This episode is brought to you by a dozen cousins. Soulfully seasoned, ready to eat beans. Learn more at AdozenCusins.com. This week on Meet and 3, it's all about screens. We're diving into the world of TV, computers, and even VR to figure out how food consumption is shifted by digital lens.
Every course talks about a different topic within the Asian American identity through a very personal lens. And the three courses that are paired with VR. In it, you're seeing a brushstroke by brushstroke recreation of the dish that you're about to eat. Most of us in the world live in urban areas. And so how much is the city already accidentally providing its resident?
And how much more could it provide if um we just made a priority? Tune into Meet and 3, HRN's weekly food news roundup wherever you listen to podcasts. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live! What you didn't get it? What's the matter?
What's the matter? I I grabbed the I grabbed the wrong knob. But it doesn't matter. Did we record it? Are we good?
That's the intro, baby. I'll do it again. Coming down that's it, man. We're coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network. I'm coming from the lower east side in New York City.
We have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez gonna dial back in in a minute. She got caught in her car. She's about to be back inside. We got uh we got our man John, your customer service representative extraordinaire, uh, live from Murray Hills. You're Murray Hill right now.
Yep, correct. Alright. Uh got uh Matt in his Rhode Island booth. How are you doing? I mean, I couldn't make it five seconds into the show without screwing up, so we're doing great.
Yeah, all right. Well, you know. Uh you remember that story I told you a long time ago about how uh I got real mad at Apple because their um their website wasn't working for like reserving uh a product that was coming out, this was years ago, and we had just had our huge snafu with our uh with our Kickstarter launch on the Sears All, and I was like, you know what? Mistakes happen. I think the same thing here.
Mistakes happen. You know what I mean? Like the one time. You're like, that's all right. Oh, it's all right.
It's it's like every once in a while you need to realize that I think everyone needs to realize that we all make mistakes, and so like while we hold ourselves to high standards, I hope, like you can't get too bent over every little thing, especially if you can't fix it. Better to get bent over the stuff you can fix than the stuff that's already happened. No use getting bent over spilled milk or spilled blood, for that matter. You know what I mean? Uh okay, and special guest, friend of the show, and also our friend in real life, Ariel Johnson, how you doing?
Good, thanks. How are you? Yeah, and where are you doing well? Where are you uh where are you coming in from here? Uh uh Green Point, Brooklyn.
Green Point, is that where you live in Greenpoint? I do live here, yeah. Are you one of those people now? Listen, so for those of you that don't hang out in New York, here's what happened. So Green Point is an area that's serviced only by the G train.
And back when, you know, I was young in the in the 90s and you know, 80s, 90s, uh, like you could basically say to yourself, if I have to take the G train, I've made a terrible life mistake. I've made a horrible life mistake if the G train. That's a terrible thing to say to her, Gabe. No, no, no, no. This is in the I's nine.
When I first moved to New York, this isn't like 2005. Like the G train or my perception of it having ridden it was that it was like very bad. Um, but but now I mean, if you're if you're willing to deal with the fact that it only comes every 10 minutes, um, it's actually I think the most reliable train in the system now. But it's also where it's because it's it's it's getting computerized, right? Didn't that one get computerized?
It's also only got like two cars on it or something like that. It's got four cars, yeah. It's a little short train. But like it's it's for the past I yeah, for the past eight years, it's been known where the hot hipsters go to meet other hot hipsters too, right? I mean, it's a good the people on it are either the old people who live in that neighborhood, which you know, are like the people that I'm used to, and then there's like you know, the the like the younger set, you know.
Well, I d I definitely live and hang out more in the uh older, not hot folks part than the hot hipster part. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like, I'm over I'm over by the warehouses. In n well, in 1997, I had a job working in a metal fabrication factory in Greenpoint. The crazy thing about Greenpoint.
Yeah, I mean there's two of those on my block. The name the name of it was SFW Metals, which was literally stood for so effing what metals. That was what it was. Excellent. And we were making like uh I was making the project I remember is I made a stainless steel medicine cabinet for an incredibly rich upper east side person, and just sitting there sanding all day, sanding metal dust into my face.
Anyways, uh so at the time I lived right by Columbia, and so for those of you that don't understand how New York City works. That's a long commute. That's a long commute, even though it's like literally like as the crow flies, five miles, it's like an hour and it was like an hour and a half, especially back in the 90s. And man, I was like, man, Greenpoint, what the hell? I mean, like, unless you were old school, like like Polish, you wanted that old school like feeling.
That for that it was great. But also, you know, much like Bushwick, where we used to record this thing, it would be like, here's a family. Oh, look, right next door, here's someone dumping oil and car paint into the ground. You're like, what? You're like, I was like, I was like, the amount of like the entire area used to be like a super fun site because you'd have hardcore industrial people, old school style, like not like new green industry.
Like I mean like literally like dumping oil into the earth. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh so that's my that's my memory.
But now it's like so fancy, like Green Point's so fancy that most of the people that I know who live in Greenpoint, like they have no reason to leave it. It's become its own mini Brooklyn. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, it is literally Brooklyn, but uh well, kind of, right? I mean, it's on the border.
And I also literally don't leave it, uh, usually now. But I mean, even pre even pre- No, no, totally, totally. Um, you can get your tattoos, you can get your artisanal breads, you can get a good kielbasa. What else do you need, really? Yeah, it's like it's like uh, you know, when I when I lived in the East Village years and years ago, and you could just like walk around and get everything you needed and never leave.
Yeah. Uh yeah, it's like that. Yeah, and this is uh yet another episode for those that don't hang out in New York City, that uh people from people from New York City, we all believe that we're somehow really worldly and that everyone else is provincial, and most of us don't leave five blocks from our house, which is a five-minute walk radius. If you plant a compass, maybe 10, you plant a compass and you draw a 10-minute walk in a circle, 95% of us stay in that circle all the time unless we're going to work. Anyway, yeah, and and then in our spare time, uh, rather than high culture and all of the uh all of the worldly things that we are supposedly involved in.
We compare microgradations of uh neighborhood, neighborhood quality from block to block. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how we do. That's how we do. Uh so originally uh you were talking to Nastasi, and you were gonna come on to promote your what was supposed to be book coming out very soon, but instead you're pushed the book off for uh a couple of months.
But you want to tell us what the book is, or you want to talk about it? Yeah, well, my my book, yes. Um it I've been I've been working on it for a while, so I may have actually plugged it here before. Um Flavorama, the unbridled science of flavor and how to get it to work for you. Uh it is it is a handbook to the science of flavor, uh with a lot of friendly diagrams and uh explanations of how molecules and plants and volatiles and the brain and ebbs and cooking work and also with some recipes to help you uh understand those things and incorporate them into your cooking to become more uh intuitive and creative.
First of all, can I just tell you what a fantastic title that is? Yo, thank you. Yo, Matt, Matt, do you have uh do you have any reverb effects there? Sadly, sadly not now. You don't have reverb?
Flavorama! It needs to be on like severe reverb, man. We could do it, we could do it in post. Yeah. Add some reverb.
I'll do it one time. I'll do it without the reverb of the Flavorama! And then what's the slug underneath? What's the slug line? Oh, the subtitle?
Yeah. Oh, the unbridled science of flavor and how to get it to work for you. What if it was like the hardcore like flavorama, like Sunday, Sunday, Sunday? For Flavorama. And then it's like the unbridled.
Like you know, you go like real, you go real droopy dog for the rest of it. It's good. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So I love the title.
I don't even care what the book has to say. I don't want to. I mean, I guess marketing is more important than content. So hell yeah. Yeah.
What's the cover look like on that thing? Well, we're we're working on that now. Um, so it's probably going to have a molecule and maybe a cool drawing. Also, she's doing all the drawings and all like watercolor stuff. It's really cool.
You crazy Ariel. I know. I love to make things extremely difficult for myself. How many drawings do you have total? And how many water how many of those are watercolors?
I think I think right now drawings. I probably need to do like a hundred more. Um and out of how many? Oh, there's gonna be about 200. Um halfway done with the drawings.
Yeah. Okay. Uh and probably like 15% or watercolor. They're all so like my I drew I do everything, I sketch with pencil, then I like to ink with either like for super fine lines, I use like a uh uh like a stadler or a um one of those like Sakura fine liners. Um but the pen I really like is a like German graffiti pen called a Molotov.
Um I think it has like car paint or something in it. Um, but it gives you like a really nice like India ink thick line, but with like fine nib control. And then to the Germans. Yeah, exactly. To to over-engineer the most perfect uh the most perfect material for any task whether that's uh wonderful gardening tools or wool clothing or uh graffiti pens um and then some some stuff I'm coloring in Photoshop and then that's more for like concepts and then for like real things like a piece of fruit I do watercolors.
Uh so um but it is the front like are you gonna like cash in on that like kind of like 50s 60s O Rama thing and like have pastel triangles on the front like those long like Chevron y like like like two sided triangle BSs you know I'm talking about oh to make to make it look like a mid-century like physics textbook yeah yeah then with like you know with like like a crazy molecule with the with the fake satellite spinning electricity that would be really fun I'll have to I'll have to like mock that up and uh but if I know you you're gonna be like but electrons don't do that. You're using you're using the boar model yeah yeah yeah yeah we like you know better than that come on man it's gotta be face space filling it's a space filling model but the space filling model doesn't fit the Ohama aerial it doesn't fit the Orama of it all yeah there's there's there's something about a uh probability distribution of an electron wave that uh is very accurate but maybe doesn't have as much visual not so orama flavorama, we're the win you get like flavorama is such a great that's not the key of Oklahoma, but that would be like that's such a great title. Flavorama. Thank you. Thank you.
I want to know anyone out there that won't sign up to buy a book called Flavorama because it also it makes it sound like it's gonna be fun. Is it gonna be fun? I am trying to make it fun. Yeah, no, it's gonna be fun. There's 200 drawings in a day.
Of course it's fun. You could buy it just as a picture book for the kids. That's how fun is gonna be. And by the way, uh you and I and uh the all of us in Booker and Dax team still have to work on that secret project. I've done some research by the way and spoken to you.
Yeah, no, I keep I keep like doing a bit of research and then having to like put out a fire and then being like, I should really send this to Dave. Like a literal fire or like uh writing a book fire. Right or no, writing a book fire, which are usually of my own creation. Um, but uh or like uh I no, and I'm also um still still having a lot of fun working on Good Eats, which also sometimes has uh, you know, uh gotta okay this model or or diagram for the blackboard because we're filming it tomorrow. But yeah, so oh you're filming uh are you filming with mask?
How's it working working? Not when I say we actually, since they film in Atlanta and I am here in New York, um, but I believe they are all wearing masks. Maybe Alton is not wearing a mask when he films. Um we'll see because the new season premieres very shortly. Uh for those of you that don't remember, Ariel is the first science officer, which sounds like a Star Trek title, but uh is in fact a title on the show, Good Eats, right?
I I am the Spock of Good Eats. This is true. Yeah, yeah. Well, don't do that Spock thing where you go into the radiation and get yourself zapped because unlike you know, we can't mind meld into the other doctor and like come back later. I don't have that superior Vulcan physiology.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look, you know, whatever. Uh so uh I have a question in for you actually so why don't we hit that one first this one's on the Twitter from Chef Joanna. I'd love to hear um Ariel speak about how cooking should be included in by the way what do you think Ariel about steam versus STEM as an acronym let me finish the question first in steam education uh it's uh thermodynamics slash organic chemistry slash biology. I'm trying to get schools to adopt cooking science into their curriculum and it's a struggle that's surprisingly difficult to overcome.
Well I I I mean I don't know whether what she's talking about is the fact that it's hard to put it into one department because usually classes are broken up by department and as she says cooking is so multidisciplinary from a science perspective. That's true and and so many so many fields like whether it's in the humanities or in the sciences like kind of look down on their colleagues who do the food version of that thing. Yeah. It's just like an institutionalized but I mean I mean how how would you do it though? Like if it like it's got to be under a department right I guess not in a high school but in a college it has to be under a department isn't that part of the problem that it that is part of the problem.
No it's super it's like really difficult to um yeah to find a place where you can really like explore all of it because you know if you're if you're focusing or if you like find a home in a chemistry department then you're gonna like shortchange the like biology um if you're in a physics department you might not get all the like ac really important cultural and evolutionary stuff. And then if if you're a like uh you know humanities department then you can miss out on the science aspects um even if you cover like the anthropology really well so that's difficult I mean I guess at like the at the pre-college level you tend to have just like a science department not a like not just like chemistry so that should be a bit easier um yeah I mean I don't know like it's there's a lot of really strong test cases that show that uh food and cooking are like really good for teaching science and getting young people engaged in science. I mean Dave you've been doing a Harvard course for like 10 years or more at this point. Yeah. Um so if it's good enough for Harvard it should be good enough for uh for various other administrators I think.
Ah I don't know about that. Um and so for those of you that don't uh aren't involved in education or haven't been for a long time uh STEM is I forget what the acronym stands for but it's like something something science technology engineering and mathematics. Alright so that was STEM and then sometime when my kids were like in elementary school they changed it from STEM to STEM. Yeah they added the A for Bird. The hell is that but then okay so we've acknowledged that S T E and M are all important although there's a uh well okay by giving it an acronym it's kind of like NASA if you give it an acronym it um becomes important.
Uh although I've often seen the argument and tend to agree with it that uh when people say STEM they mean T E. So like in terms of like putting putting young people into it into a job track that pays well and that is actually gets invested in that's really technology science and mathematics like still really get the short shrift. Well the math people though have all those hedge fund weasels paying for it. Not that you guys are weasels I'm just saying this is true. This is true.
But then I mean that when math becomes that applied isn't that like kind of a form of tech rather than pure mathematics. Ooh strong strong argument Ariel I appreciate it. Joanna channel said that she was focusing on grade school to high school and I think in response to the arts she was saying it's looked at like home ec, not like science. Right, right, right, totally um I mean which is interest I mean like uh uh if you look at like the history of home ec and food science like actually a lot of uh you know technical and scientific work happened in the in the purview of home economics departments um but you know back it back in like the the the through the 60s uh it was like well if women are doing it's hop doing it it's home ecum so there's this interesting uh historical reasoning behind why we like write off the the sort of exploration that happens in in what we call home economics um that has historically not just been about like homemaking. Right.
But that's a question more for a historian than for a scientist who fakes being uh knowing things about history. Yeah, right. Like that, like you didn't have to deal with that in your uh gra in your doctoral thesis uh on uh getters and whatnot but the um like wait it's interesting like I'm sure you've read uh and the cracklings were superb and like oh yeah I have uh I I I have a um yeah first edition copy of that actually yeah and the the first like however many paragraphs of anything he writes is apologizing for writing about food. Right, right. You know what I mean?
Yeah. It's kind of funny. I'm to be it is funny um that like apologia of it. But so okay but like go going into practicalities I would I mean I would say if you're trying to incorporate food into a excuse me um take that out in post uh into a more like technically scientific focused curriculum. I mean you know school districts school districts have like different things that that are like fashionable that they're trying to emphasize whether that's like ecology or like uh you know uh green type stuff um and I think fortunately the thing about food is that it touches so many things that it's kind of easy to look into either the like stated or unstated agenda of of a school board or of a school's like mission and like find a food lesson that can those topics uh so I would that's what if I had to do that that's what I would try to do is um I mean like I'm getting to the point where I'm old enough that like I you know know how to make an impassioned defense of things and people will tend that doesn't always make stuff get done um so so finding the most practical and easy for other people way to uh incorporate some ideas is often I find the key to actually getting something to happen.
I'm gonna choose some of these questions here from our listeners uh that I think you might have something to say about. Oh okay. Uh all right. So by the way if you're on our chat room, Matt, how do they get into the chat room if they're actually listening to I guess if they're listening to us they can get on the chat room because it means they're on the website already. Uh yes I let me I'll find the link.
Give me two seconds. Yeah yeah so you know chat your questions in and Matt can read them to Ariel while we're going but here we go Solomon's writing in from San Antonio haven't been back to San Antonio in a long time. Uh I'm creating a syrup uh that works for lattes and sipping chocolate from craft untempered single origin ecuadorian craft small batch chocolate that's a mouthful is it not yeah uh so the first method is one pound of chocolate one liter of almond milk uh with sugar as a binder uh never made sipping chocolate before a craft chocolate what are some things to try to experiment with so like have you ever had an experiment using the kind of um untempered kind of gritty I mean I've just I've never used it other than buying the you know the abuela like Mexican chocolate blanks and making hot chocolate with those right do you have any experience with this any anything to um I mean, I I have I have had and have picked up some um like Mayer Domo uh drinking chocolate from Oaxaca that's kind of like that. Although that tends to have like almonds in it too. Um is is there like an issue that he's having or is it just a creative just like creative?
What what are some things to experiment with? Question. Yeah. Um so almond milk is interesting. Um is it is the I I guess the idea maybe that it's trying to be vegan.
Well, it would be vegan since there's nothing in here that is not vegan. That would be vegan. I just wonder if you might need some like protein to help. I mean, like normally like milk protein would help uh like bind it together and keep it emulsified. Um well the the the whereas the native proteins in the almond milk don't have any any of the effected casein would.
You need to add some garbage to it to get it to I mean almond milk doesn't have a lot of protein in it. Right. It's mostly fat. So how do they stabilize it? What do they add to it?
Uh uh well a lot of places add like guar gum or um uh carrageenin. Remember, if you add guar, make sure to get the flavor-free guar from tape gums. Flavor free and t one thousand flavor. Dude, have you if you've ever taken I have, don't, and just started tasting your hydrocolloid powders to see what what you're kind of adding to your product. Yo, regular guar tastes like a pile of beans.
I mean, it's a great name, but it is not a good tasting hydrocolloid in its normal um because think about this. Everyone's like, oh, it's made in a lab. No, guar is ground up seeds. Yeah. You know what I mean?
And so like, you know, the ones that aren't like kind of purified well, it tastes like ground up seeds, and you do not want the whole wheat version of guar. Uh yeah, sometimes sometimes more processing is better. Oh, hell yeah. You just want the thickness on it. You don't want it to get all nasty.
Uh, but carrageenin, I guess it's a non-acidic environment. Almost everyone, from an industrial standpoint, ever since Jelan's patent ran out from CP Celco, they're moving away from the carrageenins in their um stabilized milk stuff. You know what I mean? Oh, and into gelans. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Those are like microbial, right? Or yes. I don't remember what, I don't remember what uh is the organism of choice, but yeah, it's uh yeah, it's microbial, and CP Calco's patent ran out, I think a couple of years ago. Oh, it used to be like so. For those of you that don't know, CP Celco is the giant European-based pectin concern, but they also have a bunch of patents, for instance, on gel-an, which so gel-an is kind of cool because there's two main kinds of gel an and they can be mixed back and forth.
And the low acyl gelan, this is confusing. The low acyl gel-an is brittle uh and um and short, and the and the high acyl gel-an is real stretchy like a rubber band. So you can get these kind of gelatin style textures by mixing the two kinds of uh gel-an, and they have other cool properties like the low acyl forms of very good fluid gel, which we can talk about if anyone cares. And um it's also uh uh heat stable, so you can light it on fire, it doesn't melt out. So a lot of times when people were making what's called water desserts or water gels for hot climates, they would use agar, right?
Um, but the other great thing about gel an is it's very low in use percentages, so much, much less than you'd use for most other hydrocolloids. Carrageenin had a very low in-use uh ratio for dairy because it reacted extremely synergistically with dairy. Uh so with Jel-An, they were charging a lot more. They weren't trying to replace carrageenin, they were trying to replace other uh hydrocolloids, and they were charging a boat ton more for it, but they were like, but it's in-use cost is so low. And typically, like the lower the amount of a hydrocolloid you can use for a given textural effect, the less flavor masking there was.
So one of Jell Ann's big things was you would get really, really good flavor release, you know, at the same in-use cost. But now that their patent has run out, everyone's like crap on carrageenin because a bunch of health people are worried about these uh what you don't remember what they're called, the the the deck degraded carrageenin. There's a word for the degraded carrageenin things. Oliosaccharides, maybe? I know, but they're yeah, but there's some kind of like especially kappa, there's some kind of degraded carrageenin that people say causes some kind of gut issue.
And so, like the vast majority of people have moved away from using carrageenin in things like chocolate milk or things like yogurts or uh cream stabilization and have moved on to gel-an, but whatever. I digress. Yeah. So uh you could use some gel an uh Solomon. But uh but do they mean like flavor stuff?
I mean, like the classic, like like I mean, the classic drinking chocolate would have been non-dairy anyway. I don't know what the nut of choice would have been in Mexico at the time because almonds came from over here, but it's true. Yeah, I'm not sure what the like filberts perhaps there were in the Americas. I'm not sure what the uh the nut situation was. I should look it up though.
Yeah. But I wonder if you're making if you're making a syrup with chocolate, it sounds like he's using like uh like a chocolate bar. Yeah. Or is it like a cocoa powder? Out of that bar, because there's no such thing as there's no such thing as like if you're doing like a minimally processed that they're not even tempering it, the eye, like they're probably just grinding it on, you know, like a grinder to like a you ever talk to Rick Bayliss about his chocolate grinder?
I have not had the pleasure. So, you know, he was saying uh he I don't know what it's what it's called, but like the rotary style grinder, like like we use like the Santha or the wet grinder that we all buy, like the the uh Idley and Dosa grinders, like the two stone whites that we all get from India. Uh he had a similar one, you know, specifically for chocolate, like a melee for chocolate, but he was saying that you know, everyone who thinks from a European standpoint, they overprocess it because they want that texture, yeah, which he doesn't care about, but also they actually want those volatiles to go away. Whereas he says, you know, in his opinion, like, you know, part of the awesome thing about some of these kind of drinking chocolates are those volatiles that other people try to get to go away. Oh yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you get like much more like botanical and microbial flavors and maybe a little bit less on the like uh like heat and processing derived ones here. Yeah. So you can actually get more terroir from grinding it less. Yeah. I mean, an interesting, like so something I've something actually have actually been writing about recently is um is uh uh uh making all different types of things into all different types of like plant material into like milks.
So like almond milk, other grain milks, sort of making that into orjot. Um so I wonder if maybe instead of approaching this as like making a syrup with the like minimally ground, minimally processed and ground chocolate almond milk, why not make a milk out of the chocolate and some almonds um so like grind together like with water and do some like high blending and then straining so then rather rather than um rather than nibs yeah start with start with i mean start with nibs or start with like the partially ground chocolate um don't add almond milk but like blend blend everything together as if you're making cacao milk um and then kind of take it into a syrup from there that sounds cool and by the way uh for syrups for that I would definitely look into a gum arabic slash uh like small amount of Xanthan thickened um stabilizing system such as Ticoloid 210 or Ticaloid 310s available from modernspantry.com or you can uh I think we talked about it a couple of weeks ago what the thing was oh Ariel on the Twitter I got another question in for you okay oh uh we just got one in the chat too oh yeah what do you want first? Well go for it all right chat's in uh oh by the way it is mixler.com slash heritage radio network uh really go to any of the show notes and the link is in the show notes um so digital audio tape asks for fermenting produce e.g. sauerkraut pickles peppers for hot sauce is sanitation slash sterilization of jars slash lids airlocks actually important or is it just busy work? My feeling is that lacto fermentation with enough salt and acid production should be fine enough to make things safe and successful our ancestors just had clay pots and they did fine.
Or that we just had well, and so a lot of people use um pits in the ground uh for for good and safe fermentation. Um so I I personally don't sanitize things when I'm lactofermunting, but I do give them like a good wash in hot water with soap. Uh but it's like a star sand as you would use for brewing beer. So not like an SLS based detergent. Yeah.
Yeah, I just I mean, sometimes I'll just like run it through the dishwasher, uh, you know, on hot and just use it right out of the dishwasher. Wow. So that's an actual goodie because everyone used to make fun of of uh dishwasher cooking. Remember when that was a yeah. No, I don't run the cabbage through the dishwasher, but I run the jars through the dishwasher.
Yeah. Wait, what was dishwasher cooking? It was a thing. Imagine, imagine sous vide, but inside the dishwasher because it's hot. Yeah, and then everyone all at once was like, this doesn't work.
Stop. You know what I mean? Anything not safe. Alright. So although I once I once I recently like had a wooden handled spatula fall down on the heating element of my uh dishwasher, and all the all the stuff came out slightly smoked.
So maybe that's a new in a delicious way with water spoon. Was it like an olive wood spoon or just like no, it's just regular, I mean it's it's regularly wood, so it just smelled like you know, vaguely pleasant burning. But uh no one's ever called my aroma vaguely pleasant. This episode is brought to you by a dozen cousins. Soulfully seasoned, ready to eat beans.
A dozen cousins aims to bring families delicious and easy to prepare food inspired by traditional black and Latino recipes. From their Cuban black beans made with onion, garlic, and bell peppers to their Mexican cowboy beans made with green chilies and jalapenos. All the beans from a dozen cousins use easy to recognize ingredients like beans, vegetables, and nutrient-dense avocado oil while avoiding GMOs and artificial flavors. Learn more at a dozencousins.com. Okay, so uh Wowie Zawi writes in, friend of the show, uh hey uh to you, Ariel.
Uh I've been dabbling with lactoferments and always get pretty good results, but I'm wondering if there's a way to boost the acidity. I find that even after a long ferment, the pickles just aren't quite tangy enough. Should I cheat with lactic acid? I mean, you can. Um other things you could do are okay.
So so lactic acid comes directly from sugar and fermentation. So then what you'd want to make more lactic acid is to have the like starting concentration of sugar be higher. Um, I suppose you could add some sugar, maybe a little like grape must or apple juice, which I've tried kind of specifically for this, um, for this thing. I was it was for making more flavored brines. Um, and it can work.
If you add too much sugar, you run the risk of it getting quite yeasty. I mean, the other thing is if you um if you slightly wilt some of your vegetables before you before you use them, um, some of the water evaporates away, and that'll concentrate the sugars. Uh so that's actually like an important part of making uh taquan pickles. Those are the uh Daikon and rice bran Japanese uh pickles um that you'll often often get. The the first step is to sort of hang up a bunch of daikons and let them partially win before salting and uh adding the rice brand to them to to brine and ferment.
So that like makes them make slightly less brine and also concentrates the natural sugars, which makes it more sour. Speaking of rice brand, I have a whole bunch of wheat bran in my freezer that I'm saving up to do wheat brand pickles with. Oh, to do like uh uh wheat wheat nucleo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the thing is is that like, I mean, come on, man.
I mean, like we live in the real world here. Like everyone is like, if you don't aerate it all the time, oh it's never gonna stir it every day. I know, come on, man. Like, there's gotta be some way to like put it in the fridge and halt it for a week and just do it once a week. There's got to be.
It works great. You know what I mean? My sourdough works great. And I, you know, don't follow any of those, whatever. I don't know.
What do you think? Have you had any experience with that stuff? Like of not like of trying to make a low maintenance one of those. Well, I mean, this is the thing is I I mean, I love nuka pickles. Um, I am also not the most organized person.
So I've had more of them just kind of die on me uh than I've had be successful. Um I did not think of putting them in the fridge, but that is a uh I mean that's a great idea. And there's there are actually a lot of a lot of fermentations that now like people when they're experimenting will tend to do them at room temperature or even heat them up. Um, but like a lot of a lot of kimchi and and things like that really benefit from like starting at room temperature and then basically fermenting entirely in the fridge. Uh I was in I was in Seoul in December and um there's this restaurant slash culinary studio called Angium um where they do a lot of like pri well like primary and secondary research on like regional recipes for like cuisine of the nobility.
Anyway, so it's like stuff that large households would be making. Yeah and some of some of the fermentations they um you know they'll have like an oyster kimchi that's been in the fridge for two years and it's like amazing. I bet I would like to do you could actually get some improvement of flavor from this slow cold fermentation. That's the thing I well I know I'll run a test. The problem is is that I don't have that much rice brand pickling.
I mean I did it once at the FCI uh you know and then somebody pitched it because they it was in a s that's the problem with the FCI students like what is this it smells weird you know what I mean? Well and and and you uh at a lot of restaurants you have the classic thing of like one one cook will start it out and then uh it doesn't get uh tang at all that there's like a a a trail of like dead nuka pickles. Yeah yeah and then also like no one really talks about like exactly like how to know how much to add back in. Whatever. It's a complicated thing.
I'll work on it. Um staying on the fermentation train for a minute uh B zoo Chocolate wrote in uh to you and just mentioned that they're doing a deep dive into cacao fermentation this week. Awesome. And they're gonna tune into what you're saying so why don't you say something uh give wise words well are the are they making or they're researching cacao? Well, probably both.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm I mean um it's like a i I I've looked into this some too. It's like a super well, most like most uninoculated fermentations is a super crazy thing. Um you get like a lot of like really really interesting wild yeasts, a lot of like acetic bacteria doing stuff at the same time as like lactic acid bacteria.
Um I mean almost think of it like a sourdough, but on but on fruit. Uh although have having said that, I think you could if you're fermenting cacao fruits at home, if you have access to fresh cacao fruits, I'm very jealous. That's very cool. Um but yeah, if you're getting into like the beginnings of the fermentation, what it could be really cool, um, would be experimenting with like a mix of wild fermented and like inoculated uh cacao. Um something that might work quite well if you can get your hands on it would be a pishia yeast.
That's like P I C H I A. Um those tend to be very good at I believe I know they make very fruity flavors. I believe it is releasing volatile sulfur compounds, although someone might correct me, that might be incorrect. Um, but you get tend to get like quite tropical aromas and things that that use those yeasts. Cool.
You want you up for another fermentation question? Oh sure. We also we have another one in the chat that's like an anti-fermentation question. First in. Pablo Pavlovsky wrote in, uh, for you, can I make a garum-like sauce by mixing chunks of meat with kiwi papaya and pineapple?
Man, it's gonna beat that stuff up um yeah pineapple in the fridge for a long time. Would that work? I want the proteases to destroy the meat into a sauce, but I don't want to die or kill other people. Um I mean, you should definitely try that experiment, but I can't give you any guarantee that it would either taste good or be safe. Well uh how do those enzymes how does like uh how do those particular enzymes work at the high salt content you need to prevent well that's that yeah that's what I'm thinking about because he didn't mention salt so I'm not sure if he's going to be including yeah Pablo the answer obviously is salt you can't do that stuff without salt no matter what anyone else tells you.
Yeah it's uh he he actually had written in it was the same question in the chat but he said should I add salt to prevent the fermentation of the fruits in this one. Well I mean the salt will prevent some of the fermentation of the fruits the salt is also more so that like very dangerous bacteria don't take over the fermentation and possibly kill you. Do you know what's really although most I think mo most garums and uh actually do have a little bit of fermentation that happens mostly from like very salt tolerant yeasts. So that would be uh of course now I am blanking on the actual name of that yeast. Oh Tetragenococcus uh that's can you say that again I love that Tetragenococcus uh Halophilus I think that sounds like like a girlfriend someone had in Brooklyn in the 70s remember when we went out with Tetragenococcus tolerant uh yeasts and some bacteria that will actually do some fermenting.
Although, I mean, no, I mean, what if you pre-fermented the fruit so there was some acidity and then added it to the meat with salt? That could do some interesting stuff. Yeah. Do you know what tastes delicious? Lacto fermented pineapple is delicious.
Kiwi, I don't know. Papaya? Whoa. The idea of a fermented papaya makes me want to like jump off of a bridge. Banana's really good.
Ooh, have I had that? Lacto fermented banana. I've had fermented banana sauces. Ooh. Where was that from?
Was it Filipino? I forget. I've had fermented banana sauces, but very nice. But ferment straight up like fermented pineapple chunks. I've done it by mistake.
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, sometimes it's real bad, and sometimes it's real good. You know what I mean? Uh so I would inoculate that. Inoculate that sucker uh and see what's going on.
Uh all right, a non-fermenting question that uh I will say what I think, and then you guys say what you think. Casey writes in, I want to make a quote, pretzel crouton. Is it safe to cut any regular bread, dip it in a lye bath one to 20, and then bake? I asked because uh this means eating uh eating more lyee directly than traditional pretzel. Looking at sliced bread on a slicer, then cutting circles as a garnish, thanks.
Love the show, Mr. Blog. I don't look the lie my take on this is that the lye is on a surface, right? You're gonna get like instant deep penetration of the stuff into the thing, and it's gonna be entirely that soapy thing. So, like I would say that it's gonna be A, it's gonna be unpleasant.
Uh, and B, it's gonna be too much. And also remember that when you're doing a lie dip in a pretzel, there's still moisture in the product. You're slicing the bread, you've already uh flashed off a lot of the moisture, and so um it's gonna go from brown to black real fast uh once you add all that extra alkaline um stuff. But I don't know. What do you what do you think, Ariel?
Well, two things I'm thinking right off the bat is yeah, to avoid this like uh lie sponge effect, maybe use sodium carbonate instead of lye. So like a much weaker uh source of alkali. Um I mean the other thing is like maybe don't dip or spread it if you uh put some in a spray bottle and lightly misted the cubes, that might give you the effect that you wanted without oversaturating it. Yeah, but still I think starting from something that's already dry, it's just you're gonna have to keep a real eagle eye on that thing. You know what I mean?
Yeah, that is true. I mean, even like like when you have a bread that's par dry that has a lot of you ever made croutons from something that has sugar in it and it's like, oh no! Right, like brioche or something, and it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. It goes from blonde to burnt like that.
You know what I mean? So it's real, it's really problematic. You know, here's another thing, like crouton people. Like, you don't need to go to the oven right away. You can just let that sucker dry out for a little while first.
You know what I mean? So that you're not trying to get all of the moisture out of the inside. Uh good. Most people they jack their temperature too high when they're doing croutons because they want those things to get out of the oven fast. Right.
And so they they it's a no-win situation. You really want a relatively slow, slow dry, the same way that they would dry a real pretzel in the real life, which is down around 200 Fahrenheit in that range. You know what I mean? Just enough to a little higher, enough to blast off all the water. It needs to be above the point where the water wants to leave over time, but um not to where it starts browning hardcore.
You know what I'm saying? Yes. Yeah. Yeah yeah um all right Josh Seaburg writes saying Joshua sorry uh hello cooking issues a friend of mine has a desire to build a tandoor but has no yard to do so and has pitched a plan to build one in my backyard yeah yeah of course they're like hey yeah uh I'm looking for advice on the best ways to do this uh and anything to be sure to do or include in the process thanks very much Josh okay well as far as I know uh and you know I'm happy to be corrected the only you should look you get to choose one of these two if you've never cooked in a Tandoor before right then you can either spend a lot of time building a tandoor and then hoping that it has the right characteristics right or you can get a tandoor from someone for not that much money and spend your time learning how to cook in a tandoor right uh but you we you know if you're only gonna do it a couple of times then you know I I'm just trying to like you you want to spend the majority of your time where you want it to be do you want to build a tandoor because what you want to do is build a tandoor or do you want to cook in a tandoor right so just go there. Uh I would try to get a copy of uh the only known Tandor book to me Tandoor cooking book by uh Ranjit Rai Tandor he's now dead the book may be out of print at this point it's the only one so it's not and what's interesting about it is it gives a an overview of actually constructing tandoors uh but the way that they're really done so this to dovetail the classic way on the internet is the same way that uh Nastasi and I did when we remember that film with Anthony Bourdain?
Yeah. We went to the hardware store. This is what everyone does. You go to the hardware store, you buy two flower pots, and then you cut whole and flower pots are made of terracotta, and then you cut two holes, you cut a hole in the bottom to allow you to stoke it, and then you cut the top the bottom off of one and you turn it upside down, and you have two inverted flower pots. And then, you know, if you're fancy Dan, like we were, you you mud it out with refractory cement, right?
And then you put it inside of a trash can, and then you well, you pour some vermiculite on the bottom of the trash can, and then you pour a bunch of vermiculate around it, and there you have you know your one afternoon tandoor. So that tandoor you can make it for like 50, 60 bucks. It's the trash can, the two flower pots and a bag of vermiculate, and you know, wear a mask when you're grinding off the uh the top of the flower pot. But my experience is uh even in that one day, of course, because we overfired it because it's us, right? But we cracked that flower pot.
Now it didn't fall apart instantly, but I wouldn't say that that tandoor would have lasted a long time, right, Stas? Yeah, no. No. No. Didn't you get one?
Or you were calling around, right? I was calling around. Yeah, I'm not gonna get into that. Nastassi is trying to get me to go to a yeah, so like so like I called around, no one was selling tandoors, so I had to I had to build one. So uh, and in fact, we weren't even interested in tandoors per se, but it turns out that that structure, that like kind of underground y or enclosed oven, is kind of an efficient way and was used all over uh Middle East, uh, all the way, you know, all the way over to China, in fact.
And so it was kind of a ubiquitous thing that nowadays we only really associate with um, you know, from the the Punjab down uh on uh in in Indian subcontinent. Anyways, uh actually that's not true. I guess everyone now is nowadays is familiar with uh the Tandoor style breads from uh the north and the west of China, right? Everyone's familiar with those things nowadays, but they weren't I don't know, they weren't when we were doing this. So point being that if you just want to do something in a day and do it once, sure, go do that.
Uh but in the real life, uh the way that they're made is there's fibers in the clay, they're made, they're molded. You have to cure it in order to make it non in order to get the right surface to actually cook uh a naan on, if that's what you're interested in, they have to be seasoned typically with things like like uh spinach leaves and mustard oil and yogurt, and you fire it slowly over a couple of times to bake out any water so that it doesn't crack. Uh, you know, so there's there's all that to go. I would say that of the ones I looked up on the internet this morning, seeing what people are talking about now, uh, I would make sure that it has a bottom opening, not just vent holes like a Weber, but like an actual opening that you can uh pull ashes out while it's uh working and adjust the amount of air that's coming in and out. Um, and make sure there's a nice curved inside surface so that there's area for you to put the breads in, but also for skewers to hang and spend some time thinking about your skewer game.
I never got very good with my skewer game, and a ske a good skewer game is super important because when you have your your your product and you're putting it in and then it slides down and drops into your coals and ignites, you feel like a jerk. In fact, you are a jerk, right? You should have had a better skewer game. Uh, the other issue is so how does one develop that technique? You just gotta get good at it.
You don't put too much weight on it, you get the right kind of skewers with the right width so that it has the right amount of grab. Like, like uh most people they're using like the the really slick stainless skewers, which are good for horizontal kind of grilling. Like what was the name of that stuff that Mark used to use? Those those little mini Italian or Croatian horizontal skewer stuff. Um I don't remember.
But you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so there's like they're Croatian, right? Aren't they Croatian things?
Yeah. So like those things, they're flat skewers and the grill has little triangle-shaped things so that you could put it in any position just by rotating it around the triangles. Anyway, so you get like four different positions with these skewers. Anyway, uh the s smoother your skewer is, the more it's gonna kind of drop off. Like, so like I would skewer the stuff on.
Sometimes I would stick something on the end of it to stop it from sliding off. And then you gotta hang it and let it dry out a little bit, and you wanna organize your skewering such that when the if it's meat, when the meat seizes, it seizes around the skewer so that it doesn't want to come off. Uh that's kind of the that's you know, the trick. But the other big problem with tandoors is the intense amount of radiant heat coming off the bottom, because that's where the coals are. So, especially in a smaller tandoor, which was what you're gonna do.
In a big, big, big tandoor, you can have a lot of stuff hanging in and you can keep it relatively far away from the heat on the bottom, and you're not gonna get a lot of scorching on the bottom. But if not, um try to wad up a ball of aluminum foil and just jam it over the end, and that'll shield it from the direct line of sight of the coals, which will which will burn your burn your stuff off. Um anyway, but the real tandoors, you can also, if you want to do this in a real so my friend who who first got me interested in in getting a tandoor, Bob Dada, who's a professor over at Harvard. Ariel, you know Bob? I don't think I do.
Anyway, he's uh he's uh yeah, he's a professor over at Harvard. What does he do? Med school. Uh he has a lab, he has a lab and in like he he does like, he does actually like uh one of his projects is rat olfaction, which is kind of oh very cool. Yeah.
Um but he also has this thing where he's he developed a system to analyze the movements of rats uh via a computer so you don't need to have a uh a lab tech sitting there counting every movement that the rat makes when you're trying to do it so they can they can get a lot more data a lot more accurately and a lot uh more quickly using this kind of like um um visual recognition machine learning thing he's he's doing a lot of cool stuff the he you know he'll win all the big prizes one day anyway uh so he was like when his grandma came over um from they were from the north uh when when they of India when they when they came over to the US the first thing that grandma did was dig a hole in the ground, like like figure out whether the clay was good, you know, made the Tandoor thing, put it in the ground and build it. I mean, if you want to be a super badass, that's what you do. You know what I mean? Of course, I don't want to be a super badass. So like I think the the minimum badassery is to just you can buy just the liner.
Uh and the nice thing about professional Tandoor liners is is that they they have uh uh either grass or horse hair or something similar in in the clay to hold it together during its initial firing, and this kind of prevents it from like instantly kind of cracking or causing problems. All right, tandors, love them. Uh and the name of that author uh uh of the book on Tandoor, which there might be a new one, please someone tell me what there is. Ranjit Rai, R-A-N-J-I-T, R A I. Uh all right, uh okay.
So we gotta go pretty shortly here. Oh, geez, Louise. Let me see whether I have any more questions on the Twitter for Ariel because the rest of this stuff I can probably answer on my own later. Um I think that's it. I think we got the specific questions for you.
Um great. Well, I love to uh clear out a to do list. Yeah, well, no, I this morning, because I didn't even know because by the way, no one told me Ariel is gonna be on. I mean, uh, you're always first of all, Ariel, always welcome on, obviously. No one told me squat.
We like like literally Nastasia and John and I at 11 30 last night, Eastern time, we're on the phone with our one of the factories that we're working with in China, and these two knuckleheads are having a conversation with themselves on text about you coming on the show tomorrow. They don't tell me. They don't tell me. Well, we've gotta we've gotta keep you on your toes, right, Dave? I guess.
I guess. Um all right, so so John, which one of the four remaining questions that are in should I answer right now on the way out? Um let's see. I wish we could get to the barbecue sauce one, but that's long. Well, why does Ariel have something to say about the barbecue sauce one?
I haven't read that one yet. All right, well, so basically, uh Chuck Ramsey at Pulaski Heights Barbecue in Atlanta sent in this question. He I think it's last four times he's made this barbecue sauce. It's set in a very weird way once he refrigerated it. Uh he says it's very pectinous, if that's a word.
And he's been making this recipe uh for years and years and years and thousands of times, and it's never been an issue except for these last four times. And he's always weighed everything to the gram, so he's ruling out user error and everything else is basically like spices and a little vinegar. So he thinks it's the ketchup and is wondering if it's maybe fermenting or if there's an ex excess heat in the atmosphere that's doing something. Um I think that's the best way to sum up that one. By the way, he's using Heinz, America's favorite ketchup.
Uh so the ingredients, uh, Ariel are Heinz ketchup, yellow mustard, but doesn't specify seed or a prepared mustard, right? Because there's a lot of gelling agents and mustard seeds. But if it's yellow mustard, is that like French's? Well, that's what I'm saying, but is it yellow mustard seed? Like the white mustard seed?
Or is it or is it yellow prepared mustard? Yeah, like French's. Because like those prepared mustards don't have a lot of just in the order of which he's listing everything. It sounds like it's wet and then the dries. Yeah.
Molasses, white vinegar, ancho chili powder, kosher salt, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, and all spice. Not cooked, blended together, and it's always stored at room temperature. I kept it at home in the fridge for a number of years. And it's only the last three batches that are causing problems. So it's like setting like a jelly.
But the weird thing is is you wouldn't think that Heinz would change their you wouldn't think that Heinz would change their recipe. Like to include more pectin or something. Or to add a thickener so that they could put less tomato in. Right. Like if I was Heinz, what I would do is I would reduce the amount of tomato solids, because that stuff's expensive, and then I would add a thickener to it to make it seem like it had the same amount of tomato solids.
That's what I would do if I was gonna be a jerk. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, but I don't think, I mean, like I I don't think Heinz, I think I would have heard someone would have said, Hey Dave, America's favorite ketchup is just drop the ball.
Right. I mean, because it would be on the label then. At least in the ingredients list, there'd be a change. Yeah, but I don't see anything else that would cause a kind of a reaction. So Well, so I mean, it makes so saying that it's pectinous makes me wonder if it is actually the pectin.
Um, and to form to form a gel properly, like like in jam, pectin, pectin, like can't really do it on its own. It needs both sugar and acid to do that. So I wonder if um if if like any other ingredient has become more sugary or more acidic that could throw off the like physical gelling of whatever pectin is coming from the tomatoes. Yeah. It's also like, wait, so it thickens and then it gets grainy as if the dry spices are blooming, followed by a separation with a dark liquid component.
And in a few days it develops an acetone off flavor, which I assume is from yeast over fermentation. So I mean, look, I mean, I guess it's possible that there's some sort of and like pectin can all of a sudden act weird, like if the acid suddenly changes or or like you say the solid suddenly changes, they can set and a misset pectin is a nasty thing, but graininess also sounds like uh there's a lot of hydrocolloid interactions that can be grainy and disgusting, like agar sometimes interacts with um uh agar, I forget what the interaction is it, agar gel and gets real grainy. But there's there are there are some like weird hydrocolloid interactions where two different polysaccharides don't play nice. And I wonder whether if any of the ingredients you've added have changed their makeup, yeah, or not. You know?
Uh I mean, does this sound or like is have you ever heard of something like this? Like, like it's also very acidic already. So I would doubt that a slight shift in acidity based on fermentation would cause this to happen, right? Yeah, I mean, it's it's sound. What about the acetone off flavor?
Yeah, that that I'm thinking about too. That's a um although like you don't really see a lot of acetone like flavors from either uh yeast or lactic acid bacteria. You can get some from uh acetic bacteria, but then uh then you'd have to have some alcohol fermenting. Um but like aren't like acetony things from plants usually like enzymatic breakdown things, not like yeast breakdown stuff, like like like bananas, like when they overripe, they get acetony, right? Well, I mean, okay, so it depends on if it's like literally literally acetony or I mean some of the like like banana overripe flavors could just be coming from like excessively high concentrations of natural esters, um, the smaller ones of which can have a kind of chemical edge at higher concentrations, and then at lower concentrations they just smell like banana.
Yeah. What do you do you think maybe so you could have like some acetone? I mean, you do produce acetone like from yeast. Um it could actually be more of an ethyl acetate smell, and that you can get either from like uh wild yeasts or from like incomplete fermentation into vinegar. Yeah, I mean, like so.
Then he says that he he made a batch and he kept one container in the walk-in in the you know low 30s and one out, and the one that was out got grainy, and the one in the fridge thickened but isn't grainy yet. So something is happening here. Yeah, and you're getting like a phase separation. Yeah, well, yeah. Well, as soon as you f as soon as as soon as something breaks and flocks, you're gonna get hard phase separation.
You're gonna get a lot of l liquid coming out. Right, right. Like it, like it as soon as something, first of all, like like that, so like you know, what we used to call that in the hydrochyloid biz is synoresis. So exactly. Yeah, the harder a gel sets typically, and some things are more likely to synerase than others, but like a weekly set kind of thyxotropic pectin mix, which is what ketchup is.
It's like a bunch of like, you know, as soon as you as soon as you make that harder and it starts squeezing on the on the water harder, you're gonna get phase separation. And if things start actually agglomerating, you'll get graininess. You'll get like flocculation and graininess. So something like that has to be happening. Um I wonder whether the salt level has changed.
I mean, I just don't know. Something has changed. If it's if it's something that's living, do this, Chuck. See what you think, Ariel. Put some of this stuff in a zippy the day you make it and throw it into water at like, you know, 75 degrees Celsius, and then like just like pasteurize it, right?
Pasteurize it, kill all the stuff in it. There's I don't think there's any many spore-forming things that are gonna be causing this. And see whether or not that thing goes through the butt. Don't take it to a high enough temperature that you're gonna functionalize pectin. So maybe even in the mid to high sixties, right?
Uh Celsius. Just pasteurize it, kill any yeast, kill any lactic acid bacteria that's in it, and see whether it goes through the same process. That'll let you know whether it's something alive that's doing it or whether one of your ingredients changed. Do you think that's a a decent decent first step? Yeah, definitely.
I mean, you could also do a third control where you just put it in a baggie and leave it out on the counter and see if it produces any gas. Uh good point. Because that would also be a good check for fermentation. And speaking of bags, on the way out, I want to know uh for next week if anyone has any uh any uh experience with these things. You heard of these stasher bags, Ariel?
Those are like the silicone ones? They're silicone, and I saw one in the supermarket, and they're overpriced, right? Right. Uh not but I bought one uh for a couple of reasons. One, it's a woman-known business, so I appreciated that.
And two, and I love like you know, uh, you know, in the in the food tech thing, you definitely want to support that. Uh, but two, it's made of silicone, which guess what that means, people? You can use it as a retort bag. So we so you you can literally so what I'm gonna do, I have it, I don't know if you can hear it. I'm gonna try to do a pressure cooker comfy in it that's actually retorted and safe to store in the vacuum.
Oh, okay. What do you think? Very cool. Yeah, I'll report back. Please, yeah.
Yeah. So I'm trying to figure out a way to get a good air seal on it because it doesn't have one of those one-way valves on it. You know what I'm saying? Right, right. But uh, I don't know.
I if you guys like a syringe, maybe or uh I tried use my old school. My my zippy technique is I I have a bunch of metal straws, thin ones. Right, right. And I zip it all the way over to the edge, and then I and then pull the straw out of the stuff. That's that's what I do.
Yeah, yeah. Very high-tech people. This is how the this is how the actual high tech people do it with like straws and ziploc bags. It's like I could break out the food saver, or I could just put a and honestly, people, people, when you're packing uh baked goods in your freezer. So like what you should do, especially in the time of corona, if you do make a baked good, right?
Slice it and then zippy it, uh, separate it with layers of freezer paper so they don't freeze together. But like that straw, your your lungs are terrible vacuum pumps. So you can't really even get like a full like three quarters of a PSI uh under pressure, right? Really, really, really, really weak vacuum pumps. The the so the good news though is that's just enough to get the bag to make a nice kind of conforming thing around your uh uh your muffin or whatever, but not enough to crush it.
So if you're putting in a food saver, which has as far as crappy as that vacuum pump is, it's a lot better than your lungs, right? And so like those things have a tendency to crush baked goods, whereas straw with a zippy is the best way to get the most air out of a Ziploc bag for uh baked goods to be put in your freezer because you really don't want a lot of air rattling around uh the bag because that's when you get a lot of um you get a lot of uh crystals growing on it, sublimation and crystals growing back on it, and you get more opportunity for freezer burn. You know what I mean? Hell yeah. Well, Ariel, uh, when is the book now slated to come out?
Um early 2022, it looks like 2022? I have to wait a whole nother freaky year. 2022. This is gonna come out in late fall 2021. So it's not it's not a big postponement.
Um look, look, look, look, you know, like, you know, look, uh I'm not one to talk. Nastasia, here's where you insert Nastasia making fun of me. Oh, have you have yes, have you ever turned in a book on time? Well, I've only turned in one and it was horribly late. But this one is even more horribly later.
If that's uh what so what's yours coming out, or is that a bad question to ask? I mean, I don't know. I gotta hand it in first, but like the what's interesting is is that having talked to a couple other people who are coming out with books now, is like some of them are going through this incredibly short cycle. So, like Yeah, yeah, yeah. That happens.
Yeah, so it's like, but that used to be just for like, you know, books about politics and and and um and whatever, you know what I mean? Like, but like you know, topical events. But now I'm seeing books that you know I know were handed in like only six months ago coming out now. And so I'm like, wow, how the heck are they doing that? You know, like how because it used to be a full year, right?
You know what I mean? After it was handed in for it to come out, so I don't know. So I I thought maybe you had more insight into that. That's why I was surprised. Well, look, I can wait.
I can wait. But hopefully you'll let me see the galleys. By the way, oh, I mean, absolutely, but likewise, I'd love to I'd love to have some eyes on yours. Oh, uh well, I'll I'll send you stuff as it goes. I'll send you stuff as it goes.
But uh, people make friends with authors so that you can get to see that their galleys, right? But here's the problem a lot of places are moving into only digital galleys now. Yeah. With Corona. Yeah.
But but but here here's the issue. So if you are friends with authors, and if you're a creative person in a field like this, the hardest thing, and I've actually not read certain things, is because if someone in a book gives you knowledge, right? It's hard not to use that knowledge. And you can't credit the book because it's not out yet. Right, right.
You know, especially like things like recipes or cooking ideas or things like this. It's like it can be difficult, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's why I don't like it's why I don't like NDAs. I mean, I do I've signed them with you before, but like not that I want we made you sign an NDA. Oh, for the Searsolve back in the day.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that I don't like any as like exploit ideas, but like the information's gonna be in my brain, and I can't really like control like what what else it makes me think of. Yeah. Not like for not for like exploitation of money, since I barely ever make any money. Um, but just like like literally my brain's gonna my brain's gonna use it for something.
Yeah, it's happened to me multiple times. It really is, it really is a thing. Uh it really, really, really uh is a thing. Oh, I'll leave you guys with this. So I'm not gonna talk about the politics of it, because of course we don't do that, but I learned a phrase yesterday uh that was in the news.
Free chicken. Free chicken. Wait, and I was like, that well, you weren't tuning into the news? I was not tuning in. Remember, remember Vindman?
Yes. Lieutenant Colonel Vinman. So he says that in the military, when you get something for free that you didn't even ask for, but you kind of want, you just call it free chicken. How awesome a phrase is that? Free chicken.
I'm just gonna use that for everything now. It's like, oh, it's because I normally I'm like, oh, gravy. Who would say no to some free chicken? No one says, well, you know, vegetarians, but like sure, sure, but you know, but like, it's like usually I say, hey, it's gravy, you know what I mean? But somehow free chicken is more like, cause the thing, because gravy, you still need to have something else.
No one's gonna go to the game. Eat it with a spoon. Yeah, yeah. No, no, like that's the thing. You're like, oh, that gravy.
You're like, wait, what the hell does that even mean? Like free chicken, you could do something with. You know what I mean? Anyway. Well, Ariel, thanks for being on the show.
Thanks for having me. It's always uh it's always a highlight. Uh we'll look forward to your input on this next season of uh of Goody. And uh let us know uh more about the book and we'll talk soon. Cooking issues.
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