This episode is brought to you by Vertera Dinnerware. Learn more at Vertera.com. That's V-E-R-T-E-R-R-A.com. It's September, and as the days get shorter and temperatures cooler, it's time to go back to school. This week on Meet and Three, we're looking at how lunchtime is changing from elementary schools through college.
Whether classes are remote or in person. While there was some information about where families could access food, it was spread out on many different websites. I'm seeing people, you know, advocate for like going back into school. And a main reason is you know, food insecurity. Like kids go to school and they get fed.
And I'm just that's a whole other thing of like fight for kids to be fed versus like going to school. Tune in to Meet and Three, HRN's weekly food news roundup wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello and welcome to Cooking Kisses. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the lower east side of Manhattan on the Heritage Radio Network. As usual, joined by Nastasia the Hammer Lopez.
Uh I think you're live from Stanford right now. Is that true? On the coast? Nope. I texted you last night.
I am in the Hamptons. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. You're in the Hamptons. Right.
You're still there, whatever. But it's basically you're looking at the same body of water, right? Because you're staring at the snow just in the other direction. Oh, you're on the other side. Hamptons are on the ocean.
I thought both were the Hamptons. No. What's the other side called? North Fork. Whatever.
Uh and joined uh by uh our intrepid uh customer service representative. John, how you doing? And John, you are b uh not in Alpine. Because you're a cooking charge. You are you were cooking for uh Jokovich and uh that throat ball took him out of the running.
And so, you know, for those of you that don't know, this like world's like one of the world's most famous and you know, I guess best tennis players got ticked off, swatted a ball, hit a line judge in the throat. She went down, as we were discussing beforehand, like the grape lady from the thing, but unlike the grape lady, hadn't done anything wrong, didn't deserve to get hit in the throat with the ball. Uh and so he was in even though it was unintentional, he was instantly disqualified, right? Yep. Instantly.
Yeah. And so then, you know, you know, you you were no longer making the room temperature quinoa as a result. Is that true? That is true too. Yep.
Yeah. Let me ask you a question. Uh I know that like he hightailed it out because he didn't want to talk to anyone because if you know everyone felt bad about the whole thing. But do you get the impression that he eats room temperature stuff only during training time? Like like a boxer does, or is this like an all the time kind of a sitch?
I don't know. That's a good question, actually. I should ask my friend about that. Um yeah, I don't know. That's a really good question.
I hope he eats happier food when he's not training. But who knows? Yeah, I mean, because like I mean, I would do it for the amount of money that he made. How much of you said he's made lifetime in tennis? So far, $750 million dollars.
Wow. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I would I would probably eat with an IV, you know, for the duration of my career, if that's what it took, you know, for for that kind of money. But I mean, unless you're making that kind of money and all you're doing is like tucking into like unspicy room temperature, gluten-free grains uh 20%, you know, the all the time. I'd be like, oh gee, but you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, what are you gonna do with all that money if you're not enjoying it? I guess he doesn't enjoy the food, maybe. Maybe he doesn't enjoy food. I don't know. Anyway.
Uh did come out with a cookbook like 10 years ago, so I think he enjoys food to some capacity. Did you read the cookbook? Uh yeah, we did. But it's so out of date because it had gluten recipes in it, it had fish and other things in there. Um, and he doesn't need any of that anymore.
So he wrote the book? Well, I mean, supposedly, yeah. As much as one does when you're that famous. But he it has his imprimatur on it. Yeah.
It's been stamped by his errant tenant tennis ball, so to speak. So we should, you should take a look at it, analyze the recipes, and let's get back and see whether the guy even theoretically at one point had a love for food. Fair. I can do that. Because I'm I'm interested in, I'm interested in knowing.
So then uh before we went on air, last night I did the public lecture uh for every year, uh Harold McGee and I go and we start up uh the Harvard Science of Cooking uh lecture at hat. Harold's been doing it for 11 years. I've been doing it, I think, for like 10, 9 or 10. And we do a public lecture, which is not the same as the class, and then we do a uh, you know, the the student lecture, which I have to do later on this afternoon. And uh this time they did it on Zoom, and I think they're gonna make it available, but I can't find a link.
So Nastasia was asking me how it went, and let me just say that trying to do Zoom with like demos, and like so I was trying to do demos and share a PowerPoint and try to run my infrared thermal camera to do demos all at the same time off of one computer. And that is don't do that. Nastasia would have loved like just seeing in the background. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, you know, you want the behind the scenes video, yeah. She wouldn't even sit there and she'd be like, Dave, you're not doing your demos fast enough. Dave, you definitely. Wait, where was Jen? Was Jen helping you or dad?
Yeah, well, even so, but like still, like the problem is is that like I needed to be at the computer, so it's not like Jen could be at the computer, and it's not like I brought her in like eight hours beforehand and walked her through every step of what I was gonna do because at that point I didn't even know what I was gonna do. You know how I am. So like I had to run, but yeah, but she even with her helping me, it's just trying to funnel your entire brain when you're doing like like uh your camera, your your overview camera, and this was without OBS, because I'm doing it straight into Zoom, and like a PowerPoint, it just doesn't, it just doesn't, it's hard. Anyway, uh so yeah, so I I learned about that. But I did in the process, and uh Nastasia, I used the lecture as the starting point to run actual experiments that are gonna be in the actual moisture management cookbook.
So you'll be happy to know, or unhappy, I don't know who has money on me which way. But one of you, hopefully, will be happy to know that I'm officially doing things that are gonna be in the book. Not just thinking about it like I have been for the last couple of years, but I'm actually running experiments that are going to be in the Miracle of Moisture Management working title. And actually, I'm gonna use some of that information when I'm talking later about one of the questions people uh have today. Um what are you doing in the Hamptons Grill?
You've been grilling. No, I'm here with uh Yeah, yeah, but like how are you cooking? Are you cooking inside or doing you're still doing outdoor cooking? Uh we're not cooking. Not cooking.
Alright. That's another way to cook is to have other people cook. You know, some people's favorite way of cooking is to have other people cook, so yeah. Yeah. And uh Matt, presumably you're still in the uh Rhode Island?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've been hosting my hosting my mother-in-law, whose favorite way of cooking is to have other people cook. So I've been doing a lot of cooking. Uh I kicked my mother-in-law out of this house so that we could do the show, and you wouldn't hear her. So that's a strong move.
And uh uh let me just say that I feel maybe I should say thank you. Yeah, I feel that we're tight enough that you can use me and Nastasia as an excuse. Hey, look, hey, look, uh mother-in-law, it's not uh it's not me. It's these other jerks are gonna kick you out, so you gotta get out. And you can use me like that.
Yeah, also they recorded other, they recorded other uh episodes, uh, you know, 1 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 4 p.m., it's scheduled all day. You have to leave. I think Nastasia and I are fine being the bad guys for this. So Nastasia, are you fine being the bad guy for this? Oh, is it?
Hey, want to hear something weird that happened this morning when we were biking back from the beach. I was saying, I was talking about how a lot of people believe that Prince is around them, you know, like his ghost. And then I was like, I don't really understand it, and then boom, a transformer like burst, and the power lines like started shaking, and everyone freaked out on the street. It was crazy. But yeah, but okay, that seems like that seems like an amazing coincidence, people who are listening, until you realize the fact that about 90% of what Nastasia says for the past month has been this thing about Prince.
So 90% of the time off air. It's like you're sitting there. That's such an exaggeration. And any any any silent break that you have, like if you're just sitting there with Nastasia, and there's like maybe like like you know, five minutes of silence while you're doing something, there's never five minutes with you. She'll be like, she'll be like, you know, you know, uh, they think everything's a fence.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So no, and now we have proof. It's true. Well, no, but I'm saying, like, if the average person, right, out of nowhere was like, you know what I read on the internet today for the first time in my life ever, and I've never thought about it before, is all of these celebrities who feel that they that Prince is haunting them.
And then, and I think that's a load of Malaki. And then boom, a thing blew up. That would be a coincidence for the ages. You know what I'm saying? That's basically what happened this morning, is when I was here, Dave.
I'm happy to believe. I'm happy to believe it. Try it. Try it. Like talk to your mother-in-law about it and see what happens.
That among certain people there is, and I didn't realize this, but it's also a uh a plot line uh uh in the most recent season of uh billions. Prince Billions. No, uh the uh the what so like the birther movement is that terrible thing with you know we all know what that is, but what's the equivalent movement call for Stevie Wonder can see? There's an equivalent terrible, and and that is also as a joke, making the run of the celebrity things, and was recently featured in billions. So, like, you know, uh that one's never gonna you're never gonna get anything uh the people on billions said that Stevie Wonder could see.
No, they mentioned it as a as a crazy like birther-like thing. It came up like two, three times in the most recent season. Yeah, uh-huh. Wow. Yeah.
People, Stevie Wonder cannot see. Like, I don't even know where that can't where that comes from. Where does that crazy a lot of people think a lot of people? Well, the important thing is that someone in Nastasia's family also shares this view, but OG, OG, way before any of the way before anyone else was talking about it, way before this was a thing. There's a person in Nastasia's family who's been like the whole time be like, that dude.
Well, so I think in Prince's book or somebody's book, he says that he thought that Stevie Wonder could see because at the four seasons hotel in some uh country, Stevie walked straight to the elevator after checking in and pressed his floor. And someone was like, or maybe Prince was like, How did you do that? Or how does he do that? And uh Stevie's like, I memorized all the layouts, or all the four season layout hotel uh hotel layouts are the same. So I memorized it.
And everyone's like, hmm. Well, not to mention, I mean, elevator go ding. You know what I mean? Elevator goes ding. But still, Dave, like, I don't know.
And here's another thing. How do you find it? You know what Stevie Wonder probably doesn't do? Walk by himself anywhere. The dude is famous.
No entourage. I'm supposed to believe that Stevie Wonder had no entourage. When Prince's ghost comes back to me, I will ask if there was an entrepreneur. I'm also gonna say that not every you know, like ground floor of the four seasons, like they can't all have the same layout. I believe he's blind.
I have no idea. That seems a little a little far-fetched. What's to believe? It's a freaking fact. This is what happens nowadays in like in this kind of post-truth crazy world that we live in.
You could legitimately that what? The Atari ad. Oh no, that's just a fake. That's a fake. It's probably like Nastasi and I got fooled years ago by a fake ad where someone no, it was like two years ago, isn't it?
We got we got fooled by a fake ad that someone did in from the 70s of Stevie Wonder, a younger, much younger Stevie Wonder, ostensibly advertising the Atari 2600. And but it was funny because we thought it was real at the time, and we're like, I can't believe that the 70s were so horrible and offensive. Yeah, they would do this. People let him do this. And yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it's all fake anyway. So but you can go look it up. After we had sent it to people, being like, look at this. Yeah, look at this crazy thing. And they're like, I knew we could see.
Um but um, although the the the premise of it is that he can't see. But the point is is that I can't believe that we live in a world where John seriously has to say, I believe that he can't see, right? I mean, like where so like this crazy freaking theory has enough legitimacy that you actually have to take sides. You know what I mean? That's like look, uh I believe that the sky is blue, but you know what I mean?
No, no, sky blue, sky is blue. You know what I mean? Like it's like earth round, you know what I mean? Like round-ish, uh, mostly round. Because in December, oh no, it was Shaq.
It was Shaq who saw him walk into an elevator. Yeah, yeah, that was the thing. It was who? Shaq said Shaq, the basketball player? Yeah.
Yeah. And then he told that to Prince, and it made it in Prince's memo. No, are you reading Shaq's memoir? No, no, no. Shaq said it on Inside the NBA that show, and he said, I'm gonna tell y'all a Stevie Wonder story, but you're not gonna believe me.
And then uh he said, we live in a building on Wilshire Boulevard, you park your car in the valets down there. I'm already in the building and come coming through the lobby, the elevator door opens, and it's Stevie Wonder, and he says, Hey, what's up, Shaq? Presses the button and goes up. And he was like, How did he know it was me? I mean, I I I don't know.
I I don't know. But the explanation is probably in Shaq's memory of this. Anthony also said on the Stephen Colbert show, what y'all don't know is that Stevie can see it's just an act. Even fellow music icon Lionel Richie believes the theories are true and expresses on the Kelly Clark. This Kelly Clarkson has a show.
This is all ridiculous anyway. I feel like they were all just hanging out at a party together at one point, and then they were like, hey, you know what would be hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Stevie was like, yeah, go for it. Sounds awesome.
Yeah. Steven Lunar's probably saying, like, whatever, man. You know what I mean? Whatever. You know what I mean?
I don't know. So ridiculous. The whole thing is so ridiculous. I mean, I I I can't I can't. I can't.
I can't even. Let's talk about cooking. I can't, I can't, I can't even. Let's just file this on a on a on a I can't even. Question that I have for the cooking issues people out there who are listening.
Uh, this is my question where I get to ask it because it's not anywhere online that I can find. So this is one where I have actually attempted to Google the answer to it. I asked the manufacturer of the equipment, right? And I still was not able to get a satisfactory answer. So look, nowadays, it used to be that uh, you know, when I was working at the at the FCI, that the the holy grail of kitchen scales was a kitchen scale that could do uh a large amount, let's say like 10 kilos, but do it to a relatively accurate uh level.
Let's say a tenth of a gram, right? And I found an old one, and I bought one, and Nils Norrin, you know, who was running the school at the time, he bought one personally. They eventually broke, and I didn't have them anymore. And the the main problem with having like a very fine accurate, one of the main problems of having a very fine accuracy and uh and a large weight range is that the larger the weight range, usually the bigger the um plate that's on the scale. And the plate on the scale, uh, if you try to do things that are very accurate, like you know, uh a hundredth of a gram, let's say, uh air currents in in the air literally move the thing around, and it's hard for it to be um super stable.
Now the other thing that in that it changes the inherent accuracy of the scale uh is what's called the the A to D, the analog to digital chip. So what they're doing is is that as you push on a scale, there's a uh little thing uh when you when you push on it and it's changing uh the resistance of uh it's the force, you know, the the oh my god, the word of her just went out of my head, but anyways, changing the resistance, it's putting a voltage through, and it's measuring kind of this very tiny voltage change and then converting that into the weight. And so uh an A to D chip, something that takes that analog signal and turns it to digital, has a certain range, right? 24-bit, whatever it is. And so the minimum amount that you can read is limited by uh A, the signal to noise ratio, like how good is the is the circuit, and B by how many uh digits it breaks the scale into.
All right. So uh usually you can't have a large plated scale uh with that measures things that are very accurate because of the wind. Uh the A to D chips have a certain range, which limits the uh uh limits it. And also, even if you have a range, uh the larger the range, sometimes the longer it takes for something to settle out at the right thing. So some scales are slow to settle, they take a couple of seconds to settle, whereas some are very fast.
Okay, so that's the background. Now, nowadays on Amazon, you can go by a five kilogram, 5,000 gram scale that does uh a hundredth of a gram, right? 0.01 grams. So it can do drugs and hydrocolloids and also like anything up to uh you know 11, 11? What's five times 2.2?
11, right? Uh 11 uh pounds, right? Um, which is awesome. And you can get them for like now like 125. If you go on eBay and get the factory seconds from the same company shipped direct from China, you can get it for 60 bucks.
Now, they sell the same scale as five kilograms all the way down to uh like 600 grams. So almost an order of magnitude difference. They all look the same. What's the difference? Right?
On the on the flip side, I bought uh for myself a 30 kilogram scale. So I can measure uh CO2 tanks, I can measure 20 pound CO2 tanks without a problem. I can put my oven on top of it, my my Brevels, my Breville air oven on top of this scale and weigh it with the food inside. Get this to the tenth of a gram. Now, I have a 30 kilo and this same exact scale with the tenth of a gram, goes from 30 kilos, and you can buy one with a with a weight range all the way down to only five kilos, right?
So, what's the difference? I said to the to the manufacturer, between the five kilogram and the 30 kilogram. They're like, well, you should always get one that measures a little bit more than you need. I was like, no, specifically, is there a disadvantage to getting the 30 kilogram one as opposed to the five kilogram one? Or am I just getting a giant freaking bonus of being able to measure more?
And they wouldn't get back to me. So, and I even I wasn't even that vague. I said, is it is the 30 kilogram slower than the five kilogram one? Is it technically less accurate than the five kilogram one? Is it all these things?
And no response. So if anyone could tell me why, if it's the same price for a 30 kilogram and the same accuracy and it's all the same scale, the blank, the outside's all the same. What is the disadvantage of getting the one I got anyway? Do you guys have any ideas? No idea.
No. One disadvantage I can think of is that you have to order a much larger calibration weight to calibrate the big scales. Anyway, uh this is in from uh Ruben WTF on Instagram. You think that means that this person's name is Ruben or they know someone like Ruben and they're like, yo, Roman, what the what? You know what I mean?
Like that? What do you think it is? I think it's their name is Ruben. But then like they're WTFing themselves? Every time.
That's like when I wake up and I and I and I just I wake up, I look in the mirror, I'm like, what the? Like that? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Um question. I'm making peanut milk, in quotes, for a coffee shop, uh, and it tastes great, but the issue is the shaking before use. I tried using sunflower lecithin uh in liquid at 1%, but it keeps separating. The recipe I'm using is 100 grams of roasted peanuts, 2.5 grams salt, 30 grams sugar, 10 grams of sunflower lecithin, 900 grams of water.
Make the peanut butter with all the ingredients minus the water, mix the water, filter through a milk bag. That was also my nickname. What else can I use to keep it as a homogenous mix? Thanks. Love the show.
Sorry to hear the bad news about the bar. You and me both, Reuben. So what you want to do is use the same product that I have in Liquid Intelligence for doing cold buttered rum and for orjahs, and that is uh Tickoloid 210S. So in something that is going to sit for a long time, you need not just an emulsifier, so lecithin is an emulsifier, but you also need uh a like a light thickener slash stabilizer, right? And so uh the the Ticoloid 210S, which by the way is available now from Modernist Pantry.
In fact, they have over 10 of them in stock. I looked this morning, right? Ticoloid 210S is a mixture of gum Arabic, gum arabic, the emulsifier and xanthan, uh, which is the stabilizer and the thickener, and I would use that at about a percent and a half, okay? Now, um, if you don't want to buy or you can't, and by the way, I would I would try it without the lecithin since I don't know how the lecithin will respond with the ticloid, it'd probably be fine, but I would try it just with the ticoloid first. Uh but the advantage of gum arabic to emulsify these things is one, I know they work, I know it works, and two, it also keeps its emulsifying power over a wide range of temperatures and also a wide range of dilutions.
Um so if you can't get the tick and the xanthan is like there and just it just stabilizes the whole thing, not from an emulsification standpoint, but like literally by making a very weak gel so the thing doesn't separate out. And those things shouldn't have to be shaken more than once every day or two. Uh and then if you if you want to increase it uh that that longer, you can add a little bit more. The nice thing is that, and if you don't want to buy 210s, the substitute that I use is uh a nine to one, right? Uh mixture of xanthan and arabic.
So that uh one percent of this stuff, one percent of a nine to one would mean that you're using 0.9% of Arabic and 0.1% of uh Xanthan. Now, and at the rate I told you to use it, one and a half percent, you're looking at about 0.15% of xanthan all day, which is thin, it's not gonna get at all gloopy. But the nice thing is that you can keep dumping arabic in, it's not gonna cause too much of a problem. So if you want it a little thicker, it's not gonna hurt you unlike a normal hydrocolloid to go up to 2% if you need it. You know what I mean?
Uh, and that's gonna be about 0.2% xanthan, which you don't really want to go above 0.25% xanthan, especially with all that nut stuff, it's gonna get start getting snotty. But uh that's what I would go ahead and do. Is that a okay answer? Yeah. All right.
Uh and if you're getting the Arabic, don't get the garbage Arabic, get good Arabic and get good Xanthan. You're better off just getting the one from Ticaloid because it's uh, you know, that you can get on a monitor's pantry. I mean, it's quote unquote expensive, but you're not using that much m that much of it, and it's pre-mixed, and they're very careful about matching like solubilities and the grind sizes and keeping the powders together. So, you know, if you can, and you can go to Moner's Pantry and just get the actual Ticoloid 210 or 310. I originally used 310, but now they they're pushing 210 for it.
I would do that. Um, less heartache. It's always less, like when you're running something, it's always this thing. Do I do it myself and potentially F up and then lose more? Or do I spend a little bit more and save myself the heartache?
I'd save the heartache in this case. Um this in from uh Seth McPhee on Instagram. Uh I've been dying to find your lemon preserve recipe so I can recreate the Coursera cocktail. Now that I mourn the loss of uh existing conditions, I gotta know. Can you help someone out?
P.S. I've made your gin and tonic famous on the Jersey Shore, clarified lime and all. Well, uh that's uh nice. I haven't been to the Jersey Shore in years. Stassi, you ever do the Jersey Shore thing?
You remember? You ever go down to Barnegat Light? Is that a compliment that he's making on the Jersey Shore? I love the Jersey Shore. You know, I lived in Jersey for a long time.
Look, I never watched the TV show. So my idea of the Jersey Shore isn't the TV show. You know what I'm saying? Did you used to watch that TV show? Nope.
Anyway. I I, you know, like there's a lot of fantastic communities on the Jersey Shore. Uh, a friend of mine used to have a house down in uh Ventner, which is just south of Atlantic City, like, like just like past the boardwalk on the beach. In fact, I lost my wedding ring in the surf there one time in uh in the early 2000s. Oh my gosh.
Whenever Dave loses his wedding ring, he is convinced that women are checking him out. I've never said that in my life. Yes, you. I have never once said that. I have never once said that.
How could I make that up? I remember it like that. You said that. I was like, I don't like to go around without my wedding ring. It doesn't equal that I think that people are checking me out.
I have never thought that anyone has ever checked me out. First of all, we were out of we were doing an employee. First of all, not in town. First of all, I believe the first of all, I believe the opposite of what you were saying. I believe that nothing gets you checked out more than putting a wedding ring on.
Okay. Because it's safe. People can look at you if you're if you're if they know that that you have a wedding ring on, or they're they're weirdos. I believe the exact opposite of what you're saying. Anyway, I have lost my wedding ring an inordinate number of times without ever taking it off my hand.
I have lost the wedding ring. That was my confusion. So how do you do this? So I've never removed, I shower with it. I I, you know, I've never removed my wedding ring.
The first wedding ring I lost was I had just gone on, as we spoke a couple of episodes ago, on the blunch diet, and I went from my getting married weight, which was, you know, like 190 or something, down to 155 pounds. I was like super thin, and so my hands got smaller. I went into the ocean and it just it just washed off my hands. It like the water was cold. This was in Ventner, and it just it came off my hands.
I came out of the ocean with no wedding ring. The second time I lost my wedding ring, uh, I was doing a sculpture and it got uh crimped. It got crimped. My wedding ring was gold at the time, and it got crimped around my finger. And so I had to go get it cut off at the hospital.
And then uh, which is why I no longer wear gold. I switched to stainless steel, right? Uh, because uh Wiley Dufrain, my brother-in-law, he was like, You gotta you gotta go with the stainless steel because it's chef's metal. It's the chef's love of stainless steel, so I have a stainless steel ring. So I switched to stainless steel.
That one, I don't know what I was washing dishes. There's two, there's two things. I was washing a lot of dishes down in New Orleans at Tails of the Cocktail, and that same day I had to like wash my hands in a trough and milk a cow for a William Grant party. We were all milking a cow. I don't know why we were milking a cow.
Uh I think they were making ramoses or something with right out of whatever. And I looked up at my hand, wedding ring gone. And so I'm on my fourth one. I hope this one stays on. But anyway.
Yeah, I've like it's unbelievable how many times I've lost this thing, considering I don't take it off. This episode is brought to you by Vertera. Impressively versatile, stylishly sustainable, environmentally disposable dinner wear from Fallen Leaves. Vertera is a mission-driven company focused on making environmentally responsible single-use products. Founded in 2006 on the belief that every culinary creation deserves a beautiful, sustainably crafted foundation.
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We have an answer for your scale thing in the chat. Alright, uh, do that and then I'll talk about the preserved lemons. Okay, yeah, yeah. Uh Vengroth just wrote in. The scale thing could be binning.
This is common with electronic components like CPUs. Uh the idea is you build a bunch of something and test them. Some perform better than others, and you give them a better rating and sell them for a higher price, but you can still sell the lower performing ones for a lower price. I don't know enough about load cell performance characteristics to be sure, but I bet some are active enough percentage-wise, or sorry, accurate enough percentage-wise to do 10 kilograms by 0.1 gram, while others have a higher percentage error and thus can only do five by 0.1 or even one by 0.1. It's better to bin them appropriately and sell them for a lower price than toss them in the trash.
Yeah, but I believe that. Like, but the strange thing about it, and that's possibly true, the strange thing about it is they're all roughly the same price, which means that they're just not following their own logic. They should take the 30-gram one, the 30-kilogram scale or the 20-kilogram scale, and they should charge me like four times as much. You know what I mean? Like if it can do four times what the other one can, they should charge me more, and then only the people who need to measure that much would spend the extra money, right?
Um, but anyway, I believe that that's true when they're making them. It's just so weird that they don't, in fact, charge more, right? There's a slight, put it in this way, on eBay. So what's what you're doing on eBay is you're you're you're buying the last rev instead of the current rev of a scale, you're buying the last rev of the scale directly from importers in China. Same exact scale, same factory, right?
And literally, like the one that does 10 kilograms is like 58 bucks, and the one that does 30 kilograms is like 62 bucks, right? So it's like, hello, you know, it's like, why would I what if there's no price penalty, why would I ever go with the with the lower one? Anyway, um, it is true, as I said, the calibration weights for a 30 kilogram scale are a lot more money. Uh but whatever. Uh wait, so we're talking about the preserved lemon.
So with preserved lemon, the trick with preserved lemon is first find a the preserved lemon that you like. The one that we used both at Booker Index and at existing conditions was the quote unquote Moroccan preserved lemon that is made by Calustians in-house, right? So if my memory serves, it's got a little bit of a couple of saffron megillas in it, but it's mainly just preserved lemons with salt and not a lot of other like extra spices and whatnot. None, in fact. I think I think they had a couple of sprigs of saffron in it, but I can't remember.
Uh so but it's just that. And then with the liquid and the entire lemon, the peel, the white, the pulp, everything, blend the entire thing into a chunky paste, right? Uh then, and the trick here is you don't want to fully clarify, you're not going for a full clarification. So uh you do just SPL, right? I don't think we used D1 and D2 on it.
But if you do, only do one round of it. Don't do two rounds of it. Because you're not trying to get the thing completely clear. You're just trying to spin out like a lot of the chunky solid stuff so that it's thin enough to pour, but you want it to remain cloudy, otherwise your drink won't have the right body. And then just put it in the centrifuge and you're good to go.
And that's the that's what we used. And uh, I don't have the spec off of off the top of my head, but it's a split-based, which I should because it's it was my favorite drink to order and one of my better specs I've ever done. But it's tequila, uh, then uh simple, dry on the simple side. I think it's like two, I think it's two and then like half of simple, and then it's a split base on the citrus. So it's uh half preserved lemon, half uh lime juice, and then uh um uh spiciness.
So the spiciness of your choice. The original was with hellfire bitters. You know, I think it was 10 drops of hellfire bitters, shake. Oh, it wasn't a full two ounces though. Huh.
I'll look it up, I'll look it up and give you the full spec. You might already have it. Because I forgot we made it smaller because it was so salty, and then we served it with the with the pony of uh of Miller, the champagne of beers. Um I'll look it up, but not right now. Uh okay.
Um Jeremy Wright saying, hey Dave, love the show, inspiring me to try new stuff, infusing vodka with juniper berries, etc., uh, which is aka gin if you distill it. Uh dehydrated lime slices is the question. The first time I dehydrated lime slices, uh, they turned out purple and got a nasty medicine smell. And the second time they seemed to stay clear and smell good. I remember seeing the purple smelly type in a bar before the apocalypse hit.
Any idea why the purple stink happens and how to stop it? Thanks. All right, uh, first of all, Jeremy, instead of calling it a nasty medicine smell, you should call it like an awesome complicated fermented note. And then if you call it that, well, that's a huge win. Then everybody wants it, right?
If you call it a nasty medicine smell, right on your menu, you're like, or if like you're serving someone, you're like, this has a nasty medicine smell, people are gonna be like, yeah, it does. If you're like tell them it's awesome and complicated and fermented, they'll be like, this is awesome and complicated and fermented. Just a little trick for you. Uh secondly, I don't know exactly what's happening, but what I'm guessing is happening is that when you're dehydrating it, your uh rate of dehydration is not fast enough. And you are actually converting it into what is known, and you can go look this up, uh, as uh black limes or lumi.
So if you look these up, uh they're dehydrated uh citrus lime, and they often go uh different degrees of purplish brown and black. And they're used as a spice when you pine the pound them and grind them up uh in many cuisines, especially in um the Middle East uh and North of Africa. And so you should that is what that's typically used for. So I'm guessing if you increase your, not necessarily the um heat, you don't want to cook it, although that's probably not gonna make it turn. Uh I I I would say just increase the rate at which you're dehydrating, and that's gonna help.
But check out uses for black limes and lumi and see whether that's that's what's going on. If you want to look up uh black limes in general, I recommend the article Mechanical Processing and Temperature Effect on Lime Shrinkage by A Fadavi, wherein they describe exactly how to prepare your own uh black limes. Uh okay, uh, was that a okay? Okay answer? All right.
Uh Steve Yoon, uh uh, as we know him, the fish poet. Hey, Stas, can you pull up somehow? Or John, can you pull up the fish poem? Because I need to hear it again. I'm feeling did you did you guys see today uh a bunch of studies came out about um depression rates uh due to COVID?
I mean it's just I mean I we knew it can't be bad. That can't be. You you read it? Nobody's depressed during COVID. No, no, but did you read like like between 18 and 24, this study, and I this is unbelievable, but like one in four people between 18 and 24 have had serious suicidal ideation.
I mean, like much I knew it was gonna be bad, but I kind of didn't think it was gonna be that bad. So I think also, John, towards the end, I know especially in our industry, a lot of us were hit with our jobs, and especially if we're in hospitality, uh not being able to provide that hospitality or have that human contact at home, uh, it really, really, really difficult. So at the end, I think we should put out the um the uh suicide prevention hotline number again. And just remember that especially if you're young, this is what I've uh so I was thinking about this. The younger you are, right, the bigger a chunk of your life this is, and the less you can see your way out of it, right?
At 49, this is terrible, right? This is awful. From a social standpoint, this is the worst thing, you know, ever, right? But at 49, it's still a lot shorter than it is for my son, who's 18, right? Where this is a huge kind of chunk of their life.
So it's A, if you're young, remember that, you know, just remember that this is finite. This what's happening here is finite. You know what I mean? And if you're older like me, just remember that people who are younger won't necessarily see it this way. And so we'll put out that and just watch out.
Even though you can't physically be with each other right now, you should be watching out uh for each other. I couldn't believe those stats when they came together. Well, real quick, I'm just gonna mention the number now and something else like that. People don't have to wait until the end of the episode. If you are feeling that way, call 1800-273-8255-800-273-8255.
That's the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. And if you are in the industry and just looking for resources to help you out with this kind of stuff, there's a great Facebook group called Chef Switch Issues that's run by Kat Kinsman. And if you look up Kat Kinsman, she also has another tremendous amount of resources out there. So yeah, you're definitely not alone, and there is help. Yeah.
There are people that want to help you. You can be, you can get help. Please do. And please, those of you that you know aren't feeling this way, please look out for people because it's a lot worse now than it was six months ago. A lot worse.
Um, now do you have the fish poem to make me feel a little bit better? No. Oh, are you feeling down, babe? Yes. Ready?
It is the hell's that about. I had sushi from a chef who developed a technique for aging fish. I got to try some of this, an Amberjack kanpachi. Oh my god, so good. So good.
One of the best poems I think I've ever read, and I'm a poetry major from Stanford. Yeah. Can you give it to me one more time? I had sushi from a chef who developed a technique for aging fish. I got to try some of this, an Amberjack kanpache.
Oh my god. So good. I need I need permission to put that in the next book. Or on a shirt. Or on a shirt.
Or like, but like, you know how like, like, okay, let's be honest with each other. You know how people put the the little poem at the front of the chapters in books that they write? Yes. How often do you understand why that poem was chosen? Or understand anything about it?
Well, I read nonfiction, and so usually it's tied in. Also, like a lot of biographies put little poems, and it's usually tied in. I know, but like nine, like a lot of times, I don't most of the time you understand exactly what they're doing at with the poem. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me, not so much.
Me, and maybe I'm at like 60%. Like 40% of the time, I'm like, hmm, that the meaning of the poem is ambiguous to me, and then I have to read the chapter to figure out what the author was thinking about that poem. Just confuses the hell out of me. But this poem, I believe everyone understands the meaning. Amberjack.
Genius. Genius work. Uh so uh Steve's question was uh every year I throw a Thanksgiving for friends who can't be with family, uh, and I'd have 20 or 30 people over. This year uh I'm trying to brainstorm what's possible for do uh for doing a socially distanced Thanksgiving. Wait, Dave, you know what my answer to this was?
I just see underneath what my answer to is this email I got from him. That's the with the poem, right? I just said, hey Steve, what the F is this? Well, wait, that's what you said when the when the original poem came in. Yes.
But then once you realized it was poetry and not a question, then you were like, sorry. Yeah. Sorry, one more time, I gotta hear it. It's just making me feel good. I had sushi from a chef who developed a technique for aging fish.
I got to try some of this in Amberjack Kampachi. It's like what's amazing about it is that like I don't usually like free verse. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not a free verse kind of a guy. Yeah.
But like, like, and it doesn't, I don't think. I mean, I'm you're the poetry person, you tell me. It doesn't have like a meter, right? No, no, it doesn't. But like, but somehow the flow of it is perfect anyway, even even without a meter or uh a rhyme structure, right?
Right, yeah. Yeah, the for the form of it is such that I assumed it was meeting some sort of standard. Structure didn't know about. Yeah. Well, I think Steve's hit on some as yet unknown metrical structure for the first one.
Yeah, for poetry. And I think this needs to be analyzed for its meter, and then he should do uh he should do a tour. Yeah, yeah. But like you wouldn't you couldn't change any of it and have it work. No, you know what I mean?
No. And also, like it's like amber Jack Kampache. And then it's like parentheses, parentheses, kompache. It's like and he said like his response to my what the F was sorry I press press send too soon. But at the at the end of that poem, it says Steve U in Los Angeles, California.
So I don't believe he pressed send too soon because it even looks like a poem is written, how a poem is written, you know. Yeah. Well I'm gonna have to trust you, uh Nastasia to format it correctly for the poetry universe, and then we'll try try to get a new thing. No, I think it's already formatted. I will send it to you, Matt.
Maybe you can like make it the image of our show today. Yeah, and then you know, we'll get it on t-shirts and uh, you know, whatever. Like, you know, it's obviously it's copyright Steve Yoon, but whatever. We'll we'll work on it. We'll get the permissions, we'll do it, we'll do whatever we need.
Uh that sounds great. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, back to his question. Uh so he's he's gonna try to do a socially distanced Thanksgiving for 20 to 30 people. And by the way, we're gonna have to start talking about this uh Thanksgiving uh stuff early for for questions because this is gonna come up a a lot and uh you know the question he's uh he's about to have and uh we should have some good answers for people.
I don't even know uh are you're gonna be in California for it, so you're gonna try to actually see your parents, right Nastasia? Yes, for an un unknown amount of time. Yeah, I am uh I'm not gonna be able to see my parents at all. Like even though they're only like an hour from here. They they won't get anywhere near they won't get anywhere near anyone.
You know what I mean? Uh so yeah, I don't know what's gonna happen. What are you what are you guys doing? Do you know yet? I'm trying to do what Nastasia's doing.
I'm gonna try and see my parents for an unspecified unspecified amount of time, like around Thanksgiving through Christmas, maybe, but that's a long time to be with my family for that one stretch at time. I rented a house, John, so I'm not speaking. I need to figure out how to like quarantine myself or get tested in an appropriate amount of time or something like that, because I definitely don't want to risk getting my parents sick. Yeah, yeah. Um Steve is saying he's gonna work uh on pre-packaging dinners, dropping them off, or having friends pick them up off the porch, and then having dinner together over Zoom.
Uh I might give each friend two containers, one for hot foods uh to microwave and one for cold foods. Now you know what the best thing, Nastasi to separate the hot container and the cold container is your book. Copy of Liquid Intelligence. So if you don't already own Liquid Intelligence, now is a good time to order it before Thanksgiving to separate your hot food from your cold food. And that is all it's ever been to uh Nastasia.
Although, you know, I can't even I could be you know what? I hate to do this because it's gonna hurt my sales, but it would be this like cheaper maybe or about the same price to just go get a piece of styrofoam from the Home Depot, like you know, with a blue board and cut it to the same size as Liquid Intelligence and then put it in between, and it'll be a lot lighter. But I think it's better when it's your book, and people are like, is that Dave's book? And I'm like, what? I don't know.
Uh so back to the uh the hot food, cold food. I assume this means crispy turkey skin is not happening. Or is it? Uh are all crispy foods not happening? Does this mean roasted Brussels sprouts are out of the question as well?
Uh, do you have any ideas on what Thanksgiving foods would store, transport, and reheat with decent results? Uh, if I got foil food containers, could I reasonably expect everyone to reheat them in the oven? Would that make crispy foods possible? Well, I'm glad, Steve, that you asked this question because for the Harvard public lecture and for the miracle of moisture management, I was indeed just running experiments on what aluminum pans do in the oven. And the the here's what might surprise you.
First of all, your main problem is gonna be you don't know what, obviously, they can't put the aluminum pan guaranteed into the microwave. It's what's not true is that metal can't go in a microwave. That's a lie. The problem is that one, the metal will shield the uh the food that's inside of it, so it just won't get that hot. Only the micro microwaves can only come in from the top.
And two, uh, it's very likely that if there's any points or creases or places where two pieces of metal come close to each other, that they will arc like a demon. And when they arc, it gets real nasty. The like the smoke, the food, all kinds of issues. Uh you know, not of cooking related, all kinds of like electronic issues. And this is why people tell you not to put uh foil or you know, things into the microwave.
But the the that foil and metal is completely incompatible with a microwave is incorrect because think about it this way the outside of your microwave is made of what? Metal, right? In fact, the whole thing is shielded in metal. But I digress. Uh one of your main problems is going to be you don't know what kind of ovens uh people have.
And so people are gonna be having wildly different um experiences. But about the thing about aluminum is this. I just ran an experiment uh this week where I took a, and I did this because of uh a lot of playing around, I was doing with my infrared thermal camera, which I'm using to test cerezals with, and I was looking at aluminum pans. And when you look at an aluminum pan or a stainless steel pan with an infrared camera, what you'll see is your own reflection. Because in the infrared, which is where a lot of the radiant heat uh is, that's where most of the energy and radiant heat is.
Um, in the in the infrared, uh, these pans are almost perfect mirrors. They reflect everything. And what that means, and you all know this from cooking, is that if you put uh, let's say you're making pizza or some sort of roll or something, and you put them on an aluminum sheet tray, you don't get a lot of coloring on the bottom of your product. It doesn't, it doesn't burn, it stays blonde. So for something like a cookie, maybe that you want to stay blonde, this is an advantage.
You're shunting away all the radiant heat with your aluminum pan. If you want to make something uh crispy, like a panned pizza, like a Detroit or Chicago pan pizza, everyone says go black. And in fact, I I spray painted, don't use spray paint because even the Hyat spray paint doesn't really work in the oven, it gets all gummy and it's not food grade, don't do it. Please don't do it. Uh but if you use if you spray paint the exact same aluminum pan black on both sides, it you get great results.
It crisps up great because that aluminum pan, which is very thin, conducts heat very well from the oven, and also it's collecting all of that radiant heat and dumping it into your food. Now here's the interesting part. I was like, okay, let me test this. I did another aluminum pan, spray painted black just on the inside, on the part that's touching the food. And then I did another pan spray painted black just on the bottom side, the part that's facing the oven.
And the one that's sprayed just on the bottom performs almost identically to the one that's black on both sides. So really all you need is the bottom of the pan to be black in order for it to get the results that you want of radiant heat all around. Problem is you can't spray paint the bottom of these cheap aluminum foil pans black, but what you can do, and I haven't run the test yet, is you can buy fairly cheaply at BH Photo or Adorama or any photo supply uh shop near you, something called Roscoe, that's like R-O-S-C-O, Roscoe Cinefoil. And cinefoil is a matte black aluminum foil that that it's a lot more expensive than aluminum foil. I think a 10-foot by a 10-foot by one foot roll is I think like 10 bucks, right?
And that stuff I know hangs uh uh hangs on to like temperature, uh sorry, uh handles the oven well. I wouldn't say it's food grade, so I wouldn't put it in direct contact with the food, but I just had mine, uh I baked a potato in uh cinefoil for uh over an hour, and it didn't leak any color, it was fine, nothing got transferred. So it's not good for food contact, but it's definitely good in the oven, because it's meant to be contacted for lights. And I would say that uh wrapping cinefoil around the bottom of it before you deliver it would allow them to put it in the oven and have the thing crisp up. So that's what I would do.
Also, here's another thing. I was running a test, see what you think. I'm gonna test, I'm gonna test the cooking issues crew that we have live here. How many of you think you should wrap a potato in aluminum foil before you cook it? Yes.
It depends on the results of the food. Okay. Well, why what does that mean, John? I don't know, like if I'm making potato rolls or something like that, I'm probably, or gnocchi, I'm just gonna bake it on a bed of salt and let as much moisture. Even if I'm just in a regular baked potato, I'd probably just pop it in there.
If I'm doing a Novak potato, then it's yeah, wrapped in foil. Well then it's room temperature, then you don't cook it at all. I never do baked potatoes, but if I was going to, I would have just, I would have wrapped it. Okay. Okay, okay.
So the baked potato council uh tells you not to wrap the thing before you cook it, but they do tell you to wrap it afterwards. And I ran a bunch of experiments. Here's what's happening. If you wrap a potato, but the the explanations they give are not very good. If you wrap a potato in aluminum foil, right, you might think, well, I'm capturing the steam inside of the of the aluminum foil, and so I'm actually gonna cook it faster, right?
Because uh, you know, it's not having evaporative cooling, it's gonna cook faster. Uh, and yes, like the ri like the jacket may not get as crispy, but it also won't dehydrate as much and it'll cook faster. Wrong. Uh what happens is is that it cooks a lot slower than the one that's just rubbed with oil and poked with a fork, rubbed with oil and salt, poked with a fork and put it in the oven. A lot slower.
Uh if you wrap that same potato in black cinefoil and cook it, that one cooks at the same rate as the one that is cooked with no coating at all. And the difference is that the one that's wrapped in aluminum foil is reflecting away all of the radiant energy from your oven. This is also the reason why, in my I'm guessing, that if you put a lot of baked potatoes in your oven, they take so much longer to cook. And I think it's because they're uh occluding themselves from the radiation from the from the radiant energy from the oven, and not, as you might have assumed, because somehow your oven can't handle it in the way that a microwave can't handle it. And also why, when you're cooking a potato, you want the maximum amount of uh radiant heat hitting it, so you don't want to put an aluminum pan underneath.
And in fact, uh you can buy now uh pan liners uh and and and sorry, oven liners that go on the bottom rack of your pan to catch things that are black. And if you do have a pan that's gonna go underneath something like a baked potato, like on the rack underneath, and then cook it on the rack above, make sure that pan is black. Um this one needs to be black on both sides because you want it to absorb from the bottom and then radiate out again. Make any sense? Make sense?
Yes. Little preview from the miracle of moisture management. Um John Dunn wrote in. Uh sorry to hear about the bar. I visited last summer, I was hoping to make another trip.
As soon as traveling isn't completely terrifying. I tracked down an online version of Pie March is on off the Half I Trust.org. Uh Pi March is on. I love that book. John loves that book.
Nastasia's sick of hearing about that book. And that's that's pretty much that's the whole story, right, John? Yeah, exactly. But you think it's a great book, too, right? Yeah, I've been enjoying the copy that I ordered.
Not the original, but like a repro from that was shipped from India. Yeah. But it's it's okay quality. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Wish the paper was a little better quality, but whatever. I pay. Uh only a fool, in terms of what pie you're gonna start with, only a fool wouldn't start with, and I quote, the king of all pies, and quote, the most sensational pie that has ever been introduced, the black bottom pie, which sounds like a like a it sounds like a uh uh like the band. What was the name of the band from O Brother Where Art Thou that George Clooney was fake in? Anyone remember?
Never no, whatever. Uh to uh hopefully and unlikely bypass the hammer. I'm going to claim that I have only one question. And it was uh you don't feel good about that, right, Styles? People trying to bypass you.
Whatever. Uh what is meant by best quality chocolate? Is that unsweetened cocoa, baking, dark milk? And overall, there doesn't seem to be that much chocolate in the pie, only two ounces of chocolate for six pies. Would you increase this to get a better chocolate flavor?
Um, and then uh there's something about very specific instructions, but I'm not gonna get into that because I didn't I didn't look at that. And no, I have not made that pie yet. Uh my wife wants me to make that pie. That's the next one uh on the list back when I get into pie making modes. But I will uh I will say this about chocolate, and I am never above quoting uh my man Monroe Boston Strauss.
Chocolate cream pie. The proper amount of chocolate is a point which I cannot definitely determine for you, due to the many brands and grades of chocolate and cocoa being used in pie work. So the amount suggested may be changed to suit your individual requirements as to flavor and color without any detriment to the finished pie. If a dark cocoa is used, less than the amount indicated will be necessary. Half cocoa and half chocolate can be used if you wish, or these can be blended in any other proportion.
The important thing to remember in connection with cocoa or chocolate is that it must be added to the milk and cooked in the mix and should never be added after it is removed from the fire. Although the latter procedure is followed by many uninformed bakers. So I did look at the recipe, and it is quite a small amount of chocolate. And normally in the like in this internet world of blah blah blah, I would say, yeah, the guy probably did a misprint or he's wrong. But this guy is so on point with his recipes that I would say it's worth going ahead and trying the recipe as he wrote it.
I would use a dark if he's subbing in cocoa, I would say he's going for basically bakers. There's enough sugar in there, so I would use a good quality unsweetened is what I would go with because I think that's probably what he was using, and that's gonna get the maximum chocolate flavor. So I would try using something unsweetened, or if you want to use something that's like 72, uh just do a back calculation on assuming that you know that the part that's not 72, i.e. 28% of it is sugar, and then remove that amount of sugar and sub and up the amount of chocolate to get the cocoa solids and butter where the recipe says, and I would try doing it uh that way and trust him once, and then as he says, you know, to paraphrase him, if you like more chocolate, add more chocolate. I'm not gonna stop you, right?
Anyone? Anyone? From Stella Brown uh via email, uh hey Nastasia Dave, uh, and etc. Ooh! John and Matt are etc.
I mean, I've been crediting us as the rest ever since you threw that out there a while ago. Well, that's just wait, which one of you has a bird? Um stop me. Sorry, I'll kill it. I love the bird, but you have it in your house?
There's a bird in the Hamptons house? What kind of bird is it? Is it a budgie? I don't know what it is. Is it dead now?
Dead now. Is it have like a nice color or is it like a or is it is it a bird in a cage in the house? No, it's not. Oh, it's just an outside bird? Yes.
Oh mute. Oh why? I don't mind the bird. I'm sure it doesn't sound good to Matt. No, yeah.
Ambiance is really nice in here right now. Also we gotta go pretty soon. We do have two. Someone, yeah, I got this one last question. Someone last night on the Zoom call, like was in some sort of like like uh forest paradise, and so like it's all there are crickets going.
And I was like to Jenna's like, are there freaking crickets here in the lower east side? We never hear crickets, and she's like, nah, it's coming over the zoom. I'm like, oh, okay. Uh so it's nice, you know, when you're in the city to hear a little bit of nature, even if it's, you know. I thought Nastasio was touring a cavern of crickets earlier.
Really? There are crickets a lot here. I recently tried the blender muddled geranium cocktail, Dave talked about the other week with my giant potted rose geranium, and it was revelatory. Well, thank you. Uh I had been wondering if you could use the leaves in a cocktail, so I was excited to try it out.
And now I'm addicted to blender muddling. It also works great with marigold leaves, and I want to try it with B balm, uh bee balm, uh aka uh monarda. I've never heard of bee bomb, but I've never heard of Monarchy. You ever heard that one, Stas? No.
Nope. Uh I'm collecting in southwest Wisconsin in the driftless region. Where's the driftless reason? Do you know about this? Any of you guys Wisconsin specialists?
No. No. Uh I'd like to use it in a cocktail for an event in October, and I'm wondering what the best way to preserve it is. Can I muddle it now and keep the liquor? I'm using gin for a month or so, or should I freeze the leaves and make it right before service?
I haven't frozen herbs before, so any pointers on that would be much appreciated as well. Thanks for the advice, Stella Brown. All right, do not make the liquor ahead of time. And like you, I have never tried freezing the stuff beforehand for the simple reason that we were working in a bar service, and there's no way that I could make sure that the leaves never thawed before they made it to before they made it into the drink. And if the herbs thaw at all before they make it into your drink, they're gonna get all nasty.
So what I would do is uh I would try freezing them and just make sure that you can keep the stuff frozen prior to service. So if you're doing them at an event, right, like I would freeze them and then keep them in zippies with uh like a little bit of dry ice in a container next to where you are so that they stay crispy frozen. But do yourself a favor and run a test beforehand. So, like um, you know, pick some pick some herbs uh and do the fastest freeze that you can do. The easiest would be, you know, a single, like try seeing whether a single layer on a sheet pan in your uh free in your freezer freezes them fast enough.
If that works, great. After they're frozen, quickly throw them into a zippy, put them back in the freezer and let them stay that way. Pull them out in a week, and if they're still good in a week, they'll be good in a month or two months. You won't be a problem, right? Um, as long as your freezer doesn't go down.
Um if that doesn't work, then you can try a more aggressive kind of freezing with like uh salt ice baths and stuff like that, or you know, if you were lucky enough, like a little bit of LN or dry ice to freeze it down uh at the beginning just to get a faster freeze rate. But I'm guessing that that will work, especially I don't know with those herbs how much uh polyphenol oxidase activity they have. So I don't know how brown they're gonna go. Uh so you might be lucky, like certain herbs can be uh frozen and then use relatively quickly with almost no deterioration. I'm looking at you possibly.
But the problem with parsley is that uh in a blender muddle drink, it tends to settle very quickly. So like if you if you blender muddle or nitrumdal parsley and you let the drink sit around for like 15 minutes, you'll get like a clearish green, and then the parsley will have settled to the bottom, which is not what you want. I don't know why some herbs do this and some herbs don't, but it's an interesting phenomenon. But I would run a test, and please, if you do run a test, please uh give us the results so that we can use uh your work to help out uh other people. Uh how's that?
We got all the questions. We actually did all the questions. Wow. What? So shows canceled forever?
Well, because we made it through all the questions, yeah. That's it, it's over. We're done. Cooking issues is over. It's a good thing.
That's like that's why I tell the kids. I tell the kids, I'm like, you know, if you ever wanted to murder me, if you ever want me to just fall over dead and your mom too, all you need to do is do what we ask you without talking back. And then that would be it. You know what I mean? Like if we just said, go walk the dogs, and they did it without saying later or blah or complaining, I will fall over dead.
You know what I mean? So it's like the same thing with the cooking issues. If I ever actually get through all the questions, I you know, I have few enough tangents that I make it through all the questions, the show's over. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. Well, it was a good run. It's a good run. I hope you guys enjoyed it while it lasted. Cooking issues.
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