This episode is brought to you by Bend the Table, a monthly food subscription service for avid home cooks focused on delicious and sustainable pantry items. Learn more at bendthetable.com. That's B-E-N-T-O-T-A-B-L-E.com. And when you use code H R N for a new subscription, you get $20 off, and we at HRN get $10. HRN is offering complimentary business memberships to 50 black indigenous people of color owned food businesses this summer.
The deadline to apply is July 31st. Each business membership, a $500 value is an advertising opportunity that will allow businesses disproportionately impacted by COVID 19 to connect with HRN's listening community and promote their work. To apply and review the terms and conditions, go to heritage radio network.org slash B I Z. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of cooking issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network.
You know, Tuesdays like noon. I'm in the lower east side of Manhattan. We got Nastasia DeHammer Lopez chilling on the Long Island Sound in Stanford, Connecticut. And we have a Connecticut person who is currently in Murray Hill. Uh John, how are you doing?
And Matt in his Brooklyn boothlet, right? Yep. What kind of what kind what does your booth look like? Do you have you put up like uncomfortable foam in your area so that it feels like crappy? No, when I want to do that kind of thing, I get into the closet.
Uh I the only modification I made is I turned off the fan, which was pointed directly at me. Yeah, okay, so I think we should all like chip in for Matt to get some of that like triangular foam crap. You guys know what I'm talking about? Like, it's like really it's like the same stuff as like egg crate packing, but like really expensive. You guys know what I'm talking about?
Yeah. And we'll yeah, we'll glue it all to the inside of his closet, and then we'll we'll put like a layer of foam on his door and just cut out a hole for the doorknob, but make the hole just small enough that it's still hard to get to the doorknob, and then we'll have like a hot incandescent light in there, and and like no ventilation at all, and then he'll feel at home like a true engineer, right? Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. Uh it would be better if it was uh actually that might be better because I'm currently in my booth slash living room slash, you know, where we eat slash the only comfortable place to sit that's not my bed, because this is a New York apartment and we only have you know one room.
So you ever you ever uh you ever pine for those dank moldy smelling like foam hot box rooms? No, this is so much this is so much better than that or like sweat is dripping into the pots and sliders, you know, you don't love you're not doing it right if you haven't shorted a piece of electronics with your with your sweat. Now let me ask you a question, because uh how how old are you, Matt? I am 33. Okay, so have you ever had to use like the old school real like sliders and pots kind of boards or no?
I've never worked on a fully analog system, no. Yeah, because like people used to like do are you familiar with the old school like sound man mullet hair haircut like from the 70s and 80s? Yes. Of course. Before I knew what a mullet was, where I, you know, where I was from, we just called it the sound man because they're in order to become a sound, and it was always dudes, right?
So in order to become a sound man, you needed to have that haircut. No other haircut was allowed other than the Soundman haircut. And if you bought that person a beer and asked them about sliders and pots. Like not pot the drug pot the potentiometer. Like they would go on for hours about how much they hated a particular like brand of slider because of the noise it would make when they were sliding up and down.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I don't think that's something that's lost. In other words like I think that's something that can be chucked in the dustbin.
I don't think that's one of those things where we when I was a boy we had to we had to buy a hundred dollar slider so that the single wouldn't get mad that you heard crackling when I when I push the vocals up and down. You know what I mean? Yeah totally although there are times when I'm given like a really fancy piece of digital equipment and the fact that you cannot tell what the hell is going on like you cannot trace a wire from place to place to find out what to do that does start to drive you nuts when you're trying to troubleshoot it's just like you just jam on the the one button that you have display you know because it's just a complete black box. Yeah yeah yeah yeah so that that does get frustrating and I'm not even a child of the analog era really yeah yeah if I had infinite money and was still playing music I would buy one of the nice old I I I'm that bass guy that I love that those old bass amp sounds. I actually, my favorite, well, this is his last of the non cut last of the sound engineer stuff.
But are you familiar with um are you familiar with uh Aguilar cabinets? No. They used to make a tube bass amp cabinet that just sounded so rich and fat that I would just sit there. I used to rent space. This is so sad.
New York used to have a bunch of districts. So like I lived in the in an illegal loft in the Garment District, and just below was where all the recording, uh like a lot of the recording stuff for like not like I'm sure rich people recording stuff was there, but like right down there and to the left of it, I used to practice for $20 an hour. My band would play in in the room where Beastie Boys recorded ill communication, right? So like all that stuff was like just there, and you could rent it. And we used to go to this, like what at the time we thought was super fancy place called Ultrasound in the 30s that was it's now closed, and you could just for like you know, not that much money an hour, plug into like a $10,000 bass cab, and Aguilar made my favorite bass cast and it was all analog, but now Aguilar I think is still in business, but they all do it with uh with digital sound processing now.
So I don't know. I don't know if anything's lost, but man, just plugging into that cab and hitting a bass string. Jeez, you know what I mean? I can still feel it. I I do know because I play I play bass too.
Yeah, yeah. Some about people who like guitar people don't understand what a bass player feels when they hit that string and get that tone. You know what I mean? You think that's true? I don't know.
I didn't anyway. I do as a sound person, okay. Last last thing. Do you know how like the sound person we just talked about their haircut? You know how they don't care about bassists at all?
So like they'll sit there and like the guitar player, like they'll work with their effects, they'll like tune the stuff up and down, they'll like do all this stuff, and the bass player, they're like, put it through. Okay, people. Back in the day, there was people whose amps were actually amplified with microphones. So like guitarists, a lot of the times, they would go direct, it's called direct, right? And then they would also have an amplifier with a mic that they would put on so that you could get the amplifier effects, like all the feedback and all that garbage.
Right. And every sound person I had to deal with was just like, put your bass into the direct box. I'm like, I don't want to put my bass into the freaking direct box. And then you get that crappy flat board sound because they don't care about your sound. You familiar with this, Matt?
Yeah, absolutely. That's that's what you do. Yeah. Weasels. So, John, Nastassi, you cooked anything interesting this week?
Food is fuel to me at this point. Oh God. You see, this is what I'm saying. You're not like selling, if you want to sell people on your new lifestyle, you should be caring about like, because isn't what you used to say is that that was the entire problem you had with uh a lot of uh these dietary regimens was it is that they become food as fuel people and then did not enjoy what they're eating anymore. Is it just because you need people dietary regimen?
It's because when you have to buy your own ingredients, cook your stuff, eat it alone, do the dishes, and then do it all over again in six hours. You're like, okay, this is I'm bored. This is awful. I mean, I think it's the eating, is it's the eating alone part. It's the it's the eating alone that definitely does this to you.
Right. Because it's not the it's not the I mean the the cooking, I mean that's that's normal, like having to cook all the time, it's just repetitive cooking for yourself. That's got I'm sure that weighs when I when I cook for myself, I don't give a crap. It's like pasta with basically almost nothing on it every time. When I cook for myself, it's two poached eggs, toast.
That's it. Like if dinner for myself. If it's gonna be dinner, and if I'm splurging a can of sardines. Like a hundred percent of the time, but mainly also because no one in my family wants to eat that. So when I'm eating alone, I mean I'm sure after like a month, I would be like, okay, I'm done with the poached eggs for now.
You know what I mean? Yep. You guys like poached eggs? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Like a lot. Not as much as you. I like them a lot. Like a lot, a lot.
I like them. I like them runny on toast. Hey, John, do you still have a girlfriend? You're not eating alone, are you? I mean, I have a girlfriend, but I see her twice a week, so that's still five other nights of the week where I'm here by myself, miserable doing dishes and cooking and worrying about using up all the ingredients because you can't buy right amounts of food for one person.
Um, Nastasia, can I can I do the your mom trolling or no? No. I told you no. Okay, okay. I won't.
But like, but I would just say for the listening crew that John is doing a variant of the Lopez family trolling technique. Also, John, why do you only see her twice a week? What's the uh what's the wow? You're getting personal. I like it.
Go. Um, yeah, I don't know. I guess that's just kind of the way things have been going. I don't know. We've only been dating for like well, I guess four months now.
Oh, just before the just under the wire. Yeah. Wow. Just four months now. Um, yeah, I don't know.
I'm sure more frequent visits will start happening soon, but I don't know. That's just like the routine that we've established so far. How many people do you think had a first date in early March and then were like on the fence and now are kicking themselves for not just taking that second date right then, just so that they'd have they'd have like, you know, something like that. Or they're kicking themselves for having that second date. So you're wait, so you think there's as many people who are like trapped in a COVID relationship than there than they're you but you do you think it's equal amounts trapped in COVID relationship versus people who had the possibility of a relationship but didn't seal the deal before the COVID?
You think it's equal or which one do you think wins? I have heard that people who are trapped that there are more people trapped in COVID relationships that want out very badly, and that divorce rates are divorce rates went up in China during the quarantine, and they are predicting the same. And also like a bunch of divorces have been filed in these four months. So pretty cool. Open markets.
It's still state to state, right? So you have to it like you have like some states, it used to be back in the day that you'd have to like wait six months or you know, something like this anyway, uh, for a no fault. You know what I'm saying? I'm sure this stuff's changed. All that crap is archaic, you know, but who knows?
I don't know. How the hell did we get on this? That was an amazing question. You're asking what we've been cooking recently and food is fuel. And then we've got that in there.
Oh, yeah, yeah. You've been you've been cooking uh you've been cooking sadness and then eating the leftovers. I don't eat leftovers. She's been throwing the leftovers away. And cooking fresh sadness every day.
Nastasi's like, I want my sadness fresh. Can I have one thing? Can I just have my sadness be fresh every day? Speaking of sadness fresh every day, Nastasia Lopez, let's talk about Amazon. Ugh, you go.
No, you're the Amazon. It's work on. They are out of stock uh in Searsol's. Wait, wait, out of stock what? Again.
Again. And two months ago when Fallon showed this year's all on the on his show. I was like, hey, FYI, you might see a surge. Also, everyone is inside cooking, you might see a surge. They ignored me.
And now they're out. Did you ever tell the the listening crew how you engineered that one? The Fallon? Yeah, I think I think we talked about it. I just heard a quick refresher.
Everyone is quarantining, obviously. Well, I don't want to give away how I do it, because then everybody will do this with their product. But everyone I mean that's the good that's the good part of the story. First of all, I don't want to alarm you guys. Nastasia can find out where you live.
Anyone can find out where anyone lives. You will do it. Like even for the smallest, like either a thing that you want or infraction, you will do it. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Also, Nastasia never pays for this information. She's not one of these people that signs up for your easy to find where a celebrity lives because they usually buy a gigantic house and then curbed or some other outlet will be like, look who bought the house in this neighborhood, and then they give you a tour of it with photos and then the address. So easy. You also searched out the address before they had to give it to us of some of our Kickstarter trolls. Be honest.
You can find this information. You are a finder of information. When we were like, who are most of the people that are being assholes? Then we found out that they're mostly in Canada. I prefer buttheads.
But the the other thing is uh that and this goes back to when Nastasia and I first met the anti-Semitic van driver, right, was telling us that he could find anybody, right? Silas, remember this? Yeah. Because why? What do they not give up?
No one ever gives up their car. That's right. He's like, people, he hasn't talked like this. People they give up their family, they give up their kids, they give up their dog. They always keep their car.
Always keep their car. So Nastasia filed that away. She's like, first thing I get rid of is my car. Yeah. Then the family.
First the car, then the family. But you think he's right? I mean, he's probably right. Just because he's a vicious anti-Semite doesn't mean that he doesn't know how to find people based on them keeping their cars. I think he's right because even though like I have this really crappy car right now, but I would still drive it to the ends of the earth before I settle on a new one.
That's just because you're cheap as hell, like me. No, I no, I'm not. I just you don't love the car, you hate the car. I hate the car. Nastasia's uh side view mirror is duct taped on.
No, I cut it because I thought I found the part and I was like, great, I can get rid of it because the part just arrived today, part doesn't fit, so awesome. So you duct tape the new part on, or do you send it back and get a different new part. I don't know if I can ever find the part. Whatever, this is boring. But the the issue is is that Nastasi can't get her car freaking inspected because it doesn't have a side view mirror.
No, that's not the thing. It's something to do with the check engine light that somebody told me I can disconnect if I go to this place in Queens, but I haven't been because then COVID started. So an illegal place in Queens? Yeah. Where they just disconnect the light.
Hey, did you see what went on last night? The fireworks in every single borough. I could see the ones from Coney Island from here. No, Macey. But then people were like, hey, what about people with PTSD that are like, oh my god, you know, like they're not letting you know when it's popping up, what time, where the thing is, are they doing it in conjunction with all the illegal ones?
Because like there's been a there's been a surprise fireworks show every hour on the hour from like 8 p.m. till two in the morning every night in my neighborhood. I thought it was the police doing it, according to some of your articles. I have heard that, but I don't know why the police would do that. I I just don't understand what the thing is.
Nobody's afraid of it. I mean, maybe someone who has specific fears, but like no one is like, oh my god, somebody's getting shot. It's like there's the fireworks again. You know what I mean? So, like, I don't understand what you would get out of it.
It's also happening here too, which is really weird. Like, even at like 1 a.m., 2 a.m. What I heard was is that normal sales of fireworks was extremely low this year because of COVID. And so the big fireworks places like Phantom have just like slashed their prices, and so people have gone in with pickup trucks and just picked up pickup trucks full of this stuff and have come in and like second wave black market sold them in cities where you can't normally get them. That's what I heard happened.
Cool. So anyway. I mean, I love fireworks, but like, you know, I don't know. Nastasia wanted to get some illegal fireworks, but at this point, everyone's got illegal fireworks. So I think we should wait till next year when it's gonna be cool again.
I disagree with you, but whatever. But I thought you hated things that other people liked and had. I don't experience what you're experiencing here. Like I'm like it's not insane, but whatever. The best consumer fireworks show I've ever saw for the Fourth of July.
And I guess by the way, is this our Fourth of July episode? Yeah. We don't have any Fourth of July related like grilling questions. But the best Fourth of July ever for me was I didn't see any real fireworks shows, but we went to Coco Beach to take the kids to Cape Canaveral to see the Space Center, and we were on the beach on Fourth of July, and the entire coastline all the way up and down was a constant barrage of consumer grade fireworks and people just hanging out. So it's pretty cool.
That was you know, not the best fireworks. There was no grouchy style smiling faces exploding or whatever. Do you like the smiley face explosions? Yeah. Yeah?
You you like the picture fireworks? Mm-hmm. What's your favorite? What's your favorite firework? I think the raining down the white, the white like weeping willow type things.
I agree. You know what I you know what I like though? I like the one where you get the the the poom and then like a second later, it starts from a little bit out from the center. You get the foosh with the rain of white uh sparkly. Those are great.
Yeah. What about you two? What do you think? That sounds great. My my best fireworks display was very similar to yours, actually.
It was in Ocean Shores, Washington, and people just went, it was like a war zone on the beach with consumer grade fireworks just like up and down for God knows how long, and people just firing them off in every direction, and the wind was whipping in off the ocean, so they weren't going in the directions intended. It was nuts. Yeah, yeah. I have you ever when you were a kid, do you have bottle rocket fights? I did not, but that's my brother would have been doing that kind of thing.
Yeah. So a friend of mine, uh, you know, who has a house in, I think it's uh right outside in Naples. So like I forget what the celebration is, but it's like they have a thing where they're fighting, they're firing at each other, like across the street and across the like plateaus, like large fireworks at each other. That would be fun. Yeah.
And then uh uh Andy Rickard told me that there is a festival in the north of Thailand, also I believe once a year, I forget where it is, where people make their own rockets, but get this. They all try to vie for like the biggest kind of rocket, and if you look at it online, these rockets are not like what you and I would consider to be like a normal rocket. They're like they're like 10 feet long and like and like 10 inches across and on giant stakes, and every year somebody dies. Wow, yeah, they're huge. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you see them, and you see them light off, and like they light it, right? And they're lighting it like they're just lighting it. It's not like they're like behind some blast shield, you know what I mean? With it, they're lighting it, right? And then like, ooh, a fin snapped off.
And then you'll see this like giant homemade rocket, corkscrewing. If you've ever made a homemade rocket and had a launch go bad, you know what I'm talking about. Now multiply the kinetic energy by like a factor of like a hundred or two hundred. Crazy. I would love to see that.
These are kind of like the rigs that people who want to like project themselves into space to see that it's a flat Earth would rig up. Well, a guy just died recently doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not gonna say okay, but okay. You know what I mean? You know?
I mean, it's dar it's Darwin award territory for sure. Yeah, you know, look, I feel look, I just whatever. I don't think it was a uh it was not a cause worth dying for. Uh okay, from oh, uh food related. I went uh cherry picking for the first time ever and had my and obviously since I've you know quote unquote kicked my allergy this weekend for sour cherries, and uh they had the they weren't technically supposed to pick because they they're a couple days away from being at peak ripeness, but I picked a bunch of Montemorensi uh sour cherries, and they're the I don't know how if that's how you pronounce it, but they're uh like a lighter red, very small sour cherry, and they are delicious.
The entire time I was there though, Jen, and I I I didn't even know I was gonna go. I was dropping uh my younger son Dax off upstate, and I was like, see if we're near a place. I went the entire time Jen was like, stop eating the cherry. Because you know, she's the one who had to take me to the hospital whenever I had a problem with the cherry. She's like, okay, you're done, you're done, you're done.
So I really I kind of did her wrong. I kind of made her feel very nervous for eating all the cherries. But then I came home and pitted like uh six pounds of cherries, frozen down, ready to make some pie. Some pie. What do you get what kind of cherry pie do you guys like if you like cherry pie?
No thoughts? No thoughts. I don't like pie. What do you say? What do you say, Stuzz?
I don't like pie. Wait, and Matt, you don't like cherry pie? I don't I don't. I mean, I just I will eat some, but I don't make it and I don't seek it out. Okay, I never I've always loved cherries.
Like until I was 30 when I had to stop eating them. But I never liked cooked cherry products. So I'm hoping that by picking my own sour cherries, and I know exactly the flavor profile that they have because I chose the specific tree that had the flavor profile I wanted, right? Because people, fruit is different tree to tree. That I can make a cherry pie that I actually love.
That I would I would be super happy if I could do that and have a cherry pie that I loved, but whatever. I'm thinking of doing a like a almost like a chiffon, like a cherry whip, as well as a more standard cherry pie. What do you think about that with a graham cracker crust? Like a cherry chiffon pie with a graham cracker crust. Except for you, Nastasi, because you don't like pie.
What do you think? It sounds good. Yeah, it sounds good. If only you had a pie cookbook, you know, to help you out with recipe. I know, but if I talk more about my favorite book, Pie March is on, people will say that I'm uh perseverating, so I won't start.
Is there no kind of pie that you like? I like hot fruit. But it's not hot. You serve it, you let it cool down, otherwise it's too runny. Yeah.
So there's only fruit that was at one point hot. Yep. Lemon meringue pie? No. Key lime pie.
Never cooked. No, I know. I've had it all. I don't like it. So my my uh stepmother also said that she doesn't like cooked fruit, but it's more than that.
You don't want fruit as a dessert. No, I like fruit as cooked fruit is it's cooked fruit, I guess. And if it's hot, I really don't like it. But cooked fruit, don't really like. What about fruit that's in ice cream?
No. Huh. What about sorbet? Sure. Huh.
Okay. Uh speaking of citrus and sorbets and lemon meringue pie. Scott wrote in via email, and this is gonna be for Nastasia to answer. Uh Dave Hammer, Matt, and John. Love the show, have a citrus question.
My wife and I have three old cumquad trees here in Santa Monica. We decided to make a lemon cello variant like Nastasia did. Our kids picked the fruit, and my wife and I mashed about 60 cumquads into a liter of vodka. That's a lot. Well, I guess how much of that weigh?
I guess it depends. Uh it's been sitting for five weeks. Any tips on what to do next? Hope you guys are staying uh uh safe out there. Scott, what do you got, Sus?
We're supposed to taste the stuff my dad said, but you're never coming out here, so we should just no, I should just taste it. Why you can send us some. Why okay? Sure. That makes sense.
Booker's been there. Yeah, why why don't you guys ever come here? I don't go anywhere. What the hell are you talking about? Just went cherry picking.
Okay, whatever. I had to drop Dax somewhere. Dax went somewhere. Dax has a social life. Anyway.
Um, and he he quarantined himself for like this immense amount of time so that he could enter a new pod of people who have self-quarantined out of New York City. People who are from New York City who have left for the quarantine are petrified of people who are in New York because we're still seen as like this like weird contagion. You know what I mean? Um but anyway, so are you gonna help Scott out here or not? No, I think we messed up this our stuff.
Like if I were him, I would put another liter of vodka in it. Well, the main mistake that you made, I think, was instead of using sugar, you use simple syrup. Yeah. Right. And you should have like ABB, what did you say it was?
Like 21? No, lower, because you added a lot of simple syrup. Here's first of all, okay. If I, you know, look, I would weigh, I would weigh the amount of product you're putting in, and then you can guesstimate how much water is gonna be at the end of how long it's been sitting. What do you do?
Do you he did you mash your stuff or are you a sliced? What did you do with your stuff? So we put the peel, I peeled them all, but the peels in the vodka and then squeeze the juice and put the juice in. Okay. Okay.
I would weigh the the peels aren't gonna change the ABV that much. They will absorb uh the stuff, but I don't think they're gonna change the ABV an intense amount. Did you squeeze them afterwards? The peels? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I don't think it's gonna change an intense amount. Obviously, the juice is gonna change it an intense amount. And if you assume that you're shooting for a lemonade style of sweetness, acidity balance, lemons are gonna balance at roughly a one to one sugar to lemon juice. Um not one to one sugar, one to one sugar and simple syrup, which would be I had to do the calculations.
So it'll be 50% of that weight on sugar. I would just do it. And you have to add the sugar later. Is that necessary? Or why does everyone have you add the sugar later?
Is that for flavor reasons or what? Yeah, I don't maybe I don't know. Because the easiest thing to do would be to put the sugar into the juice so that you know it's dissolved and you get the sweetness and tartness right based on the juice basis, and then added that to the booze. That seems to me to be easiest. But everyone, and I mean everyone, macerates their liqueurs first and sugars at the end.
Everyone does it. So there has to be a reason, right? Other than just history. Maybe someone in the chat room can uh shed light on it. But I would not use simple syrup because that's gonna reduce the ABV too much.
I would use uh sugar, but that's me. Um right? And in the future, weigh everything. This way you can easily calculate how much, like what your result ABV is because Nastasia's saying that her ABV was down like something like down at wine level, right? It was like 12, 13% by the time you were done with all the stuff you added.
Do you say 10%? I have a good idea. Oh, you haven't tried it at all. It freezes hard, so you know that it's like a low ABV. Yeah.
Yeah. Alright. Uh Alexander Saunders wrote in uh I'm I completely forgot how to send in show questions. Well, you made it anyway. My uh my 10 year old wants to have a miracle berry tasting.
Any must-try foods that I may not have thought of, huh? Uh. I mean, I was talking to John about this this morning. Uh Stasi and I didn't talk about it, but um uh we uh we've I've only ever done it for work, right? And so when I was doing it for work, we always chose specific things that we knew were gonna uh kind of highlight the effect, right?
And I have a mental issue. So I remember once, Stas, were you with me for this one? It was one of the McGee classes. Did you ever run the McGee class or did you come after we ran the McGee class? McGee was there a lot, but we had a McGee class that we only did three times.
I know. I did it at least once with Mindy, so I can't remember whether or not I don't remember what years we did it. Anyway, because it was early on. So anyway, we did Miracleberry tasting as one of the McGee classes, as well as gymnemic acid. I highly recommend that you guys, your 10-year-old's not gonna like it, but gememic acid is like the anti-miracle berry.
So a miracleberry makes acid taste sweet. It doesn't remove the acidity, it just also makes the acid taste sweet. Uh ginemic acid erases your sense of sweet, and it's hard gross. So we would always do on separate days, we would do a miracleberry tasting on one day and then genemic acid tasting on the other, so you can really get an idea of what things are like with a zero sugar. Like fruit with zero sugar is crazy.
Chocolate with zero sugar is crazy, and you know, we would eat an unsweetened chocolate and then sweetened chocolate where we couldn't taste the sweet, you know, marshmallows, sugar tastes like sand. It's it's really interesting. Anyway, so with Miracleberry, I'll never forget it, and I can't remember whether this is the one you you were with me on, Stas, but we had a whole bowl of of sliced limes. And the idea was, yeah, okay, good. So you remember.
The idea was we were passing limes out to people so that they could have they were making like unsweetened lemonade, unsweetened limeade, and just eating on lemons when they were they were doing their miracle berry. And I just sat there while other people were talking like lime, lime, lime, lime, lime, lime, lime, lime, lime. And I must have eaten like half that dang bowl of limes. And you know I don't get acid stomach aches, but holy Houstino I had a serious acid stomach stomach ache after that. You remember that one?
Yes. Oh my god. Do you remember the time when I came to teach when I had food poisoning? Oh my god yes. So like it was was it also a Mc it was also a McGee class, right?
Yes. Yeah. I don't know. It was not the same one I don't think but I got food poisoned like hard food poisoned. And like I would come in.
I would go in for so the way we used to work is the our classes were in this amphitheater and so we had a little side room and so I would run on do the talking like do some cooking with McGee then run out like throw up like like five six times then come back and do it. Oh my god I was so walking wounded that day. And geez Lisa anyway so what do you guys suggest that they eat with the Miracleberry? Like what's what's gonna be fun what's sour. I hear oh you know who used to do this all the time is uh is uh cliff cliff endo I think the genemic acid is cooler I mean genuine yeah right um with the honey yeah because it's slightly it's what's weird about that is it's slightly sweet, even though you you know you can't taste sweetness, which is crazy.
Remember how gross Coca-Cola is without uh the sugar in it? Oh my god. Uh anyway, I'm sorry that I don't have any better suggestions, but anything with a moderate amount of acidity. If you go back to the old blog, it tells you what to do with Miracle Berry. All the thing is is like make sure you get a good quality one because remember we were buying different brands, styles, and some of them are really good and some of them really sucked.
And I'll retell this one story that is not my story, but it's a story that I was told by uh Katsuya, who at the time was a uh working with Jose Andres at um Cafe Atlantico and Mini Bar, and he he was at Madrid Fusion. This is in 2004, I guess, 2005, 2004, and they were doing a demo, and uh they had mentioned Miracle Berry, and so I went up to talk to Katsuya afterwards, and he told me this story, which I may have said on the on the air, I don't know. Uh, where he had done a miracle berry demo for someone and then was just going back to do normal work, and he was get this people, acid correcting a soup. So I hope all of you, when you make soups, you cook the soup and then at the end you acid correct, right? You understand what I'm saying, guys?
You with me? Yeah, yeah. So because I think a lot of soups that could be good, the first mistake, right? People don't put pet like salt in it, right? That's the first mistake.
They undersalt the soup. That's a sad soup. And then I think the second most common mistake is not acid of correcting it. What do you guys think? Yeah.
Yeah, probably. I think for me too, I like nice like silky smoothie kind of soups, not too chunky, but for me, the texture is also an important thing. So you think people that like on a creamy soup have under blended, that's a huge problem? Yeah. Speaking of uh here's a uh a a mistake that I have seen more than sixty students make.
If you are going to make a soup where you have pureeed the vegetable, I will just say whatever pumpkin, cauliflower, whatever. Please cook the hell out of it. Why are you cooking that stuff al Dante? You are going to blend it. So as long as you aren't overcooking it to the extent that you have changed the flavor into something garbage.
And by the way, are any is anyone in this uh in this uh group that we're talking with here fans of the hyper overcooked broccoli on purpose that on purpose overcooked broccoli? No. I like overcooked broccoli. Yeah, there's a whole there's a whole kind of like subculture that I think was re popularized by I think Lydia Bastianich, and then I heard about it f from her through Steingarden years ago, of this whole kind of like subgroup of people that overcook broccoli on purpose till it gets that overcooked broccoli flavor, and then they highlight that overcooked broccoli flavor. And I also enjoy it.
Uh but for a soup, there's a big difference, you know, between now look. If if you're doing a green soup, right, like a broccoli, then sure, cook it fast and hard in salted water till it's cooked through, have the pieces small enough so they cook fast, right? That's another key if you're gonna do something green, and then shock the hell out of them in uh in ice water so that you maintain the color, right? And then and then puree them. Or what Nils used to do, because he was real fast, is cut them small so they cook real fast, drain them, puree them instantly, and then throw them into a hotel pan over ice and cool it instantly to keep the color.
But the one caveat about overcooking is some things take on with vicious long cooking kind of sulfurous flavors like could have with cauliflower and have with broccoli, and if you're worried about maintaining green color, but other than that, please don't undercook the stuff that you're gonna puree. Johnny with me on this? Agreed. I'd also like to add on the green soups, add your acids at the ends. Don't just let it sit all thrown off.
It is true that shifting things towards acid will cause the chloroform to uh denature quicker and go and go olive drab. Now, everyone always used to say not to cover the lid because trapping the volatile acids they thought would make the stuff go green, uh sorry, olive faster. I don't know that I believe that. I cover my stuff so that it comes back to the boil quickly and then uncover it. Yeah.
So that it doesn't overflow. But that's me. Um how the heck did we get on? Oh, yeah. So Katsuya is making a soup, and he's going to acid correct the soup.
I got one more thing on soup and acid in a minute. Remind me. He's going to acid correct the soup, and he doesn't realize that he's still his mouth is still on Miracle Berry. And so he's adding vinegar to the soup. And it's just getting sweeter and sweeter.
And you can't figure out why he can't correct this soup. And then someone comes up and tastes it, and it's like, and like, what the hell did you do? This is like just vinegar soup now. And he's like, uh, Miracle berry. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so the interesting thing about Miracle Berry is that it tends to one to one it. So in other words, the sugars can actually balance the amount of acid there, which is, I guess, kind of cool. But to me, it's not a straight.
To me, it's not a pure sugar flavor, right, Sas. There's something slightly chemically about the sweetness, right? It's not, do you find it as pure as as table sugar? No. Me neither.
Me neither. But it's fun. It's good to do. But I think Nastasia's right. If you care more about learning and less about hedonism, get you some genemic acid, right, Sas?
Yeah. Yeah. Uh, acid and soup. So, Nastash, you might have to earmuff because I'm gonna talk about something related to bread, okay? No good, I'm going to the bathroom.
What? For real? Yes. For real. Alright.
Okay. Wow. It's like Dax. Dax has this thing where, like, in the middle of doing something, he says, I need to go to the bathroom. I'm like, and I'm gonna, I'm not gonna tell him about this, what just happened.
Because what I tell him is adults don't stop what they're doing and go to the bathroom. What do you guys think about that? Is that true or not? In general. I mean, I know Nastasia here is specifically avoiding like listening to the bread thing, which is why I'm drawing this out until she comes back.
But anyway. I mean, I don't know. This is a dicey subject right now because New York City is the land where you like can't go to the bathroom anywhere. Nothing is open to go to the like, so now you have to think real hard about it before you leave the house. Plan to do it.
So you can't go into a Starbucks and use a bathroom now? I don't think so. Most of those places will not let you. I'm not gonna call it out in case it's not allowed, but I know uh someone that went to a restaurant, and this restaurant's a friend of ours in Brooklyn, and what they do if you need to go back is they they hand you hand sanitizer and tell you to like sanitize everything when you go in and you come out as a kind of courtesy. But I don't know whether that's actually cool to do or just what they do, so I'm not gonna call them out.
This episode is brought to you by Bend to Table, a monthly food subscription service for avid home cooks focused on delicious and sustainable pantry items. For the past few months, Nastasi and I have been trying out Bend to Table subscription boxes. When we started out, we didn't know just how much they would come in handy. Thanks to the pandemic, I spent a lot more time at home cooking with my family. Some of my favorite things that I got from Bend to Table boxes were the beans from Rancho Gordo, especially the cassoulet beans and the Christmas Lima beans, uh, which were delicious.
I've been cooking them in the rice cooker. I also really enjoyed the Geechee Boy uh grits. Those are the some of the most delicious grits I've ever had in my whole life. Uh now is the time to try out a bend a table subscription. You'll get new high-quality pantry ingredients shipped right to your door every month, like Rancho Gordo Beans, Geechee Boy stone milled grits, and burlap and barrel spices.
You probably noticed that these are ingredients that are sold out in many places, but with Bend to Table subscription, you'll get you'll keep your pantry well stocked and discover new ingredients with each delivery. Just try, just try to buy red fife flour anywhere but bend a table. Go to Bend2Table.com to start your monthly subscription. Use the discount code HRN to get $20 off a new subscription, and Bend to Table will donate $10 to support cooking issues and all of HRN, which stands for Heritage Radio Networks programming. So anyway, so one of if you're trying to do a sourdough or Levana or whatever you want to call it, like one of the problems is you have a boat ton of spent sourdough left over because you never use all of it, right?
So what to do? So you can make crackers or whatnot. Did I already talk about this, John? No, you and I spoke about it, but you haven't spoken about it on there. Alright.
So uh one of my uh, you know, one a Polish soup that I like is called Zurek, and it's made with uh fermented rye, basically old spent rye sourdough starter, fundamentally. I think they might make it with bread, they might ferment bread the way Kvas has done, but you could do it with a starter, right? And so I was like, I wonder if I can take my old hyper sour spent starter and use it as the acidifier slash thickener in a s in a stew. So I did like uh I did like a like a chicken onion mustard stew, kind of like a mashup of all of that kind of stuff, and then and then hit it with uh hit it with a bunch of my really old spent sourdough starter, and it was terrific. Of course, I'm using whole wheat sourdough starters, so it like it wasn't didn't have that it was had some kind of nuance to it other than just acidity.
It wasn't just like straight white flour, but it was great. So if you have spent sourdough starter and it's not preposterously hot right now where you are, try using it, like look up a Zurek recipe with a Z uh or anything similar to that, and then instead of using uh the fermented uh rye paste, try using some of your spent uh starter. What do you think? Is that a good tip, John? Great tip.
Interesting thing. People might people might not have tried. And if you've never tried the sour rye soup at all, or even in that realm, you should try it. It's delicious. Uh all right.
You gotta we have somebody way in in the chat on the miracle berries. Antoine Lefebvre says sour cream and graham cracker make a good mock cheesecake on Miracle Berries. Okay. Okay. Do you know what makes a delicious cheesecake texture?
If you uh take fresh peaches and you uh blend, you take this the stones out, you blend them in a vita prep, then you then add uh pectanex and you spin it in a centrifuge. You take the juice and you make a cocktail with it. Um if when Estasi gets back, maybe she can remind me. What cocktail did we make with that juice that time? The peach juice.
Remember when we had long make the bourbon, yeah. Something with bourbon. It was like clarified peach bourbon. Did we do the tea with that one or no? Anyway, so we had one of the greatest interns of all time.
His name was Long. He's now in Taiwan, I think. Uh he went to French Laundry. What a great guy, right? He was the guy that came over and we were hand grinding tortillas with a corona mill, which is a freaking nightmare.
We were doing it for like 20 people. We were using that hand grinder to grind fresh masa for like 20 people, and he just sat there grinding and grinding and grinding for hours. You remember that? And it wasn't even for work, he was just doing it. He was just sitting there like a machine grinding and grinding.
Anyway, I hear he's killing it in Taiwan. So uh what were we talking about? Oh, yeah. So we gave Long the peach pulp that was on the outside of the in inside the bucket. So when you hit uh juice with SPL and you blend it, they the the breakdown product, the puck, is intensely smooth and very just very heavy and dense.
Is that a good description, Styles? Like heavy and dense. And then he added a little bit of sugar to it, and then he like whipped froze it with liquid nitrogen and put it on a graham cracker crust, and that was on point. Am I right, Styles? So good.
It was like cheesecake texture, but almost entirely made out of peaches. That was good. I wouldn't mind eating that again. That was a pie you liked okay. Yeah, that was great.
It was like a cheesecakey type thing. Yeah. So you like cheesecake? Yeah. Do you like cheesecake with the crust up the side, or do you prefer just on the bottom and that weird kind of gravelly outside?
Uh either. But you clearly don't like the BS fruit garbage on top. No. What's the name of that guy that manages uh Dan the Animator? Brad.
Brad, thank you. Uh I'm now I don't know why that is on air, but okay. The what about uh a chocolate cheesecake? Um I haven't had enough to I don't know. And not my thing.
I prefer plain. What about Italian style ricotta cheesecakes? Yeah, good. Really? You like the grainier, you like that?
What about you? What about you, Matt and John? I like all cheesecakes. You like like the pizza dolce, like the ricotta, like the real like the really grainy, watery, weepy ones? Yeah, okay.
It's got its own its own thing. I like uh you know, Basque style burnt cheesecake, uh, um New York style cheesecake, it's all delicious to me. You know, I hated cheesecake growing up, hated it. I didn't like it until my probably early 30s. I love it now.
But I absolutely hated cheesecake growing up. I also hated cream donuts. Did I tell this story? You told them in the wand up in the past, I think. Hey Dave, tell people what Booker wants to make.
What do you mean? Non fried donuts and cupcakes. Oh my god. Yeah, Booker comes to me, he's like, I want to well, you know, people know that Booker now has decided he wants to be a professional baker. I gotta get him hooked up with Angela to uh to talk to him about the ins and outs of uh taking that on as a career.
But and uh I I hear Angela uh Garbaccia's book is doing well, the Goldenrod Pastries book. Uh anyway, um yeah, so he comes up and he's trolling me in the way that Nastasia's family is trolling uh he's like, I want to do non-fried donuts and cupcakes. And if there's two things on earth that I want, is I want my donut fried the way God intended. And I don't like cupcakes. We had this discussion with Angela when she was on the air.
She likes cupcakes. I think most people do. I'm probably in the minority on the not liking cupcakes. Yeah. But I prefer cake to icing, and I prefer my cake to not be dry.
So if I really want a cake to be dry, what I will do is I will increase the amount of surface area it has per unit volume. And the best way to do that, other than making it in tiny thin sheets, is to make a cupcake, which has a very high surface area to volume ratio. And then classically, people put gobs and gobs of icing on the top of that thing, so I can't even get my face onto the cake without having to deal with the icing. So, my in general move is I just fist the icing and just rip it off like a cap of poison and then eat the cupcake that's underneath. And if I have been blessed with luck, like they have kept the cup cupcake wrapped so that it hasn't dried out and desiccated into a little hockey puck by the time I've gotten it.
That's just my feeling. That's just how I feel. I mean, look, some people, and I think Booker is like this, like they could just like they could just go to town on a bowl of icing with a spoon. I'm just not that guy. You know what I mean?
And even like, you know, you'd think that based on other things that I like, that like like like a hard butter buttercream icing, like with lots of butter, that I would like that. No. I like cream cheese frosting on a carrot cake. So I'm not. You know what Nastasia wants next from Booker people?
She wants the German chocolate cake with the with the with the crunchy coconut icing on top. What are your what are your I know Nastasia likes it because she asked for it? What are your other thoughts? That's delicious. Yeah, but I'm delicious.
I do. So we're gonna try to get Booker to make that, but the problem is that uh Booker doesn't like coconuts, so I don't know if he will bake with them or not. He might it might come up in a baking career that you might need to use ingredients you don't personally enjoy. Well, everyone who listens to the show knows that Booker sold pasta for Nastasia and hates pasta, and we had to, we had to do many, many hours of role-playing of having of yeah, right, not insulting the product he was selling. So like we would walk up and be like, okay, hey, uh, I'm gonna get some lunch.
Um, what do you, you know, what do you recommend? I don't eat pasta, it's disgusting. We're like, no, no, you can't say that. And then we were like worrying working about, right? Remember that, Sas?
Yes. Hey, John, did you see that uh spinzall repair question right now? No. You gotta remember, other people don't have access to our email. So now we have to discuss it.
Now we have to discuss it. We have to discuss it. Uh someone is embarrassed. Uh, because even after reading the manual and watching the video, he inadvertently opened the lid while locked. Now yeah.
Now it's shut down. After starting spin-up with all red lights blinking. Yeah. Okay. Okay, okay.
So my God. Listen, listen. The good news is is that John's gonna spend a lot of FaceTime with that person trying to get their unit back in order. Hey, listen though. I have made a video.
It is super long and boring, where I completely disassemble the spinz all. So if the sucker's already out of warranty and you want to get an idea of how to repair something that John's not willing to help you repair, you can watch that video. Right? I'm willing to help people repair anything and everything. I love you.
For anyone out there listening, if anything goes wrong with your stinzall, stop trying to fix it. Just leave it and send me an email, and it'll be a lot easier and quicker to fix that way than if you try and do something to it. And I'll just say this. You probably have to spend money to get a new part if you do it that way. I'll say this on top of this, because look, here's what happens.
John fixes a lot of the stuff, and then stuff that he's not sure about, like we'll discuss with each other. So we take this stuff very seriously. Am I right, John? Yeah, very carefully. But in all of life, and Nastasi and I and John, we can get into a small argument here.
When something breaks, right? If you trust that the person's going to do their best to try to make your life right, be honest with them about exactly what happened and be clear about what you're saying to them because if the person on the other side of the line is a smart person, which John is, right, then they will be trying to figure out what is wrong based on the stuff that you say. So if you hold information back, or if you don't say exactly like this happened, then this happened, or I dropped it. Everyone's afraid to say that they dropped something, right? So it's like, then it's gonna be hard for us to troubleshoot what happened.
Am I right, John? Yeah, and the damage is already done, and if it's out of warranty, we're not gonna pay to fix it anyway. So just be honest and tell us what happened. Right. And we will we like there's no one so far that we haven't been able to make it right.
I have three units in my house right now that are taking up precious quarantine areas. That's your new title. What's your new title? So uh I don't know. What was that?
Do you remember? I don't remember. Well, is it something like spinzall repair specialists or something like this? Yeah, something like that. It was great.
Another video that John's gonna get up, hopefully pretty soon. I recorded and put out there. And I did this, believe it or not, for Nastasia. Um I did how to set up a home carbonation system with a carbonator. And when I say I did this video, I give the part numbers, I give the places to buy them, I give websites, I even tell you who to speak to at the place where you're supposed to call it.
I give you current 20 May 2020 pricing on the stuff that you need to buy. It is pretty much everything you need to know. John, am I right about this? That is right, yeah. And after it's great content.
And it's up if you check the Booker and DAX Instagram, you'll see uh posted about it this morning, and there's a link to uh it in our profile. Right, and we're not put we're not pushing it on social because we're not doing any social pushes right now. But um you made this video the way that you made bread for Jen's anniversary. When you're like, you made this video for me. It's like the same thing.
Well, no, because now you get to say this. No more carbonate, no more how to set up a carbonator question. It's definitely not true, Dave, because you will get a carbonation question and then you'll be like, go to the video. But and then tangent for 50 minutes. See, I can't win.
I can't ever win. No, that's true. Right, John? I can't win. There's no winning.
Bye bye. It does, it has the truth. There's no winning, people. Uh Dr. Kuba Radizowski wrote in uh hey, uh, would you mind telling me which peristaltic pump you're using for your rotoVap?
We have a rotovap for our students that are now trying to make it more gastronomic. Uh it's a course for chemistry students, actually. We're teaching them laboratory skills through cooking. Awesome. Uh I just use a uh, you know, it Cole Palmer rebrands uh whatever their, you know, uh I forget the name of it, but it's a 60, it's a 60 RPM, and it takes roughly quarter-inch tubing.
The problem with it is that you have to get, and I could try to look it up. It's it's on actually the I believe the actual tubing numbers are on the blog post. You can go look at it. Uh which, which you know, on the primer on the rotavap primer. And uh the problem is the tubings collapse over time.
And if you notice bubbles streaming up through the tubing, it means that the tubing's not sealing anymore. And if it does that, then uh it wreaks havoc with your um with your system. So I would invest in a vacuum check valve, and I would put the check valve on the atmospheric pressure side of the pump, not on the vacuum side of the pump. And if you have more questions, ask more questions or hit up uh hit up John. Uh hit up it ask us like you're asking a uh a warranty question for whatever because if I if I go too into the weeds on roto vaps, Nastasia will will murder me.
Uh speaking of we had a question from uh Raj Mataj via Instagram uh who wants the Tokyo high ball spec. I'll give that in a minute if I have time. But they said, am I familiar with the uh JiroVap, which is a uh online, it's online a kind of supposedly chef-driven rotovap machine, and Raj wants to know if that's kind of the way I was gonna make my own rotovap. The answer is no, it's not, but uh if I get into it, it seems like it's a lot of money, and there's not enough videos online, and they're not posting enough information for me to make a clear judgment. But uh I I didn't have time to do it this morning.
But they're using ice as their as their main thing, but it takes kilos and kilos of ice to adequately chill something uh to recondense. Uh I could do the math, but this condensation of steam versus the uh is something like 80 kilocalories per uh you know, per gram or 80 calories per gram, and the um ice is like a quarter of that. So you need a lot of ice to recondense uh you know a smaller amount of product. But anyway, um I can go more into it later. If again hit up uh John uh separately.
Uh the toki, uh yeah, I'm not gonna have time. Umti, do I have time to answer anything else or am I toast? I mean you're you're pretty much toast. All right, so I will get to uh I will get to the possible uh here's a I'll do this one quickly. Not sure if you take questions on Instagram.
There's this is from Jonathan Kane. There seems to be quite a bit of conflicting information on the web about cooking, specifically smoking with western red cedar. I was under the assumption that this was safe, but others have indicated possible toxicity. I can't seem to find much research on the matter. Some sites list general toxicity in cedar from large doses of thujone.
Is that a concern in smoking? Thanks. Now I can't, Jonathan, answer uh not a safety expert or an occupational person, but uh I mean I have an occupation, but that's not what I mean. Um the danger, Western red cedar is the highest of the of uh the thuja like group of things, not necessarily in thujon, but in something called placatic acid, which is a non-volatile acid that is uh a respiratory irritant and can cause uh like um it can cause uh uh a specific allergy. Um that is and it's it's particularly high in uh Western red cedar.
So people who cut western red cedar and work with it and slice it, they are at risk for developing a specific kind of asthma that really only people who use these kinds of woods get. Now it's non-volatile, however, when you're smoking, you're, you know, you're just not a clean burn, so I don't know whether or not it's launching any of that stuff into the air. But that's what I would look at. I wouldn't worry about the food zone, I'd worry about the placatic acid. Um all right, so I will answer Monty.
I'll answer your question about your uh Chef Steps uh control freak next week. John will make sure that I do uh and uh I can talk I'll give you the Toki Lowball spec next week Raj and I'll leave you guys with this uh uh Audi Edge wrote in via Instagram hey Dave enjoying the quarantine podcast question is cereal soup from Audi Golder answer no okay cooking issues cooking issues is powered by simple cast 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 heritageradio 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
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