My name is Sarah Kim and I'm from Austin, Texas. I'm a Cheeselandian because while life is great, cheese makes it better. Go to Cheeselandia.com to learn more. And if it's for you, sign up. Hello, welcome to Cookie Users.
This is Dave Arald, your host of Crooking Users coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday, whenever, from whenever to whenever. I'm at my Oh, by the way, just so you guys know, a little uh a little bit behind uh behind the curtain, uh Wizard of Oz style here. We forgot to clap beforehand, so we can't actually sync this up. So this is how we do it. Dave.
See? Very good. Yeah, yeah. Uh we have uh and when we when each person talks, maybe they can clap in and be awesome. Uh we got Matt up there in uh in uh Rhode Island.
How you doing? Very good. I will do that because I'm recording. Yeah, we got uh John Customer Service Representative Extraordinaire. Uh he's more than customer service representative, I would say.
He's in uh Lyme, Connecticut, where I was recently. How are you doing, John? Not too bad, mate. Hello, everybody. Are you nice, nice.
And uh Nastasia from her undisclosed Heidi Hole somewhere in Southern California. How you doing? Good. Yeah, you can clap or you're not recording. Whoa.
What was that? You just punching the mic? Because I'm holding the mic. Yeah. Very nice.
Oh, you're doing this like stage style? Yeah. Are you like, are you headbanging? No. Like when like we usually when I like to hold the mic, I like to like bang the head with it.
Right now, you know what I'm saying? No? No. You're not a headbanging mic sort of a person? No.
More of a stage crooner. Yes. Yes. I have a a glass of scotch with me too. Oh, yeah.
So wait, so like you so when you think of stage Crooner, you think of like the whole kind of Dean Martin drinking while you singing kind of a thing. Oh, yeah, and you can hear like the ice sort of hitting the walls. Yeah, it's rough on the pipes. Do you know what I'm saying? Like drinking, like uh for those of you that don't know, Nastasia Lopez and I, along with uh my brother-in-law, Travis Huggett, years ago flew to uh Modesto, California, right?
I wish it was Bakersfield. We almost got to go to the Bakersfield concert, which would have been sick because that's where the Bakersfield sound is from, Bakersfield. We flew to uh Modesto. You actually can't fly to Modesto, right, Styles? We had to drive there from San Francisco.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And uh to get Merle Haggard, back when he was alive, it would have been a different thing if he was already dead, uh, to skull where we had this project where we were like getting all of these people, some you know, mostly chefs uh and bartenders, but like some non-chefs and bartenders, to do this thing where you you have your shot of Aquavete, you look at the camera, which is supposed to be the other person that you're drinking with, you you down it all, and then you you look back at the camera again. You have to, and it the whole thing is is that it's the before and after, the before stare versus the after stare. How does it look like?
And um we went to do Merle Haggard, and we got him before the concert, and he's like, I don't drink before concerts anymore because it's bad for the pipes. Remember that? Yeah. Yeah, bad for the pipes. Yeah.
Um, but anyway, that was fun. And in that photo shoot we did with Merle Haggard, Travis just as he normally does, because the one of the reasons Travis was so good at this, is Travis is very good at like just taking with whatever light is available, like uh found light kind of a situation, and like dealing with kind of uh uncontrolled situations. Let's put that's why he shot that's why he shot uh my book Liquid Intelligence, because I knew that someone who was gonna work with me would have to deal with uncontrolled situations, as they say. And um, so he just was like, you know, shooting during the during the time we were talking to uh Merle, and one of the shots he took there happened to be uh like uh Merle's next album cover, which I thought was pretty cool. Was that I wonder whether that was his last album, whether he came out with another album afterwards.
I don't know. I'll have to look it up. Um what did you guys cook over the holidays? And you think what do you guys have? Uh all of you for the so all of you guys are Christmas folk, right?
You're all Christmas folk? Yep. All right, so what do you guys have for the Christmas dinner? I did some uh Japanese wagyu, uh Yorkshire pudding, roasted carrots, sauteed mushrooms. I think that was a we had like the bichte de Noelle for dinner or for dessert.
Oh, I say that with the French accent again. Buste de Noelle. Yeah. Hey, John, are you gonna forget your accent and forget your English and go French? I wasn't gonna bring this up because I didn't think Nastasia wanted me to, but Nastasia Nastasia is incensed.
Incensed over the whole Hilaria Baldwin situation that's going on right now. I'm not gonna explain it all to you guys because that's why Google was invented. Uh but are you incensed, Matt? No, I'm not. I mean, I I'm only vaguely aware, but can you tell me?
Like, why should I be pitch me on incense? Why should I be incensed? She's been faking a Spanish accent and being born in Spain and pretending not to know English words for over 10 years. And even though it just came out that she was born and raised in Boston, went to Spain on holiday sometimes with her parents. Her parents retired to Mallorca.
They did not live there full-time like she said they did when she was young. And she went to NYU. So it's amazing. It's like so bold because this is all happening in the age of the internet, too. So isn't this like a foreseeable thing that maybe somebody would turn around and be like, didn't I go to middle school with that person?
Yeah. So I have the the opinion of who gives a crap. But the the thing is is that so I was saying to Nastasia and John, I haven't spoken to you about this, that you and Hilaria are basically the exact same person, only you haven't faked it, right? You have a similar profile in that you could all of a sudden start going by Jean and then also busting out like the hardcore, like you know, accent like Belgique accent, you know what I'm saying? And like you could do that.
And then I was like, would Nastasia get as pretzeled up over that would be so weird. Well, I think the thing that bothers me is that she she pretended not like when it's convenient to not know certain cultural things, like you know, Alec, I guess, is into a lot of um opera and stuff like that, or or books or TV shows. She said she didn't grow up with in that with a TV in Spain. Well, how does it be? Does the opera like shuffle with that?
So you say opera is separate, opera's not part of the Hilaria discussion, right? Because that's all European. I mean, no offense to you know, Philip Glass and his so-called. No, no, no. I mean, she feigned not to know much about like opera because it wasn't.
Yeah, but that's not an American thing. Anyway, well, he was the the commentator for the mess. I like how now she's pretending to not know opera. Clearly she knows opera. She went to NYU.
Clearly she knows opera. But do we do we believe that she has lied to Alec Baldwin? We don't know. We don't know. I uh we there are people that have a theory in my close circles that when she met him, she was like, Oh crap, I need to be interesting.
I can't just be Hillary from uh Boston and you know, I need to like keep this guy's interest. So she so she created a thing. And and he loves or loved the fact that she had this accent and was like, you know, very Spanish and danced with uh whatever it's called. So now I see the root in for Jean's transformation. It'll be on her first date, it'll be really he's like, I'm really excited about this one, guys.
I got a good feeling, and all of a sudden just straight Belgian. So John, John, give me some uh how you say a pompe-frit uh in English. Give me some, give me some. Oh, what's the go, you have to go with full fake accent on me. Oh, yeah, speak all in English except for you've forgotten how to say French fries.
Exactly. Give me some. That's how I used to drink underage. I would scan a photocopy of my passport and then like Microsoft Paint move some numbers around, and then I'd walk around, you know, with a photocopy of a 21-year-old passport, and I'd put on the fake French accent and everything. And it worked most of the time.
It was pretty impressive. So give so so give me some I would like a beer. Give me some I would like a beer. How you say French fries? I would like to be, and how would you say French fries?
Yeah, there you go. There you go. There you go. I would definitely give you a drink. Nastasia, now how incensed are you currently about John's sins?
Uh not incensed at all. I think it's about John, no, about how yeah. Oh, you're saying beating me. I mean, you know, just checking. The big thing about Hillary.
By the way, Nastasia's not Nastasia's never gonna get mad at someone for scamming for a beer. No. Scamming for a husband. It's not even that. First of all, like correct me if I'm wrong, Nastasia, or if I'm speaking out of turn, we can we can bleep it out of the whole show.
It's up to you. But it's not that Nastasia has her eyes on Alec Baldwin. That would be ridiculous, but she considers him prime material and is upset that she has been he has been scammed this way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. True?
Scammed scammed out of a good one. But what's the bigger and what's the overarching thing? Yeah. If if if it had come out that like Hilaria had, you know, that she was Countess Bathory and was drinking children's blood to stay young. That would be fine by Nastasia.
The fact of the matter is is that because of Alec Baldwin, she is constantly quote unquote forced to go to Saturday Night Live tapings and their after parties. And is this so over the sake of going to Saturday Night Live? And this is why Nastasia hates her. Exactly. Oh no.
Yeah. Yeah. She sleeps backstage while he while he does his Trump thing and then makes him leave as soon as he's done with the the cold open. Ah, we've gotten to the meat of the issue here. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. True story. Uh, and that's where the hatred comes from.
So, you know, is she gonna get mad at you know, John going by Jean and not remembering how to say le French Fries or whatever? No. That's all fine. That's all good. You know?
Uh anyways. All right. So John's like, uh, so let me ask you a question, John. Back to cooking for a minute. So you so I'm a big fan of Yorkshire pudding.
How'd it come out? Did it puff up or was it sunken and sad? Uh, it was very puffed up. My mom makes it every year, and it was uh yeah, it was good. All right, beautiful.
So for those of you that aren't in the know who aren't like a roast beef kind of a situation person, a Yorkshire pudding is basically a large um a large popover slash Dutch baby slash uh whatever. What the it it's a thin batter that puffs up and gets airy in the middle, uh heavy on eggs and a fat, and in Yorkshire pudding, the fat is the drippings from the roast beef that you just cooked, and while the roast beef is resting, you pour in the batter into the theoretically you pour it into the roasting pan and throw it in. Although a Yorkshire pudding made in a popover pan with drippings is a good idea because it's easier to cut and serve out. However, uh, so that is what it is. So how does your mom do it every year?
I actually don't know. I haven't asked the recipe. We don't use we don't do the beef fat. Well, we didn't this year. Um, because you cooked wagyu, and who has enough wagyu fat like right.
That's what I that's where I was getting with my questions, is that traditionally you would make this with the with the fat from the roast, but I'm guessing you didn't have that this year because to cook the wagyu so hard that you have the fat from the roast would cause you to be the lowest of quality individuals. Agreed, yes. Yeah. So what was the form factor of this Yorkshire pudding? Uh she does like a nine by thirteen glass.
Yeah, I'm familiar with the the Pyrex casserole pants. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I have several such casserole pants, even though my family not a fan of the casserole. Okay.
That's when we had Joey Scladani on. I was like, yo, tuna casserole. He's like, yes, but tuna casserole is widely hated. Widely hated. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Yeah. And I don't think any of the other people here like do what what Nastasia and Matt, what are your thoughts on the tuna casserole? I haven't had it in a very long time. I don't mentally though.
Oh, I don't think I'd like positive associations with a tuna casserole. Here's my issue. Why not? Hot tuna. Hot tuna.
Yeah. Great conjunction of words. Wasn't that a band or a is that an album? Yeah, it's a better band name than it was band, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah.
Band name, fantastic hot tuna. But uh okay, so if you don't like hot tuna, what about tuna melts? Also, you don't like tuna melts? No, not really. Okay, how about this?
It's served cold, tuna mac. I think tuna mac's a fantastic thing. Someone was like Yeah, I like tuna mac, but I don't the tuna does not get hot when I do that. No, no, that's what I'm saying. If you i i if you guys are anti-hot tuna the band and anti-hot tuna the food stuff, maybe I can get you guys on board with tuna mac, but I think a lot of people also don't like the tuna mac.
Whereas to me, I'm like, I like tuna salad. I like pasta salad. Although a lot I'm sure Nastasia does not like pasta salad because of how abused it gets. I'm not sure. I haven't discussed this with her.
But then if you like either of those two things, the conjunction of them sounds like a good idea. And by the way, is tuna many an episode of Cooking Issues has been brought to you by Tuna Mac because it's the thing that I make in like 30 minutes right before you know getting on here. Like a like a quick crappy whip tuna. Where do you have your cold macaroni? Uh oh no, man.
I this is like hot. This is hot macaroni. I mean, well, you know, yeah. Approaching hot macaroni, and I don't know. It's not the whole, the whole dish is not cold.
It's a whole like uh mixed bag. This is not restaurant food. This is like I have 15 minutes to do this before the show. Go. And are you doing it with instant ramen?
Is that how fast you have to be? No, but like mac and cheese, like Annie's mac and cheese or whatever. With the cheese pack? Yeah, dude. So this is basically tuna casserole.
You're saying you're doing you're doing tuna mac, but in fact you're making tuna casserole. Oh, is that what tuna casserole is? I guess I don't know what tuna casserole is then. Yeah, that's well, it's usually soupier, right? So like it's it's soupier than mac and cheese, but you're you're doing an exact halfway and you're serving at loop temperature, so because it right, because it's not hot.
You you you don't want it to be hot, so you're you're folding the tuna in to cool it off at the end, letting it cool for five seconds and then eating it. And then shoving it in my face while I set up this call, yeah. So okay, so I do so I do love so tuna casserole. Yeah, what brand of mac and cheese do you go for? Oh, Annie's.
Yeah. I'm not like Booker likes the annie's not a fan. Too thin. How do you thicken up that sauce? Too thin.
I guess the tuna. Uh the tuna the tuna helps there. I mean, a bunch of random stuff in. I I throw extra cheese in too if I've got something fine. So you're you're an Annie's an Annie's Mac doctor in the way that uh whatever her name was, Sarah Lee.
What was it? What was her name that used to be married to uh Cuomo Nastasia? Sandrally. Sandrally. Like her big thing was Doctoring cake mixes.
Maybe you have a cookbook in your future, Matt, like the the the Annie's Mac Doctor. What do you think? I think I'll let someone else. Cooking issues listeners, you can have that one for free. Here's another one.
Like on Mac and Cheese while we're on it. Like, how many of you guys like sad thin mac and cheese? I probably shouldn't have called it sad, because that means that I think it's bad. But I I don't like a thin sauced mac and cheese. I prefer more substance.
You guys don't like too much substance. Your medium substance sort of a photo. Yeah. I get sad when I am rushing things and accidentally thin it out more than I want, for sure. Nastasia, what are your mac and cheese opinions?
Didn't you do a great Nastasia was the queen of mac and cheese? What do you like? Nastasia had the best fast mac and cheese when she was doing pasta flyer. Her mac and cheese recipe was like next level mac and cheese and fast as fudge. So fast.
Like four minutes, I think. But I don't remember the consistency that you that you did. What was she's not gonna tell you the secret, dude? She's not like me. She might.
No, no. Um I don't remember. Consistency was was uh was silky and uh well covered across all pasta pieces. First of all, have you and Booker been talking to each other? Because whenever whenever you know Booker's favorite like high quality indicator is silky, usually reserved for fish.
But I like that you've moved it over to the pasta thing. Silky. Silky. Uh we we we've spoken on the air since I made the uh since I made the locks for him, right? Yeah, all right.
Well uh won't won't get into that. Um all right, all right. So look, we should should we rip through some questions here? Let's rip through some questions. Now listen, uh there's been a lot of uh talk in our chat room, right, John, about this kind of aseptic uh ASAP cooking technology uh that's coming uh out of I guess either Australia or China or whatever it is on like you know, advanced like sous vide aseptic packaging.
Yep. Uh but I don't but there's no real question here involved, right? No, it's just like a little more for I don't know if you wanted to to share that with everyone is just something I would say I thought it would be of interest to you. Yeah, it's just long. I don't know that you know.
You should not read the full thing. I just sent it to you in case you're interested 'cause it was a very lively discussion going on in the chat. Yeah, I bet. I mean like that like look, in general, my issue when something new comes out is that the less people tell you and apparently the owner of the company came out to talk to one of the chat people and uh cause they I think I uh talked to them on the side to explain ex exactly kind of what the processing is. But I okay, check this out.
I was once in a um a think tank situation, uh with a large manufacturer of equipment. And one of the this was before we had the Searsol and all that stuff, which, you know, at the end, Nastasia will can wind me up like one of those uh one of those I I'm more of a symbol monkey, right, Nastasia? Yeah, you are. Yeah, yeah. She can wind me up and I'll ching ching ching ching ching ching ting at the end.
You know, I gotta go get my little my little my cymbal monkey hat and uh, you know. My ears actually are pretty big. I could probably just fluff them out a little bit and go full symbol monkey at the end on what's going on with uh Amazon because people are asking uh for Searsols and whatnot. So we'll get into that maybe at the end. Um I'm in this meeting with the with these with these people.
One of the people who was brought to the think tank was a product developer for a very large he was a brand actually developer. So his job was he would go out to people's homes, like potential customers' homes, and just sit in their home all day and ask them questions that they didn't understand and then relate that to food technology and what they were gonna sell them the next year vis-a-vis soup. So he would like sit, he didn't work for Campbell's, by the way. I can't tell you who he worked for, but he would like he would go to someone's house, like with his, you know, like I am a researcher outfit on and just sit there and talk to Randos all day without really asking them specific questions like, hey, what kind of soup you folks like? He would never ask that, right?
And he told me, this was years ago, that there was a revolutionary, revolutionary new technology for soup that was going to completely change the entire soup category and make things taste fresh and not canned, and that and that pasta was no longer gonna be a pile of mush and that like potatoes weren't gonna be overcooked and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was like, can you tell me how it works? And he couldn't, and guess what happened? Nothing. Soup has not been revolutionized.
It didn't work. If people can't tell you how exactly they're gonna revolutionize uh something, and or they can't like disclose it because they can't get a patent or they can't do whatever, or they can't protect it, then odds are if they can't tell you about it, unless they say I'm gonna tell you about it at this date when this happens, right? Odds are it's not real. Wouldn't you say that's true, guys? Yeah.
Yeah. Like, for instance, if someone says, I'm gonna give you my taxes and they don't for like six years. I'm just kidding, I'm not telling you. I'm not supposed to have a lot of people. No, no, no, no politics.
No politics. You did this. No politics. We can go into it if you want. I didn't say no.
I didn't say no. Happy to. Connor, Connor wrote in uh from uh Instagram and uh Chow, I have a cooking issue. I'm a bartender and I was working with Monin Pure today. They're monin's Yuzu.
I've never seen Monin Purees, I just see their their syrups. You guys ever seen the puree's? I'm not no. No. Uh it sits in at around 70% sugar.
That's intense and contains uh pectin. That's intensely sugary for a puree. Uh obviously it's very gloopy, almost jam-like, and so uh it's hard to work with in a drink without shaking with the other ingredients. My workaround, my mama told me you better work around. Did she also tell you that, Nastasia?
She told me I have to shop around. Oh, really? How did that work out? You know. Yeah.
My workaround was a whip shake to emulsify without adding too much dilution to the drink. But this has gotten me thinking, what could I do with a product that has a high sugar content and contains pectin to make it more workable in a cocktail without adding water into the uh into the situation? A few online resources suggest that pectin can lose its gel-making abilities after being exposed to high temperature. That's not ever been my experience. In fact, what do you do to jelly to make it set?
Anyone? Anyone? You boil it and then you chill it to set it, right? I mean, you you don't just blend fruit with sugar and it becomes jelly. Jelly!
Uh, that's by the way, from uh that's Rudolph. Who wants a water gun that shoots jelly? Um That's not Rudolph. That's Rudolph. That's not the character.
No, it's the land of misfit toys. It's the water gun that shoots jelly. He's friends with uh that little doll that no one knows why no one wants her. Have you ever figured out why no one wants her? Uh Jen had a theory.
Because it cried, I think. But lots of dolls cry and people want them. That's like one of the main things dolls do is that they're gonna see. Right? No one wants to play with a Peter in the box.
We know that. No child wants to play with a Charlie in the box. That one, he he's basically like King Moon Racer's second in command. You have like the the cowboy that rides the ostrich, right? But what's wrong with the train with square wheels?
Train with square wheels. Although I think it's just the tender car that has square wheels, right? Doesn't the train itself have round wheels? The engine itself. Maybe they could just lose the tender car.
You know what I mean? Let me find the doll's issue. Go ahead. Yeah, you figure out the doll's issue, and uh what does he say again when uh when when they think that Santa's not coming and and is he like because now I have my movies confused. Now I have Charlie in the box saying skunked again.
Anyway. By the way. So we have to make it up what's wrong with her? Leaving many classics wondering why she was a misfit due to her normal-looking appearance. So she's just there to make all little girls feel bad about themselves.
Be like, what's wrong is on the inside. It doesn't even have to be visible, and there's still something wrong with you. Right? That's what it's there for? Oh my god.
So hardcore. Uh you know, first let me write the book, and then you and I together, we can write our well, okay. So the question is Dynastasia and I write our own separate. What's plural of thesis? These?
Come on, John, you're the ex-professor here. What is it? Is there a plural of thesis? I thesis. I can't be right now.
Let's see. We will each write a thesis. The choices are we each write a thesis on uh uh uh uh or I should say an exegesis of the story of Rudolph, right? And then we publish them in its own the uh like on their own in a chapter book format, or we could try to combine our thoughts and write a single thesis. What what are the feelings?
I think that you and I should someday write a book on all of the like the crazy things that we've done that people don't know about, like the eating the f the fruit at the place in California, and then I'll explain the lunch, like that. We've never talked about that? We have. But on the air, we've never talked about the bathroom aftermath? No, no, and like the Peter walking in on you, like all of we've talked about that a million times.
Um all of the things that we don't talk about, we should talk about, we should write in this book. All the things that we talk about when we're out with people and they're horrified, we should write in this book. That's all the things we ever talk about. Yes. Like the thing, the fact of the matter is is that like I I honestly don't understand, like, unless you're eating, like, why are any subjects really off limits when you're just having a conversation, right?
Like, what what are you supposed to talk about? The stuff that you always talk about? Am I supposed to sit with you and we'll be like, well, how about them match? Oh, the the the pri the eggs, the price went up and then it went back down again. I mean, what are you supposed to talk about?
You know what I mean? Yeah, but yeah, but yeah. Yeah. I mean, seriously. Um, all right, we're back on the monin.
My work, now remember people, what we were talking about, maybe I should start doing this in the future. What we were talking about was Connor has a Yuzu puree and it's too thick to mix in and was having problems with the pectin. Then uh Connor said, you know, uh that it's jelly-like, and that we talked about boiling, and that's what sent us into the t me into the tangent on Rudolph, which is how we got here. That's a a short recap of the last like five minutes. This is incredibly helpful for me.
Yeah, all right, all right, all right. Okay. Um so anyway, so Connor thinks that uh making a pectin lose its gel by overheating seems counterintuitive. Now, what they probably mean uh that uh pectin can lose its strength if if it's heated too long, is that um pectin, like pectin is interesting among hydrocolloids in that it requires a certain amount of acid to set properly, right? Especially native uh pectin and fruits.
However, in acidic conditions, when you boil them too long, the acid actually can break apart a polypeptide, sorry, a polysaccharide, right? Because it's pectin's a polysaccharide. It can break the, it can hydrolyze the polysaccharide, thereby destroying its gelling ability. Because one of the things that, aside from the variety that a hydrocolloid is the actual chain length of the polymer, which can be different. So, like two different, uh, two different pectins can have two different chain lengths, right?
And uh two different gelatins can have two different chain lengths, even though that's not a saccharide, that's a uh polypeptide. Um, and the shorter the chain length, the the less something has gelling ability. So if you boil it for a long time in the presence of a lot of acid, then the acid will start to hydrolyze, break apart the pectin, and it will lose its gelling ability. That's probably what they're talking about, but you'd have to cook it a good long time, anyways. Um what I would do if I were you uh is I would just buy some enzymes, some um some pectinase enzyme and hit it and see whether or not it might be a little too high in sugar for it to work, but it and it might be a little too high in acid, but you'll probably get some pectolytic uh activity in there and that will thin it out.
Another uh thing that we like to do with ingredients that are um unhelpful is to like say, okay, listen, uh I know that I'm gonna put a drink on the menu with this yuzu puree, and it also contains this other liquid that doesn't cost a lot, and then I don't care that I'm don't like putting it only with oose with the yuzu, and then pre-dilute it a little bit. Now your your shelf life's gonna go down significantly, but your portability is gonna go way up. And so, you know, that's what we would we would do a lot of times. A third scenario that you can do in in terms of uh making it work in a drink that's going to be shaken, is you can buy dosing pumps. So speaking of monin, who made your puree, uh at the bar we would have milk syrup and cream syrup, and those things are very hard to jigger.
They don't mix very well. Uh, and so what we would do is we would put them into dosimetric pumps and dose them directly into the shaker, and it made our life uh easy. Is that a good enough uh answer there, Anastasia or no? My name is Sarah Kim and I'm from Austin, Texas. I'm a Cheeselandian because while life is great, cheese makes it better.
Wisconsin cheese has proven time and time again to be a delicious expression of craft, hard work, and tradition. As a Cheeselandian, I'm able to share a good experience with fellow cheese and food lovers nationwide, as well as connect with cheese producers and cheesemongers, taking my love of cheese to another level. I invite you to join Cheeslandia because during these difficult times, it has been even more important to take it easy and get cheesy. The Cheeselandia community and events have been the glue helping to keep us together and connected. And I would love it if you would join me.
And let's face it, if you hear the word cheese and get a little hungry, then you found a place you can call home. To find out more about Cheeselandia, go to Cheeselandia.com. Uh, from Max, my name is Maxim. I'm from Kazakhstan. Man, I really want to go there.
Like You always say that you should just go. When? First of all, like I almost thought I was gonna get to go once, right? But like what how am I gonna just go to Kazakhstan? Why uh when the pandemic is over, why don't you and Jen take a vacation to Kazakhstan instead of waiting for someone to pay for a trip for you for free?
You know what? Or I have I need a business reason to go. Here's another thing. What? Why do you need a business reason?
What do you mean why do I need a business reason I don't take vacations to randomly? We do like one a year. I don't think that would be like Jen, where are we gonna go? Kazakhstan. That'd be awesome.
I wanna go. But I have to also go at the right time of year and get a guide to take me up into the mountains, etc. etc. I wonder whether that guy we met uh at uh now forget it. Anyway, uh I learned about you uh I learned about you from a book by Adam Rogers, who wrote a book, what was his book called?
Proof, I think. He wrote a book about bar mixology. You were described as the best in the business, very kind. Uh can you give advice or literature to young bartenders? Um, so if you're gonna buy books, I mean, there's not that many books uh on kind of the style that I wrote about, right?
So obviously, get you get my book, that would help me. Um, or you know, uh, if you want like also some modern takes on things, more Morgenthaler's uh books, and then just get some of the classics, like you know, get uh, you know, Meehan's book, get uh Gary Regan's book, um, get uh, you know, get it. Actually, I have a bibliography in in at the end of my book that of books that I think are good for people to read when they're when they're starting. And then just go to a lot of bars. That's always the answer.
If you're interested in learning how to uh cook or learn how to um to make drinks, the first thing to do is to go have the food and the drinks of people who are doing very interesting things because it's impossible, not impossible, but it's very hard to come up, like it's very hard to create an internal metric of what's possible using only just your own skill because you're limited by yourself, right? So, you know, I always thought it was funny, and I think we've talked about this before, but I I've always thought it was funny, like uh, like it's American famous pizza places, uh, old school ones, and they don't ever eat anyone else's pizza. Why would I eat someone else's pizza? Their pizza sucks, my pizza's the best, or like burger places where they're like, I've never had the other person's burger, why would I have that? Their burger sucks, mine's the best, right?
And that works for a very specific kind of category where everyone says they like your stuff, so you feel like you don't need to change. But you know, New Yorkers who think that way about pizza have been completely lapped, right, by pizza knowledge. I mean, pizza's one of those things where growing up in the 70s and 80s, pizza sucked. Let's just be honest. Pizza sucked.
Like New York pizza was still better than pizza you could get elsewhere, but compared to a modern person's idea of pizza, it sucked, right? And people who are still thinking of pizza in terms of what was great pizza in the 80s, right? Like, I'm not trying to insult them, but like Sally's and Peppies in um New Haven, they make a delicious pizza, right? But they've been lapped mentally, right? Other people they should continue to do their thing.
I'm not saying they should ever change, but to say that they're the bee in all the end all because they don't go around and taste other people's pizza, right? Specifically. So I think what you need to do to make yourself better is to go and just eat and drink a lot. That's always the answer. Because uh, every time that I've thought I've known something and then have gone on taste excursions to taste other people's stuff, I've realized I don't know nearly as much as I think I did.
And that's the best way to learn. I don't know. What do you guys think? Yeah, that's good. It's like that guy in uh Japan.
Yeah, right. Yeah, bartender who's like came to the United States, was invited to the United States, and won't call him out, right? And um, famous. And doesn't drink very much, which is fair, but like was taken around all to cocktail bars here in the States, not even interested in seeing what people were doing. You know what I mean?
Not interested. I guess he thought maybe it would pollute his mentality of what's going on. But I think like, you know, the older you get, right? Now I'm 49, pretty soon gonna be 50. I think we might have to, because of the pandemic, Nastasia, let's postpone like our deadlines for happiness one year.
Are you accepting this or not? We have to do it on air. When was it supposed to be? Supposed to be this year. Supposed to be, well, not this year.
It was supposed to be 20, it was supposed to be 2021. We were pegging we were pegging it on my 50th birthday. Right that we were gonna get in stable, happy situations, but uh you wanna you want to push it a year? Do you want to just publicly go on record saying we're pushing it a year? Can we push it six months instead?
Pandemic's been going more than six months, and our business has been pushed more than six months back. Yes, so I'm only willing to go six months. What? Six months from your 50th. So like that's not even this year.
It has to be on my 50th. So it had to be six months from I don't know. My 50th is in March. Yes. I'm 50 years old in March.
So November 2020, right? Six months. There's no way. Like even if we're lucky. Even if we're lucky, we'll just be getting our new product online then.
I have faith. Well, that is heartening because usually you do not. I am very heartened by this. I'm not even being sarcastic. That's uh it's truly heartening, especially in light of what's happening to our business right now.
Um you want to get into that now since you brought it up and just get it over with? No, no, no, no, because I'll spool off. Like like you tell me when quickly, quickly. I'm gonna give you a time limit. No, no, no.
Can I ask a stupid question that's probably maybe inflammatory? There are no stupid questions, just stupid people. Remember that. Why is Amazon the only place that you can get a serious? He really liked it.
Um the um because we could sell it on our own, but the distribu Amazon has amazing distribution for all their own faults. And the biggest problem of doing something yourself is the logistics of distribution and shipping. By the way, are we doing that CNN thing, Nastasia or not? Rebecca's on it. Oh shit.
She's gonna work she's gonna she's gonna be showing it. Dave's a guest, though. So what? Oh my god, I didn't hear Freudian said the example. You definitely I did not curse.
There was a slip there. You definitely did. We'll review the tapes. We'll review the tapes. My mind did not curse.
My mouth maybe did, but I don't even understand. Thank God she said she doesn't listen to the show, so that's you know, it's okay. Yeah, but like the their true feelings. No, no, here's the thing. This is not has to do with Rebecca.
This has to do with any person I've ever dealt with whose job it is to protect a brand, right? Their job is to protect a brand. So they are inherently worried when someone goes out and there's a potential to damage the brand by, for instance, talking crap about Amazon on uh uh you know, something that someone from Amazon might watch, like CNN, right? And so like um when the the the PR person at the French Culinary Institute at the time, um, you know, when the uh Department of Health was um cracking down on sous vide packaging in in New York City, like I had just gone on, I had just written the curriculum for sous vide um cooking at the French Culinary Institute. You know, I was 30 something, I was raring to go.
I was like, you know, let's do this. I was like, we could uh I pitched, I was like, listen, we have an opportunity here at the French Culinary Institute. And at the time, no one was teaching low temperature sous vide cooking. No one, no one understood it, no one understand stood the rules. I had just like I had been working a lot with Wiley, who was, you know, one of the foremost people using uh sous vide at WD50 at the time.
And like I had done all of the all of the research. I knew I knew more on the technical, on the technical aspects of it than anyone, right, at the time. From a cook's perspective, not from a science and process perspective, but from a cooking perspective. And I was like, listen, we can be the people who are the face of this. We can be the place where everyone goes for information.
Like, this is our chance. Like we can get everyone, we can be the people. We can be the voice. And the ability to be that voice doesn't come up very often in anything, right? And the PR person at the time was like, it's not an important part enough of our brand and it's too risky.
So no, you have to shut up. And I couldn't talk to the NY Times about it. I couldn't talk to anyone. They didn't even really allow me to talk to chefs anymore. And I had been on the phone almost constantly, like eight hours a day, talking to chefs, calling, asking me questions about what was going to happen because I could talk because we didn't use sous vide in the restaurant downstairs at the French culinary.
Because we didn't use it, I was thoroughly free to talk to the board of health because the Department of Health, because it didn't matter. Like, like I could ask them questions and they wouldn't be like, why are you doing that? And then come and inspect us because we weren't doing it. You know what I mean? We legitimately weren't.
And so like I was in this very, very privileged position, and they said no. And maybe it was a good PR reason, maybe it wasn't. And like time and time again, like when we were at Momofuku, uh, well, when we were associated more with Momofuku, like the PR like is in the job of not taking big risks like that. And for you know, me, especially when you're younger, your job is to take risks. So that's why that reaction, does that make sense, Nastasia or no?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just like, you know, but anyway, Amazon is screwing us hard. Oh, yeah, real hard.
Real hard, real hard. Um, so I mean, it's just it's honestly, well, I don't know why we should have done it at the end. It's too long, too long to get into, but like we went with Amazon solo, Matt, because there are parts of Amazon that are incredibly enticing, right? Because they act, they act as not your customer support from a standpoint of like what John does, but they act as um when Nastasia says distributions, not just distribution like from warehouse to warehouse, but like their fulfillment is amazing, their ability to get the stuff out to the customers, to handle returns seamlessly, to make you seem cool on that standpoint, is kind of unparalleled. Because Amazon is truly or was until the pandemic, it truly great at customer service, right?
The problem is that for as good as they are on the customer side, they can be as bad on on our side because uh you know, computers will make decisions and uh you you can't get in touch with a human being, like you have zero meaning to them. Like, even if you're doing several millions of dollars of business with them a year, you're still relatively meaningless. But for us, especially, you know, we're a very small manufacturer, and so our margins on our products, even though people think they're expensive, are low, right? Because we're not producing enough product to get really good rates on making stuff, and so in order to sell things at a reasonable price, we can't sell at a Williams Sonoma. We can't sell at a at a bunch of places.
And because it's just Nastasia and myself, or was until John came on board. No, you know, we had Matt, but I'm saying, you know, John Matt was part-time, John's full-time. But um, you know, we just don't have the facilities to deal with like 20 different accounts or to sell to mom and pop stores. And so Amazon, because they take a relatively low percentage, like so the you know, the cost of doing business on Amazon is what, between 18 and 20%, Nastasia? Yeah, like 16.
Yeah. I mean, it depends on the item and and all of that and whether they actually pay you, right? It's very enticing to use them, but then as we've discovered, like one like one blip can ruin the whole business. And we've been blipped now like three times, aside from the fact that they owe us hundreds of thousands of dollars and never pay us on time, and it's caused us to be late and to like have to take loans and all of this other stuff. Yes, we have to take out loans to subsidize.
Yeah, to subsidize Jeff Bezos, and that is a true freaking story. We, Booker and Dax, have to take out loans to subsidize Amazon for real, right? Um he's strapped for cash. He is, man. He needs that he needs that first personal trillion, baby.
Everyone's got something to work towards. So listen. Um, but like they can blip you without even caring or knowing. Like the time when a computer, we we we switched uh a word right before Black Friday. We switched a word in the description and of the Sears all, and literally switching that word caused a computer to say, danger, danger, danger.
And they turned off our listing. Like two, like three minutes before we were supposed to have our biggest sale of our lives, right? Yeah. Um that cost us many, many, many thousands of dollars and heartache because then we had to fulfill all those things. They had uh uh another where their computer just didn't uh update right, they didn't place an order, and Sears alls were out of stock for three months.
Another blip again, they don't care. Um they had in this latest one, someone complained that they they didn't read the instructions, and they complained that they thought it was quote unquote almost unsafe. Not even unsafe, almost unsafe. Uh which which it's not, it's an inert hunk of metal. And so then someone, and literally, it's like you know how Dick Cheney used to be in an undisclosed location in in a bunker, just like chilling in a bunker, shooting his friends in the face, and no one knew where he was.
Like that's how Amazon does all of their like teams. So Amazon will hire a team, and it's harder to find an Amazon team than it is to find SEAL team six. You know what I'm saying? Like they are burrowed like deep underground or like burrowed deep into something like a tick, like a tick ready to pop. Only you can't find it.
They don't have they they have maybe an email that'll get to them. There's no telephones, no names, and they fire everyone every week. So there's no continuity, there's nothing. And so someone on one of these embedded Amazon tick teams, and they don't even tell you what country they're in, right? Uh, and you know, they could be anywhere.
The literally the person could be next door to you, or they could be uh, you know, in Kazakhstan somewhere. It doesn't matter. Who knows? And they said that we needed to get certified. And here's the funny part.
It's like asking for a space pilot's license, right? It's almost like, hey, you flew in space, you need a space pilot's license. We're like, well, there's no rules in space, so we don't have a space pilot's license because a space pilot's license doesn't exist. I can write you one, and they're like, no, it has to be certified by NASA. And you're like, but NASA's not going to certify my space pilot's license because there's no such thing as space pilots' licenses, and NASA's not in the business of certifying things that don't exist.
This is fundamentally what they're asking us to do. And so we're still in the throes of this right now, right, Nastasia? And meanwhile, all the knockoffs are selling, which I believe I know it sounds like a conspiracy thing, but I believe that those knockoffs are probably being manufactured by Amazon, which would really like what would you do, Dave, if that came out that that was what would you do? What would you do? I mean, that it that has been their business.
I know what I would do. I know what I would do. I know what I would do. What would you do? Nothing.
Because I have no power in this situation. This is what it's like to have no idea. No, I think we'd have to take it public and go on the news. So oh yay. Here's here's the thing.
Here's the thing. Someone's like, someone's like, hey, did you realize that someday you're gonna die? What are you gonna do about it? Answer nothing, right? Yeah, I could wipe creams all over my face and like try to only eat antioxidants.
I'm still gonna die, right? Like that it's the same thing with Amazon. If Amazon wants to shaft you, they are going to. I don't know. I think we we would need to take it on all the news, all the news.
Oh, okay. Crusading. I I like crusading Nastasia. That's one of my more favorite Nastasias, but uh uh, you know, I don't I don't, you know, uh you and I are good when we're real mad. Nastasia's only time that Nastasia actually only reason she still works with me is my ability I I'm like I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm not.
And then she likes to get me to that point where I'm not. You also you know the Dave and I switch off on who's gonna be angry in this situation. Or as Nastasia puts it, who's gonna be peshy. Yeah. Yeah.
Who Nastasia, what what's been in your most successful crusade? God, I don't know. I don't know. I'd have to think about that. All right.
We'll we'll we'll tackle that in 2021. I know what it is, but I can't we can't talk about that on there. Okay. All right. Uh do some more questions.
Uh Steve Young wrote in, Hey, had a very successful Thanksgiving where I made 32 takeout dinners my friends picked up from my porch. The main dish was six ounce chunks of turkey with chicken uh thigh skins. I had meat glued on and then fried. It's a good call. Uh by the way, also a good call.
Uh you can buy boxes of chicken skins and they're pretty beat up. But if you uh meat glue chicken skin to skirt steak and then uh fry the skirt steak, that is delicious. Like that is a chicken fried steak to be reckoned with for sure. That's one of the things we used to do at the FCI, and I always love that. Uh you just gotta make sure to let it dry out because um, you know, you want the skin to be be crispy.
Um we also used to fry at a really high temperature. Like part of the issue, you don't want to overcook the skirt steak too much, so you want to fry at a really high temperature. And if you're gonna batter it, which I which is cool, right? To batter it, we didn't use to batter it, but if you're gonna do it battered, so it's like battered chicken skins, um, because you are going you want it to fry quickly because the skirt steak is thin. I would I've been researching a lot about um uh uh battering, and I realized that the the fried chicken batter that I use that I have used for the past 25 years or so, uh, which you can get the recipe, just look uh food and wine, look up uh Dave Arnold fried chicken, food and wine, my recipe is there, at least my recipe as of 20 years ago, um, is relatively unusual.
I I've read in the past week, maybe 90 fried chicken recipes, and very a low percentage of them use a dry, use a wet, dry uh like uh breader breading, flour breading situation with leavening in the wet, very rare. And I use both two leavening, not very rare, but relatively rare. I use two leavenings. I use uh powder, but I also use soda, and uh, it's because the the liquid is buttermilk. Now, if you're using an acidic dip uh before your breading, a lot of people maintain the acidity, don't neutralize it with soda.
So if you look at like a lot of the dips that are being used in the south, like they'll have hot sauce in them with vinegar, or they'll have some form of acid, even with buttermilk, and they're not neutralizing it with soda like you would for a pancake. And I think after reading a lot of recipes, that the reason is is because if you leave the batter relatively acidic, it won't brown very quickly. And what that means is if you're gonna cook something like a big piece of chicken, like breast meat or something like this, you're gonna cook it for a long time. If you cook my recipe for a long time, it gets very dark because it's relatively uh neutral. Um, if you keep your batter acidic, it will cook relatively uh it will take a long time for it to turn brown.
So just think about that when you're frying. The smaller the pieces, the faster you want them to get brown. Then make sure you neutralize with soda if you're using something acidic like buttermilk. Long way to go around. But anyway, I would batter it.
I would use the recipe that I use for mine because I like still like that one, even though I'm doing and but maybe I'll have more information later when I come up with my you know, fry coating 10 ways situation that I'm working on for the book, but that's my two cents there. But that wasn't even your question, Steve. Uh that got me thinking. Can I make a good meat glued turduckin? Uh instead of stuffing between the layers, I was thinking of gluing the three meats together uh layered in stacks, uh six ounces for each serving with chicken skins glued to the outside.
The problem is I'm assuming you can't glue the meats after cooking them. Is that correct? If I have to glue them together before cooking, is there a single ideal temperature to cook them to? What are your thoughts? Steve from LA, aka Kompache.
Fish Poet. Um, which we're putting a new newsletter in his. Yeah, when's that coming out, Dave? Did you put your information in? How's that coming out?
I I don't know, but listen, that's not the question. The question is he has he mutes himself because his dog is barking like a weasel. Listen. Um Nastasia, but has the poem been unseated? It was unseated last in last uh month's newsletter.
I don't think it's been unseated, but there was a new poem. So are we going back to Kompache or can like it? Yes, we are going back to Kompachi because we didn't get a new submission. Has Kampachi been unseated? Uh that's uh how that's the circle been unbroken, but with Kompache and Unseated.
Um Remember that show named That Too, Nastasia? Yeah. Yeah. No. Uh I used to love that show.
I would be so bad at that. You know what show Dave Dave and I would be good at? Remember, Dave? It's called Well, any one of those, any one of those things where you have to know something about the other person, like any one of those, like newlyweds or any one of those other shows. Any show it's required that you know something about the other person.
Yeah, we would we would if only someone would come up with a show like that again with lots and lots of money. That's how we could bring our business back. But like we wanted to do one that wasn't for, yeah, it wasn't for people that like not married, like the people that have worked together a long time. We wanted to have a game show that was like co-workers. And like the coworkers, these idiots have been working together for like you know, 11 years, and so you put them next to each other and see like, you know, see what you get out of it.
You know what I mean? We would win. We would kill. Kill. They need a newlyweds game for co-workers.
Yeah. Yeah. That does sound like a promising idea. Right? That would bring our business back.
Just call us in for the development meetings, give us a producer title, pay us five bucks and we'll be on our way. That's how much we're gonna do that. And you want to be on the contestants on the pilot episode. I don't think you can do both. I'd rather be a contestant because you know they're not gonna pay us.
They're not gonna pay you when you're a contestant either. We're gonna win. The winner gets a million dollars. There you go. You you know that they would ask some random question at the end that like, because like we would know all sorts of random things.
Like they would be like, how much would it cost for you to eat your own foot? Nastasia's like, Dave will do it for free. And I'm like, you know what I mean? Like we get all that stuff right, but then they would ask some question that like size shoe does Dave wear. I've never no idea.
Or like they would any sort of normal question, like uh, you know, what brand of you know, what brands of clothing the does Nastasia think of clothing? What's clothing? What the hell? What? You know what I mean?
And then, like, you know, the stuff that normal people talk about anyway. So that's why we would lose, because they would ask all the rando stuff early, and we would make it to the end, and then they would ask something that every other human being would know, and I would have no idea. Either I wouldn't eat the channel. We should get to know those those simple ones so that we can win this theoretical show. Yeah.
All right. So back to back to the turduccin. So uh at the FCI, we used to do uh turduckin all the time. And I was kind of happy with it, but here's the problem with low temperature traducking. Uh, first of all, the classic turduccin is like it's arranged all wrong.
It's obviously gonna get overcooked, it's clearly problematic. We used to do uh ballotines, big ballotines. And what we did, we added a fourth meat, we put squab in the middle, and then but uh uh after the squab, we put uh duck, right? So basically something that wants to be cooked to roughly 54, 55 degrees uh Celsius, then something that wants to be cooked to roughly 57 degrees Celsius, and we would like sheet them and then layer them and roll them like a sushi roll, right? And then um then we put a layer of sausage because sausage can be considered cooked.
Uh, the the the you know, it would be okay down to around 60. So there's very little overlap where you're wickedly overcooking the duck, but you know, not allowing the sausage to get cooked. So we put our sausage layer there, slash stuffing, right? Then the next layer on the outside was uh chicken, and then I believe a layer of turkey, uh, and then skin, all meat glued in a layer rolled into a big ballotine, and then we threw it into a 66 degree bath, right? Which is you know a degree higher than really you want the turkey to be, but you're you're you're pushing, that's okay, actually.
You're pushing the temperature through, and this is one of the very few times we used a thermometer, we shook the thermometer straight down the center of the ballotine, which was all in plastic wrap. Uh it's ballotine, actually, though, right? Right, John? It's teen, not tan. Yeah.
Say it for me with the accent. Oh, yeah, yeah. How you say how how you say meat tube? Um it the you put the thermometer in. Please, please go into that.
Like, please in 2021. Just do just do that. Just randomly, the how you say. How you say? You say uh meat tube.
Anyway, so like the thermometer all the way through the uh tube, the meat thermometer through it, and then we pulled it when the squab got up to like 54, and then there was a little bit of a carry. Uh, and then you cool it and then you fry it. Now the it technically was really good. The problem is the pieces were really, really big. Remember, Anastasia?
Yeah. And so the pieces were a little too big. I would go thinner if you could. And also, it's just like a lot of you it turns out that people just like with rib, and if I have a second, I could talk about like uh the way that I did the rib, I did a like a four-step low temperature cooking of my uh rib roast this year. Um it's just a lot of perfectly cooked meat, and people don't really actually want a lot of perfectly cooked meat, they want some overcook on the outside, which is why nowadays when I do large party trick things, typically I'll low temp cooking through.
Yes. Uh there are no parties. I thought you were optimistic this year, Stas. Right now there are no parties. Go ahead.
So you cook it all the way through, and then you do a roast just for a long sh much shorter period of time to get that nice overcooked stuff on the outside because everyone actually loves those high temperature overcooked pieces around the edges as long as they're not dry. Would you guys agree with that? Yes. I have to go. It's not even uh it's not even uh the actual minute yet.
All right. I'm just saying. Also, Dave, imagine if we were on how much what crazy fight we would get into on that show, that newlywed show if we one of us got it. Co-work if one of us got it wrong and we thought the other there would be so much curse, it would be a spectacle. First of all, like it would need to be like one of those voting off the island situations where they just put us in in a in a padded room afterwards and film the debrief.
You know what I mean? Just going on and on. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There would have to be like so many layers of like soundproofing, otherwise, like they wouldn't be able to shoot within like a five mile radius of us.
You know what I mean? Especially if it was the million dollar and and you were sure I knew it, or I was sure you knew it. Oh my god. They would have to take all weapons away from you because I'm I'm fine with the number of buttholes I have right now. I don't need another butthole.
You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Uh oh, so but we didn't hear this before Nastasia's about to bow out. I'm gonna try to hit two or three more questions if it's okay with Matt after she bows out. Yeah.
Um, what do you have on Christmas stuff? You're asking me? I am. Uh my dad cooked a ribeye. And how was it?
It was good. It was really good. Super good. Um on the new grill I got him. Uh oh, wait, cooked it outside.
Uh yeah. Huh. And uh, how long did it take on the grill? I did not pay attention. Were you getting Ajita over running out of propane?
No. No, it was a new tank. And the sell it at the gas stations here. They don't sell it at the home depots. Because Home Depot is hoarding.
Whenever I go to like, you know, well, back when I was allowed to go to my parents' house, like it's always like, do you have enough propane to do what you're doing? And then because they were always also worried about it, they would turn the grill on too late and then turn it off too quickly. Do you know what I'm talking about? Mm-hmm. It's like you want that sucker, like, like my mom's like, but how hot do you want it?
Like on medium? I'm like, Ma, as high as it'll go. They're like, but but I'm like, Ma, as high as it will go. You know what I mean? And then like I want it to go, but then you know, you need infinite propane all the time.
I don't know. They have city gas. I don't know why they don't just plumb it. Does your dad have city gas? I don't know, but I didn't even know that was an option.
And this is his first propane grill, so he wasn't, he was like, wait, what? So I don't I don't know. I don't know. So did he not trust it? Did he still have a sack of charcoal next to it?
Yeah, no. I love that. Well, I love that. It's like, oh, it's a nice gift, honey, but I'm gonna keep my sack of charcoal here just in case. Yeah, my mom is keeping the charcoal grill for no good reason.
Yeah. Yeah, well, that's what you do. You know what I mean? That's especially like they live in a house. They can afford to, right?
It's not like they you know, they're in an apartment, yeah. Yeah. And uh did you well, I guess on a grill, was the did he do it in a pan on the grill so he was able to catch the drippings? And was there a water pan underneath so that it didn't scorch the uh drippings and cause a fire? Not the pan.
Oh, there is a built-in pan underneath, but it was cooked in a pan, yes. Yeah, on the ground and it tasted good and there was no fire. That's good. Yes. What side what sides did you have?
Um mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Okay, so Wiley, I was with uh we we'd quarantined beforehand, gotten all tested, and then got, you know, uh Jen's sisters and my family as we were all in one one building, which was my test, was it? Was it the accurate one or the non-accurate one? Uh well, I've had COVID, so I just I I was uh I allowed myself to just have the rapid. Uh Jen got the PCR and she also came back negative, and Jen and I haven't been seeing anyone, and then we made Dax take it twice.
We had him do the rapid twice. Uh like once, then waited two days, took it again, and then and then went because he's the only one in the family that has never tested positive for COVID. Yeah, who knows? So, anyways, so we were together and Wiley made this delicious thing, which I had never had before, and maybe it's just because I'm a moron that I haven't had before, but see whether you guys have had it. So, Wiley was making gnocchi, but not like Italian gnocchi.
He was, well, I mean, not what I classically think of, not potato gnocchi. He was he just made a shoe pastry. So, for those of you that don't shoe spelled like the French word for cabbage, right? Is normally what you make those little puffs out of or like gougers. They're like they're real eggy, and you you you you make like a uh a hot you put hot water in to make the dough, like boiling water in to make the dough, then you add the eggs and the and uh and they they puff up.
Um it's a shoe pastry, it's a thing. Uh was that accurate description of it, you think, John? I think it's accurate. I didn't look up the recipe, but I haven't made it in years. But he made it he made a shoe pastry, put it into a piping bag, and this is a a Wiley, a Wiley thing.
He says he got it from somewhere, but it was pretty cool. He bought uh monofilament and tied the monofilament across his boiling pot in a line, right? And then just stood there with the pastry bag and went with the fishing line and was like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. So he didn't have to have a knife or anything. He didn't have to one-hand it, and then with a knife go chakada chakra chackada into yeah, smart.
And so he's there going with the shoe pastry into the thing. And when the shoe pastry boils, it still gets that hollow kind of shoe pastry center. It's still real light and shoe pastry like. Then he like pulled it out and then sauteed them in a pan to get kind of a little bit of a crisp, buttery crispness on the outside, like you would get in a shoe pastry. And I have to say, they were freaking delicious.
Have any of you had anything like this before? I don't think so. Sounds good though, right? Yes. Yeah, Wiley knows his uh Wiley knows his like uh weird uses of uh old school French stuff.
Also, Dave, on your Instagram post with Wiley, who infiltrated it and made you feel awful. She uh Claire. Claire, Claire infiltrated what? Claire gets on sit, likes the thing. I'm like, oh nice, okay, great.
And then she goes through this story where she cooked a filet mignon, don't get me started. And then she says that she asked Nastasia how to do it, and you had given her some advice, and then she says, Well, I didn't follow any of that advice. Gives me the indication that she's horribly mutilated it, but without any sort of real data, and then asked me, and I was like, I don't know what the what do you want me to do with this information? I have no idea what the heck you want me to do with this information. Like, how did it taste?
And then it gets worse from there. She starts saying how she like sliced it thin and fried it in pans and like and like cooked it forever and threw it into a warming oven and just like had a few. Anything you can do with meat, she did like any any way you could cook meat, she did it to this poor filet mignon. And then like oven to pan to the microwave to like it's a dehydrator yeah like any horrible thing that you could do because basically everybody filet mignon has no texture so as soon as you cook it you've ruined it right this is why you just want it to be like nice and seared on the outside and basically you know blue warm on the inside would you guys agree with this agree yeah because it's got no it's got no uh if if you cook it at at all too high it goes fibroy this is why I don't really like a lot of low temp on filet unless it's just barely up and then I still anytime you cook it longer than 45 minutes you've really kind of hosed it an hour max right because it starts getting fibery anyway so she says this long sort of thing and I'm just like and so I just wrote you're making my palm sweaty and giving me agida and it signed off and then like cooking issues crew just started hammering her calling her calling her the low quality and and she threw Nastasia under the bus basically saying that Nastasia was her quote unquote meat coach right and then thereby making kind of what happened to Stasia's fault and people were like yo yo yo if someone tells you to do something and then you don't do it you can't you don't get to you you can't even call them out at all. You're like Nastasia's name should not have even been mentioned in this coral Leo.
You know what I mean that's true. No I told her to cook it less time lower temperature because I knew she would double that so and she did. And she even more than double it she like she's like uh can I also deep fry it can I also like put it into a solar oven? Can I like can I put it at the uh you know at the focal point of like uh you know a military radar set so that I like microwave it with eight billion watts, like you know, like which is how the microwave was invented, by the way, by the good folks at Raytheon. Um I had Claire Pegd as more of like a vegan juice cleanse kind of person.
Well, that's when she's in Mexico. No, she's in South Carolina right now. I really wish that she was still on her regular juice cleanse, which is Chardonnay. Me too. I liked old Chardonnay Claire.
I mean, that's a juice. Kendall Jackson Chardonnay. I only have Kendall Jackson juice on my juice cleanse. Yeah, that's the classic. That's the class.
That that's the Claire kids go for. You met her as a camp counselor, right? Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. And you guys she was always on Chardonnay as a camp counselor.
Nice, nice. Well, yeah, I'm sure you got yeah. She it wasn't like uh heavily oaked California stuff though, right? Were you steel tank people back in the day? What were you doing?
Oh, I don't remember what it was whatever crap, like Swiss crap table, Chardonnay, you know. Yeah, whatever the equivalent is. Never been to Switzerland, flown over it several times. Looks cool. You could go on vacation.
Okay, I'm signing off. All right. Uh happy new year. Happy New Year. Yeah, we'll talk to everybody next week, right?
Uh yeah, uh well. What day is it? What what day of the what what day of the month is it next week? Random, whatever. Yeah, I'll be good.
Yeah, we're good. Yeah. Okay. Bye. All right, but all right, I'm gonna Matt, you okay if I answer a couple more questions real quick?
Yeah, like two more. All right. From Cal Youngblood via email. Uh I've done and and this is perfect because it's a carbonation question. And as you guys know, if you ask a carbonation question when Nastasia is on, it's problems.
Um I've done carbonation before with uh metal carbonation camp and two-liter uh caps and two-liter bottles, uh, but I found uh a carbonation stone, which I've never heard of before, and I can't remember if you've gone over it now. The carbonation stone has 0.5 micron holes, and they say it produces a very fine bubbles. Uh would these stones produce carbonated water with smaller bubbles than you can with the carbonating cap, or would uh the water be exactly the same? Um it would be exactly the same. Like the fine bubbles is just to increase the surface area and the number of bubbles that are diffusing into uh into the liquid.
Once the liquid is done, it has no memory of how it was carbonated. The only thing it remembers is how much gas is in there and if there are other dissolved gases. So good carbonation is going to be when you get rid of other dissolved gases and when you get enough stuff in. I find it difficult to get a good carbonation with those stones. Um there are machines that will um like circulate over one of those stones and get decent carbonation in water, not it not in cocktails.
They but again I I've never a huge fan, because then also you eventually you need to you clean them and whatnot. Bubble size for a specific liquid is dependent on the what's in it, the the products that are in it. So, like for instance, in wines, like the autolized yeast and things like that can affect bubble size, sugar affects bubble size, salt affects bubble size, um, ions like minerals affect bubble size. Um alcohol content obviously affects bubble size and bubble uh bubble uh mouthfeel. In water, in in specifically in unsugared in mineral waters, the two main things that are gonna determine three main things are uh other dissolved gases.
So other dissolved gases, when you uncrack them, will produce lots of small bubbles. That's the nitrogen kind of trick, right? But will produce way lower overall carbonation. Um and salts, um, you know, uh mineral dissolved minerals will produce a smaller perceived bubble for a in my experience. I I haven't looked it up scientifically, but in my experience, will produce a smaller perceived bubble size um for a given level of CO2.
So less CO2 uh means less less carbonation and smaller bubbles, uh, higher um salts, smaller uh bubbles, and I think less perceived carbonation and um other dissolved gases in it when you uncrack them will cause that because the the they will pop out of solution like that. Umastasia and cooking issues. Nastasia might have waited on this. Greetings from Scotland. I have a question about pigs and blankets.
I should preface this by saying that this relates to the United Kingdom version of pigs in a blanket, which is bacon wrapped around thin or very small pork sausages such as chipolatas or cocktail sausages, uh, and then usually cooked in an oven. Uh the Wikipedia suggests that a US version is quite different. Uh hot dogs. And also there's the variant pigs in a blanket can be, if you used to go to IHOP back in the day, is a pancake wrapped around a sausage. So I still think of IHOP when I think of pigs in a blanket.
Uh Matt, you're a vegetarian, but you didn't used to be. And John, you've spent time both in Europe and the U.S. What are your pigs in a blanket? What are you what what are you what do you think? Uh wrapped in puff pastry.
Okay, so that's your pig in a blanket. So, like the cocktail party classic small sausage wrapped in puff pastry. Do you uh are are are you guys thinking it's a square that's wrapped over so it looks like uh it'll so it looks like it's been wrapped in a napkin or like the round all the way around where it looks like it's actually in a blanket? I guess round all the way around. Yeah.
Yeah, although I think you see more often the one where it's a square folded corner to corner, like a napkin around a whatever. Um the Wikipedia suggests the US version is quite different. Hot dogs wrapped in croissant pastry sounds good, but not relevant to this question. With that reference in mind, a friend of mine commented this week pigs in a blanket, i.e., bacon wrapped around sausage, are wasteful, overrated, and disgusting. Um wrapping bacon around a sausage means neither component cooks correctly.
I agree with this. I like sausage and I like bacon, but I don't like pigs in a blanket. This may partly be down to the fact that when I've eaten them, they've been pre-made supermarket snacks produced with low quality ingredients. That said, it does seem inevitable that bacon on the outside would be overdone and hard by the time the sausage is cooked through. I think it's actually kind of the opposite problem.
I would think that you wouldn't crisp up the bacon sufficiently for most people by the you know, without overcooking the sausage. What do you what do you guys think? I agree. I think it's like bacon wrapped scallop, great idea, but it never gets executed properly because the bacon never cooks if you cook the bacon properly, then the scallops are hammered. Do you know what's good if you like water chestnosos?
Bacon wrapped water chestnuts. You ever had those? I have not. Yeah, good. Very 70s.
The problem with you guys is you weren't alive in the 70s. Uh when when that was a thing. Canned water chestnuts, bacon, and I think a third component. I forget what they were called, but there was a toothpick through them, and you would eat them. That's what you used to do.
So like they would come like in a chafing dish with the toothpick, water chestnut bacon, some third component I'm forgetting, and then you would eat them. That's what you would do with them. Um I think your problem is that uh they're not meant to be high quality in the sense of high quality. The best version of this I used to have was at a uh like a lunch counter called the Yankee Doodle, which was in it went out of business maybe three years or four years ago, but it was a staple for like eighty years in New Haven. And uh their version of pig in a blanket was, and this is the way it should should be done, I think, was a standard U.S.
hot dog, right? Wrapped with a thin, standard garbage lunch counter bacon. And the reason this is important is because the thin bacon is going to cook relatively quickly, right? And there is no opportunity for it to be dry because there is no center meat. It is simply the like crust of a bacon and the fat keeps it lubricated because there's no sort of like large amount of meat to get uh dry.
Is this making sense? Especially to the meat eaters here, what I'm saying? Yeah. Then it was cooked on, rolled on a griddle or perhaps fried, I can't remember, right? Uh until it was just done and the hot dog, you know, was fine and the bacon was perfect, it was very thin.
It was then put on, and talking about gilding the lily in the best of ways, a split buttered toasted hot dog bun. And it was good. Was it the the best expression of bacon? Absolutely not. Was is it the best expression of sausage?
Clearly not, right? Uh I mean, it's pretty dang good as a hot dog bun goes. But it's like, uh, but like it was a decent combination of low-quality lunch counter bacon and low-quality American hot dogs. That makes that make sense? And it was enjoyable to eat.
Um, all right. Uh I still haven't gotten through even a chunk of these, these questions yet, John. I feel like we're gonna have to next week go over even more of these questions, right? Yeah, we gotta stop going off on tangents and just focus. No tangents, no Amazon talk?
No. Let's get these done. Yeah, there's a lot of things. John, let me ask you a question, uh, because I don't remember. Were there any things where someone had a question that they specifically needed to answer for New Year's?
No. Just we'll give you give you a couple seconds to make sure that no one has any New Year's questions that they need. No, one did come in right before the show. But that is not nope. I think we're good.
All right, people. Happy New Year, and we'll see you next year on Cooking Issues. Cooking Issues is powered by Simplecast. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you.
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