours, right? The whole thing now is at 52.
It has gotten up. If you cook it for an hour, hour 50, depends on the thickness of the steak, to get the middle of the steak up to 55. I don't actually like to let it ride at 55 anymore because I think it takes it to a different place in texture. I want it to touch 55, like touch 55, and then I want to drop it down to 52 or so, let it ride at 52, and then drop it down to 5250. If it's a 50, if the whole sucker's at 50, you're not and it's over an inch thick, like an inch and a quarter thick, you're not gonna overcook the center on the sear.
So then just pulling it, letting it rest for just a minute while you're getting ready, then searing it and doing the sauce should work. So this is how I would get around it. The other thing you can do is this if you have a uh I don't know, Breville toaster oven or something like this, uh that can hold a constant like 140, it takes a w a long time for a thick steak to overcook when it's in a warming oven. So what you can do is you can take it to the temperature you want to sear it at or even sear it, and then throw it in like a 140, 150 oven, and the inside's not gonna cool off anymore, but it's really not gonna overcook in the amount of time it takes you to do a pan sauce. What do you think?
Good, great. All right. Uh they're gonna kick me off soon, but I had another low temperature related question. I have a question about, this is from John. I have a question about pressure canning.
If I were to get a whole vacuum top round, cook it with a circulator for 24 to 48 hours, then cut it up, pack it for pressure canning. Pack it for pressure canning. Uh pack it for pressure canning. Would this improve the texture of the beef after canning compared to just canning with the higher heat in the canner, take away all the texture improvement from the slow and low cooking? Uh I'd love to call, but I can't find the number.
The number is 718-497-2128. That's 718-497-2128. Uh, if you hit me back with the uh number, I'm happy to call in. P.S. I'm convinced that my eight-year-old daughter, I've I've convinced my eight-year-old daughter that the hammer is a female professional wrestler who just likes food, and that's why she's on the show and why Dave always yells the hammer.
What do you think, Jack? She's correct. Yeah. Yeah. This is accurate.
It is it is my opinion, John, is my opinion that uh low and slow before pressure canning will not do anything because the pressure canning is like so much more violent. And it's gonna like uh see when you're doing low and slow, one of the interesting things about low and slow is that the connective tissue doesn't render out. And also when you're cooking for a long time, especially cuts like that, like round, some of them can tend to go livery over very livery. Yeah, not like a livery cab, like with the taste of liver. Yes.
Over long cooking periods. Uh and so in general, if I was you, I would just pressure can it. But I could be wrong because I haven't run the test. You always need to run the test. I would do it, but I would say that at first blush, uh, pressure canning is gonna remove any uh perceived benefit you would get out of um uh out of the uh what's it called?
Low temperature cooking. Yeah. Um this I do not know the answer to. I have a question from um I think this question, although it could be, is from Jean Uyet, uh about milk. Uh wondering whether uh it could be a man, could be a woman.
I don't know. Yeah. Running uh lives upstate New York and is a wonders whether can pre-condense milk with reverse osmosis machine the way they do with maple syrup. Answer, I don't know. I wasn't able to find out quickly enough.
So hopefully I'll get Nastasia to reroute that question to me uh next week, and I'll do a little more, I'll do a little more research. I mean, I don't have a lot of experience personally with reverse osmosis other than with water. I don't have I, you know, I've, you know, I don't have a sugar shack much as I would like to have one. Uh and if I did, if I did, would I do RO or would I just do classic boy? I mean, the reason one of the reasons to do RO, right, is the pre-concentration, save energy, right?
Because you don't have to do as much boiling. Yeah. 40 to 1. I don't know. I'll do some research and I'll get back to it.
Jack, thanks so much for taking the place of the hammer. Matt, we good? We're so good. I'm just envisioning, you know, nostasia with somebody like in a in a full Nelson. Yeah.
Yeah. Don't have to think too hard. Yeah. It's right there. Anyway, cooking issues.
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