This episode brought to you by Appeal. Appeal is a plant-based protective layer that helps produce last up to twice as long. Learn more at Appeal.com. Hello and welcome to Cookie Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday, although I think this is the this is the last one, maybe before the new year.
I don't know, we'll see. This is in fact the Christmas episode. I'm your host, Dave. I'm here in the lower east side of Manhattan. We got Nastasia the Hammer Lopez at her undisclosed uh Southern California uh location.
How are you doing? Good. Yeah. We have uh John, uh Intrepid Customer Service Representative Backup in Lyme. Is it old Lime or Lyme?
Is there really a difference? Or is there only really one lime? I think there is a difference, but we are in Lime proper. Lime proper, not old Lime. No.
You think old Lime is one of those kind of like post editions where old Lime is actually newer, but they call it old Lime, and they add like an extra D and an E, like oldie Limey. I I I don't know. I hadn't thought about it, but you could be right. Yeah, in Mystic Connecticut, the real mystic is mystic, and then they have something called oldy mystic y villagey with like all kinds of like stupid shoppies. Do you guys hate by the way okay?
Got Matt in Rhode Island. How you doing? Good. I can't wait to hear the end of that question. Yeah.
And and I want to bring him in now just because anytime I get to hear his voice is a pleasure. Uh Christmas tradition. We have on uh the show today, friend of the show. Phil Bravo! How are you doing, Phil?
Good mor. Morning, Dave. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm doing well.
And uh, as you know, um Phil Bravo is the closest living human being to Thurl Ravencroft, aka uh Tony the Tiger. He was uh also one of the voices in uh Spike Jones's novelty band back in the 40s and 50s, and was most importantly for the purposes of today's show, not the narrator, who is Boris Karloff, also a great voice, uh, but the singer of the original Grinch. Yeah, yeah. Uh so I have to go through that every year in case people haven't listened before, but that's that's and uh Nastasia. How long have you been pestering Phil about doing the the Grinch?
Doing the Grinch? Yeah. Um, I don't know. I think you did it the first time like ten years ago, Phil, at the gaff karaoke, right? Or something?
It was at the gaff, 40 48th and 9th Christmas karaoke. Non-denominational holiday karaoke. Now, the that bar, which you guys used to like to go to, the gaff is named after the hook that you stick through a fish's face, right? Don't know. I thought it was like when you make a mistake.
Right? Oh, like a gaff. I think that that's I think that's two Fs and an E. Oh, really? Uh huh.
I think uh I mean it I think we just we just assumed based on our behavior. Well, also that that bar is near what used to be a film neighborhood. That's why the film center building and everything's over there. Maybe it was maybe that's where gaffers went. True.
Yeah, that would be weird if gaffers had their own bars. What are gaffers? What are gaffers doing that? Everyone gets their own bar. Everyone gets their own bar.
Why can't gaffers have they tape things to things? Gaff tape. They tape what to what, Dave? They they tape stuff to stuff. You know what I mean?
It's like stuff to make it. Give me an example. It's like, hey, moron, that light's gonna fall and kill the talent. Get the gaffer. Yeah.
You know, like that. So if gaffers gap, then what does the best boy do? I mean, first of all, are they still called the best boy? Or do they have a like a gender neutral best boy? I think that is just like um that's like the highest position you can have without having a producer credit, right?
Like best boy. Like I mean, I don't know. I'm not in the business. Someone needs to tell me, but it's like I thought, like, you know, if you if the coffee that you get is really, really good, you get like some like third tier producer credit. So, like, just below that is like is like best whatever, right?
I mean, Anastasia you hang out with that. I thought it was most favored dog on set. It's like you're the best boy. Can you imagine if they just had a bunch of dogs chilling and then the dog starts barking and gnawing on stuff? Yeah, and then at the end of the production, they nominate one to have been best boy.
It makes sense. Uh it does. What if they what if instead of a dog it was a rabbit and the rabbit continuously chewed through all of the cables, so they have to keep going through rabbits because they would electrocute themselves on the regular? That seems like that would hold up production quite a bit. Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, it's it's all about tradition. If the tradition is having a rabbit chewing through your cables, why do rabbits chew through electrical cables? Or were you guys not aware that this was a thing? I was just waiting for the punchline. No, this is a real thing.
It's not a setup. This is real, this is real. This is real. Oh, speaking of speaking of uh though of punchline y things, Nastasia. I have found a fact that I did not know that I think you might actually enjoy not being sarcastic.
Okay. Are you aware that the and so everyone who knows knows that Nastasio Lopez is works with cooks, but is actually a fan of comedians, right? So not a fan of cooks, but a fan of comedians, but works in the cooking field, right? Okay. Yeah.
That's fair, correct? Cooks and comedians, same patron saint. Ooh What does that mean? What do you mean? Aren't you aren't you at least part Catholic?
Patron saint. You know what a patron saint is. Yeah, it's real. Yeah. Saint Lawrence, get this.
Here's why. Saint Lawrence is the patron saint of both cooks and comedians because of one wise crack he made while being martyred. So he's being well, so the legend goes. Who knows how it actually went down, right? So there's these seven deacons, uh, and they you know, they he was the last one to get martyred.
And the uh, you know, the whoever it was that was, you know, persecuting him, some Roman weasel, uh, was persecuting him, and said, You gotta bring us all of the riches of the church, all of it. Bring it all, because we're gonna confiscate all of this crap. And so I'm on the I'm on the radio show books. And so then what happens is is he he is instead he gives all the stuff away to the poor, brings the poor folks to the thing. He's like, here's the riches of the church, it's the poor people.
Why? That's not why he's the thing, though. Here's what happens the the Romans are so mad that they order him to be cooked over a fire, right? And here's where it comes. So they they spread out a big, you know, gridiron, uh, I you know, a big you know, grate, and they they fire up the coals or whatever they had back in the day, and they throw them on the on the on the coals, and before he dies, he goes, I'm done on this side, turn me over, and that was it.
Patron saint of comedians and cooks. That's good. Also, uh if it's if it's Lawrence, I like it seems appropriate that it's patron saint Larry. Yeah, Larry. Larry for comedians.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Larry for yeah, yeah. But can you imagine like being like, I'm gonna get this one last zinger in? I'm done on this side. Turn me over.
Boom boom boom. If only they had this stuff, you know? The drums. If only they had drum kits back in the day. Yeah.
Anyways. I thought you would enjoy that. Did you enjoy that? That's good. And I picture Larry David as that saint.
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Uh, we could totally do that. We gotta make you a beside.
I'm sure they have a Larry David patron saint somewhere. Well, we have a meat glue question later if we get to it, so we could talk about getting a Larry David like uh mask, stuffing it with meat, and making an actual meat Larry like Saint Larry David that we could grill on one side and then turn over. What do you think? I don't know about that. Do you remember how disturbed people were when uh we were making meat uh Easter bunnies and deep frying them, Nastasia?
I don't think I was with you then. Really? Yeah. We took we took the Easter bunny chocolate molds that they had at the FCI, and then we uh like meat glued because we want it to be nice and firm. We meat glue and packed meat into the uh things, and then low temptum, and then we had these meat bunnies, and then we would deep fry the meat bunnies, and for some reason people found it disturbing.
I don't think that's that bad. Me neither. This doesn't make any sense. If you were down to cook some rabbit anyway, what difference does it make it? Oh, here's another rabbit meat.
Yeah. Here's another thing, guys. Since I since we don't have a uh uh a you know, a bar anymore, another thing we were gonna do last year, we didn't get it in time, but this year, you know, we we didn't do it is we bought some silicone Santa Claus molds, right? And then we packed, we we took our uh our chicken liver mousse, right, and packed them into the Santa mo molds, chilled them, and then had Santa like Santa chicken liver things. They were pretty good.
The problem is is that they get like if you have to chill them too much, they get a nasty kind of bloom when they come out. If you let them sit around too long, obviously they oxidize because it's chicken liver moose. But the molded Santa uh moose, I thought was a nice was a nice thing, you know? Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Um wait, can I jump can I jump the line with a cooking question? Why not? Okay. I was cooking skate for the first time a few weeks ago.
Uh Wait, whoa, whoa. You've never cooked skate before. I had never cooked skate before. Okay, how did you how have you lived this long as a pescatarian? And just curious, how have you lived this long as a pescatarian from Rhode Island and not cook skate?
Well, first of all, I spent all I spent many a year as a vegan, so that's part of it. All right. Yeah. Okay, okay. Uh anyway, okay, so and my wife and I, Kate, we're sitting down at a meal, and uh all of a sudden she's like, Are your lips tingling?
I'm like, Yes, they are. And then we look this up, and apparently skate sometimes uh secretes like urea. Is any of this ringing a bell? Should one be wording all of these? Is it a flaw?
Like what how do we feel about it? No, no, so listen, skate is a cartilaginous fish in the way that sharks are, right? So all of those uh cartilaginous fishes use you know certain kinds of you know, th those kinds of compounds for buoyancy, some more than others, buoyancy changes, and it's just it's just they do that, whereas the the bony fishes typically do not, right? Uh also some squid are very high in kind of unpleasant, you know, uh things. That's why like certain squid have to be treated differently than other squid, right?
That said, the average um skate that you buy in a market does not have uh you know high amounts of the of those kind of compounds. Whereas some sharks, if you buy them, they do. You ever, John, you ever buy a shark and had it be real, like you know, real stinky, real anyway. Uh the skates that you buy in a market probably uh don't, and that's also probably not causing your allergic uh tingly reaction. There is a relatively well-known uh allergy some people have to skate.
Uh in fact, uh, you know, a famous chef, my brother-in-law, I won't call him out, but his name rhymes with by lean mufrain. He is allergic to uh skate, and so as a consequence, because he didn't want to be allergic to everything, he would fabricate it as much as possible to try to like beat the allergy out of himself. Um so it's it's real, but you know, I wouldn't be concerned, and I don't think it's because of residual urea. Could be wrong, but I don't think I am. But here's the thing.
What's awesome about skate? Did you notice the best thing about skate, Matt? Uh no. What is it? It is that it is one of the very few fishes, and John, fill fill, you know, you know what I'm gonna say.
What is amazing about skate? I lost John. Where is he? I'm here. I don't I don't know about the meat on both sides of the bones.
No, it's that you can beat the ever-loving crap out of it. You can hammer it, and it still tastes good. Yeah, that's true. It's the most forgiving of all fishes. Of all fishes created in on this earth, skate is the most forgiving.
You can just do anything to it. I definitely I read something. So after we, you know, we started to go down this rabbit hole of like, well, why is this tingling sensation happening? And I definitely read things like, oh, you the more you cook skate, the more like tender it gets and the better and whatever. I was like, what?
And that's a that's a little over. That's a little bit much. I try so then I throw a piece on and was like, you know, let's okay, let's test this. And it was not better having cooked for longer. It was no, no, no.
However, it is it is the most forgiving, I think, uh, fish. The weirdest fish, uh cartilaginous fish uh I've ever cooked, is the fresh version. I believe the technical the genus is Harpadon, and it's the um it's the fish that is used to make the uh dried specialty Bombay duck. And it is compl it when you cook it, the entire interior of the fish completely liquefies like a gelatin. It's we the weirdest fish I've ever cooked.
So I used to deep fry them whole and eat them. I stopped because uh if you let them, they're great when they're hot, but if you let them cool off, they are vile. They are disgusting. And as everybody knows, you can't trust your family to eat when you tell them to. They just don't do it.
So I couldn't have them just sitting around turning vile. But those things were great. Yeah. Um so I'm sorry I couldn't answer your question other than uh if you're both tingling and it pro i i actually, you know what? Now that I'm rethinking, if both of you were tingling, it's maybe something wrong with that particular or something in that particular batch of skate, because what are the odds that both of you have the same reaction low, right?
Yes. Have any of you other guys heard of uh this reaction with skate? No. No. Maybe it's some sort of like, you know, Rhode Island is currently like, you know, a weird poisonous land.
Maybe maybe it's Rhode Island. Phil, you only eat tilapia, right? That's what I was gonna say. Uh what I was mainly gonna say is I just know the reaction to tilapia, which is you cook tilapia and then Nastasia complains for about 37 hours. Uh Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil.
Phil. Rightly so. Listen, it's not like it's not like Nastasia's distaste for tilapia is not known to you. And it's not like it's unreasonable. It is a Philpfish.
It it is it is the it is the Kenny G of fish. Now, Dave, Dave, it's Christmas Eve. You gotta get through seven fishes. I got it. One's gotta be tilapia.
I'm not the fish don't grow on trees here, man. Uh well, apparently they do in North Carolina. Indisputably true. Fish do not grow on. Nastasia, am I allowed to am I allowed to say this or no?
No. No. I'm not allowed to say this? All right. Uh okay, I will not.
Uh now listen. First of all, uh you could do you could do like uh a salt cod, a great appetizer, right? You could do uh my you know you get some salt cod. I think the best thing to do with with that is to, you know, like do like a brand style, or like uh, you know, like whi whip it up with uh whip it up just with with oil and makes a fantastic like cod dip. That's one fish right there, no tilapia, right?
Like what else what are you sh you're in California, don't they have fish over there? He's in Portland. He decided to spread COVID up there because there wasn't enough cases. Just went coughing up the western seaboard. So how long is your beard now?
Have you gone full lumberjack? Oh, yeah, no, it's more Z Z Z top at this point. Oh, nice, nice, nice. You're not allowed to go Z Z top unless you buy the guitar strap that allows you to flip your guitar uh 360 degrees in the middle while you're while you're playing legs. I didn't realize that was a good there was a guitar strap that didn't allow for that.
That's let me ask oh, oh I was about to lose it on you, and like you're like, I didn't know you why go back after that. What a convention. This is Phil, what a save. Once you've had tilapia, why go back? Anyway, I would basically say any other fish would be a good call.
Like I I would prefer if someone served me eight pounds of escalar and I spent the rest of the night on the toilet pooping out the wax, then um Wow. Booker, I'm on the radio here. No, no, no. Booker Booker's colour color commentary is welcome. Yeah.
I just escalar is a delicious fish, right? But it contains waxes that are, shall we say, indigestible, like the olestra of fish. And so, you know, it can have some results on the way out, is all I'm saying. The the main thing is uh when you're trying to, you know, create a a real holiday event, you run you want the full out Franca Stanza coming out of Nastasia's mouth. So you make tilapia, you don't necessarily take the bones out of the salmon.
You like, you know. This is what I don't like about D Vane the shrimp, just let it go. This is what this is this is what I don't like about the greater Nastasia universe, like Marvel and DC universe. Is this is this like friends? Like, like I'm okay with messing with each other, but you guys mess with each other in ways that are like they just make your life worse.
Everybody's life is worse. Like the classic like Nastasia universe thing is is like, ooh, I'm gonna make something to give you gastrointestinal distress. It's also gonna give me gastrointestinal distress, but it's worth it because I get to see you suffer. You gotta commit to the job. But that's what I'm saying.
Like, like, I mean, I don't know. It's like it's like this culture of cutting off your nose despite your face. I just don't get it. That's what our our friendship is all based on, I think. Right, Phil?
Yes, mutual spite. Yeah. Did you mean in some sort of like misanthropes camp? The health kitchen. That's pretty much it.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's it's true. We're just for they should have uh done you guys for that instead of uh Jessica Jones and freaking the Flash or Dash or whatever his name is uh Daredevil, that's it. You know. Um listen, before we get into some should I rip some questions and then we go let or should we do the the Phil and the and the charity call out, the end of the year charity call out first.
I told Phil he could get off at 15 at 9 15, so I know it's Nastasia of your schedule, Phil. I don't know. Nastasia, remember this radio show takes place in the Eastern time zone. Uh yes. This Nastasia's also that kind of person who's like, if she's in another time zone, she's what I heard everything's.
Exactly. Yeah. Uh Dave, I will do it. I have a food question, Dave. Oh.
Okay. Right. I have I have one. This is uh so I was Scotch, uh Scotch eggs. So I want to delicious.
I want to make scotch eggs, but this is a good thing. Don't use tilapia, Phil. Don't use tilapia eggs. That's the thing. I was gonna wrap them in tilapia and sausage stuffing.
Um so if you sue vie the eggs and get like if you like do it uh like a ramen egg scotch egg instead of like the really hard boiled. Yep. Every time I do this, I like uh, you know, I'm trying to peel the egg and it's like I destroy I destroy like seventy-three eggs on the way to one Scotch egg. So what's my yeah, well then you haven't actually done it with a circulator. You've tried to imitate a circulator.
Any look, the the the super crack out method that is used with a immersion circulator, right? The problem with those is that they're so soft that they're hard to stuff, right? So you cook those at 62, right? Or if you want a little thicker, 62 and a half, you um you let you can let them cool, whatever, you crack them out, then you take them through boiling water to firm up the white on the outside. The advantage of that technique versus traditional, honestly, is that there's less white.
And everybody knows that in a scotch egg, it's really like you got your sausage and then some sort of thing that's holding the yolk together on the inside, right? So like I think that the reducing the white ratio is a huge win of doing an actual low temperature egg for a scotch egg. But um what you're doing you can't if you're going to do what you want to do and you wanna peel it traditionally, I would actually say put them into boiling water, simmering, right? Because you don't want 'em to rattle around and get busted. I would put them into very hot water because the the if you start from cold water, the colder the water you start with with an egg, the harder it is to peel.
There's been study after study of this that it's hard to peel eggs that were started from cold. So you want to go in uh super hot, right? And then um you want to take them out before the yolk sets, so you have to time it relatively accurately. Put them in ice water to cool them down quickly so that you don't continue to cook through. Uh then you should have an egg whose white is hard enough to peel accurately.
All right. I'll give this a try this afternoon. I want to say one thing. The worst friend thing that we did during the holidays is when Phil bravo showed up late to my holiday party in my apartment, because he used to live below me and Grace. And he was supposed to have eggnog as uh as a starter drink for everyone.
But he just he came an hour late and he had hadn't even made the eggnog, hadn't even cracked the eggs. So what happened, Phil? Um, all right. So the way that this went down, Dave, is that I spent approximately two hours cracking uh eggs and like getting things prepped. Nastasia came.
This is like this is this story is flipped around. She came downstairs into our apartment. Well, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. It took you two hours to crack eggs. Nah, you know, it's a figurative two hours.
It was uh it was a good amount of time. I cracked like 47 eggs or something, whatever 18 times three is, Dave. You're the scientist. All right, so uh I crack all these eggs. They're sitting in the house.
18 times three is 47. What do you want? Crack? Exactly. Uh this is why I'm a terrible cook.
Uh but I I leave the eggs in the sink because it's like, you know, it's a hell's kitchen, tiny sink. Everything is tiny. Nastasia comes barreling into the apartment, goes like take angry, turns on the turns on the the water into the eggs, is like this is all dirty. Uh and then it took another two hours to make said eggnog. This isn't a great story, Nastasia.
The setup here is uh I was doing what I was supposed to do. Listen, this Phil Phil ruining everything. I'm not taking any sides here, but I'll tell you what, like all of us use the sink for messy work, so we have stuff that we're gonna keep in the sink. And when people whenever anyone approaches me, and Phil, you should learn this. Whenever anyone gets near you when you're working in the sink, you gotta do this.
Oh yeah, but the I didn't know Nastasia long enough yet. So now when Nastasia comes near me, anyone in any circumstance. Yeah, but when Nastasia comes back to the case, any circumstance. It's just Phil, anyone! Jesus comes back from the dead, floats through your window, goes near the sink.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! Don't you listen, Jesus? Anyone. Anyone. The Pope, like, whatever, Elton John, like whoever comes in, like, you tell them not to touch the sink because it is entirely reasonable for someone to turn on the sink.
Because you know why? It's a sink, but also it's entirely reasonable for you to be working in the sink, and so you have to make that clear. Nastasia, do you agree with me or disagree with me? Yeah, but I was just angry. Yeah, she this was.
This was my apartment, and she wasn't doing anything in the sink. I think she literally just like spite. It's like it's an instinct. Yeah, the spite just came up, like, you know, it welded up through her. Merry Christmas.
Yeah. Uh so by the way, by the way, Nastasia, uh, have you watched Rudolph this year? No, I haven't. You have because you have kids, but I have not. You gotta get on that Rudolph.
Gotta do that. You're gonna say something else. Uh what? Yeah, I know. I will.
We've watched uh we've watched all the ranking all the rankin' bass uh stuff. Nice. Um but like my kids are old enough to not really need it anymore. It's just a family thing at this point. Cute.
Yeah. Are you a fan of Are you a fan of Elf? Or is that like, you know, is that you like the homage? Do you not? Well they're fair enough.
All right. I just might it's my favorite thing of the holiday season is by buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mr. Norwal.
Yeah. My favorite, uh like my favorite in elf is uh I know him. You know what I mean? When when the when these like Santa's coming here tomorrow, he's like he freaks out. I didn't realize how funny because I had rewatched it for the first time in many years.
The the little person scene is with uh with Dinklage? Yeah. Where he's crazy doesn't call me an elf one more time, and then he does the wave. Yes. Does the wave and then he does the run flying running?
Yes, so good. And and Will Farrell's holding out like he remember when the raccoon hits uh Will Farrell, he tries to give the you need a hug, Mr. Raccoon, and the raccoon flies at him. Oh god. That's so good.
Uh was it the other? Oh, uh the the one that we use in in our family all the time is uh you smell like beef and cheese. Yeah, you don't smell like sand, you smell like beef and cheese. I've I feel like at random times of the year, Nastasia just yells at Dave, you sit on a throne of lies. Yeah, yeah, right.
Well, that's just that's not because of elf, though, that's just the case. Um Dave, can you talk about the the show that we watched where we were horrified? We watched which one would that be? Oh, which which one? The Ed Asner thing.
You and I, our text, I have a screenshot of them. It is so funny. You and I were horrified. Horrified. But it's also a good cause.
Really good. They're doing a uh they're doing a screen, uh, they're doing a um uh a re a read through, a table read, right? Of uh It's a Wonderful Life. And how has to say, here's the thing. For those of you that don't know, uh I don't watch it anymore because I got uh saturated with It's a Wonderful Life because my crazy uncle Larry used to come over to the house at Christmas time because then we would all you know be at the same house at Christmas time, and he would find whatever TNT marathon was, and he would keep It's a Wonderful Life on an endless loop.
And less loop. And this is before we, you know, we we didn't own it. It was just it was oh, it was crazy. And so uh I'm saturated. But uh It's a Wonderful Life is a Christmas thing with uh Jimmy Stewart, and so Jimmy Stewart is the main character, and so they in instead of Jimmy Stewart, they got Pete Davidson.
Now, I like Pete Davidson, Nastasi likes Pete Davidson. Really? Yeah, he did a really good job, Matt. Okay, okay, all right. Okay.
Jimmy Stewart, well known, like old style, like literally a bomber pilot in World War II, like, like the exact I cannot imagine Jimmy Stewart getting baked. I cannot imagine Jimmy Stewart even acting like someone who is getting baked. He like like Pete Davidson and Jimmy Stewart are the exact opposites of each other. And so I think a lot of people reacted negatively to the idea of Pete Davidson doing this table read, but I thought he did a good job. Yeah.
Especially this. Like you know how like uh in a table read, like you're not doing like the necessarily the full acting thing because you're just reading it, you know, ostensibly for the first time. But sometimes, whenever Pete had to get angry, he went full Staten Island on people, and that was real, right, Stas? Yeah, that was good. Go get your mother!
I was like, whoa, geez, whoa, Pete, I'm feeling that one, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, anyway. Uh so, but they had some technical difficulties, and uh, your boy Ed Asner, the Santa, the real Santa from Elf, not the beef and cheese Santa. He's about 800 million years old, right, Stas?
Yes. Yes. And so he was sitting in this He played Old Man Potter. He played Old Man Potter. So he was sitting in this chair, and every time they would cut to him, he would have a different blanket on, but he wasn't moving.
Like, so I think people were just swapping out his blanket, and he had a big Kermit the Frog colored mug of tea, and then he would just, as it was going, fall asleep. In the mid in the middle of the day, and then they would wake him up, he'd be like, he flip through the pages, do his line. But he's a perfect potter because you know he's like the master of curmudgeon. And Vanessa Williams was the narrator. She did a great job.
Uh her and her brother, who I didn't really know beforehand. And then as they cut out, they forgot to cut Ed Asner's mic immediately when they cut, and he does the classic old man. Oh, is our narrator again? And then they cut out, boom. That was the end.
It's for a good cause, though. It's for uh the Ed Asner Center, which supports um uh people who are on the autism spectrum, which obviously is caused dear to my heart. And this leads us into the charity portion of the uh episode, Nastasia. What's going on? I thought we were doing Phil singing first.
What does it matter? Okay, let me get the email. I don't have the email. Oh, Phil Phil's gotta go teach recorder. He can't stay on long.
Is Phil still on? Yes. Oh, Phil's on. Okay. I'm I'm like, again, I'm sitting by the uh the like in the basement, uh like by the home alone furnace, so I'm trying to mute just in case it's like.
Alright, so while while Nastasia is getting that stuff together, can you hum your favorite uh recorder version of uh Lady Greensleeves? Lady Greensle. I can't even hear green sleeves in my head right now. Oh I see. That's the and uh yeah, yeah, go.
But it's like the doo-doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo doo doo doo doo. There you go. Merry Christmas, dude. It's not supposed to be that it's it's if it's not supposed to be that low, it's like supposed to be like you know, idiots with panpipes and stuff running around. What did you bring Phil Bravo on for his false?
Yeah, I got I I got one range, man. Uh speaking of Falsetto, there's a new B, there's a new BG's uh what's it called um documentary out that I'm sure Nastasia's gonna wish to see because I haven't watched Eastern, yeah. Yeah, she's a fan. Uh okay, ready? So we in our newsletter we had asked for people to send us our charities to call out on the air uh for people to give at the end of the year, and we have some.
So from Brady Vickers. He or she said uh that Southern Smoke is a great charity. I he's sure it's already on our list uh since we worked. It is a great charity. We've worked for them before.
Yeah, Chang just won a million dollars for them on the Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The nice thing about that charity is that um you know the people it's like a direct it's a direct give. Like uh the story were you there with me that night or were you did you make it or were you I know you you came but you might have been you were late. I don't know if you heard his story where like they this uh line cook yeah yeah this line cook got uh it hit right by a car or something like that and he was in the ICU and like the he they didn't have enough insurance to pay for the bills and so you know basically I think they were gonna pull the plug on the guy and the mom heard about Southern Smoke and called Southern Smoke and they were like, Yeah, and they paid his med bills and he's alive today. So like that's the kind of thing they can do, like direct action for to help actual individual humans in the hospitality industry.
So they're good. Right, Sasha. And then the next two are a result of the story that we posted on our newsletter about how you and I made 30,000 cookies for the troops and nobody wanted them. So I think people thought we were doing that again this year. And uh uh uh John, what's French for all hell no?
Yeah, it's more absolutely not, but yeah. Um but if people are baking cookies and want to give them uh there from Julie Snarski, our old friend at David Michaels. Oh nice. Yeah, she said that uh there's a company in Boardman, Ohio called Buttermade Bakery. Um they ship palace cookies to soldiers around the world.
Uh she also works for an organiz or an organization called Caring for Friends. Um and they're in Northeast Philadelphia by David Michael, and uh they help people uh get meals that need meals. So there's that if you're on that side of the world. And then there's also another place, Mercer Street Friends in Trenton, New Jersey. And then some Robert from SoCal said he lives in San Diego and he's been to existing conditions.
Yeah, and and if you work with Nastasia, she'll take a bite out of it first and then hand it to you. It's not true. Okay. All right. No, she didn't take a bite of any of our cookies, but this is a well-known Nastasia Lopez trick, which we won't talk about now.
We'll talk about it later. If someone is curious, we can talk about this famous trick later, but not today. Yeah. Um, nice. Yeah.
Nice. Uh, and so um I would be remiss. Well, we're talking about direct action charities. I mean, obviously, whatever, I won't get it. I'm not gonna get it.
Which one are we gonna say? I'm gonna say MoFed. What? Well, I think okay. I think well, this is more like charity for charity charity.
Okay, you know what I mean. Uh people that need things type thing. All right, yeah. Uh speaking of people that need things, before Phil Bravo, I'm gonna talk about a little little Christmas miracle that Booker and Dax could use. Get this people.
So uh listeners of the show or people who have gone on Amazon and tried to purchase it. We've gotten a lot of emails recently. Hey, why can't I buy a seasonal? Here's the answer: the answer is, and we've spoken about this before, that uh Amazon, you know, because someone someone didn't follow the instructions and didn't understand that when you season a Searsol, you have to burn off the binder in the insulation. It says so right on the package.
It's a well-known thing. Uh there it is. Uh and so, but because this person complained, Amazon now is asking us for quote unquote certification from a laboratory that is quote unquote certified. Here's the funny part. Here's what we need our Christmas miracle.
If anyone out there can hear my voice and understands what I'm saying, right? Amazon just wants it to be certified. But when we told them that we have spent before we ever came out with the Sears all, that we spent months trying to find any sort of standard for what we're doing and came up with zero because there are literally no standards for it, right? And and to be a standard, it has to be a standard that was written by a body like UL, like uh the uh NFPA national fire, you know, provided. But one of these bodies needs to write a standard that then laboratories will um do, right?
And so we told Amazon there is no standard. And they were like, How about this standard? Uh UL 147, which is a standard for torches. And we're like, well, that standard doesn't apply because we're not making the torch. And they were like, you're right, that doesn't apply, but you need to find something.
But here's the thing labs won't certify things unless there is a standard, and they won't just, for instance, like I could say to me, I could say, hey, listen, the Sears All is actually a plush toy. Can you just certify it that it's uh safe as a plush toy? And right, but they won't do that. Like labs don't play that game because they don't want to lose their their standing. Be like, listen, and there's no standards for th for inert hunks of metal.
Like there's no standard for a ladle, right? Um, other than you could get NSF for a ladle, but we can't get an SF for uh a ladle is dangerous because I could bash your head out with it. Oh, and have wanted to many times. But my point is that like, is it that that there's literally no standard? So we like uh a friend of ours was like, why don't you try to write a standard?
But then so I wrote a standard uh, you know, about like how to check to make sure that this inert hunk of metal wouldn't catch on fire, which of course it cannot, right? And then uh, but the labs are like this is not a regular standard, we won't do it. So we've been to like uh I think four labs in Shenzhen and like one in Hong Kong, and no one could because here's the thing labs are worried about their name, right? And they don't want to put a certification mark on a product if it's not a standard that is recognized. And we're like, we don't need a certification mark on on the product, we just need to send a piece of paper on your letter head to Amazon saying literally that you are a lab and you have looked at it.
It's so meaningless, and this is why you guys can't buy a Searsol, because the decision of the judges is arbitrary, but also fine. Oh uh, I've noticed that your plot that's not in stock right now. Maybe you should do something because people want to buy it. We're like, That was right, that was from Amazon. Amazon told us we should put more cerezols in stock because we don't have any, yet they're holding us back from putting it any in stock because they literally removed the search term from the thing and only put up the knockoffs.
It's so crazy. Like they didn't kill the knockoffs, which like aren't made to the same standards and frankly probably aren't safe because they don't care about things like balance and whether or not they're gonna fall over. I'm an interject, straight up not safe. What people say about them, you know, that they emit green, yellowish gases coming off of them, you know, not only in our knockoff and other knockoffs. I've seen like black metal dust coming out of them.
Like all the knockoffs are garbage. They are not worth the money. Yeah, well, and and they they're sold out now because no one can buy the real anymore, so everyone bought the fake. Yep. I'm convinced that Amazon is making and selling the knockoffs, and this is all just an Amazon thing.
Well, I appreciate your conspiracy theories, Nastasia. I mean, I really do. I'm not just being see here. I think uh that's giving them too much credit. That's like saying that the US government can do any conspiracies.
They can't, they're too dumb. You know what I mean? Like, not dumb. I'm I don't mean it that way, people. If if you work in the government, that's not what I mean.
What I mean is is, you know, look, you know, it's like one person can can paint the Sistine Chapel. Five people can't even paint a house. Do you know what I'm saying? Because they interfere with each other and they can't get their work done. You know what I mean?
It's like I don't trust that they're that they can accomplish anything like that. Anyway, whatever. That's just me. Um Phil Phil Bravo, or should I say, Phil Bravo? I just want to say, Dave, that felt like the most Christmas thing of first uh you're doing basically Dan Ackroyd with his like, this is uh bag of glass and little Johnny Sniff.
You know, how are you gonna hurt yourself with this? Okay, what was the name of that toy company again? Straight like everyone's I can't even remember. But it's like you turned into everyone's uncle who at the end was like, five people can't even go, like paint a house. The government's not gonna fix it.
You know this is this is the most Christmas morning I've had Listen, listen, listen. I'm here for you. If you can't see your crazy Uncle Air and your crazy uncle Ralph, I'm here for you, people crazy Uncle Dave. Oh my god. Uh you know what?
I am in fact. So, like the like most of my nieces and nephews, let's just put it this way. They didn't really get me, right? They don't really get me. Like, I'm not their cup of tea.
But my they like uh I'm growing on them, right? I'm growing on them. Actually, the the ones who moved to Atlanta, like they're they're they're pro me, right? But the uh the youngest of all of them, Mabel, she has always been on my side. So Mabel has always been down with crazy Uncle Dave.
However, she does refer to me as crazy uncle Dave. Which I appreciate. You know, everyone needs a crazy uncle XYZ. You don't need two, one. Uh yeah.
Well, I'm here for you, Phil. So are you here for me? Are you gonna do it? Oh no. I'm here for you, Dave.
Okay. All right, all right. All right, do you have any plugs? Do you have any plugs before you before you go and sing and get on? Yeah, I don't I don't think I have any plugs.
My my plugs are uh it sounds like those charities that you mentioned uh are amazing. Everyone should do you own Phil Bravo.com? Do you own Phil Bravo.com? Uh that's a good question. It feels like something I probably like bought 10 years ago, like late at night and drunk.
So, how do people get in touch with you when they want to hire you for voiceover work? Which is what you should be doing? Yeah. Well, if you go if you Google Phil Bravo, basically you're gonna find a uh very successful high school football coach. So, you know.
How's his voice? I don't think very good. But I keep on getting emails from like random kids that are like, I'm in, coach. Are you also gonna sing put me in, coach? I'm ready to play today.
I really I really should. But that's more of a high register song. You gotta get that like Fogarty, and you're a different kind of jerk than your man Fogerty. So um the uh Phil's email is Phil Bravo at gmail.com, right, Phil? It is.
Yeah, and he's happy to set up one on one uh one-on-one Zoom recorder lessons for you. I am you want some you want some voiceover work, that's great. Also, yeah. So support music education in your communities, everybody. That's a good Christmas thing.
All right, do it. Grinch it up. Do it. That was my plug. Uh all right.
Uh Dave, can you give the can you give me the the like the clarinet lead-in? Oh, uh I now only have the hold on a second. You got uh my mind's erased, like what's going on constantly in my head now is the heat miser song. Ba bum bum bump. You know what I mean?
That song is still amazing. That's all I have in my head. Oh you gotta basically that one? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep.
Yeah. I just did it. So you've got Dave. You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch.
You really are a heel. You're as cuddly as a cactus, you're as charming as an eel, Mr. Grinch. You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel. And I'll so strong.
So good. Wait, are you also a rotter? Uh you're I'm a rotter. Uh my heart is, and I don't know if you know this, but actually full of unwashed socks. And my soul is full of gunk.
It's a whole thing. So here's here's something that I did not know until this year, which I'm ashamed to say. He's not saying tomato squash. Because I um it's not a tomato squash. I was like, what the hell is a tomato squash?
And I looked it up. I was Googling forever to try to find this elusive splotched, yeah. I did not know that. I thought that there was a squash. That would actually and I felt, yeah.
Yeah, that would be an amazing thing to make. You can make a dead tomato splotched with moldy purple spots. That's a good solid uh holiday cheer. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's like the best.
We could just f I you know what? I'm actually doing that right now. I am fermenting, I'm making my uh fermented uh salsa recipe. So I I I have some tomatoes, but they're not they're fermenting. That doesn't that doesn't count, right?
It needs to be purple splots or whatever it is. Uh thank you, Phil. Thanks. What other good deep voice things are there, Phil? Someone requested what was the one that someone requested?
Well, there's I'm dreaming of a white Christmas. Yeah, white Christmas. But that's not a deep voice register. That's more of you, you don't strike me as the Bing Crosby type. Yeah, I'm not that smooth.
Yeah. Maybe you could do the Andrew Sisters. That would be amazing. If you did like all if you did all of the Andrew Sisters parts, but like three octaves down on that album. Oh wait, Phil, give me some Meli Cleeky Mukka, Phil.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they can do that. Or Phil, you could you could Rickroll people in real life. That's not Christmas. Rick Astley is not a Christmas character.
Wait, Phil, do Dave, we had to do um what was the one we just did, Phil, for Pat. Um Wonderful Christmas Times. Oh the Yeah. Yeah, Wonderful Christmas Times. Can you that video will be coming up?
Yeah. So what can you just do a little bit? No, I'm not gonna I don't want to give that up. I did the whole I I did the whole uh guitar the guitar solo in there. Or I think it's a guitar, the guitar solo I did vocally.
So that's gonna be some some uh key. Watch watch YouTube, everyone. It's coming. The YouTube. Uh all right.
So listen, I'm gonna research Is your band gonna have a Grinch like you should have your Amin one Mr. Grinch as a video? Are you gonna do that? Uh we He's a he won't because he's a rotter. Also, I think Spike Jones's novelty band would be like the best band name.
Yeah? Wasn't that what was the name of his band? I think just naming it Spike Jones's novelty band. Yeah, all right. All right, that didn't sell.
Didn't land, hey. It didn't land. It's fine, it's good. Take it out of here five minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Listen, uh any any sort of uh if you need some sort of like uh throw Ravencroft back from the dead or any of that stuff, first of all, like that name is an amazing name. Like if your last name is Ravencroft and your mom looks down and is like, you know what? Thorl. Right? How strong is that?
Like you're set up for life. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, how lucky to get born with Ravencroft as your last name.
It's just so hardcore. What if if Phil, you if you have a kid, it should be Ravencroft Bravo. That would be so cool. Oh my god. Bravo's a great last name, Phil.
Yeah, I'm not saying your parents botched it with the Phil, but I'm saying like Hey, Phil, Phil, Phil, Phil. Tell Dave what your name was gonna be, and then what you were gonna do with that name if you had if they had. I don't even remember this, Nastasia. This is the other thing with Nastasia. You say something once because you know it'll make her laugh, and then she's like a two-year-old.
She's like, do it again! Phil was supposed to be Nick Bravo. Oh, Nick Bravo. It's my middle name. Yeah, in that case, you would have been selling cars in Florida.
Oh yeah. Nick solid used car, like Nick Bravo, damn glad to meet you. Nick Bravo is definitely used Kia. Nick Nick Bravo's definitely better with a handgun than the Phil Bravo is, right? I mean, Nick.
Yeah. Well, it's also like I think uh does everyone have the what you were gonna be named if you were a girl? I was gonna be Kelly because it was the uh seventies, Dave. So Kelly Bravo would not have landed in the same way. Kelly Bravo, yeah.
I don't know. Yeah, same vocal range is the problem. Just like oh I am jelly. Well, Nastasia, would you have been would you have been uh Joey because they ended up having one? That's what they chose?
A boy, or would you've been Michael. Michael. Yeah. Mike. Probably they were gonna name her.
They were gonna name her Thurl. Yeah. Or you might look at Nastasia and be like, hey, yo, Mike Lopez. That's like what? Yeah.
Mike. Mike Lopez and Nick Bravo. He'd have you in a Ford F-150. Well, it would have been it would have been uh Kelly Bravo at that point. Would have been Mike Lopez and Kelly Bravo, which I'd buy a car.
I'd buy a car for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. So listen, stay on, Phil, because uh maybe you can chime in if you if you don't have to go teach recorder to uh small children who are uninterested.
Uh by the way, Phil, uh you're do you enjoy uh organ music? I I you know, from time to time. You mean like full out like Bach organ music? Or do you mean like it's got it's it's got its place and time. You ever walk into a church and not know there's gonna be organ music and then there's organ music and you're like, oh yeah.
Yes. I I walk into a church and I do a full out, oh yeah. I love it. An organ, an organ is like it's one of those instruments that like you can see why they put those into a church because it rattles your whole body. It's like a religious experience, a good organ.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, the up the other thing is that if you watch the organ footwork, it's remarkable. It's crazy. Yeah.
Cameron Carpenter. Look up Cameron Carpenter. Is that a modern organist? I'm more of an e power biggs man myself. It is.
Yeah. Ooh, fair enough. Yeah. No, he's he's like uh he's like the rock star of organ these days. That's right.
It's true. It's a thing. Yeah, yeah. Oregon's cool. I w yeah, yeah, Oregon's good.
All right. So uh Jake, Jake wrote in via email, I'm interested in whipping beer with aquafaba. Oh my god, what is whipp people? Without having to whip it? Do you have a ratio that works for you, Jacob?
Uh no, I don't listen. Listen. Why? Wait, do we know why? Listen, listen, no more aquafaba questions.
Like, just no more. Listen, listen, listen. No more. 2021, no more. Here's the thing.
There's two ways this can go. I have actively resisted aquafaba, not because it's bad, but just because so many other people are working on it that I didn't feel I needed to work on it. Right? Nastasi, is that not a fair reason? You think it's disgusting too.
I've never had it. You think my concept is disgusting. I've eaten chickpeas. I love chickpeas. Anyways, my point is this.
Uh you know you can now buy aquafaba powder? It's like powderized aquafaba. Anyway, uh I've never investigated chickpea hydrocolloids because I have plenty of purified hydrocolloids that I can work with if I want to. However, I feel, and John, maybe John can weigh in because he has no hatred one way or the other, that maybe I should just take the time to work with it so when people ask me the question, I can just here's your answer. No.
Hey, you want to know another uh Christmas uh uh Christmas kick in the in the cahoonies is uh for years I've been telling people that they should go to Mark Power and Sons in Guntersville, Alabama for all their soda needs. Right? And Nastasia is so sick of carbonation questions. I think we have a couple on this thing. She's so sick of carbonation questions that like every day she made John call me and be like, Have you done your carbonator video yet?
So we don't have to talk about it. Have you done it? Have you done it? Have you done it? And so finally I did it.
Finally, like after years, and I've been dealing with Mark Power in Guntersville, Tim specifically, there for 20 years or more. And right when I do the video is when they're like, you know what? We're getting out of the business. Oh my God. And like in the video, I have the part numbers.
I'm like, here's Tim's telephone number. I'm like, well, can I talk to Tim? Tim doesn't work here anymore. I was like, oh God. But uh, John, I don't know if you can call it up before the show is over.
They gave us a replacement house to deal with. Um, because if you're a company, if you're like a bar or restaurant, you can do you can buy all the stuff from Fox Beverage, but uh they won't sell to individual humans. But i i if you can find it, John, that would be uh helpful. Um, I want to see if I can find them. From Brian, uh I have a bunch of Hachia persimmons, the astringent variety.
I want to make uh Hoshigaki, you know, the ones that are not the flat ones, but the ones the persimmons that you hang on strings and you kind of massage them and they they turn into like little like like uh sugar bloomed pruney things. You guys know what I'm talking about? Yep. Yeah, okay. Uh but don't want to wait and hang them up and massage them daily.
Uh they get that wonderful sugar bloom when dry. Do you have any shortcuts on how to make them in a dehydrator time and temperature? Uh I don't, I've never done it. Do you think the same effect would be possible in a dehydrator? Thanks, Brian.
Um, look, uh in life, most things that take a long time. There are ways to do it quickly. The results might not be or probably will not be the same. That doesn't mean that they'll be bad. I'm gonna say that you should do the same thing that uh Nastasia Lopez and I do when we do our apple heads, because it's not like we have all day to wait around and make uh millions of apple heads.
I would use we loosely. Uh do you own a dehydrator? All you gotta do is stick them in there. Okay, you know what? No respect for what I do.
Eat it. So it's like what you have to do is you have to build, you can take the rack that you have, take everything off, and if you have an excaliber, right? Uh and depending on the length you do, I you I guess you should use twine. Uh I would make cop I used copper because I wasn't eating them and I had a lot of copper around. Little copper hangers.
So you bend a you bend like a cross, almost like a Christmas tree stand into the bottom, punch it through, and then make a hook, and you can hang them so none of them are touching. And then it's just a question of getting your uh temperatures right so you don't get case hardened. What you're worried about here is case hardening. Uh if you're gonna do the the uh persimmons though, I wouldn't put copper into them. I would just get a length uh I would I would get um bamboo skewers and I would cut them into pieces uh and then thread thread the stuff through with like a larding needle and tie the skewer so it doesn't fall off the thing.
Uh but then you'll have to fashion a hook. I mean, the copper really was nice in that respect. Maybe you could get non-reactive uh stainless wire and uh do it the easy way like I do. But that's that's how I would do it. I would hang them in the dehydrator, and I know it works fine for apple heads, but apparently I don't because I've apparently never worked on apple heads with Nastasi before.
I miss Appleheads, Dave, don't you? Uh yeah, but now do you have that song going through your head? Yeah. Apple headed doll in the anyway. Uh do we ever make an apple head doll with fur boots?
No. And or reboxed with the straps? No. We should have. We made a Jay-Z applehead.
Uh I'm not gonna get into that. That's what you said uh at at our favorite uh drug front uh event that we did, where we went to a bar who shall remain which shall remain nameless, and we flew all the way across the country to do this event. And they're like, I don't know, make like five cocktails. What does it matter? We don't need to make money.
This is a drug front. Isn't that what they said? Barn LA. It doesn't matter. He doesn't work there anymore, so you can just say what it is.
Harvard and stoned. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, uh, I don't know. Harvard and Stoned.
We're kidding, Matt. The joke. Alright. Yeah. This episode brought to you by Appeal.
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Learn more at Appeal.com. Michael Murno wrote in Hey, not sure who to reach out to, but here it goes. I recently batched up some eggnog in order to let it mature in time for Christmas. I used six cups of creamslash whole milk. So that means like a mixture of cream and whole milk, I guess.
A dozen egg yolks, a pound of sugar, and about four to five cups of so that's like a quart and a half, quart, like a fifth and a fraction of uh rum brandy bourbon uh by uh by measure. Uh let's say it's four cups because in the end you did it to taste. Uh I know you've talked about aged eggnog on the show, but can't seem to find the episode in the back catalog. So I'm wondering if you could just briefly talk about it so that I could have a sound bite to reassure my wife that I am not trying to poison her. Are you not trying to poison her, Michael?
I don't know. Uh here's the thing it all depends on time plus uh alcohol and sugar. So the the two things that you have in there that are gonna stop the eggs from uh the cream is not a problem. It's it's either gonna spoil or it's it's not, but it's not a problem. What what everyone sh is theoretically worried about is the uh is the salmonella in the eggs.
And the interesting thing about eggnog recipes is that the longer you keep them, not the better they get, although some people think so. Nick Bennett, uh our friend Nick Bennett has aged them for I don't know how many years and brought them out. Um but you need to keep them for a certain length of time in order for all the bacteria to die because they don't die right away uh from the from the eggs. Uh and the amount of time it takes is going to depend on the alcohol and the sugar level, both of which are going to inhibit the salmonella. And I would just check your there is published online, uh Rockefeller University has the they did the famous challenge test where they inoculated their eggnog recipe with salmonella and waited to see how long it took to kill all the salmonella.
And so if your alcohol and sugar levels are anywhere close to theirs, I would uh give that uh little uh paper sound bite uh to the family and reassure them that uh while in fact they will die, it won't be from that. Wait, so Dave, are you saying that the eggnog that Phil made that year where it was with the eggs and he served it immediately was not okay? Well, we all know that you guys don't care about each other. Maybe that's what I was saying. I that that that was one of the most irresponsible things in the world.
I think that maybe what you did is tried to save everybody. Yeah. By by sabotaging it. Look. Uh yeah.
I there is no re I I'm pretty positive I gave like 63 people uh salmonella that year. Merry Christmas. In the real life, in the real life, right? Uh, you know, a lot in I don't know. I I don't I don't honestly know.
It would be interesting, I could probably look it up. A chart on um salmonella incidents in eggs per thousand year by year, right? Because um obviously the more um confined the hens are the the larger the chance for a contamination uh in uh in in your egg supply. Uh but there are so and so the arc people have always also said, oh, uh I'm I'm not worried about it because I only use organic eggs where like I'm a friend with the chicken. I'm like, there is no evidence that Phil, your eggs were from the deli on 48th and 9th, right?
Exactly. They they literally they're gonna be able to do that. He's friends with the bodega guy free. Yeah, he's friends with the bodega guy. Uh by that you mean the bodega cat, I think.
Yeah, yeah. That's who is pooping out the eggs. They the cat ate the chicken and pooped out the eggs. But Dave, isn't it uh isn't it a thing like supply chain? Isn't theoretically because the trucks are now refrigerated in a way they weren't in like the 60s that theoretically there's a lower instance of salmonella regardless?
I don't think. The internet lied to me. Uh uh look, all I'm saying is is that in the absence of data, I'm just gonna go say I don't know the data. But what I what I will say is that um there are many recipes uh that call for raw egg, like Caesar salad. Um and they're you know, you're just rolling the dice.
And that's dice that we roll on the regular. You know what I mean? Or you can pasteurize the egg yolks uh if you if you want, or pasteurize the whole eggs if you have an immersion circulator, or you could buy pasteurized eggs. Um, but that's just uh, you know, it's one of those uh what's it called? Uh risks that that people take.
And the you know, one of the big things is just letting people know that they're taking the risk, and most people who are on the younger non-imb immunocompromised side are willing to take the risk of eating a raw egg every now and again, right? I I like Dave that the uh your answer to the question started with like, and then you can give your wife this white paper that uh outlines why it's relatively safe. And then you end it with, you know, I mean, you drive a car, that's dangerous. Drink the eggnog. I mean, no?
Am I wrong? I mean, I think you're right. Yeah. Uh and and again, the the party in question that Nastasia is talking about. I did not inform people that they were all drinking raw egg or something.
Uh because I I was not responsible as a human at that point in my life. That uh checks out, Phil. That checks out. Yeah. So apologies to everybody.
Yeah. From wet market dynamics via Twitter. Uh we have been using your we've been using your French fry recipe. Uh, do you have a comparable recipe technique for potato chips? Hashtag not a Thanksgiving question.
This is an old one. Uh I'm actually working on one for uh the uh forthcoming uh someday book, The Miracle of Moisture Management. I have run over the past month, probably 25 potato chip tests. Uh and here's a question for you people, you people meaning anyone who can hear this. What is your ideal chip?
And you have to, and Nastasia has a chip she says she's gonna send me because she has an ideal chip out where you are, right, Nastasia? Yeah. Yeah. So the the real question is is uh everyone gets hyped up on the uh variety of the potato and say, yeah, true, fine, uh as far as it goes. But it's really like thickness, crunch level, color, I think deep river is pretty good for a mass-produced chip, no?
So you like them you like them hard. Yeah. So like not like a crispy lace. Do you care how dark the potato is? Because that's the thing.
Um, I think the darker it is, the more I'm like, oh, it's gonna be harder, so it's gonna be good. So you like a dark chip. Yeah. Uh yeah. So a lot of people don't like a dark chip.
And in fact, a lot of work that's done in potato chip. So, like, I I'll just say this. The the the great divide in potato chips is like old school kettle, where it's basically slicing almost directly into the oil, right? Versus some form of soak or blanch where you're blanching it and soaking it. And um, you know, b if you're if you're not doing a soak or a blanch beforehand, right?
The soak in the blanch is not just to get rid of extra starch, right, but to get rid of sugars on the outside. And if if you get rid of those sugars, but those sh those sugars cause it to go brown if it's cooked. Also, the thicker you slice it, the more brown it's gonna be because you cook, because you cook longer. So, you know, if you don't care, right, then you can stay on the kettle side. If you do care about it getting brown, then you um you need to go um you need to go through one of these procedures that I that I've been working on.
And the other little, the other little tidbit is that you want a high specific gravity potato because you want the lowest moisture content potato, the highest solids ratio potato going in. Uh but that's all I could say about it right now. For more, you'll have to wait till I'm done with my tests, and I have a definitive idea of what I'm what I'm doing. Um Jeebus, I got so many. From uh yeah, but we didn't answer anyone's uh question.
Hold on second. Here, hey, Dave, Nastasia, uh, Matt in the COVID booth, uh, and also Phil. They Mark doesn't know you're here, Phil, but you know, I'm welcoming you in my in my form. Uh I've recently started working at a deli at a grocery store, and we have a couple of rationale combi ovens, which we use for reheating cryovac food items and for cooking the ubiquitous roost chicken to go. Uh chicken breasts that are eventually diced up for salads, wraps, and joints, and etc.
etc. Uh I've been slightly alarmed by the temperatures that we cook to. The chicken is uh done until it's probed at 190 Fahrenheit. Ouch. The beef at 154 Fahrenheit.
Uh Booker, what's 154 Fahrenheit in Celsius? Um 68. 68! And the brisket 172 brisket's fine if you're doing higher temp stuff like like uh like barbecue style. Uh I find these temps to be high and the enemies of quality, especially the chicken breasts, which are dry and chalky out of the oven.
I believe that. Uh I believe that you referred to these ovens being pretty accurate over about 140. Well, they're accurate in the in the average, right? So they'll swing like 10 degrees or so uh or more, but the their average is pretty accurate. And I'm wondering if there's any danger in doing these products at a lower temp, like I would do in my home, my circulator.
Uh my thought is that we have these expensive accurate machines, and we we would be providing a better product if the temperatures were more in line with modern cooking thought. I do uh not, however, want to put anyone, including the immunocompromised people and infants, in danger. Where shall my limits be? And should I uh just let sleeping dogs die? Um yeah, so see, what do they do chicken to 190?
That's just like that's like crack smoking temperature. That's just crazy. Just like take yeah, yeah, take it down. There's no need to cook that high. There's no need to cook that high, especially if you if you can temp it and then cook it longer.
If you can get it up to like a known uh good pasteurizing temperature and then let it ride, then you've uh you've got a little bit of a thermal thing in these. Those like I don't even I've never even heard of 190. That's just what's 190 in Celsius, Booker. 190 Fahrenheit? Yeah.
88. 88. Oh my god. You heard that right. Jesus.
That is that is look. The chicken died. You've killed the chicken. Don't kill it again. John, are you with me on this?
Yeah, absolutely. Criminal what's happening there. Yeah. Remember that that's one of my favorite lines from uh from uh big night. It's a criminal, it's a criminal.
That's that's uh, you know, Shalub's great. I mean, like, Shalou's done a lot of good work, but the Shalub and the and the Tucci in uh in that movie, classic. Which one of you people hadn't seen it? Matt, have you seen it yet? I have seen it.
I saw it, I watched it early in the pandemic. It was great. Yeah. Alright. Nice.
Great movie. Uh Sergio wrote in. Uh hope I'm not uh leaving anyone out. Uh the list of people. Uh I know the hammer does not like Aussie accents.
She told me the last time I tried to convince her to visit for food and art, but we are not all crocodile Dundee. I should hope not. That movie does not hold up, people. If you go back and you watch Crocodile Dundee, it does not hold up. It's like saying all New Yorkers are Simpson style of rednecks.
But whoa, none of us are like that. You're thinking of two different people. We got your rednecks. So if you want to see like rednecks and New Yorkers in the same, like you have to, I can tell you where to go to see everything. Florida, I think.
Rednecks and New Yorkers. It's just Florida. No, but if you just want to do it by car, like you could go check out the Swamp Yankees up in like, you know, uh Northern Connecticut, right? Right, John? I can say that.
You're a nutmegger. You like a swamp Yankee, right? Anyway. Um, like, you know, we we have our own, we have our own rednecks here in the Northeast. People don't remember that.
They're like, oh, it's all you coastal elites. Not true. We have real rednecks here. You know what I mean? Anyone gonna back me up?
Yeah, yeah. All right. Um, I once looked at a uh at a property, we couldn't afford it to buy it. Get this on the Connecticut River, right? And so there's a kind of a blue-collar side of the Connecticut River and and a fancy dance side of the Connecticut River.
I'm not gonna say which side John uh is on right now, but it's the fancy side. So I was on the other side, and everyone's dream is to have a plot of land on the river because it comes with it with a God-given right to have your own dock, and that means you can have your own boat on the Connecticut, right? So they these these it basically the the plots of land were the width of the slips so that people could put their docks out. And I went to go look at it in November, and the the person who was gonna uh was showing me his property, right? They kind of had running water, but the like like a Nastasia favorite thing, like the bathroom was kind of outside of their of their trailer thing.
And he was outside shirtless cooking over a tire fire, slugging rum out of a Captain Morgan's handle. All right. Now, don't anyone tell me that we don't have our own rednecks up here. Anyway. Um, oh, I didn't get to the question.
Anyway, not trying to convince her anymore. Dave, you should visit uh and bring Harold. Uh question time now. I have seen black garlic. Oh, jeep.
He just said, don't bother, you're not gonna go. Oh, you you would go. Come on. Uh I have seen black garlic recipes for the rice cooker, tried it and done it. Seen black onion recipes, which apparently need a bit more moisture.
I tried shallots uh and they just disappeared. I guess they need more moisture. Uh never tried shallots. Uh question is for some reason I have a mental block on shallots because the French love them so much that I've never gotten into them. Is that unfair?
I like a fried shallot, like a crispy fried shallot. But like, like who the hell wants to peel all those things and then and then uh does it like shallots more than onions and stuff. Really? Do you enjoy the crop the cross, the shallon? You ever use those, Nastasia?
The shallows? Yeah. That sounds good. They're like long like a shallot, but bigger like an onion, and the taste is right in between. John, do you have to do that?
They're good. Yeah, they're good. Yeah, they're good. And they're not as much of a pain. First of all, shallots, you're like, I gotta peel all these, and then when you take the outside layer off, they're like, ah, it's actually two things inside that you need to peel again.
Ha ha. You know what I mean? Hate. Hate it. Um question is oh, uh question is Will the sugars on corn work the same way as the garlic.
Could you make sweet black corn, even theoretically? Uh love your show and Argentinian in Melbourne, so not the hammer's average Aussie accent for sure. Uh listen, I don't think so. Uh I had looked, this question came in a while ago, but because we've had a bunch of guests, uh, I haven't got a chance to answer it. And um I'm pretty sure that it's it's not just the sugar, it's the uh very complicated sulfur chemistry that's going on in different alliums, and that's why it happens with different alliums.
But it might be possible to do a mix of uh like garlic and corn or something like that and get get an interesting uh result. Um but you know, I don't know. Let me let me let me know, but I would guess not. I've hold I've held things that have some sugar in them for several days in a rice cooker and not had things changed, but I haven't tried corn. Um, Crookshank wrote in via the chat room.
Uh, what's the best way to remove skins from chickpeas? They've tried baking soda, but the removal is still a pain. Uh I don't have a good thing for that. John, do you have a good chickpea uh removal um? Hey, this is the last question.
Hold up. Do you have one, John? John is done. No, I'm sorry, dogs keep barking. Uh no, I do not.
And I think Kenji wrote about this as well for like a good hummus, and he says there is no good way to remove the skins. It's just tedious work. Yeah, you know what else sucks? Removing the skins off of almonds. I don't care what people say.
Like, first of all, you've ruined that dish towel now. You guys all know what I'm talking about? Yes. You rubbed it. Dish towel ruined, or like buy them.
Okay. Merry Christmas. Hold on, look. Can I sharpen serrated knives with sharpening stones? Uh the spider code.
Mary Chris. Spiderco makes a special uh sharpener to sharpen serrated things, but you cannot do it with a uh regular um stone. Goodbye. Wait. No, Dave.
Dave. Hold on. We have a bunch of hold on! We have a bunch of questions that we didn't get to do. Goodbye, everybody.
I'm out. Okay. You're bye. When's our next show, John? Next week.
Are we doing a show next week? Yeah, so get over it. I didn't know we were doing a next show next week. That's why I couldn't find out because you're so willing to tell people to blow up. I I was gonna do whatever you wanted to do.
There you go. All right. Happy holidays. Happy holidays. Christmas with Nastal.
Yeah. Yeah, right? Right. Yeah. Now you guys know.
Enjoy it. We have a meeting at 10.30. 1.30. Oh, and we're gonna prep so much for the next 13 minutes that I can't die. I'm not gonna think about it even.
People, if I have a meeting with you, I'm not thinking about it until 30 seconds beforehand. Just so as you know. Happy holidays, cooking issues. Cooking issues is powered by Simplecast. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network.
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