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This episode is brought to you by Just Egg. You can't have plant-based breakfast without a plant-based egg. You can get started with a free sample. Just head to J U dot S T slash H R N. This week on Meet and Three, we continue our series on global food trade.
We've covered sugar and spice. Next up, bites. Servers would come around with little carts or trays carrying these things. Um they would cry out what they were uh providing. So you guys here are my young son when he was three or four years old, referred to the theme sumplaces as screaming places.
Tune in to Meet and Three, available wherever you get your podcasts. With the COVID thing, we're usually pretty close to noon, right, Nastasia? Yeah, we are. Mm-hmm. We got uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez back on uh the sunny shores of uh Connecticut.
How are you doing? Good. Great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh they've re repaired your your window that got blasted out by the last storm.
However, they replaced it with Milky Plexiglass. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was a previously clear window, I assume.
Yeah. Yeah, it is. It was made out of glass. Yeah. Which, you know.
Yeah. Okay. Well, Nastasia, on the plus side, at least it's not like a view of the water. It's not an important window. Right.
Yes. I know. People, it is in fact a view of the water. It's an impressive. It's the only reason.
So basically, Nastasia has like a New York sized apartment in Connecticut. However, it is right on the water. But but without the window, I don't know. You wouldn't know. Wouldn't know.
No. You just wouldn't know. You wouldn't know. That's the problem. You wouldn't know.
We got uh Matt, you're back in the uh the island of uh road and the all of that. He said he's there. Forever is a long time. It's a mighty small state to say you're gonna be in it forever. Oh, I mean, yeah, not only that, but I've actually like I'm I I mean I'm gonna be on this island.
I'm on a quidneck island within Rhode Island, so I'm like, it's even smaller than you think. Explain a quidneck to me. It sounds like a clam variety, like a delicious clam, but maybe make a a big one that you would use for stuffies or chowder. What's a quidneck? Uh I have just gotten so used to every single word that sounds like that being a Native American tribe that I didn't even think to ask that question.
Yeah. I assume it was the local tribe. Yeah. You know, my favorite uh Rhode Island name is Musquamacet. That's a good one.
Misquamicate. Um so uh yeah, uh by the way, out there, uh hope everyone's doing uh okay. Like we're right now are like strangely, our weather is fine. The rest of the country is hosed. Uh so I hope you know anyone that is losing power gets their power back and everything goes alright.
I hope, you know, if you're growing citrus in Texas, for instance, that your crop isn't completely ruined because they're harvesting, like all the grapefruits are being harvested right now. They're only like halfway through the harvest. And I I think the storm hit so hard and like so fat, they was weren't used to like this level of stuff. And so I don't even think they they could go out and do their frost mitigation stuff for like the grapefruits and the valencies that they have growing down there in Texas. So uh, you know, people first.
I hope the people are okay, and then after that, I hope people's uh, you know, agricultural livelihood isn't getting um destroyed, but it doesn't look great for some people, so anyway. Um yeah, anything else going on with you guys? Anything uh anything good? Anything or should I just dive right into questions? No, just dive.
Just dive. I did something fun. You want to hear it? Yeah. All right.
So uh oh, for uh you know, for Valentine's Day, uh I did baked potato and the A5 Wagyu. That was delicious. I did my standard, but don't even ask me anymore how to do steak. The answer for ribeye, and I'm only talking ribeye now. The answer for a ribeye is about 45 degrees, sorry, 54 degrees Celsius until just until the center gets up to 54.
At which point I immediately drop that sucker down to 52 and then let it ride, and then just let it ride, you know, like uh hours, a couple hours more. And then uh, you know, you just gotta drop it down far enough for for the sear. So the because the A5 cost so much, it wasn't so thick. Uh I dropped it all the way down to about 40. You know, I just pulled it out and let it come down like almost to 40 Celsius before I I did the the sear off.
But it's a good technique for steak. I recommend you use it. Um, but that's not what's fun that I did. Uh so uh now this is not about the bread baking, okay. That is but you know, everyone knows I've been doing the the bread as all a lot of us have during COVID.
I know it bothers Nastasia, but it's not about that. So I had to have the bread, right? But like you know how you know how when you like get fresh bread you have to wait for it to slice it, right? Because it's too hot. You know what I'm talking about?
Yeah. So yeah. So if you slice it too soon, like it uh it gets all gummy and nasty. It's like all huge problems. Like you gotta let the starch set up and like even for like for whole wheat for rye, you gotta let it set for like for like hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.
But anyway, so the bread's about to come out of the oven, and I realize it's late, and everyone's gonna want to eat. I'm cranky because as you know, Nastasia, as you know, I've been I'd be blunching, so as a bluncher, like I'm getting like rancid, more rancid than normal around dinner time. You know what I mean? This is Valentine's Day or this is last night? No, no, this is like this is like uh a couple nights ago.
It's like uh like Saturday or something like that. So, anyways, so like it's uh it's getting time, it's getting time, and then I remember reading that uh, you know, people use a vacuum to cool off bread more quickly, right? So I'm like, I'm gonna use a I'm gonna use a vacuum to cool off bread. Now the theory, folks, is that you know, as you um as you suck a vacuum, you're lowering the temperature at which water boils. But as the water boils, right, you're boiling off water, but that boiling takes a lot of heat to accomplish, not temperature, heat.
So what's happening is heat is leaving the bread rapidly, like really rapidly, and cooling it down. Uh, and I was like, eh, uh uh, I'll give it a try, because I've read about it, and you know, whatever, it might hurt to keep in qualities, whatever. So now remember, this is a crusty-style whole wheat bread. So here's the first mistake, and I'll never do this again. I just took I have a you know small commercial vacuum machine at my house, which is why, by the way, I've never tested out any of these non-commercial vacuum machines, because until someone sends me one to test, I have no reason to go buy one because I have a small commercial machine at home.
Anyways, so I take all of the plate commercial vacuum machines are like big chambers. Mine is small, but you know, chamber, and it's full of these plastic plates to take up extra room, right? So you I pulled all the plates out, I I opened the oven door, literally opened the oven door, took the bread directly out of the oven and blap, put it right into the vacuum machine and closed the lid and the oil starts, you know, the the oil pump comes on, and then all of a sudden everything fogs over. So all of a sudden I start seeing all of these specks and dots. I'm like, what's going on?
Like something awful is happening. You know, in those horror movies when they're inside that room and the fog sprays all over everything, and then you kind of just see the handprint hit the window and wipe down, and you know something terrible is going on? Yeah, it was like that on the inside of my vacuum machine. When I finally stopped it, I let it run for like a minute. I finally uh I opened it.
The entire half bread, half fly. Well, no, no, here's the thing. Well, yeah, I wish. That would have been amazing. Uh no, uh, so the good news is, uh well, the bad news is like my oil was completely contaminated.
The inside of my uh machine was completely coated in a fine moist powder of sesame seeds and wheat bran and part, it was it was a complete and utter vacuum machine disaster. So if I'm gonna do this again, I need to figure out a way to have that not happen in my vacuum machine. Uh it took hours to clean it. Anyways, but the bread, I want you to know, people, that like this radical kind of uh vacuum chilling, it did shatter the inside of the crust a little bit because I hit it real hard real fast. Uh and but I could literally directly from the 450 degree oven into the thing, and within a minute, I could pick up the bread.
It was cold enough to pick up in my hands. And the crust was the most shattering crust, the most like crunchy, shattering crust, but I hadn't evaporated that much stuff out of the crumb. So the crumb was still soft and moist, but it was the sickest, the best whole wheat bread crust I've ever produced. It was nuts. So I'm gonna experiment some more.
Yeah, yeah. So that's uh my vacuum machine trick uh trick of the week in review. Uh for those of you that don't know, it m it because it does uh evaporate some moisture, it may affect keeping qualities. There's some studies on the internet that say that it may also affect uh staling, it might stale faster. But when you're gonna bake a loaf and you want to eat it right now, right away, uh if you can figure out a way to have it not ruin your machine, you know, maybe good idea.
Yeah. Are you saying that it was just like e extraneous things that you would put on the exterior that caused the ruining of the machine? Like if if you hadn't put s any seeds over any kind or anything, it would have been fine. Well, I think it was violent enough that it like atomizes the wrong word, but the crust got so crunchy that I think like the the rapid evaporation, like literally popped little tiny yeah, like that. Bits of the cross would have come off had there been nothing else.
Yeah. I mean, I I could test this, but I mean, like, you know, my standard bread making technique is I do a relatively high hydration, like uh uh like around 80% hydration on a whole wheat dough, right? And then I do I do my my my you know forming it into a round and then I I just take a giant I take a stainless steel bowl and I fill it not fill it, but I I I fill it with sesame seeds, and then I just drop the just formed so I you know I I I mold the the I mold the the the bread on a wet board, right, so that it doesn't stick, and then I just take this like tacky wetish thing and then I drop it into the into the sesame seeds, flip it. So I have a ball that looks like a sesame seed can giant sesame seed candy. It's just all sesame.
And then I throw uh bran into my uh into my, you know, baskets, my raising baskets, and and throw it in. So my bread always has on the outside bran and sesame. So I could run a test where I don't do that, but uh, you know, I'm saying if you do if you have anything on the i outside, whether it's rice flour or anything, that sucker's gonna spray all over your vacuum machine in the most unpleasant way. But I'm wondering if I just stick it, like if I stick it inside of like a a bag, you know what I mean? Like some s maybe even a paper bag, one that can take the heat, you know what I mean, and then throw it in there, maybe the paper bag can take most of the hit, you know?
Mm-hmm. We'll find out. We find out. I will test again. I will let you know.
Uh we got we got a question in chat. Can we just let 'em jump to the front? Okay. I mean I want to see. Nastasia's got things to say about that, but they're here, they want to know.
That's good, right, Stu? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um Alpha Romeo and Juliet, who I think is a new first first time caller. Uh any tips for crispy sweet potato fries. I've tried Pex SPL and breading, and I'm looking for other ideas.
Yeah. The Pectanex trick isn't gonna so the Pect Nex trick, any one of the all of the tricks, like pre-boiling, uh drying, the Pectanex, uh modernist cuisines, uh, ultrasonic, uh, McGillicutty that they do to it, these are all techniques to kind of mess with the surface of the of the fries to make it so that they give up their moisture and get crunchy uh before the inside of the fry gets dry and hollow, right? That's what that's all about. Problem on a sweet potato fry, because of all of the sugar, right? You can't it doesn't work, right?
It just doesn't work. So you can't really treat the surface of a sweet potato fry to make it good, let's say. So the the solution has to be some sort of coating on the outside. So uh breading might be a little bit intense, but there are people who do uh starch coatings, and the idea uh with I I think with a Nastasia, you like no, you don't like french fries, so you don't like sweet potato fries. What about you, Matt?
Uh sweet potato fries? I I like sweet potato fries, although I go for regular French fries over sweet potato fries most of the time. Right. But if you wanted to make a good sweet potato fry, I think the answer is going to be and you want it to look at as not breaded as possible. It's all going to be about uh the proper uh starch coating.
There really is no other way to there really is no other way to do it. I mean, I guess you could literally dehydrate the outside, but it's still you have an issue. You could do uh it no one can, I mean, I don't even know why I'm telling you this, unless you unless you have a uh the equipment already, it's not like you can go do vacuum frying. Vacuum frying might be another option because then you can turn the su uh temperature down such that you're not um scorching the sugar. But even so, it's hard without a a good starch coating.
So I would say just tune your starch coating to be better. All right? That makes sense, guys? Yes. Uh all right.
All right. Uh uh Brian Leonzo wrote in hey, uh, next week on the podcast, uh, can you say whether there's uh an actual difference between using a sugar cube and uh just using simple syrup in cocktails, I guess, other than the obvious dilution, which can be adjusted. Thanks. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, like uh sugar cube, first of all, so if you're using a sugar cube, some people are doing a thing where and I don't know Nastasi, I've you ever had this presentation before where they they take this sugar cube and they they hit it with a like a dash of angostora bitters and they put it in the bottom of your flute and then they pour the you like that or dislike it?
Uh I I don't see the point. Oh, alright. Well, it means it adds a little bit of sugar, but it's mainly a visual thing. It's mainly if you like it. It's mainly if it if it if if it if it floats your boat.
You know what I'm saying? And a lot of people eh they like it. You know what I mean? Just from uh they like the whole ritual of it. You know what I'm saying?
But if you don't like the ritual of it, I don't really think there's a point. If you want your your champagne to be a little sweet, you'll add something sweet. I mean, I know you. You'll do what you like, which is good, by the way. Yeah.
Um, yeah. All right. Well, so like that's a different application. So we're not talking about that. I'm assuming when you say sugar cube, you mean any form of granulated sugar that you can smash up in the bottom of a gr of a glass.
So there's two reasons to do it. The people who like to do it, um, a lot of times they're mashing it into a citrus peel, and then they're they're doing kind of a rapid uh oleo there where they're trying to, you know, smash the um smash the citrus or whatever else, you know, could be an herb, such that they're using the the sugar as a grinding mechanism, right? And so there's that. And then uh typically also it doesn't dissolve all the way because it's very hard to dissolve uh sugar into high-proof ethanol. So uh the sugar tends to not dissolve, and so it will get kind of sweeter as you drink it.
Some people like this, I don't, right? So the advantage I could theoretically say in a drink like an old-fashioned, I could say this. I could say, hey, listen, you um when it is not very diluted yet, you don't need as much sugar, and then as it gets more diluted, you will need more sugar to have the same level of sweetness. That's true. Uh in practice, it doesn't work.
Um, you know, look, do it if you like it. Does that make sense? Uh is that enough? Do you need me to talk more on this? I don't think you need to talk more on it.
All right. Uh oh, by the way, uh, Nastasi, I don't know if you've been hearing things. Uh I I have been hearing people have been sending me, and I think maybe also I I've shared some with Nastasia, their own stories of uh Maria Guarna Shelley. And although most of them can't be shared on air, uh please send them to us because we enjoy them. Wouldn't you say that, Nastasia?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We th we thoroughly enjoy them. And you know, someday Nastassi and I will have a completely unexpurgated uh show.
Well, these you can't just not share because they're uh not family, it's because some of the people are still alive, you know what I mean? So yeah, yeah, yeah. But but language is a problem, is what you're saying as well. Oh, really? You know, um, I mean, look, Maria did curse.
It's not that she didn't curse. Uh, but it's just that, like, her like when she wanted to be rough on someone, she didn't need to use curse words to do it. Yeah. Let's just put it that way. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed that uh these stories that people are sending me, and I think Nastasia does as well. So please continue to send them to me uh or to Nastasia. We do uh for as you know, we do talk to each other regularly, so you can just send it to one of us, right, Nastasia.
Yeah, I couldn't the the revelation last week that you had called up to talk about the uh what was it, a charcuterie book? Um like gotten the receiving end of that was uh yeah, I just yeah it made everything make sense. Well maybe you know, like in retrospect, maybe that's why I was so scared of her the whole time. You know what I mean? Uh yeah, sounds like it.
I don't know. Man, we could have gone on and on. It was a good group of people last week. Anyways, yeah, that's great. Um amazing to have Alex on the whole time.
We didn't even know Nastasi and I didn't even know if we were gonna oh by the way, John's not here. John is still with us, people. I didn't um we're not excluding John from the podcast today. He is on grand jury duty. That's why he's not here.
He's on grand jury duty. I'm assume he's listening on one earbud and ignoring whatever evidence is being presented. P.S. Could be an interesting case or what a case says because my man's gonna go to the Southern District of New York. So you're yeah, you're thinking like mob things?
What are you what do you got there? Oh, southern district. Oh, they they've oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Anyway. I like how like your uh Rhode Island mind goes directly to uh mob. But anyway, Nastasia and I uh Nastasi and I didn't think we were gonna get Alex on like at all. So to have her the whole time was kind of amazing, I thought. Yeah.
She's great. Yeah. Um uh strange uh bird, strange bird indie uh wrote in uh about I think uh strange bird is the one who wrote in about the eggs. Remember the eggs and we all tested it and none of it works? Yeah.
The uh British thing, yeah. The TikTok thing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it just goes to show people.
Just because somebody did it on TikTok does not mean that it's good. By the way, uh John sent me, so like every once in a while, John sends me stuff, he's like, hey, old man, this is what's trending on uh on uh the idiot the idiot machine today. So I'm like, okay, so uh have we spoken about this? The folded tortilla machine thing that not machine, the folded tortilla thing that people are doing? No.
No. I don't really understand. I saw it and I hated it so much that I completely erased it from my mind. But what people are doing now to get their like eight million views is they're they're doing like a folded wrap, right? So it's not like they're cooking the tortilla properly, flour tortilla, of course, uh, but they're putting like the different flavors in between different pockets of the tortilla and folding it so that like, you know, like this ingredient will be separated by this other ingredient by a fold of the tortilla, right?
And then it all ends up in some sort of vaguely cone-shaped monstrosity. You with me mentally? Yes. Yes. Yeah.
So I want someone out there uh who can hear the sound of our voices to tell me why on God's earth you would ever want this to happen. Why would I want more crappy, gummy, improperly cooked, improperly reheated tortilla in between every different ingredient that I want? Like, why would you ever want this to happen? Why would you watch somebody doing a video of this? Why would you encourage them?
That's all. That's all I want to say about that. I just don't understand why anyone would want to do this. And then I it's one of those situations where I saw it once and I was like, these people are actively hurting food. And you should not encourage people who are actively hurting food.
You just shouldn't do it. I don't think. They're just showing you. Did you know you can't trust everything you see on the internet, even if there's a video? Did you know that?
Well, I don't think TikTok's like the like I don't know, YouTube or it's it's for really young people. Well, like what do you consider really young? My my kids watch it. That's what I'm saying. Oh, it's like teenage, not like five-year-olds.
It's not like it's not like it's not like teletubies. Right. Or booba. Do you remember booba? Kind of.
Oh. Boo bah. Remember that? And then it was like boodaloodaloo, and then they fart. You don't remember this?
Yeah. All right. Booba. We had we had these uh these like it's one of these things that was invented for the toy, I'm pretty sure. Like they're there, it's nonverbal.
So, like uh, you know, when when in between when Booker was born and Dax was born, like they started having a lot of of uh kids' programming that was non-verbal come on where it's like this non-verbal learning stuff. And and the the boobah thing was one of those, it was also, I think, flash animation stuff. So it's like you just have colors and things saying booba and like fart noises, and I don't know, the kids loved it. Anyway, it's a human torture. These noise toys are if if you for any of you that are gonna go to uh a baby shower anytime uh anytime from now till till till you're gonna be dead the rest of your life, and you don't like the parents, give them noise toys.
If you're ever yeah, uh you know, Nastasia, when you're when you want to be a butthead and you're going to one of your buddies' house, four baby showers coming out. Yes, noise toys. Yeah, this is good to know, yeah. Noise toys. Or like especially it's even better because like the problem with uh the problem with doing it at baby showers, they can throw it away before the kids get old enough.
It's even better when the person you're giving it to doesn't have the technical skill to open it and cut all the wires to all the speakers, right? Or even better, give a mechanical noise toy because you can't even defeat them, right? But uh, like the best is to go to someone's house that has like a five-year-old to like a seven year old and just give them the loudest, most obnoxious and yet addictive toy that you can. Give it to them about 20 minutes before you leave, so you can have the satisfaction of seeing the look on the parent's face, and then hightail it out of that place before the noise drives you nuts. This is this is your forever now.
Bye. Yeah. Goodbye. Because then, like, what are you gonna do? What is the parent gonna do?
Throw it away? Make the kid make you know, bend the kid like a pretzel by throwing it away? What are they gonna do? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was thinking it was a good one for the first baby shower because it decreases the chance that you get invited to future baby showers if they have more kids.
But I see how you need you you need you need the child there to make sure it stays in the house. Yeah, yeah. I'll tell you this another thing. When I was a boy, men didn't get invited to baby showers. And we were lucky.
You know what I mean? Because they are a kind of a nightmare, right, Sas, baby shower nightmare. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, yeah. What's the noise toy equivalent of a wedding for a wedding gift?
Oh. If you don't like the bride and groom, what are you supposed to give them? Oh, you give them nothing because you have a year and then you just let the year pass and then have it fester forever. Uh-huh. Yeah.
You do that for everyone though, dude. That's not true. You're not just being mean. Now you're just being now you're just being hurtful, Nastasia. Am I wrong?
We've never been to a wedding together. When was the last time we were at a wedding together? I mean, I can count it on zero fingers. We were almost gonna go to who's were we gonna go to? We went to Arielle's wedding.
Oh yeah, but we were gonna go to one together. I can't remember. Oh, uh uh Andy Ricker. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but we couldn't go to Thailand.
I forget why. Right. I wish. I've never been to Thailand. Oh man.
You needed to get home. I currently have a package in Thailand that has been sitting at customs for a month. What is it? Uh it's yeah, it's it's it's it's an oil tester. It's a freak, it's a nightmare.
It's a freaking nightmare. But like, it's a $500 thing, and I got it for $250 because someone was selling it in Thailand, right? And the guy didn't have any reviews, right? So I took a chance because PayPal is, you know, PayPal guarantees that you're gonna get the thing. And we don't really have them here in the US very much.
They're hard to get in the US, these oil testers, because in in in some other countries, you're legally obliged to test your oil to make sure that it doesn't have uh um too many polymerized uh you know polar compounds in it. Uh we're not, and so we don't, right? So they're hard to get here for a reasonable amount of money, but I don't know, it's just been stuck in in Thai customs for freaking a month, dude. And he keeps on swearing. One of our fans would love to pick it up for you now.
Well, I don't want it picked up. I want it in the United States. That's what I'm saying. Through customs. I'm sure it is someone who can't do some strings.
Who could smuggle it? Who can smuggle it? Well, the first time the person who sent it left the battery in it, and the people at Customs were like, yo, yo, this is the first three weeks. Yo, yo, yo, you can't, you can't, uh, you can't ship batteries. So then they took the battery out and they shipped it back, but that was like only like a week before the new year, right?
So I was like, ah crap, if it doesn't make it through customs before lunar new year, I'm hosed, right? And then I uh I was like, oh, well, maybe I'll I looked it up, and you know, I like Thailand only just this year officially made Lunar New Year uh a national holiday, like, right? So I figured well, maybe I'm okay, they're only gonna take maybe the Friday off. So then I sent an email like yesterday, because they definitely don't celebrate any President's Day, and I was like, hey, just asking, I see that it's stuck again, and he's and the guy wrote me back like within 10 seconds, he's like, uh, little thing called Lunar New Year. I was like, oh, oh.
You know what I mean? Over a month. Over a month. Don't get don't get us started on holiday on like having to do business across countries with different holiday patterns, right, Nastasia? Yes.
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Thanks for testing the myth and chatting about it. I knew it would be a myth. Although, Strangebird, I think you should have tried it first and let us know you couldn't get it to work before we wasted three different eggs. I wasted two, so that's four eggs waste it. Although they are cheap.
I have another. Can I use vacuum evaporation to reduce a liquid or a juice into a syrup at room temperature? What gear would I need? Yes. Okay.
I feel like that didn't cover one gear at a minimum. Yeah, okay. So listen, as I was saying before, uh, when you apply a vacuum on something, you lower the temperature at which it boils, and um a good like oil-based refrigeration vacuum pump or a uh you know, a commercial vacuum machine, or even a rotovap, a rotary evaporator vacuum pump, it can very easily get a pressure low enough to um boil uh liquid at room temperature. The problems that you're gonna have doing this is depends on as you concentrate it, as it gets higher and higher sugar, it's gonna be harder and harder to get the stuff out. You're gonna need to be able to suck more and more of a vacuum.
But even more importantly, is you need to recondense all the liquid because none of these vacuum machines are designed to um are to suck all of that moisture out. So you're gonna need some form of cold trap uh in between. So you're gonna need some form of stirring, you're gonna need some form of heating because as you boil it with a vacuum, you're gonna be lowering the temperature to the point where you could even freeze it if you if you went long enough. So you're gonna need to heat it just to keep it at room temperature. Basically, you're gonna need to build your own rotary evaporator.
The answer is you're gonna need to build your own rotary evaporator, right? And I've done it for cheap, but it's a real pain in the butt. You can do it with a stir plate, an Erlenmeyer flask, a cold trap, and a vacuum pump, but you know, it's more of like uh yay, I did it, not like uh I'm gonna use this to make breakfast. You know what I mean? Yes.
Yeah. Uh oh, and even though John's not here, uh Brian Schuter wrote in about uh uh John's John may not be able for scheduling reasons to do his maple syrup this year, but uh uh one of one of uh our old one of my old uh interns, friends from uh French Culinary Institute moved back to uh Minnesota, Peter Schweiger, and apparently, and he was at Marvel Bar, which I just heard from this contact unfortunately closed uh before I could get to go to it because I haven't been to Minnesota in many, many years. You ever go to Minnesota, guys? No. Met my wife in Minnesota.
Really? Is she from Minnesota? She was living there at the time, but yeah. No Marvel Bar for me, just the uh what was that? The Eagles Club is where we went for our first date.
Real good cocktails at the Eagles Club. You really are you just No, but they were quite cheap. Alright. Well, what what food stuffs do you remember from uh from Minnesota? Oh uh don't say wild rice, do not say wild rice, do not say wild rice.
Give me some things. I won't. I was staying at my brother's house, so I don't remember what I pasta, probably. I have no idea. I'm sure I just ate whatever the hell he had around.
One of my mom's best friends, dad used to be the uh doctor for the Minnesota Vikings. So we went to Minnesota when I was a kid, and apparently it was a great time, but I was too young to remember. We did catch a boat ton of catfish that nobody wanted to eat, so we bury them in the garden as fertilizer. There endeth my memories of Minnesota. Oh yeah.
Yeah. Uh anyway, so Peter Schweiger goes to like Upper Minnesota and does maple syrup every year. So uh maybe we'll try to contact him. We'll get uh Mindy has his contact. So we'll uh we'll hook it up, and if we can if we can get his advice in time for John, uh if we can get the scheduling to work, we'll we'll have some cooking issues, maple syrup.
Although you think John's gonna share any with us, Nastasia, or is he gonna keep it all for himself? I think he'll share. Don't you? If you share the techniques that help him to increase both the quantity and quality of this maple syrup, he'll share with you. Can't have both.
He might keep it to himself then. It's real good. Yeah. Uh so let me ask you people a question. And I'm not gonna say anything about this.
I'm just gonna ask you a question. Matt, I'll ask you, uh uh, Matt, you're standing in for everyone now. And uh, by the way, people, I want you to know this is not the standard Dave or Nastasia versus Dave or Dave versus Nastasia situation. Nastasi and I are on the same side of this argument. We have other people we know who are not.
Alright? Alright? I'm just letting you know that. So when you're choosing sides, don't try to choose me or Nastasia because you have to like we're in complete alignment on this. I don't even know what you're asking.
You're sending. Now remember, it's COVID time, right? So a lot of people are sending care packages and it's hard, right? Oh god, we already send this. Well, I'm not gonna say what's in it.
Someone sends a package. Someone sends a package, Matt, to you, right? Force somebody else. Okay. Do you open it?
They sent uh no. Okay. Like let's say there's a bunch of weed and mushrooms, and you know that they're in there. I wasn't gonna go there, but wow, okay. There's a bunch of weed and mushrooms in there, and you know they're in there.
Do you take some as a tax? Oh, yeah, maybe. That's not like at that point. Yeah. It changes.
At that point, at that point, at that point you're clearly transmitting to a friend or something. I'm like, yeah, why not? Yeah, yeah. Let me add this. Since I didn't think we were gonna go there, I thought we were gonna keep it.
Because Dave, it changes the story every time when you tell a man of a certain age what is in the package. Wait, what do you mean certain age? People young people, old people, who who likes it? Uh what age likes it. TikTok is the new weed for the kids.
Yeah, yeah. Any man between the age of 18 and 50, I'd say. That's not a certain age, that's almost all ages. Certain age. Certain age.
Uh you know, like over half their life. Yeah, if they're living, probably. Uh anyway, so but my point is is that okay. I think this changes it a little bit. It's being sent to a state where it's legal.
So you're not, you're not being forced to become a felon for it. You're not being forced to break local laws to receive the package. So you you don't get a smuggler's matter slice. No, it's true that that did it it crossed my mind for sure. I mean, the minute you said what was in it, and now all of a sudden I had a very clear picture of like, oh, I'm delivering this package to basically like my college roommate.
I'm like, would I take a little bit off the top from his package? Absolutely I would. He owes me. What? You ask?
No. Tell him, maybe. What? Holy crap. Yeah.
Listen, it when you f when you find when you find somebody's wallet, do you take a fiver out of it before you hand it back to them? Well, this is why Nastasia is spot on, because I think like if you change the contents of the package to literally anything else, I don't think that that would be a good idea. No, of course. I mean you wouldn't take a Twizzler, but you would when it's when it is drugs, it's a it's a different. I just don't understand it.
I just I mean, honestly. The rules are clear. Also, wait, I thought you said that you guys are on the same side of this argument. We are. We won't touch it.
Oh, okay. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. But Nastasia's just like I understands that other people might. Yeah, okay, gotcha. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. And she's also, like, which I didn't know, making the further claim that it's a dude thing. It's a specifically 18 to 50 year old dude thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Alright. I don't know about that, but Nastas and I are on the same side, and I literally can't, I literally can't understand any uh any other way to look at it other than it's not mine, I don't take any. I literally just can't understand any other thing. Yeah, I don't know. You know what I mean?
Because you drive. Because when you're in that if you're if you're already descending into that part of the culture, but it's legal though. Yeah, yeah. That's new to me, though. I don't know, yeah, you know.
Newfangled. You know, so this guy, he sent all these white truffles to me, so I pulled out my shaver and I was like, chaka, chaka, chaka, chaka, chaka, chaka. Ooh, those eggs were good. Here's the rest of your used truffle. What?
No. I don't know. Yeah. I told you, Dave. Nastasia used to get the fancy truffles, huh?
We did have pasta flyer, yeah. You like those things? The white ones, yeah. You think they're worth it or you just like them? If they're there, they're they're good.
It's not like, do you ever crave them? No. Let me ask you a question, separate question. How much money? First of all, like let's say you had non-finite funds.
With like when they start shaving and they look at you, first of all, I don't play that game. So like when I got the A5 at the at the at the Japanese prime beef here in New York, I had them cross out the price tag because I didn't want the only thing that Jen saw when I got it home to be how much we had spent on the steak. I wanted her to enjoy the taste of it, not the money that was flowing out of our pocketbooks, right? But it's like I think a lot of people who are doing the truffle thing, like they get extra truffle just so that they can spend a lot of money. True or false.
Uh, yeah, probably. That's what that looks about. When you're shaving truffle for someone, do you have to give them the look? You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, no, I know.
I know. The uh, well, they're like, oh, you can't handle it, look, right? That that look. And then when they give you the when they give you the two-finger wave, when they when they give you that, you know what I mean? They they wave towards themselves a little bit with those two fingers.
Then the slicer gives the nod and the oh look, right? Oh. And then they keep slicing it, and then the person, and here's probably almost always a dude, gets embarrassed and they let them over slice, right? Anyway. Um, but if you had a non-finite amount, like when would you stop the slicing?
Like, so here's your pile of pasta, right? Here I am with my slicer. Oh, that's a hefty amount. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Alright. So you like a good amount of truffle. Yeah. If you're gonna, yeah. Wait.
Okay. How much money would you need to have it be like worthwhile for you? In other words, that you would pay with your own money and not feel bad about it. Oh, I wouldn't. I even if you had non-finite money, gotta support them truffle farmers.
Uh not farmers, whatever, finders, wildcrafters. Okay. Uh well, what were we talking about? How do we get on that? How do we have a?
But I have a question. I have a question about sourcing troubles. So I I have heard there there is some amount of like fraudulent truffle purveying. Is that correct? Like nostalgia, when you were trying to source them for positive wire, is that a like a thing you had to worry about?
Like the No, because Mark had his super high-end contacts, and that was like verified and all that stuff. So I don't I can't speak to fraudulent truffles. Can you, Dave? Well, I mean, I haven't personally bought, but if you're a Jamok, then the odds that you get taken are high. I'll I'll tell you what.
I was at uh an event. I think Stasy were there too, but I don't remember what the event was, right? And at the event, one of the things was a giant, a giant like white truffle. Like one of those ones that looks like a human brain that was totally effed up. And they were auctioning it, not after effed up like crazy, right?
It wasn't quite human brain size, maybe like you know, monkey. Anyway, so like they're auctioning it off. Remember this, Nastasia? And like they brought it out and they were auctioning it off at this charity event, and we were sitting next to or standing next to uh uh you know some truffle expert who was already like six glasses of champagne into their cups, right? And we turned to them and they're like, I smelled it, it's frozen.
It was frozen, I can tell. It doesn't have the aroma. It's ruined, it's garbage, it's trash. And then I was like, oh Jesus. Like, this is not even something I knew you had to worry about.
You know what I mean? Like, but apparently, like to maintain this like super truffle, they had frozen it, and thereby for someone who knew any better, they ruined it, right? But they were gonna auction it off for a lot of money to someone who didn't know any better. Someone who was just sitting there nodding their head up and down when someone was shaving this stuff over it. You remember this, Nastasia?
I don't think I was with you there. I mean, remember that. All right. You would remember that. That's something you would remember.
Yeah. Um, anyways. Uh, but so yeah, there's a lot of fraud. I mean, obviously, everybody knows that truffle oil is nine out of ten times fraudulent, right? So, yeah, real bad.
Uh all right, so Dave Jensen wrote it. Now, I have to say, people, I apologize slightly. Uh this morning I was deep into a 3D modeling hole. Nastasia and I have a lot of like real-world business problems that we're dealing with right now, and we're trying to solve them all during uh the lunar new year, because as soon as all of our factories quote unquote come back online, we're gonna need to have a lot of answers for them. So, like basically my days are spent buried in uh in 3D modeling and testing.
So I'm reading these questions, and I may or may not have never seen them before. So you're getting my unvarnished, unprepared response. All right. Dave Jensen via email. Want to say, love the show.
Well, thanks. After discovering it in 2019, I made the plunge in spring of 2020 to begin listening to the back catalog. I have less than a hundred episodes to go to get cut off. Jeez, that's a lot. You listen to a lot.
Uh I know you think those of us who listen to old episodes are crazy. Oh, there you go. And while that may be true, it has been an excellent informative distraction since COVID started. Uh I don't recall this being mentioned, but uh, it's in the last hundred. Just listen to the last hundred.
This question's gonna get answered. I don't even know what the question is. I just know that in the last one hundred. It's there were very thorough episodes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's so thorough. Like, remember, once, so well, how many have we done? Eight million. So, like, like one, like there's only a hundred of them, but those hundred, we do nothing but answer real questions. Right, Nastasi is have to find them.
They're secretly hidden. Yeah. Uh I don't recall this being mentioned, but I found a company that sells, oh, uh, this is biodegradable vacuum bags for sous vide cooking. Remember that guy that took the class with us who only called it Suz Vide? No, I don't remember.
And his only reason for existence was to make pickled onions and sell them, and he would come up to us after every event at the French culinary and be like, the onions, the onions. And he would ask us questions about his onions. You don't remember this guy? No. The on and then he would come up.
So like Mills and I would be doing a demo. Nastasia would be there. We had the interns, the entire, like, entire demo stage is like littered with detritus from like all the crazy demo stuff. And then Mr. Onions would start approaching the demo area from the audience, and Nils would just be like, Oh, I gotta go, I gotta go, and he would go, and I would be s stuck talking to Mr.
Onions for like 45 minutes, and then Nastasia would be staring knives through my body as though I wanted to talk to Mr. Onions. Sometimes it seems like you do. Listen, people, I like onions more probably than the next guy. But I don't want to talk more than three times about your pickled onions.
You know what I'm saying? Yes. Anyway. You like those tiny Italian pickled onions, the wild ones? Yeah.
What are those called? Lam lamb, what are they? Lamb, what are they? Lampeshi? Yeah, they're good though.
Uh all right. I don't recall being mentioned, but I found a company that sells biodegradable vacuum bags for sous-vide cooking. I've traditionally used Ziploc bags for all of my low temperature work, but recently purchased a Vesta brack uh vacuum sealer, and uh when I went to order some bags, I saw they had new biodegrad uh biodegradable bags on their website. I've only used them twice, but did a side-by-side on wings for the Super Bowl. Uh, did you are you uh what what do you like for your Super Bowl leads, Nastasia?
Uh we have wings and uh chili, yeah. Chili, like chili in a in a bowl, or like like with fixings, like with cheese and onions and all that crap, or just no, just in a bowl. Uh and but so like you have the separately when with your wings, are you are you like uh are you like a uh like a buffalo sauce? Do you do the blue cheese on the bottom? I don't know.
My mom my mom does it, and they are over they she fries them for like an hour, the wings. I swear to god, and I I choked. It was this year? Yeah, this was last weekend, right? Yeah.
You choked? I joke. Well, I like I I had to spin it. It was it was so it was like the darkest, darkest brown, you know. Do you know and and that's without breading?
It was just dark, dark brown. Yeah, dark, dark, dark brown. Like, like shriveled. Yeah. Yeah.
Like our favorite newscaster. Okay. So then we'll talk about it later. The um, but you know, it's Jen, my wife, it's her one of her biggest fears is that like either I or one of the kids will choke. That's her biggest fear.
So anytime it says choke, don't ever say choke in front of Jen. She'll like think somebody's choking. It's like it's up there. It's like the way that you're afraid of of like getting electrocuted or people getting electrocuted. Yeah.
She's afraid of choking. It's a problem. Like with fish bones and stuff. It's a problem. You know what I mean?
Anyway. Yeah. Uh, all right. How was the chili? Good, because my dad made it.
Whoa. Calling out your mom. Jeez. Wow. It was good because my dad made it.
Wow. She likes it. If there's a little bit of like moisture in chicken, she gets she gets a little, you know, crazy. Is your is your is your dad a beans or a no beans? Beans.
Beans. Beans and beef. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Alright. I like I like beans. Although I I enjoy a non-bean chili, but I also I I like it any which way. As long as it tastes good, I like it. You know what I'm saying?
Mm-hmm. All right. So David Jensen said, I have only used these biodegradable bags. That's what we're talking about, by the way. Uh I've only used these biodegradable bags twice so far, but did a side-by-side on wings for the Super Bowl, and they held up well for one hour at 65 degrees Celsius.
I haven't tried anything else to put them to the test. Do you have any tests you think might be worth running to see how well they hold up versus plastic? They are about 50% more expensive than regular bags. Uh the gallon bags are about a dollar and wow, that is a lot more. Hold on one sec.
Uh I was just uh having someone stop making noise in this. Yeah. Uh I haven't tried anything else to put them to the test. Do you have any tests you think would be worth running? Um my question, uh, David, is uh I haven't gotten a chance to look at them yet, but a lot of times when people say that plastic is biodegradable, it's not really biodegradable.
Uh what it is is is that it breaks up into microplastic. So I'd be interested. Uh I'll do some hold on one second. What do you think is going on? Uh definitely sounds like, you know, just lunch, some lunch prep.
Hopefully, Dave gets a slice. Um still going. What is it? Alright, there we go. You know, I tell the kids I have one hour a week where I need silence in the living room, which is where I shoot the thing, right?
It's like, and you know what? It's like it's not like they're going anywhere, right? Like they can eat lunch before, they could eat lunch after. Right? Comes in, knocking plates around, running the running the disposal, pulling seltzer until the until the because like Dax drinks out of this giant mug, pulling seltzer until the the freaking motor turns on, right?
So I'm like, yo. The first time I went off, I was like, yo, stop. Like eat lunch afterwards. You don't even have school today. It's not like you're doing it around classes.
It's in between games of uh whatever they play, Halo or Call of Duty, whatever garbage they put out. That's like President's Week. Kids get a whole week off. They get a week off? I thought it was a whole freaking week.
I thought we stopped celebrating white men like this past year. Yeah, I thought presidents Obama was not a president. Well, oh, all right. You don't think Obama's a black man? Okay.
All right. Also, I good to know. I would like to say that I am canceled until further notice. Oh, this is your this is. Okay.
Discuss pre canceled. Nastasia is a believer in pre canceled. I think everyone should be born canceled until the committee of whatever Gen Z, Gen A A, whatever the next thing decides otherwise. Sees sees fit to uncancel them. Yes.
Huh. Prove yourself. Bold. Yeah, I don't know about that. Uh I thought you agree with me.
Why? I thought you were because Did you have this idea in response to the cancel kids uh skit? No, I had it before. What's a cancel kids? All I'm saying is is that, you know.
Okay. I I I like you heard it first. I'm canceled. Yeah, but not really. You just want you just want to make this point.
No, I don't that everyone should be pre-canceled. What do you mean? You just said you couldn't. Oh, yeah, I think that would be a good idea. I know it's not gonna happen, but I am pre-cancelling myself, so that what does that mean though?
That means you can't listen to yourself? No, that means you're getting off of social media. What does it mean? It means I'm gonna delete her channel. It'll just be blank space every time Nastasia spoke of it.
Well, listen, uh, I don't want Nastasia to be canceled because she's still on the show, and I would prefer if you guys continue to listen to cooking issues. Wait, because if you're canceled, they can't listen to cooking issues. That's why. Yeah, that's what cancelled means. So, you know, you should be still be young enough to kind of realize what it means.
It means that no one would listen to you anymore. And as this is like part of the case. I guess it could I guess it could be just canceled except for this show. Uh yeah, that's not the way canceling works. That's not the way canceling works.
I'm starting to get a sense when when Nastasia was like, it's for it TikTok is for young people. I'm now getting it that like where Nastasia falls gener generationally. Like nothing. Not on board with TikTok. Not a hundred percent clear on the canceling.
Yeah, you're not you're not old enough to be old yet, Nastasia. Just keep it mellow for a couple more years, alright? Uh you know? So it's like uh geez. Yeah.
Lunacy. So uh most of these bags that say they're biodegradable, and I don't know this from cooking bags, I know it from dog poop bags. Most dog poop bags that say they are biodegradable aren't actually biodegradable. What happens is is they break up into tiny pieces and then end up being tiny little pieces of polyethylene called microplastic that like litter the ground and the ground actually becomes a certain percentage microplastic, which is not uh I think ideal. So um most of the people I know that are doing work with real real actual biodegradable plastics, one of the issues with them is that they tend to absorb moisture over time, duh, because they're biodegradable, and so they tend to have a finite lifespan.
Uh and in fact, um back when Nastasi and I thought we were going to maybe sell snack products, we had spoken to some people about some bioplastics using bags, and they said that they only work if you have very good control over the um over the manufacturing, and you get it straight from the manufacturer and don't let them absorb any moisture, otherwise they're a huge pain in the butt. So, and by absorb moisture, I mean not like disintegrate absorb moisture, I mean absorb small amounts of moisture in the way that let's say nylon might. Uh anyway, uh that's my take on it, but I will research those and see whether or not they are uh what I call feel-good biodegradable. I can't see it, so it's probably not in the earth still, versus actual biodegradable, like turns back into stuff that animals can use and turn into more animal parts. You know what I mean?
Yes. Alright. Uh ooh, H-O-O-V-E. How do you think you pronounce that? Hoove?
H-O-O-V, yeah. H-O-O-V-E. Hoof. That's cool. Hoove.
Do you know what people don't say anymore? If I said hoover, would you know what I meant? You mean like a vacuum, yeah. So yeah, but like to ingest something quickly, inhale. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So that's still current. People would still know what that don't know. I mean, I think we've already established that we're maybe not on the cutting edge of culture. Do you think people in Boston still say put it in the frigid air?
You think they still say that? I hope so. Yeah. Frigidair. It's not like because as if that's a brand anyone even remembers anymore anymore, but like in in the in in in you know, in the Medford part of my family, there was you'd say put it in the refrigerator, and they're like, what the hell's that?
Friggin'? You know what I mean? And then like you're like, yeah, the frigid air, the frigidair. And I don't think they ever had a refrigerator brand refrigerator. Anyway, it's a good brand name though.
Frigidair. Right? Yeah. Uh okay. Anyway.
Uh who've wrote in and said, Who Thompson wrote in and said, hey, I'm here with multiple annoying questions. So I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna read through the whole thing, I'm gonna go one by one. And if you don't like the questions, this to Assy, we'll stop and we'll bump it to the next one, right? That's how you that's how you want to roll? Yeah, that sounds good.
All right. Uh firstly, I just got some transglutaminase. So for those of you that I don't know, don't know, uh, it's meat meat glue. So transglutaminase is the enzyme that uh, you know, glues different meats together, uh, covalently bonding the different protein strands. And I'm looking to start experimenting.
Uh what I want to do is make steak with chicken screw uh chicken skin glued on, uh, sort of the first thing people do with meat glue. Well, I don't know if it's the first thing, but it's one of the first things you do with meat glue. It's delicious. Uh like 72-hour short rib uh with sous- vide. Uh my go-to method would be to sous-vide the steak, then glue the skin, then hot skill it.
Nope. Wrong. Will the meat glue work when the steak is already cooked? It will, but that's not what you should do. Lastly, if I brine uh a piece of beef with a relatively low salt concentration, like 0.25 to 0.5%.
Will I get a cured texture? Will I reap the uh the rewards of juiciness from brining? Asking for well, I thought sorry. So that I'm gonna take that as a question. First of all, the brining is a subject of much debate.
I am not a believer in the word uh dry brine. There is salt. And then there's a question is how am I gonna add the salt, right? Now the problem with meat is that meat with a lot of connective tissue can benefit from brining in long cook situations. Meat where the texture is primarily determined by the muscle fibers will take on a cured texture when it is salted too long ahead of time, especially if you're going to cook and chill it.
You should glue the skin to the meat first, because both the skin uh and the meat will contract and they will stick together. Meat glue also works much better on raw meat. If you think about the way a chicken works, you don't rip the skin off of a chicken, cook a chicken, and then glue the skin back onto a chicken. You cook it as kind of one unit. So if you want a good bond, and the one we always used to do was um skirt steak, we would bond uh chicken skin to skirt steak and then trim it.
And the reason uh you do that is that um you know it's a relatively good thickness to fry up. You can also low temp it with the skin on all the way through, pull it, let it let it uh dry out, like you would for chicken skin, and then fry it uh at as normal, right? So I would just say that. And remember, you don't need to worry about uh as long as you don't puncture the meat, right? I wouldn't worry that much about um salmonella contamination from the chicken skin in as long as you don't puncture the meat because the outside where the skin is is gonna be fried to a very high temperature.
So you should kill all that stuff dead, and also even the relatively low temperatures at which you'd cook a steak in a sous-vie bath are gonna be enough to wipe out uh or at least stop the growth of your friend Salmonella. Right? Right? Make any sense? Yeah?
Uh all right. Joe Ankowitz wrote in. Hey, quick question. How much vital wheat gluten do you use in your breads? Also, you mentioned adding yeast to your bread recipes in addition to starter.
At what point do uh do you add the yeast and how much do you use? Thanks, uh Joe Ankowitz. Uh okay, so how much wheat gluten, you know. I add depending from zero to however much, you know. I I I tend to not add more than about 10 grams to every uh 400 grams or so, or 10 gram, yeah, 10 grams to like, yeah, about 10 grams to 400.
I tend not to add more than that, which is I guess uh uh what is that like two and a half percent or something like that. I tend not to add more, but I really uh I don't even I don't use it on wheats that I don't think are deficient, right? So, like uh everyone goes crazy over red fife wheat, but um you know, relative to other wheats that I use, like Redeemer or or uh you know, like um turkey red or uh you know some of these other harder wheats, it you know, um it doesn't it doesn't have I don't think as strong a gluten and so I'll hit I'll when I use red fife I'll hit it hit it with a little bit of gluten but remember you have to jack your hydration uh a little bit um but you know I would just test it and see how you like it. A little bit is good, you know, uh for breads that are underperforming on their on their rise. Um the yeast, you I I would if you're gonna add yeast uh at all, just add it when you add the other leavening and add it small enough such that the rise time is what you want, right?
So what you're doing is is the sour the sourdough starter is there, it's producing the sourness. So, like if you have a sourdough that's getting too sour too too fast, right? Because what's happening is you haven't had a chance to condition it yet, and so you're like pulling it out of the fridge, you're maybe only doubling it once and then adding it so it's gonna get real sour real quick and slack the dough out, you add um just add enough yeast to balance that back such that you know it rises in the time that that you want it to, but it you I can't give you a number. You just have to you just have to figure it out. You know what I'm saying?
Based on your individual uh starter. That makes sense, Nastasia? No. Because remember, your starter, your starter and my starter are different. How you treat your starter, how I treat my starter are different.
I'm a lazy person, and so like you know, like when I'm using the starter, I I like I want it to be able to come out of the fridge. I want to be able to double it up, put it in that day, right, and then do whatever I'm gonna do with the bread. I don't want to have to, I don't want to have to think two days in advance about my starter, right? So I build the recipes around the knowledge that that's the level of pain in the butt I'm willing to go to. Just understand yourself and how much of a pain in the butt you want your life to be, and then build your recipes around that.
You know what I mean? Uh one more question, Dave. Uh all right. Uh okay. How do you think this how do you think this person's name breaks down?
Jake Nancaro, I think is how this name breaks down via Instagram. Hey Dave and the cooking issues crew. I'm from Melbourne, Australia, which is pronounced Mel Ben, not Melbourne. What do you think about that, Stas? Melbourne.
I have chills. Wait, did he did he put that in there? Or you're just telling people? No. I was told to say this.
It's pronounced Mel Ben. Okay. Mel Ben, like my brother Ben. Mel Ben. Not Melbourn.
With like a lot of O's. Melbourne. But I kind of prefer the I mean, whatever. Your city, you get to get to call it call it. You get to call it what you want.
You know? It's one of the rights you have. If you have a city, you get to call it what you want. Look, we have a street, we call it uh Houston. You don't get to tell us it's Houston.
It's not. It's Houston. It's our street. We live here, right? Anyway.
Alright. You'll have to excuse my accent, Nastasi. You can't hear it, but now you're making me hear it by saying that. Dave also hates the accent. I have certain.
Okay, I will say this about the Australian accent. There's uh, which is the word that we that both of us find thoroughly we can't imitate it. Like we can imitate a lot, but what's the word we can't imitate? I don't know. It's uh there's a word, there's a vowel-based word in an Australian accent.
Oh, so the word so. Oh, yeah. It's sore. We can't do it. Yeah, yeah.
We can't. I can't, I can't wrap my mind around it. Anyway, it's so. Anyway, uh, but not so like SEW. So, like, like anyway, whatever.
No, anyway, I believe when I when I was in New Zealand, I noticed that the word no could include all of the vowels. And it's quite quite confusing. Say it, say it, Matt. I no. Or I don't know.
I can't. I can't. But it's like nor almost. It's like nor almost. Yeah.
No. I just yeah, yeah. Can't be imitated by it can't be imitated by a non-trained American, a non-voice acting trained American. Can't really like we kind of grew up imitating British people here in this country, but like we didn't grow up, at least my generation didn't grow up trying to imitate this particular like consonant plus the letter O from Australia. We can't do it.
You know what I mean? And it's different from like the Canadian Surrey out. Like that we can do. You know what I mean? Badly, I'm sure, but we can wrap our minds around it.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Okay. Uh all right, so we're back to to Melbourne. Uh I've been listening to your pod for a couple of weeks now.
I've been trying to listen to the whole backlog. I started listening backwards, but that was some weird Benjamin Button crap. Have we ever read this question? Now I'm having a Benjamin Button moment and a Merlin moment, by the way. There's some sort of new Stonehenge thing out with Merlin.
I gotta look it up. Because you know I like Stonehenge. You know how I like Stonehenge and Stonehenge? Do you okay? Do you remember this?
What are the two days in the year where you can actually go on to Stonehenge with almost no rules? Solstice and solstice. Correct. Now, which one of those two solstices is crowded? The one that's the sunnier or warm one.
Ding ding ding ding ding. So what I'm saying is, let's do the cooking issues winter solstice at Stonehenge. Yeah, we won't hang out at Bath, have some delicious reagan cider, go freeze our butts off on the on the plane, and then be like, I'm in Stonehenge on a solstice, and we don't have to deal with all the people that can't handle the cold weather. You know what I mean? Sounds great.
You know what I mean? None of those VW uh camper vans, uh, like uh, they're too old and they're not maintained well enough. They can't drive in that cold a weather. You don't need to worry about those people showing up. You know what I mean?
Yeah anyways. Anyways, I like Stonehenge. Anyways. Uh, hearing about the things you talked about in reverse, we're talking about Benjamin Button again. Uh, so I'm tackling it year by year starting at 2020 and going backwards.
My question is about kitchen scales. And if you have any specific recommendations, I didn't talk about this already? I think I talked about this already. I feel like I talked about it. Listen, what I recommend, here's the problem.
I've gone on eBay, and uh, so there's a number of people on Amazon, and by the way, these are made in China, so it's even closer to Melbourne, right? And they're being shipped from China. So, like if it's being shipped from China to the United States, they'll definitely, they'll definitely full Melbourne you, right? You want to look at um, they have these ones now, five kilograms, five kilograms, get this, by the point oh one grams. Now, are they accurate at 0.01 grams?
No. But they are accurate to about a tenth of a gram. But the problem if you buy them super cheap, so like you can get them for like a hundred dollars or a hundred and something dollars uh from a legitimate company. Or you can go and get last year's model from the factory that made them, right? Shipped directly to you, and the problem is is that you could get a dud or you could get a great one.
So I have a 30 kilogram kitchen scale that's by the tenth gram that is my day-to-day kitchen scale because I got really lucky. I also have a five kilogram by the hundredth gram, and that sucker has, you know, about uh about a gram's drift as it heats up over the course of an hour. But, you know, I'm a I love this. A I love a scale that plugs in because is there anything worse than you're trying to measure something and it's like, ooh, you know what I'm gonna do right now? I'm gonna save the battery, because that's what's important.
Not the measurement that you've been working on. It's the battery that's important and it turns off your scale in the middle of a measurement. For any of you that ever had this happen again, I want you to go take your scale. I want you to hit it with a sledgehammer, I want you to throw it away and go get you a scale that can get plugged in. Because guess what?
All of the scales that can plug in also take a battery. So you can have your battery in it, and you can take it wherever you want, but then when push comes to shove, it's not going to turn off in the middle of a measurement. When was the last time? How many times has this happened to you? You you put the bowl on the thing, you go, you get your brown sugar.
You're putting your brown sugar in the bowl. The brown sugar runs out or whatever. It gets clumped, and you're like, oh geez, and then you have to go over and you have to get scissors to open the brown sugar more to open new brown sugar. You get back, you're just putting the new brown sugar into the bowl. And by the way, you've added half the brown sugar already, right?
Half you've added, but not exactly half. And you weren't like sitting there with a pen and paper and writing down how much brown sugar you added. There's already eggs in this son of a gun. There's already, there's already freaking buttermilk. It's already all in there, right?
Right? You're just adding brown sugar, right? And then, and then right when you're boom boom, it turns off. And then when it when you turn it back on again, it's at zero, and then you're sitting there trying to guess. Yeah.
Nightmare. Yeah. Nightmare. Just yesterday I was doing the full arm's length reach across the kitchen for just to like to tap on the scale so that it or on the ball so that it wouldn't reset, it would read a small change and wouldn't reset, you know? Yeah, yeah.
It's a nightmare. I think whoever thought that was a good idea, I what I think the scale should do is be like, yo, you want me to save the battery or your your your work? And I'll be like, work, thank you. You know what I mean? Like that would be okay.
You know? Or anything. Or like, how about this? How about this? Like, if I've touched a button in the last hour, just keep it on for an hour.
Just keep the sucker on for an hour. You know what I mean? And every time I touch the button, keep it on for an hour, right? That's the way the next spinzall is gonna work, by the way, people. We're trying to get rid of the timers.
Because the timers had tendency to they were never accurate. I didn't care about that. They're mainly just so that you don't leave the thing on forever. So I think what we're gonna try to do is make it such that when you turn it on, if you don't touch a button for an hour, it just turns off because you should touch your Sears all at least once an hour. Spinz all at least once an hour, right?
Right? Interesting slip. Yeah, you shouldn't do this with a Searzol. If you touch it once, it stays on for an hour. That seems like a bad idea.
Well, people do do that with the torches. I tell them not to, but people do do it. Like the torches have a lock on, right? It makes me nervous. Oh, yeah.
Now you're making me nervous, Matt. Yeah, sorry. My bad. Yeah. Anyways.
Uh so is that is that is that it'll is that all I'm allowed to do? Yeah, yeah. Is that it? Did we get to the end of the question? Yeah, yes.
We got that, but listen, Zero Anima wrote back and said they want to ask things. It's real quick, so it's good. Uh trying to clarify pineapple juice. I have both agar, agar, and pectanex, a vegan one. They're all all the pectanexes that I know of are fungal, so they're vegan, right?
Uh, would this be enough? I don't have a centrifuge, and I'm not sure if it requires freeze thaw. Thanks. Uh, you can hit pineapple juice with pectanex, and then uh you have to use a little more because the pectinx is broken down by the pec uh proteolytic enzymes in the pineapple juice, assuming it's fresh, so you might have to add a little more. Um, and you might have to add some finding agents uh just because pineapple juice is fairly acidic, but then that will settle out over the course of uh a day or two, and then you can rack off the top and you'll lose some, or you can do.
I actually, this is interesting. I haven't tested agar freeze thaw on pineapple, whether or not there's any problem with the enzyme, but there shouldn't be, right? There shouldn't be. So freeze thaw agar should be fine. You can do a quick agar, and if you don't want the pineapple to taste cooked, you should do a similar thing to what I do with lemon or lime juice, where I you boil the um agar separately.
The no-boil agar doesn't really uh work very well. Um so it will work, but the problem then is you either have to cook a portion of the pineapple juice uh or you have to add water, which is gonna make it um is gonna make it more watery. And uh agar uh clarification is on the no fly list for nostasia, she'll never do it again. What else is on that list? Uh garlic cutting.
Oh, you don't peel garlic? Not at my own house. So if you go to someone else's house, you'll do the unpleasant thing, but you won't force your guests to do it. Oh no, I just won't do it. Won't do it.
Unless I'm by myself, which yeah. Well, why wait? Oh, wait, so you will, in other words, you will make the sacrifice if you're by yourself and you want garlic. But if if anyone's around, I'm not doing it. That's somebody else's job.
That's like my mom who claims she's allergic to shrimp. If there's to raw shrimp, get this, people. My mom is like, I have a contact dermatitis with raw shrimp, so you have to peel all the shrimp and devain them. Oh, yeah, that's unpleasant too. Yeah, yeah.
But like, you really think my mom has a contact dermatitis to raw shrimp, or is it really that she just likes my hands to get that sli. You know when the when the shrimp slime, like, like it if you're doing it and then someone talks to you and you even just like sit there with your hands in the air for a couple of minutes and it starts to dry and you get that dry. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. You know what I don't like about chopping garlic?
I don't like that it ends up not only is your hands smell forever but the stickiness bothers me for some reason yeah you know that that tackiness of cooked garlic bothers me yeah yeah hey do you get do you get ticked off when someone else does it for you but they leave some of the skin in yeah but that happens all the time you're like where were you born what is wrong with you right do you let other people saute the garlic or do you assume they will burn it and so you take it no actually all my friends in this quarantine have or at least my West Coast friends have become really great cooks so I don't even have to cook anymore well that's good news I like to hear that I don't know about here not here uh we gotta go what okay what Matt you gotta go we gotta go we gotta go wait you we were about to sign off and you're like no wait oh well you gotta sign off now I don't hey look it's basically impossible to tell based on what is being said whether the show will continue further like anything could become another question I'm gonna go ahead and say that's fair yeah yeah fair statement uh all right well uh good to have you back on this coast Nastasia uh see you next time I'll see you in August why is that when you're gonna get vaccinated or whatever anyway all right cooking issues cooking Issues is powered by Simplecast. Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content, subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website, heritageradio network.org.
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