This episode is presented by the Brooklyn Kitchen. Learn more at Brooklyn Kitchen.com. 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, bars, and more. It's been 10 years, and we're just getting started. Find us at heritageradionetwork.org. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arrow, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday.
I know it's really late this time. It's freaking MTA! Why don't you just take the F to the L? Because you know the J is always gonna be messed up. I don't I didn't.
They don't have look. When you get MTA people, in fact, we know an MTA person. Like, just put a sign on, like, right before you go down the stairway saying you are shafted. But you always are shafted No, no! They've gone back to being in a normal schedule.
How many times has Dave been late because of the MTA? Um, I always assumed it wasn't because of the MTA, he just used them as a foil. Yeah, no. In fact, but they had gone back to their normal schedule. I hadn't, like, assumed that they were going to reshaft it and not stop at flushing anymore and just like divert to the middle track and sit there.
I just think you should take the F to the L. Oh, you think so, huh? Yes. Because I take the A C E to the L. Yeah, because you live in Hell's Kitchen.
I live three blocks from something that goes directly to here when it's running properly. Which is never. No, it was running properly again. It was running in both directions. Uh do you check the map or the MTA?
No, I'm stupid and assume that the trains are running on tracks. Are you being sarcastic? No, I I'm serious. Booker, my son, checks it every day. Right.
So then why don't you do that? And then you'd be on time. Yes, I know, but it's dumb. And also I have to research a bunch. So, like what happens is I try to push it till the last second so I can get the train that will get me here on time normally, because I'm I don't get the information that you guys send until I'm already basically passed out the night this time.
I can send it earlier. Whatever. You say that. You say that often, but yet unless I actually get the questions when I'm still in a mood to work. Sunday.
Sure. And then we can add additional questions, then I can look at it beforehand, but instead I have to do all of the research in the morning from the minute I get up until I get on that train. So if I'm not on that train, it's because I'm researching questions so that I can get in here late and not have time to answer them. Which way is this? And then we'll send the MTA schedule every morning.
Oh me, me. This is me and Stasia being aggressive aggressive. You're such a jerk. You know what? Like I have to sit here.
You're not being helpful. You speak Hey, people, go into the ch uh the Twitter chat room, but by the way, someone asked, is this mixer thing? Is that the chat room? Yes. Alright.
So you hear that? The mixer thing is in fact the chat room. See whether Nastasia is actually being helpful or not. Okay. Speaking of being the chat room link is now in every episode description too.
Oh, I like that. Did you do anything interesting, uh, Matt? This past week from a food perspective? Oh boy. Um.
No. Nastasia did. Nastasia went to the uh opening party of the Hudson Yards. One of the best parties ever. Yeah.
Well, mainly what what is what is it? What does a party need to be to be one of the best parties ever in your estimation? Unlimited Krug, um, cavi unlimited caviar and a great DJ. There you have it, people. It's not a complicated formula for Nastasia Lopez.
Just play some decent tunes and keep the champagne coming. Some caviar. Keep the champagne. Was the caviar good of champagne? Yeah.
Or did you eat them separately? Separately. Yeah. Okay. Um, tomorrow, Nastasia and I have to, and she's super psyched about it.
No, I think I'm less psyched than you are. Uh so uh we're doing a shoot. Actually, Harold McGee's coming in to do it. We're doing a shoot about French fries where we're gonna dredge up the old SPL French fries supremacy techniques. And so after this, Nastasia is super nothing Nastasia loves more than staring there with her vegan face on, watching me blanch potato strips.
I will take some videos, and hopefully there will be a rant from Dave. And then, like, she doesn't like French fries anyway. Yeah. So, and Nastasia, I can't even she can't even pretend to give a crap. Even though this is literally our job to do this stuff.
Like, we're gonna go have people videotape us and like, you know. It's just you. So I just again have to stand there watching you do it. What? Yeah, tomorrow they're just videotaping you.
Well, and McGee, you're not gonna be in the thing? No. You know what the thing is, Nest here's another thing, people. Is there anything in the world that you hate more than being in a shoot? I hate it.
You know why she hates it now? You know why she hates it now? Why? Because she's like, who do these people think they are? Francis Ford Coppola?
Yes! Just get the shot already! Yeah. She does not appreciate people caring about their job. No, I love people that care about their job.
No, you don't. No, you're a liar. She wants them to be so good at their job. No, they're just doing it. No, no, no, no.
You're being you're being far too charitable. No, no, no. No, Nastasia Lopez has no respect for what they do for a living, and therefore do not think it is worth trying to be good at. I think movie people are great, like Francis Ford. Ow, like really.
They deserve that. Oh, radio cramp. Radio cramp. But like the getting the shot over and over and over for an unknown. I don't know who's filming it tomorrow.
How are you supposed to be good at what you do unless you try to do a good job? What I also hate is they're like, can you do the thing that you did again? Because they didn't get it. No, no, no. And you're like, but that was so off the cuff.
And they're like, I know, but just pretend. That's how this works. I know, but I just I don't like it. Yeah, but if it's because you fundamentally don't respect any makers and you don't respect any aspect of you don't respect the people who are doing it, and you don't respect what they are doing. You're like, who cares?
It's just gonna be, you know, one person's gonna watch it, it's gonna get tossed, it's gonna, you know, it's like it's it's the visual equivalent of toilet paper. That's what your mind. Dave, you were on good morning southwestern uh specific Connecticut. That is wrong. It was good morning Southern Connecticut Sunday.
Yeah, nostalgia, you totally miscarriage it. And by the way, by the way, when I bring it, I bring it, I killed that segment. I have no doubt. Yeah, but see, like that, that's one segment. Because you get me to do something, and I just I do it.
That's my favorite thing in the world. It makes sense. You're what? Saturday night life. Yeah.
No, no lots of takes. Uh, you're wrong. They read, they they practice that a billion times. Which is the same thing as doing a take. They just have to use the last one because they're live.
They sit there and do the same crap over and over. If you had to do that, not as much as you can. Maybe like three times. Excuse you. If you had to do that, you'd be like, what are we talking about?
This they sit there like all night like discussing like a single joke, and you're like, well, what are you? What are you? What are you Rembrandt with your jokes? What? It was right before.
No, they're not different. Steve, can you fry that uh blanch that French fry from this angle now? No, no, well, you know what? We want an overhead. Now let's move all the lighting and we gotta move all the lighting.
I can't This is why it's this is why you also can't get Nastasia to take a picture of something for you that's important. Or a video. Because she's like she'll she'll sit there and like she'll start looking at something else. She'll be like, uh, something outside the window is interesting. Maybe my mouth.
And she'll like suddenly start videotaping the thing that's outside the window. You're like, hello. Like the purpose of a video is to take information and put it into people's heads using a visual medium. So you need to care about what the picture is. I think we have a we have a caller on the air with a question about cinematography.
Okay, nice. Caller, you're on the air. Oh hey, how's it going? Long time listener, first time caller. Sorry to interrupt that rant.
That was pretty fun. Maybe it can continue after my question. Um no doubt. But yeah, I just have a question about freezing enzymes. Okay.
Uh so I'm planning to make uh a garum from some small fish that I've got frozen in my freezer. And I know that kind of depends on the quality of the gut enzymes to kind of get that going. So would freezing have a negative impact on being able to use the kind of endogenous enzymes? Yes, I'm I'm thinking about it. For instance, SPL, the one that we use for uh you know, most of our work at the bar, is freeze thaw stable.
And I would bet many enzymes are freeze thaw stable. Um for instance, when you know you freeze a um when you freeze a uh a piece of uh like an avocado, for instance, and it thaws, it's still the polyphenol oxidase enzymes in them still shred it. You know what I mean? So many, many, many enzymes are free saw stable. Are all I don't know.
But the good news is unless you are freezing something to extremely low temperatures, there's still a lot of water unfrozen left inside of your fish. You're not getting it down below the you know what some people call, even though it has many different meanings, the eutectic point where all of the liquid is frozen solid. And so, you know, it's a known fact that certain um enzymatically, you know, um what's the word, catalyzed things, because of the radical concentration increasing uh increase as the uh liquid phase gets less and less can actually go up even when it's uh in super cold storage in freezer storage, which seems kind of paradoxical. So uh the answer is I would say you're probably fine. Okay, cool.
I think you also answered my second related question, which is I've got some pectinase and I wanted to freeze it, but uh couldn't find any information on if it was freeze thaw stable. So I will tell you what happened. Uh my partner at existing conditions, Don Lee, we needed to reorder uh Pectenex, right? Now, by the way, this is something you people might not know out there. Uh, for years we've been using uh Pectenex Ultra SPL, right?
And it turns out Guzmer, the place that we buy it from, was telling us to use that one, and most people are using that in the literature, especially in European papers. Why? Because it is not GMO. But we now get Pectanex Ultra XXL, which sounds like you know, like a rap album. And XXL is uh GMO, has like uh the organism, the I guess it's an aspergillus or whatever it is that that you know produces it, is a GMO organism, right?
Uh, and it is get ready for it, people, half the cost. J at l at least as effective, if not more, half the cost. So I'm switching to XXL. And then when we reorder this pail, right? Of uh, because you have to buy we buy it in um 25 uh kilo pails, right?
So that's 25 kilos. We buy the 25 kilo pail. Uh they wanted to know if we wanted um a special kind of packing around it to prevent it from freezing. And Don was like, why? Does it matter if it freezes?
And they said, I don't know, I'll check. And they checked and they're like, nope, it does not matter if it freezes or not. So there you have it. Straight from straight from Guzmer's mouth. Awesome.
It's actually it's actually not Guzmer anymore, it's JTEC Industries now, I think. JTEC. Don't call Gusmer, they no longer carry that. I think it's JTEC, which is a Nova Zime distributor of SPL. They switched about two years ago.
Anyway, good luck with it. Let us know how your Garm comes out. Right on. Back to the rant. Alright, cool.
Well, I don't know. I'm I'm I'm not necessarily feeling the level of anger anymore. So we'll talk about uh here's something I'm angry about. I got a note, not food related, then I'll get off this onto food-related stuff. I got a note, this is Nastasi related.
Nastasia, for those of you that don't know, is the Tesla whisperer. Love. Yeah. Did you see they announced the Model Y? People aren't as jazzed about the Model Y because it's less crazy than they thought it would be.
And but other people who are kind of smart about it were like, well, it shouldn't be crazy. It's the Model Y. My son Dax obviously wants the X. But here's where it gets in. Nastasia can, for any reason at any time, somehow manage to wangle a Tesla.
I don't know how. She she can pick hers up at any time because she was one of the early, early adopters of the Model 3 when they when they did their equivalent of pre-ordering, right? Their quick Kickstarter equivalent. So anyway, so Subaru uses, which I own a Subaru because you know, Eastern, you know, Connecticut, all this is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whatever. So uh Subaru used to use uh Tanaka airbags. And it's gonna take a second, but you got that in your head, Nastasia? Yes. Okay.
Well, you know what? Pretend that you haven't heard it. Radio. She this is what she can't do. This is why she can't film things.
She can't even, for 20 seconds, get off her phone where she's searching for whatever she's gonna buy. I'm listening. So anyway, so like you told me that in the first take. Right. Right.
This is what I have to deal with, people. So uh the airbags, uh it it doesn't really happen that often, but like they put the wrong kind of uh material in the detonators for the airbags, and sometimes now, minor accident, the airbag will inflate and shatter, the housing will shatter and we'll send shrapnel through people's face and kill them in the passenger seat, right? Okay, so I call up Subaru because they sent me a letter in the mail saying, hey, you should not drive your car. Uh you should get it fixed. I was like, okay, I'll get it fixed immediately.
So I call the Subaru dealer, and the Subaru dealer is like, oh yeah, yeah, we can change that out for you in July. And then another one I called, and they're like, we can do it in late April. I got one that would do it in early April, and I was like, what the hell am I supposed to do before April if I need to drive the car with like with my whole family, like the the two kids, the two dogs, and my wife. And they're like, well, it, you know, nothing's happened so far, so why don't you just keep on driving? And I was like, are you on crack?
I was like, look, the airbag has never gone off because I've never been in an accident before. You're expecting me to wait for the airbag to go off to send shrapnel through my wife's head as she sits in the passenger seat. You freak. You know what I mean? Yeah.
I was like, I was she was like, well, or he, I forget which one. It was like, well, you know, I guess when you put it that way, I'm like, yeah, I guess when you put it that way. Yeah, so everyone has to sit in the back seat with the dogs in the back. So then I realized. And this is why I'm bringing it up on the air.
But can you believe they said that to me? This is why I'm bringing it up on the air. Nastasia, like, I have a gift card, which I don't know if it's still valid for a one night, but I need you two nights. It says one on the thing. I need you to extend it.
I need you to use your Tesla skills. And just tell them it's two nights. I'm not good at it. You need that, you need to Nastasia. I do I do stuff for you.
Not really recently. Oh, okay. Okay, people. Give me one recent. What?
Yeah. I the last one is a fake fireplace. And that's like seven years ago. What? Yeah.
What? Yeah. You are uh I'm not gonna you know what? You know what, people? Lack of gratitude.
Dave, give me one. Give me one. I'm not gonna bring up personal crap on the air. Lack of freaking gratitude. Seriously.
Actually, no, I know what you did. People. Do you want to know? No. People are the line.
You want to know? I want wine Santa. No, many things. Many things. I put up with all kinds of garbage.
Constant. Just hearing stories is not garbage, though. You haven't heard the stories, people. Anyway. A lot of them, I think they have, actually.
Uh no. Oh no. Yeah. No, no. Yeah.
Yeah. Dave basically knows everything. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah, when it when it goes down, I'm gonna get the I'm gonna be the first double tap to the head when she needs to bury all of the information.
Pop pop. This episode is presented by the Brooklyn Kitchen, a recreational cooking school on a mission to change the world by teaching people how to cook like grown-ups. The Brooklyn Kitchen began in 2006 when two creative home chefs, Taylor Erkin and Harry Rosenbloom recognized an opportunity to create a community space with approachable, hands-on cooking classes and inventive culinary experiences. Taylor and Harry believe that cooking is a daily practice in creative problem solving. They bring this ethos to the Brooklyn Kitchen, a cooking school that fosters community and redefines home cooking for everyone.
Now located at Sunset Parks Industry City, the Brooklyn Kitchen hosts a range of public and private cooking classes, corporate team parties, pop-up dinners, and tasting events for cooks of all levels. Learn more at the Brooklyn Kitchen.com. Are you enjoying this podcast? Heritage Radio Network has plenty more. I'm Damon Boldy.
And I'm Southern Teague. Together we host the Speakeasy, a show where we discuss cocktails, spirits, wine, beer, tea, coffee, and all things in the liquid universe. Yeah, our guests range from bartenders and brewers, alchemists and ambassadors, roasters and regulars, hippies and home brewers, and every expert enthusiast in between. Browse episodes of the Speakeasy wherever you listen to podcasts and on heritage radio network.org. Josh Antigrews writes in, I have a question for Dave and Cooking Issues.
I am unsure how to get the salt levels correct for braised meats. I struggle to get enough salt in the meat without oversalting the cooking liquid. I typically want to eat both the meat and the liquid, often reducing the liquid into a souse. What do you recommend? Thanks, uh, Dave and Stasia.
Uh Josh Andrews. Well, you needn't bother thanking Nastasia because she doesn't care about your question and won't answer it. Shots fired. Yeah. But um the fact of the matter is is that you know, if you look at uh old recipes for, let's say, stocks, uh, you know, and and master sauces that the French that the French folk use, they hesitate from putting any salt at all into which I think is a mistake, but they hesitate for putting any salt at all into things like a stock that they know that they're gonna reduce and they know they're gonna use for a bunch of different preparations.
So you're running into kind of a similar situation here where you're using a stock at one concentration or a sauce, rather, at one concentration, and then you're gonna reduce it to another. So it isn't necessarily possible to get all of the um, you know, all the salt you want in your meat, let's say, and then also uh, you know, get the correct level in the in the sauce, because if you're gonna reduce it after you braise it by a lot, then well, that's gonna get real salty if they had the correct salt amount into the meat. So, in general, um, you know, you want to figure it you can't really do this. So, so what I'm saying to you is like it's just in theory only. But in general, what you want to have happen is you want to have a general idea of what your total content is going to be towards the end, and then hit a total salt content for that.
So if you know you're gonna end up with, let's say, you know, two cups, two cups, what am I freaking shoot? Two cups of sauce, and then X pounds of, yeah. I'm going back into my American roots. Yeah. Yeah.
Two pounds of meat, then you can kind of calculate how much salt that whole thing would require, but you're still gonna run into problems if you're doing if you're doing uh, you know, uh cooking in a thin liquid and then a massive amount of work uh afterwards to thicken it. So I would recommend trying to get your sauces as close to the consistency that you're gonna want uh beforehand, then salting it so that it tastes kind of right as you're going in the pot during the braise. You can I add salt probably in three or four um chunks. I'll I know I'm gonna add some at the beginning, I add some at the beginning. Then as the braise progresses towards the end, I'll see kind of how much reduction there needs to be.
Maybe I'll taste it, I'll add a little more, then I'll pull the meat out if I'm gonna pull the meat out, and then I do any reduction right there, and then add the meat uh back in, right? But also if you're doing something in the bag, you must over-reduce your sauce beforehand. So it's actually kind of easier. The the mistake people make in the bag is they don't realize kind of how much liquid is gonna come out of the meat. So your braising sauce becomes much or your your sauce, whatever you're gonna call it, becomes much more liquidy, and therefore you have much less flavor than you're used to because if you're used to kind of open container cooking, you're used to evaporation happening and no evaporation happens in the bag.
So the secret of sauce in the bag, if you're going to use it and you want to get the salt levels correct from the get-go, is to over-reduce your sauce. I mean, over-reduce your sauce. The meat will shoot its liquid out into the into the sauce, it'll water it down, and hopefully everything will even out from uh from a salt perspective. Um anyway, hopefully that's helpful. Is that helpful?
Yes. Nastasi's like, it's helpful for me because you've stopped speaking. Uh Andy in Chicagoland calls about or wrote about Manhattan. You know Manhattan? Slash bunker, bait fish.
You ever do any fishing? All right. Matt? No, I got nothing. Nothing.
Hey, uh, well, then again, hey Nastasia. Nastasia doesn't care, Andy. Dave, I care about you. Matt and the crew. Matt is the crew.
Oh, thank you. I never get named in these questions. Really? Are you uh Matt, do you do you like the group Motorhead? Uh sure.
What what is your favorite motorhead song? I mean, I don't, I I'm not like a huge fan. I've listened to some Hawk Wind, I've listened to some Motorhead. I like Lemmy. He seems like a good dude.
Was it peace? Was back, yeah, when he was alive. Anyway, whenever anyone mentions crew on this, and anyone who's in audio engineering, I recommend you listen to uh my favorite track from the Ace of Spades album, We Are the Road Crew. I will most certainly rock out to it. Oh my god.
Such a great song. We are the road crew. The story, I think I might have told this on the air before was that he wrote this song. Oh, what's the story? You tell it then.
Jerk. So, like, uh, so what happens is it's that would be a fun game for this show, by the way. Every time Nastasia's like, oh, I've heard this already, she has to tell it. Yeah, yeah. Then she would maybe be quiet about saying that stuff.
So, anyway, so Lemmy writes this song, I think on a bus, and then performs it live. It's the first time anyone hears it. And the some of the roadies literally started crying. They were so touched by him writing this song, We Are the Road Crew. And so, whenever I hear that song, I have this image of this like hard-living, like drunk out of their minds, stoned to like to the edge of existence, like grizzled road crew.
You know, motorheads roadies were like some serious roadies. You know what I mean? Yes. Yeah. And like just having an image of this guy standing on the sidelines with a little tear going down his cheek is like the most priceless image to me.
I love it. I think about it constantly. Uh anyway. Uh what's the ABV of that tear? Oh my god.
Right? Right? You could get drunk off that man's tears. We are the road crew. No, no, no, no, no.
That's such a good song. Um, Matt's recent trip to Charleston made me remember a question I had about pickling small schooling ocean fish. Small schooling ocean fish. Uh, but first, my wife and I are going to Charleston in a week, and I'd love to know where Matt got those pickled fish in Shadro. My wife doesn't love seafood like I do, but I'm gonna eat all the seafood I can.
We've we've actually been chatting about this, so I've given him recommendations in the chat. Well, why don't you help out the people who want to you know on a channel? So uh Xiaobao was my highest recommendation. It's a really amazing uh Vietnamese spot down there. Uh and then Callie's hot little biscuit for more of the food that you would expect to get down there.
Uh Citrus Club for good cocktails on a rooftop and graft for uh wine. There you go. There you have it. Uh but my main question is about pickling fish. My family goes to the Alabama Gulf Coast every couple of years to fish.
Uh remember the blue fish Ikaj made test from a while back? That was me. I do remember that. Uh one of the bait fish of choice for fishing off the Gulf State Park Pier is either the Gulf Manhattan, uh pilchered. So Gulf Manhattan is like a Manhattan, which is uh pilchered is uh, you know, uh certain sizes of pilchered are kind of what you would think of like as a sardine.
So we're talking about oily stuff, or most likely the scaled sardine. Honestly, I can't tell which is which, and neither can anyone else. Um with the right bait catching rig, I can catch a bucket full of them. And when the fish uh when the big fish aren't biting, like any sensible human, I've often wondered about eating the bait. I should just try it next time, but in the meantime, do you know if these types of small bait fish can be pickled like a herring or shad?
I've tried Googling, but there's not much info out there, especially about the Gulf species. Thanks, and in Chicago land. So, about Manhattan. Uh, I looked it up, and uh, of course it was Dan Barber. Someone did it, like took a bunch of Manhattan to Dan Barber, and because it turns out that Manhattan is one of the most widely landed fish in you know in the entire country, if not in the world, and it's used mainly for like fish meal, like cat food, dog food, fish meal for feeding to uh animals like omega-3 fatty oils that you take in your vitamin supplements and all this other kind of stuff, as well as for uh bait.
Um, and most people don't want to try it because it's an oily fish and they don't keep it well, which means that if it's not kept well, it kind of stinks to high heaven. But the main reason I think why it never caught on is that like a shad, which we were talking about last week, it's incredibly bony. So I read this uh kind of the travails of this guy along with the people at blue uh blue hillstone barns who were trying to put um Manhattan on the menu, and the main problem they were having is is that no one could get all of the crazy little bones out of it. Now, you've hit upon there's two ways you can get rid of bones. Well, there's two ways you can mitigate three ways.
You can actually do the job of filleting the thing. Well, four. You cannot care about the bones, but most of us do. They don't like having those little bones stuck in the back of your throat. Do you like having those little bones stuck?
You hate that? Are you freaked out about it? You know my wife is petrified of that, right? I probably said that on air. My wife's greatest fear is that someone's gonna choke on a fish bone.
Um so anyway, so you could just too, right? Um she's not as worried about chicken, but she doesn't like eating off the bone, but like whenever there's fish and one of the kids gets a bone, she's like, ah! You know what I mean? She's like all worried about it. Uh I don't know why.
She just because I eat so quickly, people, I eat so quickly. Nastasia, how quickly do I eat? Jiro. Uh well, what she's referring to is that uh both Nastasia Lopez and Mark Ladner blame me for their subpar time at Jiro because they felt somehow that they had to keep up with me. Nastasia has never before in her life felt like she needed to pay attention to what I do at all.
So I don't know why. And you were like, Don't be a pussy. I never no, I don't use that language. Anyway, that was hard. So yeah, I gotta keep up with you then.
No, you didn't. Yes, I did. No, you didn't. You eat at your own, you eat it at your own pace. Dave, remember when we went to that event and you didn't know where it was, and it was at like Le Cirque, and we showed up all sweaty.
What does this have to do with anything? I kept up with you. That's walking. I'm saying we were paying $350 for sushi a piece for like that short of a meal. Because Jiro cutting according to when you were finished.
No, no, according to when we're all finished. No, Dave. As soon as you were finished, he could not wait. Just start cutting. It's his fault.
Yeah, and then he stood by the door when we were like trying to just just stay like a minute longer. Like he was like, get the F out. Matt, get on the chat room. Is this my problem or Nastasia's problem for worrying about when Jiro wants her to get out? Because I eat at the rate I eat no matter where I eat.
When you're in a Japanese country with like a master of a craft, and he's giving you the stink eye, like hurry up. Okay, so this is again. And I was like, Dave, slow down. No, why should I slow down? There was two other people, you and Mark.
And Mark had to get up every 25 seconds to, you know, set himself on spray anyway, because he had been poisoned at his last trip, right? So he had plenty of excuses for not eating your you know sushi at the rate that I did. But sorry if I don't enjoy eating slowly, and I'm not going to sit there like a moron and stare at my food just so that you don't feel guilty. Like you eat it however fast you want. Literally, I was I turned her at the time and was like, eat at whatever pace you want.
He's not gonna put crap on your on your plate until you're done with what you're done with. But he'll look at you like hurry. Okay, so this is again between your head and Jiro, and has nothing to do with me. Nothing. Has nothing to do with me.
It may surprise you to find out that no one in the chat is willing to wager on like team nostalgia versus team Dave here. But you guys have five minutes. Listen, so what happened was is I eat so quickly that um that my wife is always afraid that I'm going to uh choke. Anyway, so you can just deal with the fish bones. Um you can uh attempt to bone them, which is apparently almost impossible with this, or you can do a semi-filet and then either can them.
As I said, I think they were they were commercially canned in the 40s in Florida. I can't I only have been able to find a document from the 1940s, and it was probably like wartime shortages, which is why they did it in the first place, and then they just stopped doing it because people didn't pick up on it. But uh the flesh is apparently delicious, so as long as it's fresh and treated nicely. Uh so you could try because it's it's fundamentally in the same family as herrings. It really is fundamentally in the same family as a herring.
Now it's true, many different herrings have lots of different flavor profiles. Like I went to Cape Cod once and caught a bunch of what they call alewife, which is a bait fish that they use, um which is a herring, you know, herring style bait fish that they use to fish up on Cape. And I cooked them up and I would say they were okay. Well, they weren't the best herring I've ever had, but they were definitely edible. So anyway, so you have these bones.
Pickling will actually uh if I would change the vinegar out once or twice, will actually soften the bones because the vinegar will remove the calcium and make the bones a lot more edible. So I would do a pre-filet to get the big bones out, then leave the little bones uh in there and let the vinegar melt them out. But I would change it because if you've ever tasted the water or the vinegar, rather, after you've dropped a uh an eggshell into vinegar to make it soft, it's nasty. All the calcium stuff goes in the water and the water tastes pretty nasty. So I might switch it out once, unless you get most of the bones out, and then you should be okay.
The other thing you can do is if you can it uh in a pressure canning scenario, the bones will soften to the point that you can eat them. Again, if you leave larger bones in, they're relatively unpleasant. So if you've ever eaten canned salmon, any of you guys ever eaten canned salmon? No. And you have the they leave the backbone in, so it's certain kinds of canned salmon, they just chum it into steaks, pack it into a can, and then leave the kind of the backbone in, and you get these weird, nasty kind of calcium uh nuggets around it, which are kind of nasty, but then the rest of the bones melt out.
So any of that stuff uh should uh work. Um but I don't have time apparently to get into the derivation of the word Manhattan, which is kind of interesting. Okay. Uh Patrick writes in uh by the way, he likes the dance moves, which you posted on the internet. Nastasia is trying to get Travis Scott to come to the bar.
I don't think it's gonna happen. Uh I like making cocktails and frequently run out of lemons and limes, but I pretty much always have clementines around. Setting aside the questionable ethics of stealing my kids' cuties to make drinks, uh, how should I go about uh doping clementine juice with powdered acids? And what are some drink pre preparations you would recommend? Uh so the problem with clementines is that um, you know, what we call clementines are a kind of a wide variety of different mixes, uh usually like tangores, which are uh uh a mixture of uh orange and uh a mandarin.
And they do have a relatively wide range of acids. Most people consider them to be lower acid than let's say an orange. Uh although I did some research, I looked up a piece of uh I looked up a thing called Roll of Cultivar and Choosing Clementine fruits with a high level of health promoting compounds by Luigi Melella in 2011, and I looked at their titratable acidities for like 15 different cultivars or 10 different cultivars that they had, and the range of titratable acidity in it was between 1.6 and 3-ish percent. So a wide range. So that is not low acid, that's higher acid than than most oranges.
I would just treat it like orange juice, and then if it's too acidic, scale uh back. And by the way, the the bricks of it is also similar to orange juice. The bricks of the ones that they tested were in the range of uh about about 11 to about 12. Um so, and just use it wherever you would use. Um, if you use a a ratio of citric to malic, the same way for that's in the book, you can just look up the recipe on Amazon uh by going to look inside.
Um for orange juice, it's for every liter of orange juice, it's 32 grams of citric acid and uh four uh 32 grams of citric acid and 20 grams of malloc. You might want to scale it back a little, scale the citric back a little bit and see whether that's too acidic. But yeah, you can use it in any place you'd use lime, but you want a little bit of an orange head. It's good in margaritas, I like it. Any um, you know, I think it's good.
Um, so they're gonna kick us off the air. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. You're gonna live tweet this freaking French fry nonsense.
I'm gonna live film it, and hopefully there will be some because I actually people haven't seen this in years. Um it'll be interesting. People haven't seen what what? Like the technique, and it's supposedly a new you're you're revamping the recipe. Well, the the the issue of the recipe is the issue of the recipe, and for those of you who've listened to any of this, know that it's all about the miracle of moisture management.
And so the technique that you use to get the ideal fry is going to depend like very much on the size of the French fry that you use. In the test that we ran at the French Culinary Institute, we were using a 3/8 inch fry. It when we moved to Sambar and we were thinking of putting the fries on the menu at Sambar, we moved to a half inch, which is why they weren't as crunchy because we need to use more of a um, we need to get more moisture out of it to get the crunch level at the level we wanted. Um I think the secret here is going to be in the blanching technique, which I'm changing. I'm gonna move to a par blanch and steam technique, I think.
Also, let us know if you like seeing behind the scenes videos or not. Because people enjoyed the face that you made when the spinzalls came back into stock. That wasn't behind the scenes. P.S. That's what spinzalls are back in stock, people.
Uh the new spinzalls are slightly different. Here's what we changed. The lid, you no longer need any of those black little like squidgy rubber parts. You still need the fins, obviously. Um all the parts for the new one fit the old one.
So if you need replacements, don't worry. We can replace all this stuff. What? Nothing. What?
Nothing. I'll talk to you about it afterward. You should if if you you have to say what it is. If you say it on air, you didn't have to talk about it. This is like this is why you have no boundaries.
You can't tell the difference between what you're supposed to talk about on a microphone or not. Because you're talking about something that's not related to the show, right? No, it is. All right. Just keep going.
Hold on a second. So then uh the other change we made uh was there's a hole now in the lid with a rubber stopper in it, I think. We I haven't seen one yet. So that those of you that have had your lid freeze on because you didn't clean the freaking thing properly, and you let it dry with sugar on the bearing, and then we're not able to get the lid off of the spinzall. It's now easy to fix that problem by pulling the plug out, putting a little bit of hot water and unfreezing it.
Nastasi and I yesterday made a video about how to fix this on an older generation spinzall. Also, any of you that have frozen the interlock shut with because you let uh fruit juice get into your interlock system. Nastasi and I have a video now that you can get from Matthew to tell you how to fix that problem. And any of you that have let that like have tried to run it without the uh gasket on the bottom of it and have let fruit juice leak into the motor so that the motor shaft doesn't spin anymore. I also have a video on how to fix that problem.
So today we are your spinzall selling fixing people, cooking issues. Thanks for listening to the Heritage Radio Network, food radio supported by you. For our freshest content and learn more about our 10-year anniversary celebration happening all year long. Subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website, Heritage Radio Network.org.
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