No esperes. Cambia te hoy a Cox. Requiere Cox Mobile Gig Unlimited Garantie de Presion including puzzles and cargoes. Velocidad of datos mobile se reduce as well as 20 gigas a mes. This episode is brought to you by Root Eleven Potato Chips.
Made with a secret recipe and superior ingredients. Their mission is to make an outstanding product in a safe and clean environment. To learn more, visit RT11.com, the Mm-hmm. Hardcore is a new series from Heritage Radio Network. Over six episodes were taking a close look at the rebirth of American Cider.
Really, it wasn't until about 10 years ago that cider started to be revitalized in the United States. From the science of fermentation. So yeast, it's a fungus. It's a unisell fungus. To the magic of terroir.
What really excites us is thinking about communicating that very sort of spiritual aspect of knowing a piece of land. And I will die on that point. Subscribe to Hardcore wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Harder, host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network.
This is really late today. I'm sorry, Indiana. From Harris Pizzeria! Well, Roberta's Pizzeria! In Bushwick!
Jordan as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. We do not have Matt in the booth. We have Amanda. How are you doing, Amanda? I'm good.
I'm very excited. Nice. So, like what other shows do you engineer? So I've been with HRN for over a year, actually, which is pretty wild. Um, I usually do the Monday and Thursday shows, so you probably have heard me on Happy Hour.
Nice. Um Why food? Um, let's see. What others? When people ask you if there's a happy hour, you always say, I'm always happy.
And then they walk away. That's how it works when you're at a bar. I'm always happy! And then they leave. What what are your food predilections?
No pressure. Silence. Amanda, what do you like? What do you like doing? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know the question of me.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry, my food preferences? Yeah. I don't know. Anything that's yummy.
Okay, but do you cook or do you eat other people's cooking primarily? Uh I do a lot of the eating. I I'm a pretty small person, but um my stomach is it's it's a little bit scary how much I can eat, honestly. I like that. I appreciate that in a person.
I appreciate the ability to eat large quantities of food. It's a good it's a good skill. Yeah, yeah. So like what do you have anything in particular? Where did you eat recently that most excited you?
I'm just trying to get a handle on who you are here. Uh let's see. The most recent place that I went to out in K Town in Manhattan. There's a place called Gamiok. Yeah.
Um had some nice. Where is that? That's not the one that's up high, is it? Yes, it is. It is on the second floor.
Oh, you're fine. Oh, yeah, I don't think of the other. Yeah, yeah. Alright. Go ahead.
Go ahead. Go ahead. How was it? Um it was good. It was good.
Definitely really good. Um, I personally, I think I really like our cold noodles there. Um I had their bib when I was there. It wasn't as good as our cold noodles, but I mean, it's winter time now. Did you have it in the toll soap or not in the toll soap?
Tulsa, of course. Okay, nice. Strong. Uh this is my favorite cooking implement on earth is the stone bowl. I love the stone bowl.
When you get the crispy rice. Yeah, I don't know if you're aware of this, but you can go completely, you can completely erase it. You should not. Should not, right? But you can completely just kind of unmoor that piece of cooking equipment from like its cultural heritage.
And if you put like rice and then anything on top and an egg, good, it turns out. I've done almost any flavor combination that works with rice on the bottom and an egg on top, I have done, and almost all of them good. Can I just say real quick, eggs are just freaking magical? They are they are magical. This is an opinion shared by most of the people that I enjoy.
Vegans might not like eggs, or they might not eat eggs, but no one can deny that the egg is a is a is a mysterious and magical thing. You know? Life comes from within. So since you are hearing other voices, I will say that also in the studio, we got a full, full, you know, full boat full of people today. We have uh Rebecca, aka the Boondogler.
Ooh. Not a flack, not a flack. Doesn't like the word flack, but the boondoggle is better, is what you're saying. She is the she is the brand empresario of Booker and Dax, the boondoggler. Likes to take us on many a boondoggle.
Just try to keep you guys in line. And the irony is that you can call me the boondoggler. Yeah, we do. We have also in the studio, we have uh from the network cat. What are you uh what do you what are you what are you pushing today?
Oh, I'm just here to thank you for making cocktails at the gala. Do you want to know how much money we raised? Uh do tell. $78,000. That's amazing.
And if I hadn't been there, they would have raised 80. Would have been nice. And also in the studio, uh, we have John DeBerry. Known in the industry as JDB, formerly of PDT, former formerly of Mama Fuku. Yeah, formerly of Mama Fuku, now uh writer at large uh and starter of charities uh about uh social justice in the hospitality space, uh which we can talk about later.
But you're here to push yet another different thing from uh either the writing that you've been doing or the social justice stuff you've been doing. Uh what is it? Yeah, well, I've got this um non-alcoholic aperitif that is like basically launching this week online. It's been around in some restaurants and bars before that, but kind of this is the this is the week where it's happening. Um it's called Proto, and it's uh eventually going to be a line of different um products, but for now we're just launching with one.
It's called Ludlow Red, named after Ludlow Street in Lower East Side, where we both live. Doesn't taste like Ludlow Street, though. Doesn't taste like Ludless. Well, I don't know. I mean I do.
You ever face planted in Ludlow Street, Rebecca? No, but I do think that you bring up a really good point, John, that you and Dave actually are neighbors. We are. Lower reside. We passed by each other.
Yeah. So did you guys uh share the train coming over here earlier? Uh Rebecca is a terrible human being. Uh wait, wait. So let's let's start.
I I hear that we have a caller on the air. That is so cheap. Yes, we do have a call in the air. Uh Rebecca. Rebecca.
Wait, Rebecca. Not the boondoggler. She is not calling into her own channel. No, no, no. Oh, yeah.
Claire. Oh, Claire. Oh. Friend of friend of Nastasia and uh and classic button pusher, Claire. Hi, Claire.
Wedding officiant. Hi, Rebecca. I miss you. I miss you too. Oh my gosh, I miss everybody.
Okay. Okay, do you miss me? I was gonna leave that right there. And what is your question? Um, well, it's not so much a question, but I was listening in on the episode like around uh Halloween about the Count Chocolate debacle.
Okay. And I just wanted to call in and defend myself. Uh am I I need to know, first of all, so Claire is living, was living, is, was, is. Are you in Mexico City right now? I don't know.
I was there for a week on business. I don't listen. A week, a week. Most recently a week. Most recently a week.
Oh, so there was like two days when she wasn't here, and then another like month before that? She was here. Okay, okay, okay. So the point being a regular boarder at Nastasia's house. With rules.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So uh something I did not know. I'm just giving everyone the thing. Uh I had always thought that Count Choquio, because I don't really care about Count Choccio personally, but Nastasia Lopez here says that Count Choccio is actually a seasonal product, like Malomars, but for not for the same reason. Yes.
For those of you that don't know what a Malamar is, it's a marshmallow on a graham cracker with chocolate, and Nabisco only sells them in the winter because in trucks they melt. Uh so I did not know that count chocula, which is Malamar, a good product, by the way. It's her favorite cereal. Oh, yeah, count chocolate. No, no, wait.
So Nastasia Lopez insists that Count Chocula, I was more of a booberry guy. I hate both of those. Okay. You're what are you a Frankenberry? Or do you not like any of the monster cereals?
No monsters, no fruit in cereal. What? Like no fake fruit flavors. What? Oh, it's the worst, yeah.
What about Fruit Loops? No. Whoa, what about Applejacks? No. Do you think the answer is gonna be different if you say another one?
Well, I keep trying to say these things that taste good and then have what about Captain Crunch with Crunch berries? No. No. Take them out. I don't like that either.
Okay. Yet you don't mind that powdery cocoa flavor in a chocolate cereal. I don't like that either. So what the hell do you like? I like only plain Cheerios.
Yeah, and honey nut. Delicious. I like honey nut cell. I like honey. I like honeycomb.
Honeycomb is a good cereal. Yeah. The problem with all of this variety of cereal, John, is that I find that it it kind of scrapes the roof of your mouth. Captain Crunch is the worst. Might as well eat sandpaper.
Like the way it scraps. Or it leaves like a film on the roof of your mouth. Why is that? I I don't know. I think that's probably your body parts that have been created.
Rejecting it. It's your body rejecting it. I've looked it up. There's not that much fat. Captain Crunch does leave a greasy film in your mouth.
And I don't really understand. That's why I'm talking about it. Because it's not like doped full of grease. I think I've read, I haven't read it recently. But anyway, so back onto Cow Chocula.
Nastasia Lopez, by the way, grown ass woman, has her own freaking apartment and purchases Count Chocula for her own use and says, You have the run of my apartment. I don't expect you to pay rent. I don't really even expect you to clean up. I have certain rules. I've embroidered them on a pillow.
Am I accurate so far? I have to. I need to give everyone the lay. Lay of the land. So then I'm not gonna go through those rules because it got people in trouble.
Okay, hey, hold up. I'm not like a rando. Hold up. The rules apply to everyone, not just Randos. And she said specifically, I have in my house at this time, Count Chocula.
Please do not eat it. I have put it in a special cupboard. Yes, I did. Okay. I missed that rule.
It wasn't on the pillow. You know why? Because you're constantly texting. She was she was more. She was oh on Tinder.
Same. It's all the same to me. Like, she like one time Nastasia Lopez and Claire were borrowing my pickup truck. My pickup truck may or may not have had brakes at the time. The rear of the pickup truck may or may not have been attached to the rear axle of the of the thing at that time.
I said to Nastasia, I was like, listen, you are gonna be driving up to Connecticut. I know you hate tolls as much as I do, so you're not gonna take the Triborough Bridge, which people now call the RFK. You're gonna take, you're gonna take like third or Willis. I always forget which way is which. I just drive it by memory, right?
And you're gonna go onto the Bruckner Boulevard. I was like, now listen, your GPS is going to lie to you and tell you you need to make a right turn. Or left. Where I forget what it GPS always says. It is wrong.
Here's what needs to happen. I was like, Claire, I need you to pay attention during this 13 seconds where I explain this one turn that I'm telling you your GPS is gonna get wrong. She's like, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. Claire, Nastasia's gonna be driving a dangerous pickup truck with no brakes. I need you to focus because you're gonna be the navigator.
Focus! I'm telling you, please! Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. And they got on, they got over into the Bronx like I told them they would, and they did not make it onto the Bruckner. They stayed on that lower roadway and got like vectored off into nowhere.
I got stuck there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my god. So this is, I'm sure what was happening. Please don't eat my cow choculus.
Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. Alright, now defend yourself. Oh my god. Is that the whole story? Yeah.
Well, she ate it on a train. She also, by the way, I don't know if I'm gonna do this up, but if you're calling in, I think this is fair game. Now, if you have a job, let's say you you are like like an owner of a small business, let's say Booker and Dax, like Nastasia is. Okay? And you make your own money, right?
You are your own boss, you have your own apartment. Okay. Are you allowed to buy some sort of a face cream to make yourself feel good? Yes. Are you allowed to say this is my face cream?
Oh my gosh. Yeah, I I used her stupid BLOG recherching. And she said, Nastasia was like, don't use my face cream. Yeah, that's on the case. Claire uses the face cream and then has the nerve, the stones, the rocks, to say to Nastasia, Will you use too much of this face cream anyway.
It's Nastasia's cream! She bought it with her own money and then she earned. Was this P50? Yeah. Oh, that's real bad.
I used to be amazing. Okay, defend yourself. Is it a is it a tub style face cream? And Dave, I just want to say that stock. Very exciting.
Didn't I buy you a brand new bigger bottle when I left? Was it the identical face cream? Yeah, I bought her a whole new bottle, like a hundred dollar bottle. And I was delighted to do that. I'm just trying to say, why don't you stay away from people's like toiletry?
Look, it's one thing like it's one thing you're like, oh god, I forgot to bring on them when I'm there. I forgot to bring toothpaste. So I'm gonna use a little bit of your cold gate. Cost two bucks. Nobody cares about their colgate.
Right. You know what I mean? It's like, just don't touch it to your actual toothbrush, please. You know what I mean? But it's like, you you're you're everyone, look, look, I don't even you can tell by my face.
I use no lotions or creams. I hadn't shaved in like two weeks. I shaved it off, and my face was like just a bloodstream this morning. But it was like the entire layer of your skin. We're back to bathroom issues.
But like, you just don't mess with people's people are confected to their face creams. I thought you had a question about Mezcal and able-bodied women. What? Well, hold on. I just want to say on Count Chocolate that when I left, every time I say it sausages, I always send gifts.
And little did she know, I did eat like a fourth of her bag of count chocolate. But then, when she got home from China, guess what was waiting for her? Four boxes of limited edition count chocolate. Okay, Claire, Claire, Claire. If you punch someone in the face, giving them a package of band-aids is not a fix.
I don't know. I mean, Nastasia got three whole boxes. Yeah, it sounds like kind of a deal. Nastasia can afford Cal chocolate. Shut up.
Is this the first time a caller has told you to shut up? If it came with a note they say, I'm so sorry. I you know what? If you had literally just said, I've had this argument with Nastasi so many times and brought you up, Claire. If she had if if Claire had just said, you know what?
That sucked. I'm sorry. And then bought the count chocolate, win. That's what I did. Did she say she sucked?
No, she said. I didn't say I sucked because that's negative self-talk, and it's not true. No. But I made a mistake. I said suck.
Sorry. I made a mistake. I shouldn't have done it. Oops, you made a mistake. That's all.
Making mistakes is never fun. You say, oops, I made a mistake. That's all. Freaking mistakes they can happen to anyone. Remember that commercial?
Anyone? Anyone? I thought you were speaking that up. Go look at uh 1970s public service announcements. And there's one, and uh, and it's like it's a bunch of kids, uh, cartoon kids who make mistakes and then get real upset, and then they go into the oops, I made a mistake song.
And Nastasi and I sing this PSA sometimes. It's like, you know, what is it? She says like building blocks. And it starts with, I really liked it. Like, because they were like trying to like go outside of their comfort zone and like do These are kids.
They liked it. Like building block towers new for them. Uh, you know, I was drawing on some paper. And then like, you know, she messes up the picture that she's drawing on the paper and she starts crying, and then the oops it look it up, please. It'll help you, uh the child and you.
Anyway, uh, so you had a question about Mezcal, did you? Yeah, so my question is why do different mezcals taste so different if they're all from Agave? John Deberry, I'm gonna let you answer this. Oh really? Uh I didn't brush up on my mezcal.
You don't need to brush up. They taste different because they're processes. There are different species of plants for one. There's different yeah, right. Different spe different roasting procedures, different fermentation strains.
No one really says different donkeys on the tahona. Yeah, yeah, different donkeys. Different distillation practices. I heard that the mezcal master also makes a difference. Especially if they're a woman.
Uh well, I don't know whether the gender is going I I like any I like any like female distillation because it's a it what it's a highly gendered and should not be feeled, but I don't know that the actual gender is going to affect the finished product so much as I wish there were more women master distillers. What do you think about this, Jim? I think that's correct. Yeah. Although I don't know.
I feel like it's a certain perspective you bring as I I'm speaking as not a woman, but like as a woman, as a as a non-woman, um I feel like there's a certain point of view that is well, like you said, there's not enough women representing it in the in the industry, and I think that if you're a master distiller, you're whatever you make is an expression of who you are as a person. And if the kind of person you are is underrepresented, then you're gonna have a more unique and interesting product as a result. Yeah, and you have to work harder because yeah. Wait, Claire, it sounds like you had more to say on that though. Like, especially.
What have you done? Is there like particular mezcal that's made by a woman that you like? Wait, what? Is that that was a really fast question. Wait, what?
Is there is there a particular Mescal that you're having in mind that's produced that's produced by a woman? You know, like any examples or favorites. Yeah. Well, so I was just in Oaxaca and I did a teaching, and there was one that was made, and I can't recall the name. I can send it and we can put it in the show notes.
But it was made by a woman, and I tasted probably like seven or eight different types, and this one literally tasted like like heavily of caramel. And I asked the the guy, he said, like, why is this? And he was like, Because it's made by a woman. He was like, This is my favorite medical. There's no other medical that tastes like this, and like it only tastes like this when she fit.
Is it because at men the testosterone makes you use too much smoke? So it's just overpowers everything. Is that it? Well, Tom D. We love you, Claire.
Goodbye. This episode is brought to you by Root Eleven Potato Chips. From the moment Route Eleven dropped their first batch of chips back in the early days of 1992, they understood their destiny as a high quality producer. Instead of succumbing to the frenzy of mass production, they took advantage of their small size and made chipping a personal art form. The payoff was immediate.
An incredible potato chip. With a secret recipe and superior ingredients, their mission is to make an outstanding product in a safe and clean environment. In this world of uncertainty that we live in, Route 11 potato chips believe comfort food can be just that. Know where your food comes from. To learn more, visit RT11.com.
Alright, uh, I was gonna let me let me just rip some quick ones. Call her, you're on the air. I promise you, call her. Unless there is something very strange happens, this will not go the same way the last call did. I think our last caller just got disconnected.
Uh they hung up. Alright, well, before you answer a question, John, let's taste uh no no steaks here. They're not a prototype. What does proto mean? Well, it's a kind of refers to like kind of being the first of its kind since it's in its own category.
It's not really it's not a spirit, it's not a mixer, it's not like a cocktail. Kind of is a cocktail, it's built like a cocktail in the same way. I think that's a goofy word, don't you think of it? It's a it's the best word I've come across so far. Um what uh what's the base here?
It's water. I mean, I mean like like what's just how do you how do you go about building well, yeah. So I, you know, I was like a big Omaro nerd, so I had like this uncomfortable amount of botanical sitting in my kitchen, and I was writing my book last year, and sort of as a way of procrastinating, I sort of fucked around with cold cold infusions. Oh, sorry. Uh with yeah, I get one per show, right?
Yeah. This is an HR and happy hour. You know Jim Lady where they where they where Jim Lathey talks, they keep their finger on the bleep button and release it when he's not cursing. I don't know who that is, but yikes. He's a cocktail guy, not a red guy.
John DeBerry is. Go ahead. I'm not where your bread guides are. Um so, and I was doing I did some cold infusions of botanicals into water uh and then blended them to create something that I thought was was delicious. And it's sort of based on the uh I love roasted dandelion root tea, I love licorice tea.
Drinking those individually, so I thought maybe how do you build like a full-fledged cocktail kind of thing around that? So I added blackberries, black pepper is a really great way to use really good thing to use in um like NA drinks to kind of re replicate that heat, that spice from non-alcoholic for you people. Yeah. Non-alk, yeah. Um and then threw in some florals, uh rose, chrysanthemum, honeysuckle.
That's a good word. Chrysanthemum? Honey suckle. Honeysuckle? Honeysuckle.
The way you say it is beautiful. Yeah. It's like ASR. So how do you ever where do you get that stuff? Well, I bought the dry, I bought most of the dry goods at Calustian's uh but then when you go to a full scale, you can basically have people to do those dry, those cold and cold extractions into water for you.
They'll do a better job. Yeah. Well, it's like I think the thing is that Calustians like those the plastic bags that they're in are obviously semi-gas permeated. Well, they make them you can they there's like a room to the side where they make where they do all the the packaging. So they have all the dry yeah, so it's like not it's very close to where that's gets sold.
So there is uh there's a overlap. An overarching kind of everyone knows that the great stuff. Love Calusteans. Love Calustians. Have you read the captions on their products?
Some of them are out of control. Like like like what they're just like they just make these really wild health claims. Like gummies out of control? Uh yeah, a little bit. Yeah, yeah.
Uh they're just really casually gummies. They're just really amusing. Um and have a lot of someone have a lot of detail um about how they're how these botanicals are used and their benefits. It's it's you can spend a lot of time reading them. Hey, we got another uh caller on the line.
Caller, you're on the air. Uh hello. Caller. Hello. Hi.
Hey David, it's uh you're from DC area. How are you doing? So uh two things. Number one, I called over the summer asking you about making pizza on a cowboy grill. Okay, how'd it work out?
Well, so I didn't end up doing that. I I ended up caving and buying uh one of those um the pizza ovens, so I got the Uni Pro. Yeah, yeah, and uh how how's the recovery time on that thing? Excellent. Excellent.
I yeah, just wanted to you know give that recommendation. But really, I wanted to ask you, I'll be in New Year's uh in uh the city for a wedding on New Year's Eve. Um are you guys doing anything at the bar? I believe that we are going to do a buyout, but I don't think we've announced it yet. Last year's buyout was a lot of fun because it was just I mean, there were I think some cocktails, but it was mainly like saber saber saber saber saber saber saber saber saber saber.
Jack pulled out the saber ring that I made, you know, years ago. Remember the saber ring? Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. So like it's I think it's the saber ring technique that has the least amount of injuries, which is surprising coming from from you.
But yeah, yeah, yeah. Sounds like an interesting business. You know what I wanted? You know what I you know what I wanted to do? No, no, I can't, because the problem with this with the ring is if you use it wrong, it's bad real bad.
Like Aaron Polski to bring him up again two times in one show at Booker and Dax sliced the hell out of his hand because he didn't have his thumb in the right position, and so he had it like where the he scraped it right over the broken bottle. I think it was there actually. And he started bleeding all over our floor. Oh, and I was like, away from the ice away from the ice You know what I mean. Like I feel like the actual knife sabering is way worse.
Although it's good to know there's a line with the liability. Like that's the place. Well you but the thing is like all like most like quote unquote champagne sabers are all dull. Like the career not Kareem Machines. The cream machine?
The designer? Which machine is it? Anyway, like uh his is relatively dull because you you don't need a sharp blade but yet most people do it with a kitchen knife. And then if you're drunk and let's say you let go of a kitchen knife that you're swinging about it can be uh bad manslaughter. What what?
It's called manslaughter. Oh only if they're dead. Yeah. Uh but yes we'll probably do something. There will be cocktails and there will be I don't know when we're gonna announce it probably soon.
We'll probably I think we'll probably announce it probably uh after Black Friday once it's all set up speaking of Black Friday Booker and Bax is gonna do some news on Black Friday. Anyway you should come by is their wedding on New Year's Eve who does that it's on New Year's Eve. I don't know not to get into memory politics on there. But yeah it's gonna be uptown and I'm not from New York and I've never been there for New Year's Eve. Is it insane to try to get from uptown down to where you guys are I don't know I'm always holed up like I used to live three blocks from the ball drop and I never once went just to give you an idea.
Yeah I like what happens is the entire midtown gets blocked and shut so like I don't know how the FDR is or or the that's the the whole city's unlocked down basically it's don't go anywhere. I mean but the subways work right there I would take the train before a car yeah like the six that I'm sorry the uh the the F line doesn't go through it goes past Bryant. I'd be careful of the A line, which goes right through Times Square, or the one. Take the 456. I would take either the 456, which is the other side of the island, or the or the the orange lines, which go down 6th Avenue because there's going to be a lot of police presence there, but they the actual lockdown isn't, I think all the time.
I think the trains just don't stop at any of the 42nd Street stops. Yeah. I think that's what happens. Yeah. But anyway, uh once you're down in our neighborhood, it's actually quite mellow.
It like like other neighborhoods are mellow other than the actual Times Square area. And even the dive bar I used to go to on New Year's Eve, which was on 9th Avenue, was mellow because no one who is a tourist need to go there. You know what I mean? So I worked at PDT on New Year's Eve. I like requested to do it, it's the most fun.
There's like no five people come in. Was it a buyout? No. No. See, buyouts on New Year's Eve are fun because it's always like it's people who want to be there, which is nice.
You know what I mean? Uh well, no, as opposed to people who happen upon you may or may not like what you're doing. So like you know that if someone goes to a buyout, there it is. It's a home run. Yeah.
So I think the buyout's gonna start at like nine or something like that. You know, okay, so then you'll sell tickets to the site? Yeah, most likely, yes. Don't hold me to it, but most likely, yes. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Hey, listen, also, like I think when you get married, you should not necessarily get married on a holiday. I think that you should let people have their holidays. And then I'm with you on this one. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Alright, all right. Dave, I feel like you should have a whole episode dedicated to weddings. Like, I feel like you have a lot of good knowledge and opinions. I do have a lot of opinions.
I thought you would say subways. I was excited for that. I have a lot of opinions, some good, some bad. So let's talk, let's talk about proto. Yes.
So what do you what are your thoughts? What is this game? Like, what are the acid bases in it? There's a little bit of acetic. Take balsamic vinegar.
So yeah, so it's acetic. Yeah, and then there's acid from the blackberry. Yeah, yeah. And so how much blackberry is in it? Like like like uh like do you have to like I had to put a juice statement on it?
It's 34% blackberry juice. Cool. I like it. Delightful. Yeah, it's very good.
So what do you what do you find people are most often leak like so uh a pair of teeth obviously do you dope it with a lot of glycerin or no? Nope. Have you doped it with glycerin to taste what happens? Yeah. No.
There may be some glycerin in the in the extracts themselves, but it's like negligible. Oh my god, I just noticed you're shirt. Oh uh yeah, we won't be discussing that either. But uh Yeah, I've been wondering what would happen, like if you would carb it like uh I I like if you come by the bar sometime, I have nothing but glycerin at the bar. Let's I'd love I'd be interested to see what happens with glycerin, but I think it's good.
So it's like uh do you expect people to use this in like non-alcohols, drink straight? It's pretty versatile actually. I like to drink it straight, but it's also good with champagne, like uh kind of as a curious, like a cassis replacement. Have you tried it in sparkling martinellies to have it go? No, I haven't.
It sounds like it might be a little cloying. Just because of the martinellis. So they have a dry, do they have a dry non-alcoholic sparkling cider? Anyone? I don't think so.
Why not? They should. They should. Maybe maybe like a French one or something. I feel like there's all apple.
Oh yeah, there's an there's like a Norman apple cider, right? I I forgot the name. But actually, there is one now that you mention it. But it's not super dry. It's not like a some basque stuff.
It's like pretty much. Yeah, because I wouldn't want I would want something that had mainly apple acids, not one that had gone acetic because you already have like an acetic base here. So in a carbo, it's not so much acetic acid that I think it would get blasted out in a carb. I think it's like like r you know, right there. Uh is that what happens?
Like this, it's a what's what's special about acetic acid that makes it. Well, it's volatile. Yeah. So like it like it affects you more on your nose. That's why, like, you know, uh like the kombucha smells like that.
Yeah. Or like, you know, like if you have like uh, you know, the the drinking vinegars that like Andy Andy Rickers is working on, like when those are carbonated, they will really pop because the the acid's volatile anyway. So it's like, and I think that not necessarily that the presence on your tongue is so much more, but the presence on your nose is more, it's kind of more of an acid nose. And you'll you you know, in any sort of cider that has a heavy acetic note, you can get it on the on the nose or in natural wines that have gone slightly acetic, you know, you can get that like pow. But like, so if you doubled it, I think it would be too much.
But if like you use a non-acetic base with this, I think it would be good. Anyway, I think it's very informative. I enjoy it. How what's the what's the price of this? Uh well, I'm doing a gift set for for the holidays.
It's uh two bottles with with uh gift tubes, some other goodies thrown in. It's beautiful, shipping tax everything is 70. Tubes. It's a series of tubes. Yeah, got its tubes tied.
The internet, ooh, and uh, and uh and they buy it where drinkproto.com. Drinkproto.com. All right. So let me read rip through some questions until Amanda kicks me off the air here, uh, which is probably soon because I don't think she likes the way she was cheated at the top of the show. Anyway, uh Tyler writes in uh hey Dave and Nastasia.
My wife and I will be in New York City on Saturday and plan to come to existing conditions when it opens, and you must try things on the menu at the moment. Oh, so you missed it. No, dem apples wasn't on the menu. We froze the juice uh and we saved it, but grape stomp is the exact same drink, just Concord grapes instead of apples. So I recommend having the grape stomp.
We we still are getting good fresh Concords in, and uh it's good. Anyway. Uh and for Anastasia's demographic tracking, Tyler's 32 male lives in Washington, DC, and his wife tolerates but doesn't encourage the accumulation of kitchen tools and appliances. He offered all that up. Wow.
Matt would like to know our take on the season as you go bit of conventional wisdom. Season as you go. No one's gonna do the whistle? Nope. Uh it's whistle as you it's to tune a whistle.
No, I know. I I sang it in my head, but I didn't want to confuse it. Uh I can see how the timing of salt additions can make a difference, but how important is it in reality? Matt, well, listen, the conventional wisdom is if you're gonna reduce something or cook something for a long time, you either don't salt it or you viciously under salt it because you have no idea how much reduction is gonna take place. However, if things are not going to be reduced or cooked for a long time, I'm a believer in seasoning components to their uh to their correct seasoning, so that no matter what order you eat things or how you eat things, it all tastes good.
Uh which is why when people say, Well, I oversalted this one thing and undersalted this other thing. I hate that. I hate that. Uh another thing I will say is this if you salt something today, and you eat it tomorrow, most likely tomorrow it wouldn't need salt. Because unless you've been seasoning from the very beginning of cooking, um, like you tend to taste the exterior salt on something.
Let's say a pasta, let's say you have a pasta, make a pasta. In general, don't you notice the second day it needs more salt, even if it didn't need salt the first day? Because the salt like it's a sort of sort of sort of sort of site. It still seeps in. It seeps in.
And so like you don't perceive as much of it, and you need more of that exterior salt to get the same salt hit. Right? Because it's soaks in. Gotta get that hit. Gotta get that salt hit.
Whereas, like, soups in general stay at a similar level, a level of saltiness because the salt's already been in liquid form all the way through. Alright. Jane writes in from Toronto on preserved lemons. I've heard many times over how invaluable it is to have preserved lemons on hand. Oh, only if you cook with preserved lemons.
Many people live their whole life without ever even tasting a preserved lemons. Lemon. You know what I'm saying? I like preserved lemons. I think it's a good thing to have, but I I mean, I don't think that you're living an impoverished life if you don't have preserved lemons.
I love preserved lemons. One of my favorite drinks that I've ever made. Corsair. Corsair. Preserved lemon drink.
So I'm not saying anything negative. Also from Calistians. That's what we do buy them from there instead of making them because you know why? We lazy. I've heard many times how invaluable it is to have preserved lemons on hand, but every time I try to make them myself, they never release quite enough liquid.
And consequently I worry about them going bad. All the recipes I've seen seem to suggest that the lemon should release enough juice to be almost covered, but I haven't seen that happen in any of my attempts. Do you think it's a lemon issue? Or am I not adding enough salt? Should I just add some extra salt, water, lemon juice?
I would add a little extra lemon juice. Also, I don't know the lemons you're using. Like are you have really thick skinned lemons? I think most of the juice isn't coming out of the skin. Most of the juice is coming out of the pulp.
So if you have like those very thick skin, like California style lemons, they probably won't release as much. Are you scoring it? How far in are you scoring it? Are you doing full halves? Are you doing like the more traditional, like quarter it but not separate it and put the salt in the middle?
That's gonna release the juice faster. But I wouldn't be afraid to add a little more lemon juice on top to put, or you know what? Just push it down to push it, push it. Push it down. Yeah, push it down until it makes a little more juice and work.
That should work. Let me know what happens. Uh John DeBerry, do you have any good uses for way? Whey? Whey.
Uh I do not. No. Brandy. Not even in a cocktail. Ah, I've used it in way, please.
Milk wash. Listen. Brandy wrote in, Brandy, you wrote in about good uses for whey, both like like acid whey and other ways. And I I need to think about it. I'm gonna I'm gonna get I'm gonna come back to it.
I'm gonna give you your time, Brandy, but I'm gonna do it later. Uh Mark Thompson wrote in. Have you ever heard of the town in in in Canada, Cam Loops? Can't say I have. Cam loops.
So Mark wrote in and said, Mark from Sunny Cam Loops, British Columbia. Are you sure the name of the town isn't Sunny Camloops? No, it's Camloops. But I looked it up and I was like, I was like, I'm sure, I'm sure that Mark is just being like, you know, he's in Canada right now, so the day is what, like half a half an hour long in British Columbia right now? You know what I mean?
Like, I was like, I'm sure he's just messing around. He's being facetious, and then he's, you know, he's being sarcastic when he says sunny cam loops. No, can loops, cam loops, can't K-A-M loops, like Fruit Loops, but K-A-M, is the second sunniest town in all of Canada. They just don't have any clouds at Cam loops. What's that about?
What's the first? I did not look that up. I didn't look it up. I I mean, I'm I was working. I'm good just with the second.
Anyway, Mark has three quickish questions. One, uh, I keep a salt cellar beside my stove. You know, a thing for salt. I know. Not a root cellar, which is underneath the ground.
Salt cellar. Uh I am not careful about being food safe with it, considering that nothing could live in pure salt. Am I correct or not? You are correct, but salt can still get gross. There are things that are safe that make you go when you look at them.
Or like, for instance, uh, just looking at someone's filth hands going into salt and then sprinkling it over your food, you're like, that's gross. May not be unsafe. Gross. You know what's a good use for salt? Uh after you uh do your chicken or whatnot on top of your wood cutting board, I rub salt into it before I wash it off.
Learn that from my old butcher. Scrub salt into it, let it sit for a while, and then do the wash off. Because I actually don't bleach my my boards. Do you bleach your boards? I do have bleach.
I do not bleach my boards. I rub I love salt. Uh I do food prep for a week at bleach your hair? Doesn't it hurt your hair? I mean, I didn't know what is it actually bleach?
I know well, I know that you like I know you light it in your hair, but is it actual bleach or is there something that's not as damaging? It's like I think it's peroxide, it's not like chlorine bleached. Because chlorine bleach will f you up, right? No, like I feel like a little bit like off after, you know, because it's like a lot of chemicals on your head. How do you un how do you unwirey your hair once it's been bleached?
Uh you can't really. I mean, you can get like conditioner that does a nice job. Adds the stuff back. I'm gonna touch your hair. Okay.
Do you use Olaplex? I do. Oh, the Olaplex shampoo is like the best shampoo I've ever used my entire lottery. Yeah. Okay.
Okay. Not a plug. I'm not going to be able to do that. I do not, I do not, I do not even have knowledge of what you're speaking. Uh I do food prep for a week at a time, which usually involves some sort of soup or stew in a large pot.
I usually put this on the counter lid it overnight to cool down. Is there much of a risk in doing this? Depends on what you mean by much. Uh like uh Mark Ruhlman and uh Harold McGee got into uh an online slap fest over this a couple of years ago. Uh and the the thing is is that if it's lided and it was hot, the odds are that nothing's gonna grow.
Things could grow. Uh usually reheating the soup beforehand is gonna make it all okay, but uh it's not impossible that something bad can happen. Now, if you're pressure cooking your soup and you don't open it, that sucker is commercially sterile. But like odds are you're not gonna die. I mean, like, like look, here's some things that's all about mandating risk.
Here's some here's some risk things, right? Oh, I left the pizza out overnight. Do I have to throw it away? No. No.
No, you don't. The water level is so water activity level is so low, pizza is a preserved item. You don't need it, might not be good anymore, but it's definitely not dangerous. And you know, so uh so things like that. Soup, like if it was me and I had worked hard on some soup and it was on the stove, and like I'd be like, Am I gonna throw this away or am I gonna reheat it?
I'm gonna reheat it. Yeah, you know what I mean? But like incinerate it and it's all good. Yeah, but am I gonna say that this is what you should do? No, no, no.
Um three. What is the purpose of sweating miropoi if no caramelization is taking place? Uh typically you sweat, I don't know. One thing is is that when you sweat it, like aromatics like onions, you are changing the chemistry of the onion before a lot of the water is added, even if they're not brown, so it's probably a different flavor. With regards to carrots and things like that, it's usually to just to pre-cook it and to start getting rid of some of the water before you're adding things.
Uh, in something like a soup, I don't know how much of it's uh difference it's gonna make, but that higher temperature on the carrot during the sweat process, even if it's not browning, is gonna make different flavors than if you just threw it directly into water, let's say. So there you go. Uh Mike writes in about molasses, molasses, industrial bry products slash delicious. Why is it so cheap to use as a commodity for animal feed, yet freakishly expensive as an ingredient? Are we getting squeezed out by big rum?
It's $30 a gallon unless you buy it in bulk. Well, Mike. It's capitalism, baby. Yeah, well, also there's different kinds of molasses. So you are definitely getting overcharged for black strap molasses, which is kind of gross, but you should be buying fancy molasses.
Fancy molasses, and I'm a fancy man. I don't know if you know this, I'm a fancy man. Yeah. Uh fancy molasses is when you take uh the sugar cane syrup and you just boil it down. It's not actually a byproduct, it's like a sugar syrup.
So it's full spectrum. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called integral molasses, and there's actually two kinds. There's integral molasses, it's called high test molasses. And there's integral, which has not been clarified beforehand, so that's like super like unprocessed.
And then there's uh regular high test, which they filter it because the non-filtering, there's a bunch of like protein scum and stuff that will like that F's up your plant unless you that needs a lot of skimming unless you clarify it first. So anyway, so high test molasses, my favorite, of course, is Crosby's because I'm a northern person, right? Crosby's molasses is a butt-kicking fancy molasses, right? Uh is like to me, that's like the standard. Like that stuff tastes good and has a higher sugar content in terms of like it, they're all at about 80%.
So what they do for that is they invert the sugar, right? And we'll get into invert, but we won't because we don't have time, but they invert the sugar so it doesn't crystallize and take it to like 80, 85 bricks somewhere up there, and they give it to you. So it has all the stuff that's in the cane, but all the initial sugar is there. Black strap molasses is a sugar-making byproduct. So it's more bitter, it's like had a lot of the sugar removed from it.
It still is high in sugar, but has a lot more ash and other weird kind of like stuff in it, and that's a kind of a byproduct. That should be cheap. There are grades of blackstrap molasses as well, and most molasses it's sold as baking molasses or cooking molasses is actually a mixture of blackstrap molasses and high test fancy molasses. So, there you go. But molasses is uh very good.
Stella Parks, I think, did a breakdown on the internet on Sirius Eats of like accidentally using black strap molasses for fancy molasses for like good high test molasses, showing how black strap molasses is gonna ruin your cookies, and like and like actual fancy molasses is going to make good cookies. And there's a people who grew up in cities who didn't grow up eating molasses, like so you didn't grow up in like the molasses parts of the south, or you didn't grow up in the like north where molasses and beans is a thing. For those of you that have grew up in molasses poor regions, right? Molasses desert molasses deserts, like you like here's where the mistake a lot of food writers who grew up eating food and like enjoying food. So you're from Alabama, right, Kat?
My dad makes cane syrups, right? So you know what real molasses is. So for you, when you think of molasses, you're thinking of fancy molasses, and black strap molasses is like the weird, like gross thing that other people. But and a lot of writers think that, but the average person thinks that molasses is black strap molasses. Okay, and that's not so you have to just think about them as two separate products, they should really have different names.
You know what I'm saying? Uh Jacob wrote in about my uh Arduino travails and says I should be using teensy's. Thank you, uh Jason. I will be looking into the teensy, which is a different kind of microcontroller, faster, smaller, better, stronger, faster. It's the six million dollar, but it's cheaper.
You know, six million dollar uh man and woman. You've seen these these remember those shows? Did you like those shows? Steve Austin and Steve Austin. Steve Austin was like Stone Cold Steve Austin?
No, but that was also the name of the character in the $6 million dollar man. Do you think he named himself after that? Probably. Which one came first. Uh Lee Major, $6 million.
We can rebuild him. We can make it better. Stronger. Faster. Remember this?
Steve Austin is in uh he's taking off in a rocket. Rocket messes up. He's an astronaut. He takes off, he crashes, you see the crash and burn of the capsule, all messed up, and then you see him on the operating table, and the boss is like, we can rebuild him. I was more of a bionic woman.
She was awesome too. Same idea. She's a tennis player. She's a tennis player. Bionic woman was a tennis player.
I've and she was in a parachuting accident. And they rebuild her and make her better, stronger, and faster. Lizzie Lindsay Wagner was the actress for that, and that's a good seventies right there. Like when I was growing up, you had your Lindsay Wagner, you had your uh oh my god, what's her name? Oh my god.
Linda Carter, Wonder Woman. For me, I haven't seen the new Wonder Woman yet, so I'm still a Linda Carter Wonder Woman kind of a person. But anyway, Linda Carter. Wes writes in, why does the type of pot slash heights and sides matter when it comes to evaporation? I'm currently roasting pork shoulder and milk in a shallow pan instead of a deeper Dutch oven.
And I'm doing so because allegedly less will condense on the sides of the shallower pan, I'll get more concentrated sauce, more brown cut of meat, etc. But heat in must equal heat out, right? Won't the same amount of heat and therefore water vapor be escaping from a pan, regardless of the higher the sides, and regardless of whether the lid is on or off. No. Uh no.
The lid off or on is the main thing you're dealing with here. A large surface area of liquid is going to evaporate a lot more and will take a lot more heat to get to the same temperature because you're as you evaporate, literally evaporation cools things down. That's evaporative cooling. And so if you want stuff to get hot fast, use a narrow pan. Here's another thing.
If you want to evaporate things quickly and you have plenty of heat, use a wide pan. If you are going to uh really reduce something a lot, then you want a narrow pan because it will scorch as it gets down to the bottom. That's the main reason. So, like the actual coolest pans to do reductions in are tapered. So they start out wide so that your evaporation can happen really quickly, and then as it goes down and gets down, you have more height to deal with so that you don't burn it out at the last minute.
Uh but anyway, uh so I'm gonna get I'm gonna get kicked off, I'm pretty sure. So you are, dude. I'm gonna deal with Carlos, Carlos and your cookie shelf life, marijuana cookie shelf life problem. I have a lot to say. I will talk to you about that uh next week.
By the way, next week is the Thanksgiving episode of Cooking Issues Right Nestasia. Yeah, and Brandy, I will talk to you about Whey, but I'm gonna leave it with classics in the field uh regarding a question from John. John writes in and says, Dave once mentioned a chocolate fondue that he kept warm in a uh circulator bay-marie at a party. I used to do that on the constant. I would have a uh I would have a queso and a and a chocolate fondue next to each other and just fix things all the way around, and you get to choose.
Does this pretzel go into queso or does it pretzel go into chocolate? I feel like it's both. Yeah, yeah. Also, you need to do that for your holiday party, John. Yeah, okay.
Yeah, all right. Uh so what did I use? Anything to watch out for uh for to ensure stretchiness. I don't want stretchiness in my chocolate fondue. It's not goop.
It's not goop. Uh, or proper texture. And this leads me into today's abbreviated classic in the field, where we're gonna talk about Julia Child. Now, Julia Child, uh, I never met her. I got into the food business basically, like professionally, the year she died.
So I feel I got into it just a little bit too late to meet her. But she was kind of one one of my idols. In World War II, she was uh part of the OSS, which became the CIA. She was a spy. She invented a shark repellent that apparently is still used because sharks were messing with a lot of our underwater bombs.
And so she like developed a shark repellent to keep sharks away from our underwater bombs while she was working with the spy service. There's a good drug history of that. We had sharks. Try at work. Have you heard of Total War?
Let's see if this works. And then sharks are just getting blown up in like every era. This is World War II. This is not like, you know, like minor war situation. This is like all in, all your chips in the middle of anyway.
So, like, you know, if a if some sharks have to get damaged, some sharks are gonna get damaged. You know what I mean? Like, that's just that's how it worked. Uh in the 50s, uh, she went to uh Court of Blue uh cooking school in France and in 1961, wrote with Simone Beck and some other person whose name I always forget, uh Mastery and Art of French Cooking, which is the amazing two-volume set, which is still a classic. Now, when I was a kid, in the basement of our house was all of the cookbooks, including Mastering Art of French Cooking, along with all the gourmets, the bone apps, and the sunset magazines that my mom had saved since you know 1970.
Right? Yeah. And so when I used to read Mastering the Art of French Cooking, because I would look at it, it was to a teenager intimidating. It was very intimidating. But as soon as, and so like it and it's still to this day when you look at it, it's very precise, very French.
It's like if you don't do it this way, it won't be French. Like, Julia Child had not learned to really kind of cut loose. In 19 uh 89 or 4, I forget. She came out with The Way to Cook. The Way to Cook was the book she wrote in America, where she is already at this point, she was born in the 30s, so she you know, she was already, you know, like like fully matured, like older woman, and she had just been cooking for this, you know, decades and decades, teaching people how to cook, and she'd already kind of unmoored herself from all of her needs to be French, but she still had all of that kind of awesome French underpinning.
And she was much freer with her writing and telling you what to do and giving you more license as a cook. And it's the first cookbook my mom bought me when I graduated from college when I was starting my own cookbook library and couldn't have her cookbooks anymore to crib from. And so to this day, for my wife Jen for her birthday, I make her the Queen of Sheba cake that is in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Uh, you know, the I I think my edition was from the early 90s, but the original one was in the in the late 80s. And so my chocolate ganache recipe, because my fondue is essentially uh a ganache, it's not essentially, it is, I just melt ganache.
Uh, and you can keep ganache in quart containers in your fridge basically uh forever, as long as the butter doesn't go rancid. So you want to push, you want to push some uh plastic wrap down onto the surface of the ganache uh after or just before or after it sets so that you don't have a lot of like you know, nasty flavors, and then cover it and wrap it again so that fridge flavors don't get into your ganache. But it could not be simpler, and I'll read you what Julia Child had to say about it. This is from Julia Child, The Way to Cook. This is an extremely easy and versatile chocolate filling that was not around when I was doing my classic French training in the early 1950s.
Now I often wonder why not. Who introduced it, etc., etc. But again, not really caring so much about that. She just leaves and lets that pause off and goes directly into the recipe. And now remember, this is an 80s recipe, so uh she says use eight ounces of sweet chocolate or six ounces of sweet and two of unsweet.
I use exclusively like somewhere in the 70s, like bittersweet for my ganache, and I don't have to add anything else to it. One cup of heavy whipping cream, uh, two tablespoons of pure vanilla, and two to three tablespoons of rum optional, and optionally confectional sugar if you need to sweeten it up, which you won't. Uh and then couldn't get easier. Throw the whipp throw the cream in, throw the chocolate in, bring it up slowly, melt the chocolate into the cream, throw in the rum and vanilla, stir it, done. You're done.
Done. You're finished. It's over. It's good. Anyway, uh, I recommend you read it.
I've never met anyone that doesn't like Julia Child. The worst thing I've heard people say is, oh, I wish other people of the same uh generation, like Madeline Kamen had gotten so as much um, you know, props as Julia Child did. But Julia Child was so influential because of her television presence. It's hard for you to understand if you didn't grow up when she was really big. Like she was the first chat and chew, right?
She was the stuff. Uh and Madeline Kahn, unfortunately, ruined her legacy by at the end of her career redoing the making of a cook and butchering it for modern co uh modern uh, you know, what's it called? What's that thing people call when they believe that uh food can be healthy? What's that called? Nutritional stuff.
Yeah. Anyway, so she butchered her her Magnum opus that way. Anyway, I recommend you go look at uh the way to cook. Thank you, John DeBerry, for bringing in proto. Go check it out.
Uh it's very good for your non-alcoholic aperitif needs. Thanks for all your doggling. Next week is your last chance to ask us Thanksgiving questions. I will be talking about my Thanksgiving bird because I'm gonna be cooking it in New York. Uh, I don't think we talked about China.
Nastasia and I can talk about China, and we will have Booker and Dax announcements next week out Cooking Issues! Are you enjoying this podcast? Heritage Radio Network has plenty more. It's Todd Shulkin, the host of Inside Joyous Kitchen here on HRN. Inside Joy's Kitchen carries on Julia Child's legacy of introducing the brightest lights in the food world to wider audience, just as Julia did from her home kitchen.
Look for Inside Joy's Kitchen wherever you listen to podcasts and on Heritage Radio Network.org. Cooking issues is powered by Simplecast. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content, subscribe to our newsletter.
Enter your email at the bottom of our website, Heritage Radio Network.org. Connect with us on Instagram and Twitter at Heritage underscore radio. You can also find us at Facebook.com slash Heritage Radio Network. Heritage Radio Network is a nonprofit organization driving conversations to make the world a better, fairer, more delicious place. And we couldn't do it without support from listeners like you.
Want to be a part of the food world's most innovative community? Subscribe to the shows you like, tell your friends, and please join the HRN family by becoming a member. Just click on the beating heart at the top right of our homepage. Thanks for listening. Whether you're a homeowner creating your dream space or a pro managing multiple projects, discover a new way to shop at Ferguson Home, where great ideas become stunning spaces.
Visit FergusonHome.com to explore the best selection of bath, kitchen, and lighting products. Or book an appointment at one of our showrooms where you can experience products firsthand and get personalized expert support every step of the way. Bring your vision to Ferguson Home, where it all comes together. Shop top brands like La Cornew or find your local showroom at Ferguson Home.com.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.