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The whole life cycle of food would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter behind China and the United States if it were a country. You know, in the age of COVID where a lot of those institutional processors did grind to a halt, and a lot of farms had to dump milk in Pennsylvania, even while supermarket cases were bare, the organic market stayed strong. They source all these ingredients. They do all of this work, and then they just boil it for a few minutes and then they throw it away. Tune in to Meet and Three, available wherever you get your podcasts.
Uh I'm here in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. We got Nastasia in Connecticut. How are you doing, Nastasia? Great. You know what I don't know I don't introduce you.
Nastasia, the hammer! Lopez. I used to introduce you, like I think better, you know? Yes. But then you squashed my hammer abilities.
So the ones that were squashed, no one's ever squashy or anything abilities. Man, geez Louise. We got uh we're Connecticut heavy today. We got uh John uh in uh in Connecticut. How you doing?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, cool. And uh Matt in his uh up there in Rhode Island. So we're full on Swamp Yankee right now. Yeah. But again, unless you're unless you're doing a a pre-spring 55 gallon drum tire fire with a handle of uh Jack Morgan along one of our many rivers along the coast here, you're not a really a true swamp yankee.
You know what I'm saying? Right, yeah. Uh I've I witnessed that person. They are something. They are something.
Uh okay. Uh oh, before I start, any guys didn't do anything, anything good food or not food related in the past week? Anything? Uh no. Tried to do like a braised lamb pasta dish that didn't work out the way I wanted to.
But what didn't work? What was a so in other words? Had you braised the lamb and you were using it as the leftover, or did you braze the lamb specifically for doing this? And were you doing some sort of like what was specifically for doing this? I don't know.
I wanted to like take the idea of a roasted leg of lamb and kind of like make it braise. So I did uh a lot of garlic, anchovies, uh de-glies with some white wine, then some vegetable stock, through lamb shanks in there and you know, raise them until they were done. Took them out, reduced it a little bit, uh thickened up the sauce, added more garlic and anchovies and white wine, parsley and ridiculous. I don't know, it's just like just it was just missing something. Did the Rodicchio make it uh bitter or was it decent?
Do you have the good stuff? It was the good stuff, it wasn't overly better. It was kind of bitter I was looking for. Yeah, I mean, uh Nastasi, you remember the French Culinary Institute when they had like the Ridicchio Consortio come in and they had all of the like really super fancy stuff that they brought in? I was like, oh, this is pretty good.
Because like I'm you know, I had been used to the the garbage stuff that you get starting in the 80s at some point, we were like in the US on the East Coast, right? We were like lettuce was iceberg, right? And then all of a sudden people were like, oh, if you were gonna be fancy, you got romaine, and then all of a sudden in the 80s, they brought out ridiculous, and they were always the tiny, they've been around forever, little like purple, like they look like mini cabbages, and they were just bitter and kind of useless and expensive. You remember these? Anyone remember what I'm talking about?
Not really. No. So like Rodicchio was like a thing that everybody wanted because it sounded fancy and looked fancy, right? But it just wasn't very good. So I've never really liked it.
But do you remember when the consortium came and brought all the super fancy stuff, Sus? Yeah. That's that stuff was good. And good, like, you know, lightly, lightly sauteed, lightly cooked down. Um, I can't believe none of you remember the garbage Rodicchio.
I've hated it my whole life as a thing, just because I was exposed as a child to garbage versions of it. Anyway, uh, it is good. So so what was it missing? You had it sounded like you had a lot of stuff. You had salty stuff, you had umami stuff.
Did the anchovy. How much anchovy did you add? Did the anchovy take it in a in a d weird direction that you didn't want or what? No, not at all. Like, I don't know.
It's just it just was just like missing a backbone of flavor. I don't know. Maybe I could have reduced the bracing liquid some more so it was more concentrated. I was just, I don't know, like lacking a punch. No tomato in there.
No tomato in there. Maybe maybe like a little paint a little paste. A little paste up in that piece. There was a little paste in the veg stock. But yeah, still not enough.
So back to the drawing boards. Alright. Okay. I've been experimenting. So next week, by the way, and get your get your questions in now.
This is your one shot. I'm giving you a full week. Well, not really, because you know, this is probably gonna when is this gonna go up, Matt? Like Friday? Hey, hey, it's almost never been Friday.
It'll probably be to it might be tomorrow morning. Yeah. Oh, okay. All right. Okay.
So if you hear this before next week, uh I uh we've gotten a bunch of questions in about the uh ANOVA uh combi oven, right? Their home combi oven, which is I think like six hundred dollars, and you can have like all of the it does the sous vide, it does everything, the steam and all this. So people have asked me a lot of questions about it, and I've never been able to answer those questions because I never used one, but I have one I'm testing now, and we have uh Scott Hymanegger is gonna be on from ANOVA uh next week. He's going to be our guest, and we're gonna talk about the oven. So if you have any questions you want to answer about it, uh preferably send them to me early, early, because then John can get them to me and I can maybe do some testing.
Because uh, to be honest, I see these questions usually a day before the uh the, you know, like actually the morning of the show. And so, you know, if there's something that you like want me that's gonna that is you know interesting enough to test actually test, let me know earlier, right, John? Yes. Yeah. Um here's something food related.
Did you hear that Mr. Potato Head is dropping the Mr. What is he now? Well, it's not gender inclusive. Is his wife okay with this?
No, so she is also dropping the misses. So, okay, so hold on a second. So now there's just potato heads? Yeah. And Hasbro, people are upset that Hasbro sounds like and wants the people want them to drop the bro.
Are you making this? Is that part real? Actual AP or AP AP.union.net. No, no, AP News.com. This is all so it's not Hasbro anymore, it's more a hashtag.
So is the brand of toy now called anthropomorphized potato? Yeah. Well, hold on. Has bro. Like that?
Yeah. Or is it more like hasbro? Yeah. Like that. Yo, has bro?
Do you? I has bro, bro. Like that? That's what they're worried about. And then the American girl doll is now selling a boy doll.
I don't know how they're gonna. Oh, first of all, was Hasbro formed by the Has brothers back in the past. See, I don't I don't know. I don't know. I I don't know.
I'm just scanning this. The has and has not brothers. See, people, this is what actually is going through Nastasia's mind. She's like, I'm not listening to anything about an oven. I'm gonna read the AP newswire coming into my mind.
That's why I wanted to bring in some food stuff. So I brought in some potatoes. That's not actually food stuff. Although I will say the Mr. Potato the Mr.
Potato Head uh is a very big cocktail concept. The Mr. Potato Head concept of cocktails. It's a it's uh you know a plug-in. The Mr.
Potato Head was uh, I mean, everyone's done it forever, but I think it was Phil Ward who coined it as a method of cocktail invention where basically, you know, you you take the structure and you just pop stuff off and on to change and to make up different cocktails. So, you know, a margarita minus lime plus you know, Yuzu, you know, Mr. Potato Head. That was the the theory of cocktail uh construction. Can you drink out of a Mr.
Potato Head? No. They're full of holes. Yeah. Well no, not even over.
Not even with the right parts inside the bottom. Nastasia, I don't know if that you I don't know if you know this, but you work with someone who's not only a trained MFA sculptor, but also a product designer with 3D printing capability. I can I can seal up. We we could take a stock potato head. Yeah.
Well, so so what I would recommend, what I recommend, all right, is you actually leave the I always reminded, because remember, you open their butt and the and and they're they they crap their body out like a sea cucumber, and then you like put all their stuff on their face, right? So if I was gonna do this, what I would do is I would make it. Why are you giving away the secret when we're gonna do it? Because if anyone else does, so listen, what I would do, what we will do is I will construct a uh a potato head, like almost like a capri-sun pouch that sits inside of the potato head body. So then you don't have to worry about washing it, and you can still, as you're drinking, like reconfigure it.
So it comes, it sits, you reconfigure it, and when you put the straw, we'll drill a hole through its forehead, and you can uh and you can uh drink it through that way. You can garnish with an apple head. Oh my god. Potato on apple on and and I want you to know we were way ahead of the curve because we've never gendered our apple heads. No.
Yeah, yeah. Way ahead of the curve. Way ahead of the curve. Oh. They all just wore hats.
Which is gendered, yeah. Yeah, it depends on the hat. No. I mean, like, my my Easter bonnet, when I wear that, I'm making a gender statement. Were you able to come up with your last full bar concept in 12 minutes?
Because this was pretty good. You guys remember uh my original, so like you know, look, I have many bar concepts that I'll never do. French fries, tater tots, as the and we'll call it like can it we'll we'll play only cannibal corpse because we're eating potato heads, but the bar is a potato heads. So it's I don't actually listen to cannibal corpse, but uh I mean the idea that like you know if the the waiters are the servers are dressed as potatoes, maybe. That's too much, maybe.
Maybe maybe people are dressed like people, right? And then like, but what if we like what if we have them in like completely like genderless Slenderman outfits so that everyone looks like they could be plug and play? You know what I'm saying? Like everyone looks blank. You want everything to be blank except for the potato heads.
Because you want them to shine, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Configured. That's taking it a little too far, though. I don't think people are gonna want to wear.
And when Dax went as that I first of all, I don't even know where that Slenderman thing comes from, but Dax went as it once as Halloween, and it's super creepy looking. What is it in the reality? What is the Slender Man? What is that like a kid uh teens novel series? I don't think I think it is.
Dax Dax went at it one year, and he was he's it was fundamentally a body sock that went over his whole body, and then he put like an outfit over the body sock, and he just looked intensely creepy. Like faceless humanoids are creepy. You know what I'm saying? Like super creepy. The internet says it is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepy pasta internet meme created by something awful for them user Eric Newston in 2009.
There we go. Okay. All right, all right. Uh you know, we'll put that in a time capsule. Yep.
What did Chat say? Oh, I was gonna chat's like talking about you know actual food stuff if you want to. Like, what? Yeah, give me give me give me some giveaway. They can't stand this crap.
Yeah, give me the food. Well, they would also like you to know that apparently this whole Hasbro thing just stems from them deciding to put, I think, both Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head in the same box. But anyway, whatever.
I believe that. Alpha. I believe that. Although they sell eight million. Let me tell you something about people.
People out there, people. Uh if you've never made a product before, when when you're only making a couple of products, you don't want to have a bunch of different like SKUs, SKUs, right? Because you have to pay for all these different boxes. But it's actually the opposite if you are a big company, because then you you flood the zone to sell more. So it's like the Doritos in food, right?
Let's go back to food for a minute, right? In food, you're like, why is it that they make 8,000 Doritos? Why is it that they make 950,000 different varieties of layers potato chips or Oreos? And the answer is when you go into a store and you see the same Oreo that you've seen your whole life, right? You may or may not pick it up if you're not a regular Oreo buyer.
You probably like Oreos, but you're probably not going to pick it up. But if you go in and it's like double birthday, St. Patrick's, blah, blah, blah, Oreos, and it's a different package, you're like, oh, there's different Oreos, and it makes you buy more Oreos in general, regardless of whether you buy the special ones. So in over the past 20, 15 years, really the past eight years, but like it's been starting maybe 20 years now in the making, companies have just increased the number of SKUs they put in a particular lineup. Because adding things to a lineup makes the entire lineup sell more, even if the really little niche ones don't sell that many, right?
So they're not actually competing with each other, they're increasing their entire brand. And so the idea that you're trying to save money on a box when really you're just flooding the zone with potato head stuff. The question is really, it it might not be an issue if if if you're only going to one place for your potato head style things, right? Then it doesn't really matter, right? But it's kind of like Pac-Man, Miss Pac-Man, if they they have a rivalry, someone might get both.
So why would no one's gonna buy two potato heads if there's no difference between the Mr. Potato Head and the Mrs. Potato Head? But it it if if there's two, maybe they get two, maybe they compete. Maybe you get one for one kid and one for the other.
So I don't know. I don't think they're actually saving money. I think it's a different thing. Ken confirm that this works on the food side because uh, we are occasional Oreo buyers, and Kate saw that there was a Lady Gaga package of Oreos, and she's like, wonder what's up with that. Bottom, they're real bad, they're just very colorful.
Uh threw them away, and then why are they bad? They just don't taste as good. How do they not taste as good? Oh man, I don't remember anymore. I'm not one, and I was like, this is not enjoyable.
And then you're left being like, I still would like an Oreo, so the next time you're at a grocery store, you're more likely to pick up the actual Oreos that taste normal. All right, listen, I want some Lady Gaga Oreos. I want to know what's not pleasurable about the Lady Gaga Oreos because I like almost everything Lady Gaga does. Right? Yeah.
I mean, by the way, they ever catch the person that shot her dog walker. Don't know. That was some random stuff. That was weird. All right.
Chat question about vegetables. Okay. Alpha Romeo and Juliet asked, I've learned that my partner prefers crunchy vegetables to softer ones. What would your go-to crunchy vegetable recipe be? Yes, I've roasted everything and love to fry, but would love any ideas and inspiration that the cooking issues team has.
Thanks as always. And then there's two follow-ups. Do you want to hear the follow-ups first? I don't know. You tell me.
Holden Trout responds, and this is this is very cooking issues. Holden Trout responds. Your question isn't directed at me, but you can soak the veggies in a calcium hydroxide solution. Honestly, I think almost any calcium bath would help. You can also use something like Nova Shape to reinforce the pectin calcium cross-linking with certain vegetables.
This can also be a good idea. Listen, listen, listen. Listen, calcium hydroxide is interesting. Uh, and I've written about this on the blog, by the way. So uh calcium hydrox calcium cross-links and makes things stay firmer longer.
And but basic things and basic things make things stay greener, but make them uh break down actually faster, make the pectin break down faster. So calcium hydroxide is interesting in that it it kind of has a it kind of pushes both ways. If you want stuff to get soft, make it basic. If you want stuff to stay crunchy, make it acidic. So acid plus calcium, even though the calcium is not going to be uh which way is the solubility go?
In other words, some calcium, like calcium chloride plus acid is going to keep stuff real crunchy. But the real problem is that as any uh real French person will tell you, uh, and John, as our as our closest to French here, you know, Belgique like French lover, right? Is that the French don't understand our obsession with vegetables that are undercooked? Am I correct about this, John? Yeah.
So and the old school French cooks at uh at the FCI were always like, no, no, mais non, mais non. Because like people would like, you know, undercook their veg, because here everyone was like, you want your vegetables to be el dente. You're like, no, you you want them to be cooked, but not mush, right? And the whole idea of being like to cook them the French way is to is to do that. Now, that said, it is my firm belief that you should eat the vegetables however in the hell you like them.
But what you haven't specified is how crunchy your partner likes these vegetables. Does your partner actually like raw vegetables? Is what I'm asking, right? So it's like certain vegetables, you know, your partner might want the texture of raw, but without the raw taste. And that can be done with uh like a relatively high temperature blanch that doesn't boil it or cook the pectin down, right?
So like they might hate, for instance, if they're like me, they don't like the raw starch taste in a pea shoot, right? But if you if you lightly blanch a pea shoot and shock it, it's still crunchy, but it loses that raw taste, all of a sudden I like it, right? Um if your partner actually wants uh raw raw tasting vegetables, but you're sick of your classic crude, I say, why not try a bandia cauda? Because banyacautas are delicious. So you get yourself some anchovies, you get yourself some butter, some garlic, some oil, you make it into a little into a little hot base, you make it it's a bath, it's warm, you dip your stuff into it.
That stuff's delicious. And then you can also have some bread with it and dip it, and it's it's delicious. You guys like banyacata? Anyone here? Anyone here a bandicata fan?
Yep. Yep, good stuff. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. However, and I think I don't know whether I've told this story.
Have I told this the story with Miley about bandy cauta on the air? Probably no. No? Not recently. Not recently.
Not in the last hundred episodes. So, you know, all right. So uh I've said this many times. Like, I became friends with Wiley Dufrain, uh the chef and donut entrepreneur, because um, I say entrepreneur like that because when any any one time anyone says they're an entrepreneur, my assumption is they're one step away from being homeless. You know what I'm saying?
It's like entrepreneur is not like something that like if you have a business, you have a business. If you're an entrepreneur, it means you can't tell me what your business is. So either you're doing something illegal, you're in porn, or you're or you're you don't really have a business. Are you with me on this, Nastasia? Or you don't you don't you have a different feeling about entrepreneurship?
No, I don't think see it like you know. Yeah. So you think entrepreneur is a valid thing to say that somebody is. If you say somebody is like a food entrepreneur, that makes more sense. But if they just say, entrepr, what do you do?
I'm an entrepreneur. Like, what does that mean? You you you're on the street selling singles? Like, what what what like what is like what is it like what what is entrepreneur? You know what I'm saying?
Like, why aren't you being more specific? Yeah, you're not with me. But who says that? Like, I don't I haven't run into anyone who just calls themselves an entrepreneur. It's a very like New York City streets thing.
You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know, what do you do? I don't know, what do you do? Like that. You know what I mean?
Hey, I entrepreneur. He's either with the mob, something. You know what I mean? It's like it's the same thing as saying, what do you do? Import export.
That means you're a criminal, right? Anyone who says they're import export and they don't tell you what they're importing and exporting, criminal, right? Uh-huh. Chef Joanna would like to throw multi-level marketing into the entrepreneur mix. Oh, yeah, right, which is criminal, right?
So they're basically they're doing something, they're doing something, well, should be criminal. Ponzi scheme, some sort of Ponzi scheme. This happened with Booker and Dax. Dax got into some sort of pyramid scheme. And thankfully for him, he was at the base of the pyramid, so he didn't get messed up with it.
And Booker was like, It's a scam, it's a scam. And Dax was like, it's not a scam. It's one of these things where like everybody gets five bucks for getting somebody to get into the system, you know what I'm saying? And uh, and I was like, No, you know, your brother, you know, usually he yells at you for the wrong reason, but you know, Booker's 100% correct. This is a pyramid scheme.
He's like, but I made my money. I was like, yeah, but the math proves that within a couple of cycles, there's more more people, you need more people than there are people on the earth to pay everyone five dollars. And he's like, Man, I got my money. See, so he didn't learn the lesson. Some saying early is what he learned.
Yeah. I don't want my I don't want Dax. I mean, like, I don't want Dax to because here's the problem with pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes. And by the way, we what do we get accused of, Nastasia? The Bernie Madoff of food.
You were called the Bernie Madoff of food. Yeah, because we were because we were we were two and a half months late delivering Sears alls to people with the first Kickstarter. Two and a half months late on a product that we made from scratch that no one has ever made before. Two and a half months late. You're the Bernie madoff of food.
So I was like, the trick is is that when people start their pyramids and Ponzies and all these schemes, is that no one wants to get out when the getting's good. You know what I mean? That's why they end up getting hosed. And first of all, it's uh unethical. Anyway, that's not what we're talking about.
What were you talking about? There was a food question. Roasting vegetables. Well, I mean, crisp, crisp vegetables. All right.
All right. So anyway, banyacota. So Wiley was uh, that's what it was, entrepreneur. Wiley was uh had WD50 at the time, and he wanted to go out with Miley, my sister-in-law, who runs the Food Network magazine and uh started it, runs it. And um, so they were having their first date, and they came over to my house, and she had a really nice dress on because they were coming over to our house just for a drink, and then they were gonna go out.
And uh I was like, I made a banya cowda. And so I had like this like I had like these little cast iron, like awesome little cast iron thingamajigs, and it was full of the hot, hot anchovy grease, and uh and a and a plate of like uh uh crude's and I fumbled and dumped the entire thing on her dress. I I dumped an entire container of like hot stinking grease on her dress. Yeah. They have two kids now.
Yeah, blessing blessings upon you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which brings me up. Anytime when you're at somebody's house, which was sorry, maybe someday someone can come over to your house again. Let's just assume that within a couple of months people are allowed to come to your house again wherever you are.
Something that in uh in in my family, my stepfather's side of my family that they always did that I loved, and this is uh related to you know, spilling banya cauta all over over Miley, was uh I've never made it again since then, by the way. So I haven't made banyacouta because I got it's a it's it's like uh uh you know traumatic for me. So like I haven't made it in probably 15 years or something like this. Uh so anyway, so you know, my my stepfather's father, uh you know, the butcher, I've talked about him on the show. We we'd sit at this long table on a Sunday at the house, and at the end of the meal, he would always pour some red wine onto the tablecloth and kill it.
So that like no one had to worry, and everyone knew it was gonna happen, so no one had to worry about whether or not they were gonna mess up the tablecloth. So they just took that off the table. I always thought it was a nice gesture. It went through a lot of tablecloths, so I only do it if somebody spills something on the tablecloth. I will immediately spill something on my own tablecloth just so that they don't feel bad.
But I always thought it was a nice gesture. Um else have that uh have that custom in their house? That's a nice thing to do. Yeah, it's a nice thing to do, but like if you don't have a washing machine, like it's just oof, you know. Well, it's more it's more for like later in your life, like if you're in that situation where you know you're the it's your house, you have the tablecloth, and you just want to make everyone feel welcome.
You know what I'm saying? Um but I tell you what, it really takes a it takes a load off your mind, especially if you have people who aren't like your normal people there and they're all nervous about like you know you getting bent at them. Anyway, uh any more chat food questions there, Matt. Uh no, well, other than Chef Johan chimed in to suggest spiral the use of spiralized veg instead of chopped, says. But nothing goes, nothing goes, but as soon as you cook a spiralized veg, the thing's cooked.
Or you're saying like leave it raw so that you can eat unpalatable veg. Can I make a plea for cooking kale, please? Can I please just make a plea for cooking kale? The kale was not in v there look like all of these kind of like greens and brassica stuff are all extremely closely related, different cultivars of relatively similar stuff, right? There have been for generations, people have raised greens that taste good before they are cooked.
Why don't if you're gonna eat one raw, why don't you eat one of those raw? If I never have raw kale again, I'm fine. Because you know what I really like? Raw cut up as crunchy stuff? Cabbage!
Cabbage is delicious, raw and cooked. Almost any kind of cabbage I would rather have than almost any kind of raw kale. Now, cooked kale is delicious. But dude, think of all the vitamins and nutrients in the raw kale. So healthy for you.
Dave doesn't give a crap. I know, I know. Yeah. Yeah. Come on, man.
I mean, look, here's another one for you. Uh, like uh spinach, right? Like, I know that a lot of you eat raw spinach. No, no, no, no. In California, there is some spinach that tastes really good raw, like amazing.
Miniaturized? Uh, smaller, yeah. But not miniaturized. Miniaturized. Not the tiny one that hasn't turned.
So it's it okay. Let me ask you this. Has it gone from being roughly coin shaped to being frilly yet? No. So it's still coin shaped.
Yeah. Right. So that I mean, obviously, you can't eat the raw spinach once it turns into a filth machine and it's all frilly and long, right? Yeah. But you're saying you're saying they have these varieties, and you're saying that this this spinach that you got in California, you would choose as a raw green over other raw greens.
Yes. I would buy it every like pat like so much of it every week and give it to people too, because they were like, this is amazing. Raw. Well, I would love to try that. In the same way that, like, uh, you know, your at the time boyfriend, when you and I were working, uh, you and I were slaving away, and uh, you know, inside uh where's we're Nastasi and I got our respective others a free trip to Japan.
That's not true, Dave. You gave we got three tickets, me, you, and you gave yours to Jen. Mark paid his. Yeah, and I paid taxes, but they got to stay in the best hotel in Tokyo for free. Okay, okay.
And they got all the food in the hotel for free. That's a free trip. The trip, you know how much more the trip was than the airline tickets? Yeah. And and remember, I got we got more than that number of tickets because I flew coach the entire way.
But like anyway, that's not the point. Hey, you show up in Tokyo and you get to stay in the park hyat for free. That's free. Okay. You get that you get the use of their of their concierge, and they get you anything in the hotel, including all the restaurant stuff.
That's free. Like, literally, like taking a poo in that hotel probably costs more than the airline ticket over there. Okay. Especially when you're flying deep coach, which is what we did. Like, I was sandwiched in somebody's overhead bin as I was flying over there for the 14 hours.
Alright. So let's just put it that way. So they're getting to chill in the hotel, they're getting their spa time, and Nastasi and I are working. And he goes to what he says is the best sushi experience of his life and has as the dessert, raw eggplant. Oh yeah.
And Nastasia and I are like, what? And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, raw eggplant. So apparently in Japan, they have, and and I've never been able to find it. I've never eaten it. There is some variety of eggplant that an 80, well, no, this wasn't the 80 year old guy.
This that's some that someone that's can buy it, slice it, and put it on a plate, and you're gonna eat it as your fruit course after after dinner as your dessert in a sushi restaurant and enjoy it. And he said it was like the best thing ever. And I've never had it, and I'm still jealous to this day. Like, you know, eight years later, I'm still jealous. Yeah.
You know? Aren't you jealous, Doss? I do wonder, yeah. Yeah. And so, like, you know, now you have me wondering about this like magic spinach.
That's like I feel bad for anyone that's never had like like what I the best tomatoes that I've ever had that I can get almost every year. But if you're not in New York, you can't have it. So, like, you can have a good tomato, maybe, but you can't have the one that I'm telling you about. You don't even know if I'm a liar. I'm not.
It's a delicious tomato, but I mean, what are you gonna know? Same way with the with the eggplant. I gotta try that eggplant. Anyway. So I would like to try your spinach, but in general, I think spinach should be cooked because what I hate is the squeak.
Mm-hmm. Hate the squeak. What do you guys think of the squeak? Do you not like cheese curds? I love I love a squeaky cheese curd.
Okay. Right? I don't want a squeaky green, because it's first of all, a squeaky cheese curd, there's something nice about it, right? It's like a green, is like it's like, what am I am I chewing on neoprene? What is this?
You know what I mean? It's just unpleasant. I just don't like it. And yeah, I don't like it. I love cooked spinach though.
Uh how the hell do we get onto that? All right. Matt, you're gonna let me know if there's anything else we need to address in the chat room, correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chef Jonah and I confirms that spinach film on teeth is the worst.
But yeah, you're you're good. We're good here. This episode is brought to you by just A. You can't have plant-based breakfast without a plant-based egg. Just egg is now the fastest growing egg brand in the United States.
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When you're cooking spinach, this used to happen so many times. At the French Culinary. It and aside from uh you know people not salting before they send it out, ugh, hate that, is when they would run out of time and they wouldn't squeeze the spinach before they before they uh f did the first the final dressing and put it on the plate, and it gets that disgusting black liquid flowing out of it. You know what I'm talking about? Yep.
Well, John, thanks. Thanks someone for piping up. So you you just you you cook spinach and you throw it in the colander, you shock it, you drain it, you pull it out, but you don't squeeze it, then you think you can just put your your your whatever salt, dressing, whatever, and put it on your plate, and you're good to go. If you don't squeeze the spinach, it sits there and bleeds gross filth. Anyway, um I hate that gross filth.
What's your favorite way to have cooked spinach? Just put it in the pan with nothing else and cook it down. So you don't like cream in it? Nope. No, assuming salt and pepper.
Salted after, yeah. No spices, no alliums at all. Nope. Wow. Okay, plain Jane.
Uh, what about you, John? What's your favorite spinach? Uh I like cream spinach a lot, but also plain with like garlic and jellyflakes. Garlic and jellies. Matt, Matt.
Uh I would I would get on John's train there. What about you guys? Uh I always add like not to make it sweet. So, like my standard veg cook in general, by the way, uh, not really with spinach, although I do it with spinach, is uh salt, salt, pepper, salt, pepper, sugar, a little bit of sugar. Not to not to make it sweet, but just to uh glaze it a little bit.
So, like typically when I'm doing veg, like carrots, like uh Brussels, I blanch beforehand. Like so, like so big big veg I blanch beforehand and then pan it. Um small veg I don't, but yeah, it's always it's always salt, pepper, a little bit of sugar, sometimes spice, and then uh you know, depending on whether I'm doing alum, but for plain veg, it's just salt, pepper, and sugar. I think a little bit of sugar always always helps, and then a little bit of moisture, and then you cover it with uh a lid and you take it until it's almost done, lift it, let the rest of the stuff evaporate off open so it doesn't oversteam, and then jiggle it until it gets the nice coating on the outside. That's my standard pan veg.
Anyways. And with spinach, I like to add a little cream to it because I like a little creamy spinach. So if I'm gonna do spinach and I'm gonna make it right away, I'll do it maybe the way Nastasia said, because if I'm gonna add an extra liquid to it to cream, I don't have to do it. But if I'm gonna do it for a bigger setting, or if I'm gonna do it in advance, I will uh boil it in salted water, shock it, squeeze it so it stays green, uh, and then I can add the um flavoring to it. Did I answer the question on spinach and then non-spinach veg?
Yes. Okay. Uh Mark wrote in via email a couple of salt questions. Firstly, does salting after cooking diffuse through meat the same way as raw meat? Um, well, when you salt raw meat, right, uh while the meat is cooking, there's a faster transport in and out, right?
So the the the so I would say first of all, also the meat is a higher has a higher moisture content when it's raw. Uh and it's also kind of more open, it hasn't contracted down. So I would say salting meat after it cooks is gonna cause less penetration, um, much less penetration than salting it uh beforehand. But I mean, again, like salting beforehand, it's it's it's complicated. It's it's much more complicated than that.
Uh second, does salting vegetables do anything similar? Uh I'm thinking salt diffusing through the veg also having an impact on the proteins instead of veg. A lot salting vegetables beforehand depends a lot on the vegetables. So if you want salt to have a big effect on some vegetables, you need to cut them. A lot of vegetables have or bruise them.
A lot of vegetables have very thick kind of coatings on them, like waxy cuticles on them. And so if you salt them without cutting them, really not a lot happens, right? Uh, at least not right away. Uh so you need to wait a while for that to happen. Whereas if you cut them, then uh you know the salt can get in there and uh and really kind of affect it quickly.
And the, you know, one of the biggest things that salting does is uh osmotically dehydrate things. So you can think about eggplant. So it's not really the you're not really affecting the proteins aren't that important in vegetables, right? I mean they are, but they're not, right? The what's important in vegetables is the pectin structure and also the moisture content.
So like um, and the salt that you're using there doesn't really affect the texture of the of the pectin that much at the levels that you're using. Things like we were talking before, calcium really would, or the pH, right? So adding acidity to something will affect the texture of a cooked vegetable. Um so but salt will dehydrate it. So like when you're cutting an eggplant, you cut an eggplant, you salt it, and that is going to osmotically dehydrate it and it's gonna draw out that kind of gross liquid.
Or if you're making cabbage and you're gonna do coleslaw or whatever, you slice it, you salt it, you let it rest for a couple of hours, and it gets a lot of the moisture out, and that way your coleslaw that you dress and that's fine at the table isn't gonna turn into a weepy wee-wee for the next day if you want to have the coleslaw the next day. You're a monster if you make a coleslaw today for tomorrow and you don't pre-salt your cabbage uh before you do because it's gonna turn into a watery mess. Has that happened to any of you guys ever? No. No, I don't think so.
Do you have you ever made coleslaw and served it in a day? You ever made coleslaw for tomorrow? No. No. Okay.
You guys are no help today. You can at least pretend people like it's a show. Pretend! Um active! I don't want you to lie.
I just want you to lie. I don't ever want to eat. I didn't realize. I thought, am I playing a character right now? What's my backstory?
Your backstory is you're a swamp Yankee from Rhode Island. I could do that. Yeah. Uh no, I don't want anyone to lie, but I mean, geez, Louise. You know?
It's like I'm getting nothing from you guys. It's like, it's like uh getting nothing. Throwing them off, getting nothing back. Uh Hapidural wrote in. So wait, so Hapodural, is that like getting an epidural and they're happy about it?
You think that's what that name is? That's their last name. No, the Instagram hand handle is Hapodural, like they're happy to get an epidural. Which I think most people are. I think most people, if they need an epidural, are happy to get it.
Uh that has been, you know, I've never had one, but that's been my experience with other people getting them. That they are quite happy to get them. Um so habitural writes in about uh quicksmal. Uh uh, so many years ago, like 2010 or something, uh, I did a blog post on nyxtamalization, which is the technique where going back to calcium hydroxide, where you take uh calcium hydroxide and you uh you par cook uh typically corn, and um then you let it sit for a while, and the calcium hydroxide breaks down the the skin on the on the corn, makes it a little bit softer. You then grind that into masa.
And so that's the masa thing. And if you don't have the calcium hydroxide, if you don't do the nixtimalization, then it's just cornmeal. It doesn't taste like masa, it doesn't work like masa, it won't make a tortilla the way masa does. Um anyway, so uh one of the things that I did, and uh I don't know if I was first, but you know, I'm the first person I ever saw do it, put it that way, uh doing alternate, like non-traditional uh kind of like European grain stuff with with that technique. So I was doing a lot of rye back in the day.
And uh rye tortillas, rye nixtimalized tortillas are delicious, but they're a real pain in the butt. So I tend not to do them that that often. And I also experimented with trying to do quick stum, you know, quick nixtimalization, which is where you do it in a pr in a pressure cooker and see whether you can kind of get rid of either the soaking step or uh, you know, part of the cooking step just to make it happen faster because it it soaks for a long time. But I didn't have very good results. So the question is I saw that you tried pressure cooking blue corn in the nixamol, but wondered, and the reason we did blue corn was because we had a 50-pound sack of it, right?
Uh, but wondered if you tried regular yellow dent corn. No, I didn't. Uh I the only one I tried was the one that I posted on the blog, and uh I I didn't like the idea enough to try it with the yellow. There's not that much difference really between uh the the I mean there's a difference in the color actually, you know, obviously in different varieties, different flavors, but there's I don't think there's that much, there wasn't that much of a difference between the yellow corn and the blue corn we had in terms of their textures. What I would say is that it's a lot of people only really have access to popcorn.
And popcorn is hard to nictimalize because it's real hard. And maybe pressure uh nixamalization, pressure cooking nixtimalization, if you want to try something that might work and be fun, try I would try maybe nixtimalizing popcorn in a pressure cooker because that might uh take away some of the things that make popcorn such a pain in the butt to work with uh when you're doing a nixamalization. So anyway, take that, take that one and try it or don't. Um Warren Johnson wrote in via Instagram. Uh so back at the ask he wants to know uh what was the recipe for the Shag Bark Hickory syrup that we used uh at existing conditions uh for the Macintosh Plus cocktail, which by the way, I always hated that uh name because I get it's an apple joke, but I don't really like the Macintosh as an apple.
I think it's a trash can apple. Not a Macintosh fan. Like last season, last apple season, I went out and I picked one off of a tree and I was like, eh, it's fine. It's a standard apple kind of flavor, but I would never ever, I don't even know why they named the the the computer after that. Like, would you ever, if someone's if you were on your deathbed and someone was like, call out an apple and you can have this one lice last bite of an apple before you die, would anyone on this earth choose a Macintosh?
No. No. No. Trash can. It's trash can, it's worthless.
I mean, it's better than a delicious, right? It's you know, red delicious. Red delicious is a filth machine, but um, especially the way that they are now. Anyway. Um, what was the recipe for the Shag Bar Hickory?
And any suggestions on how to approach recreating or substituting this at home. Well, I wouldn't try to recreate it. Uh, I would, or I mean substitute it, I would just recreate it. First, you gotta find yourself a shag bark hickory tree. They're one of the most easily recognized trees in the winter that you can get because uh, you know, if you just Google Shag Bark Hickory Tree and like look at the pictures of the bark and look around in your neighborhood until you see that kind of bark, then you've ID'd it, right?
It's not there are no look-alikes that are gonna mess with you. It's just that's what there is. Um, uh another thing that you might not know if you don't know where the shag bar kickeries are around you, and they're they're located. I don't know if they have them on the west coast or whether people have planted them on the west coast, but they're they're all the way through at least Ohio, um, and I think all the way through in the upper sections through Wisconsin. Uh I don't know how far south they I know they go, they probably go all the way south.
I don't know whether they go through the plains states. Anyway, so uh you can there's lots of applications now where people have uh geotagged uh trees, and so you can go and find a trees in your neighborhood on a map on your phone. Very useful uh for foragers out there. Uh so anyway, find one and then just peel the outside bark off. You're not hurting it, don't peel so much off that you're getting to the inner part.
Just take the stuff, it's gonna slough off anyway. Wash it just to get the you know, the outer, you know, you know, dust and and and whatnot and bugs and all that kind of stuff off. Wash it. Break it into small pieces, you know. You know, when I say small, oh, I don't know, like uh inch and a half long, something like this.
Uh, and then so it's still a little bit wet because you've washed it, right? So about the recipe I'm gonna give you is the one that I actually ran the test on. So you can re-jigger this however you want. But I did 378 grams of that bark, and then I put uh 1600 grams of water into it in a in a container, and I put it into my vacuum machine, and I did a vacuum cycle on it three times to kind of get the liquid to the inside of the bark and start the infusion before I heated it, right? So you can omit that, but it just won't be as good.
Uh or and you might have to let it steep longer. Uh then I added 700 grams more water, and the reason I did that was because I couldn't fit a bigger thing of water in my vacuum machine. Um and again, you can do it without the vacuum machine I have, it just not quite as good. You can you know what you should do? If you don't have a vacuum machine, put the bark in, put like a uh a grate or something so it stays under the water, and before you boil it, soak it overnight.
How about that? Uh then you bring it to a boil, you let it steep for 10 minutes, you strain it, it should be already kind of dark. Then I boiled it down to about you know, uh.6 of its former size. Technically, I did 0.615, but you just want to reduce it by like a third or so. Uh, and then I add an equal weight of sugar to it, and that's the syrup.
All right? All right. Who's typing? I hear typing. I thought it was unostasia, but I didn't call you out, thank God.
Thank God I didn't call you out. You gonna say something, Dave? You're gonna say something. I never would have heard the end of it. If I had called you out, I never would have heard the end of it.
I'm still not gonna hear the end of it because I admitted that I was gonna call you out. I've already lost. The good news is is that uh these days, small losses are the new big win. You know what I'm saying? I was your uh motto for 2021.
Yeah. Small losses, the new big win. Oh, speaking of, uh, any news on uh any news on our on our on our magic quest. No, you know what the news is. I know, but people like to hear people like to hear about uh people like to hear our Amazon news.
What was the one that we uh we hired a lawyer? Nastasi and I hired a lawyer. Uh yeah. No, hold on, hold on, hold on. Hold up, hold up, hold on.
So we hired we hired a lawyer. We hired a lawyer, right? And listen, we hire Rebecca to get us out of the dumb things I say. Not to stop me from getting into the dumb things. Anyway, so like so like we hire this lawyer.
Nastasi and I are on the phone with the lawyer. And we feel like Rebecca has to try to get the record on the show because she's because as anyone that's ever listened to a recent episode of the show knows Amazon, someone didn't read the instructions for the Sears All, which is the handheld broiler that we attachment that we make for the torch, and they didn't read the instructions, and they didn't realize that when you first get it, you have to burn off the binder that's in the installation. And uh and so they're like it caught on fire, and it was maybe dangerous. So Amazon pulled our the Sears all off, and it's been not for sale for the past three months as a result. Uh and they didn't pull off the competitors.
Nastasia got the competitors pulled off because they were violating our patents. Interesting story. Separate story. Um anyway, so uh Amazon was like, yo, you need to certify it, right? Uh you need a safety certification.
And we were like, well, there is no safety certification because there is no UL certification for like broiler attachments for torches. Like literally, there isn't. So it's like I was saying, like, it's like the equivalent of Amazon going to us and being like, listen, uh, imagine if like they controlled the Mars rover, Amazon controlled the Mars rover, and they let you send the rover to Mars, right? They let you send the rover to Mars. And then they're like, you need a valid driver's license from a state in the United States to draw a valid driver's license for that rover.
And you're like, but there are no Martian driver's licenses. And they're like, yeah, we still want one, or we're not going to let you drive the rover that we've already put on Mars. So Amazon already has all of our Sears all, and they won't let us sell them unless we give them the equivalent of a Martian driver's license. So then Nastasi and I go to uh a lawyer and we say to the lawyer, this exact thing. Do you have someone at Amazon that you can talk to that isn't the robot that Amaz that that Nastasia talks to that keeps on saying that we need to get it certified to a standard that doesn't exist, and or if it's a menstrual cup, get this other certification, right?
And then and then the lawyer says, Yes, we have some sort of special, we don't have special. The lawyer says, Yes, we have uh what'd they say, Stuzz? What'd they say they have it? Contacts or the legal right, we're like a relationship with the legal department. Which is why, and so Nastasi says specifically, we have sent all of these emails, we have done all of these things.
Are you going to can you do something other than these things? And they said, Yep. Right. So Nastasi and I talk, we decide to hand them like a big brick of cash and all of our documents that we've already documented that we have done these things, correct? Yes.
Yeah. And what did the lawyers do? They just sent the same stuff that we sent over to Amazon. Amazon came back with the same robot that was like, if this is a menstrual cup, you need to certify it to a menstrual cup standard. And then I was like, this is the same stock email.
And the lawyers were like, yeah, it looks like you need to get it tested to that standard. Well, that's a good idea. Yeah, yeah. And so we're like, but you didn't do anything that we didn't do. And then the partner writes us back and is like, well, no one should have promised you that you would have gotten something other than what you did.
And then like, we're like, what? What? You know what I mean? I was like. And they said you're lucky you got a standard with a number associated with it.
No, we're yeah, but no, we're not. Because they can't certify to that standard. Yeah. Okay. So normally the answer would be like, you need to certify.
Yeah. To a standard. Okay. The lawyers knew. So it's, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You need to certify this not torch as a valid torch. Okay, but I can't, because it's not a torch. So for the first time in our how many years, Sas, have we been working together?
11, 12, something like this? 12. For the first time in 12 years, yesterday, Nastasia calls me and she goes like this. I don't know, Dave. I just I I don't know.
This has never happened. Usually there's something. There's something. I you know, like I've seen with the I've seen happy Nastasia, I've seen sad Nastasia, I've seen angry Nastasia, I've seen Joyful Nastasia, I've seen all the Nastasias, but never fully accepting defeat Nastasia have I ever seen. Yeah.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that it's like I've accepted defeat by Amazon Amazon, and now we're we have another idea, which who knows, but it's it's only gonna it's only gonna get complicated. It's gonna get complicated and it's gonna take a lot of time. People keep saying, please don't send me if you can hear my voice. Please don't send me an email asking me if we've discontinued the Sears all.
It hurts me. Or the worst one is have you gone out of business? Like that's worse. Yeah. Well, we will if we can't fix this, but no, we haven't yet.
It just like it's just painful. Like maybe, but we have we're not clear on it yet. Yeah, it's just like I want you guys to know, and also like, you know, when you're dealing with any company that's not like a uh a big like conglomerate, like any smallish company, like when you email, like you're emailing real people with feelings. Like, think about it for a second. You know what I'm saying?
Also, you know, like like literally I'm gonna chime in with things to not email. Don't ask me to recommend a competitor's mind. Not gonna do it. They're not also not safe. So yeah, just not gonna do that.
Yeah, yeah. Also, don't ask a company, and I know you want to, because I want to many times. Don't ask a company whether it's really nod nod, wink wink, okay to do some stuff that they've told you is not okay. They can't tell you to do something that they're not allowed to tell you to do. They can't.
Anyway. Just don't do it. It's not polite. It's rude to try to to put someone in the position of having to refuse something that you know they're gonna have to refuse anyway. You know what I mean?
Anyway. Have you gone out of business? Have you discontinued the seasol? No, we're just gumokes, and we can't like we're just gumokes, people. Leave us alone.
Um the pharmacist in Bibes wrote in via Instagram. Hey Dave, uh, any recommendations for making a gum syrup that's gum arabic or gum acacia for for those who use acacia as opposed to Arabic. Uh, I have a I have gum arabic on hand and I made it a couple times. However, it always tastes off to me. Any help is appreciated.
Thanks. So uh listen, uh you gum gum acacia gum arabic is a tree exudate, okay? And it comes in various uh even out of the tree. Some of it is clear, some of it is yellow, some of it is brown. What's important about the gum arabic isn't just the hydrocolloid that's in it, it is a protein, and it's one of the very few hydrocolloids that is a mixture of uh polysaccharide, the hydrocololoid itself, and a protein.
And it's the protein actually that makes it such a fantastic emulsifier, but it isn't the protein that gives it the viscosity. So the interesting thing about gum arabic, the hydrocolloid is that you can use very, very high levels of it, uh, and it does, and while it gives you some good mouthfeel, it doesn't actually get too thick, right? So that's what's kind of interesting about gum arabic. The other thing is is that it maintains its properties over a fairly wide range of dilution, so you can make a very thick syrup without it getting too thick, and you still get some bodying and a lot of emulsifying ability at lower um lower concentrations once it's diluted. So that's what it's for.
Now, um, but that in that protein impurity is still in there even in very clear white gum arabics. So I would try to just buy a higher grade of gum arabic, one that is uh, you know, I wouldn't even think of it as refined, but just a higher grade of gum arabic, lighter. The lighter it is, probably the less of an off-flavor. It shouldn't be kind of brown or yellow, and the best gum Arabics are almost clear when the syrup is made. The answer the question there or no.
Yep. All right. Anthony then wrote in via email. Uh we got this a while ago, and uh I haven't looked at it yet. But Anthony from Seattle here, uh, I saw uh this gadget, and it's so it uh it's a Kickstarter.
It's nine nine, like the number nine, which I always found it difficult. Like uh there was a uh like this three sevens flashlight company, and I found it impossible. I was trying to figure out their website. I was like, do they write sevens? Do they write the number seven?
This is the problem with having numbers in your in your website, right? Because you're like, do I write, do I write NINE or is it the number nine? It's the number nine. Nine barista, not nine baristas, nine barista.com uh is this espresso maker. And uh anyway, so Anthony wanted to get my thoughts on it, and again, I have not tested it, I've not used it, so I don't know whether it's any good, but it's an interesting concept.
So here's the concept. First of all, the problem with espresso, espresso wants to have a uh, well, it depends on how you think of it. I actually believe in a in a falling pressure profile. My favorite pressure profile is the one that's produced by the old school uh commercial spring lever operated ones, so higher pressure at the beginning, uh lower pressure at the end, but relatively smooth over that over that regime. That's my favorite.
You can argue with me, and you're probably right. That's just my favorite. Anyways, uh, you want a relatively, you know, you don't want a very low pressure or a very high pressure or one that's wildly oscillating. That everyone can pretty much agree on. And you need a fairly accurate temperature.
So uh typically the way you do that in a large machine is you have a very large boiler, and you get it up to a temperature, and then you keep throwing energy away from it, and then you put water through a heat exchanger, and that heat exchanger, because the boiler is a relatively constant temperature, because it's so thermally inefficient that it can stay at a constant temperature because it's it's always leaking energy and putting energy in. And they the heat exchanger through it, and you get a relatively constant temperature of water at a relatively constant pressure because you're using a procon uh pump and that pump is cycling and producing a fairly constant pressure. Okay? Okay. The way these guys do it is is kind of interesting.
They heat the water to a much higher pressure than normal. Enough pressure to actually get the full pressure that you need for a cup of espresso, which is you know, on the order of, you know, uh, what is it, 135, 140 psi, I forget exactly, you're in that range. So, like, you know, nine bar, something like this. Um they actually heat the water up to get to that temperature, which is phenomenally high, but then they put it through a reverse heat exchanger that is actually cooling it down to coffee temperature on the way to infusion. And so it's got no like electronic or moving parts.
It's done all I think well, it might have electric parts. I gotta I gotta look at it, but you don't you don't plug it in, it's stove top. And then it runs that way. So if it works and if it makes a genius cup, uh good cup of coffee, it's kind of a genius idea. I'm a little worried about having such a high pressure boiler there, but I don't know, it seems cool I would I would be interested in in uh trying it but anyway that's that's what it is uh they might have a pressure multiplier so they don't have to take it all the way up to 135 uh PSI I'd have to I I I looked at it a couple of weeks ago but I haven't had a time to look at it it looked like a good scheme and you know maybe someday we'll we'll try it but I mean the idea of being able to make an actual shot of espresso like on a stovetop burner is pretty cool right now I think that you missed a pun in their name and Chef Joanna is losing her mind because it is in fact nine bar like nine barista nine bar uh yeah so I guess they do take it to nine bar yeah yeah nine bar easter uh well I don't think in bar people I think in PSI I'm an American I couldn't figure out they couldn't figure out the pun for that one yeah yeah well pisties 135 pisties yeah it doesn't work not as no one's gonna buy that uh all right well good call chef thanks for uh thanks for looking up um all right uh Brandon Byrd wrote in uh what's the best way to reheat a Mornay based mac and cheese without having the sauce break I would just say uh gently right I mean if you have an induction or if you can double burner it or uh or like even like light nuke and stir like uh any John you have any good ways of reheating that stuff oh wait ma it's it's in a mac and cheese it's not the sauce it's in the mac and cheese.
No I like to just do it in the oven. Takes a little while like with coverage so it's so it steams itself. Like 350 and so I listen, not not too uh not too uh free again like not to like push the thing, but one thing it's really nice about hat uh for next week, because we could talk about next week, is that uh the steam function on the reheat is a freaking gene. Like being able to do a relatively like you know, increase the moisture content and reheat at the same time so that you can get the relatively rapid reheats because you don't have it covered, but it doesn't dry it out. I have to say is pretty is pretty sweet on that ANOVA.
So we'll definitely ask questions like that if you want to know like how it functions for for stuff like that. My two favorite now reheating tools in my kitchen are induction. The induction, induction burners, having an induction burner in your house, especially one that's relatively accurate, like makes reheating uh like leftovers and sauces a freaking dream compared to doing it on a stove because you can set like the temperature and you and you're never gonna scorch it. Because it's scorching is the problem you get on on reheating uh a lot of especially thick things, especially things with a lot of gelatin like braises like John's like lamb if he was gonna reheat it. Uh and so the induction is super useful on that and also for keep warm.
And the steam oven for stuff that's bigger that you don't want to put in a pot and put on induction is pretty useful for the reheat. Um, all right. Um, you can if you're gonna make the mac and cheese after you can jack it with a little extra starch and that'll hold it together a uh better. Um and if it's on the verge of breaking, you could stabilize it with some um some of your citrate crap or whatever your emulsifying salt of choice is, right? So you can you can adjust it that way and you can um and you can hit it with a little extra uh hit it with a little extra uh starch and uh that'll all that'll also help um keep it from keep it from breaking uh but of course it'll reduce the probably cheese flavor because you probably have to thin it a little more with a little more uh milk anyway um all right you said I got uh all right so I'll read this I haven't I haven't read it before uh Brandon Vickers wrote in via email and I'm this is I don't I don't know what's gonna happen yet people uh for the last year I've been dreaming about a time when we can all get together again for big events uh yeah haven't we all for reasons I don't fully understand that dream always includes a never ending soft serve party huh I have done this huh okay I'm actually qualified what's the best way to make that dream of reality get myself an old tailor or is there a way to do lots of soft serve without a machine thanks Brady Vickers from North Dakota no that's not the one with Mount Rushmore.
So don't get into it. Don't ask don't say anything about the Dakotas it's not the one with Mount Rushmore. I'm gonna have to say that in North Dakota your soft serve ice cream season's got to be pretty short right pretty short. I've never been to any of the Dakotas someday I would like to go um so I once found a tailor soft served three machine I've told this story so I'll be brief I've told the story before but I found one on the street and that's the advantage of of you know living in a big city especially if you live in uh non-residential neighborhoods which I did at the time is people will just wheel giant pieces of equipment out onto the street in the middle of the night and if you're the kind of person that walks around the street at like you know 2 a.m you're apt to see a soft serve machine. I found a soft mach serve machine on the side of the street.
I found my first oven on the side of the street. I found my um I found my my first meat slicer on the side of the street. Uh what else have I found on the side of the street? I found uh a bunch of sarinin chairs on the side of the street. I found uh I I found you if you're in New York City and you're have any kind of and I'm not even talking those things I'm just talking to you about people, that's not a dumpster dive.
I could go for days. You guys want to talk about dumpster diving or like how to really raid a junkyard? Back when I was a kid, you could go onto a junkyard and run over the scrap heaps and pick up scrap while the magnets were moving around and the other people were cutting stuff with oxyacetylene torches. I s I remember vividly I went into uh and this is i you know uh this scrap heap and I made sure to ask once and then go in and then never talk to the guy unless I was paying because every time I would pay, he'd be like, I don't even know why I let you into my junkyard like that. I was like, oh Jesus.
And I wouldn't go into car junkyards, right? Because those weren't interesting to me. I wasn't looking for car parts. I was looking for stuff to make sculptures and machines out of. So like I would be running over piles of metal that were like 30 feet high and were leftover scrap from people punching things out of uh out of steel sheets, like half inch, quarter inch steel sheets.
So we're talking like super jagged piles of like terminator level post-world apocalyptic garbage, right? And this guy would let me just scramble over it. Meanwhile, like 30 feet away from me, some poor son of a gun was without a respirator, cutting apart old oil tanks with an oxyacetylene torch that he was cutting through the lead paint, cutting through the oil, like just filled machines. I don't know why I was allowed in here. Anyways, uh, and I used to just with whatever I I remember I found an old saw blade that was uh four feet high, right?
And I used it for a sculpture piece, maybe even more, four or five feet, I forget. And I was able to get it up on its end without going through my I always wore steel toed docks. So I wasn't worried about stuff going through my foot, but my body was not similarly protected. So anyway, so I got it on its edge, I rolled it off of its pile down onto the ground and then rolled it over and bought it. And that was one of my first sculpture pieces.
Anyway, so you can raid these things and dumpster diving, I did I got so many good things out of dumpster dives, but even without doing that on the side of the street in New York, that's how I found my soft surf machine. Soft surf machines are very expensive. So if you're gonna get a soft surf machine, um, I would say there's probably someone who could rent it to you, right? So if you're gonna if you're gonna get it, I would look into renting, because even small ones are relatively expensive. Then the other question you gotta ask yourself is any decent size soft saw machine is gonna be 220, right?
So you can get a countertop one, and uh, it depends on how big a party you want to throw. Like I did a party for the party was like 40 or 50 people, and so like I had to use the big soft surf machine and took gallons and gallons. So you could get a smaller one and maybe get one used off of eBay that's on its last legs, but I I would say rental. Um, you need a big one is gonna be water cooled, so you're gonna need a hose to hook up to the water cooling system, and you're gonna need a 220 outlet to run it. Um the other problem is is that unless you're used to cooking large amounts of stuff, uh, these things take gallons and gallons of base.
So one thing you shouldn't do is just put a giant five gallon pot on your stove and think that you can make a creme en glaze base in in a five-gallon batch, because unless you're really good, you can't. So I made scrambled egg ice cream way before Heston made it popular, all right? And it's real gross. Like scrambled egg ice cream. If you don't want scrambled ice ice cream egg ice cream, super gross.
Anyway, so I would. If you're gonna do the party, I know this sounds like a cop out. I would buy the base. I would buy the base and rent the machine. Uh I would rent uh if you if you're gonna have a lot of people, I would rent two tabletop air-cooled machines.
Uh they might have one that can run off of one ten, I'm not sure. But soft serve parties are fantastic. Just realize this. Serve some savories because people are gonna get so like with the free fixings bar and the by the way, any fixings bar I refer to a free fixings bar because of Roy Rogers. Anyone else here ever been to a Roy Rogers?
Yeah. Yep. Yeah, free fixings bar, right? Yep. It's all about the free fixings bar.
Yeah. My hamburgers were like as tall as I was because I would fix in those sons of bitches up. I think all you have to do is get the bun on top, and it's cool, right? You could take as many fixings as you want. So anyway, I refer to any fixing things as a free fixing bar.
But that's what I would do. Uh soft serve uh party is great. Now, if you have the money, or if you can find one for cheap or rent, the the tailor, and I think electrofreeze also makes one. The the two flavors, twist middle is money, because everybody likes the two twists. Am I right?
The twist, everyone likes a twist, even if visually, visually, and get the shell, buy the shell. Do you guys like the dip or don't like the dip? Like the dip. Like, yeah. You like the dip?
You if you could, but if you could only have one for the rest of your life, sprinkles or dip? Sprinkles. Dip. Dip. Sprinkles.
Dip. Okay. Dip? Okay, stuff, sprinkles. Multi or brown?
Brown. Brown. Okay. Nice. So Damon, Harjoy Rogo, bartender at my old bar, once saw someone go into a soft serve, uh, soft serve place, and this was the order.
And this was Damon now, this is his standard ice cream order, and I want it to become every I want this to go everywhere. This should be everyone's standard ice cream order. Um, not for Nastasi, because you want the brown sprinkles, but he goes, his order was brown with different. That's chocolate sauce serve with multicolored sprinkles. But because I guess the place didn't have real chocolate flavor or whatever, the customer just ordered brown with different.
So I think that's a great ice cream order. What do you think? Yeah, fun to say. Yeah, like brown with different. Yeah.
All right. Uh next week we have Scott from ANOVA. Send us your uh combi home combi oven questions. Uh cooking issues. Oh, shoot.
Yes, 20 seconds. All right, listen, people, I have a proposition for people out there, engineering people out there. When I still had a bar, um, I was gonna build, I built a laser projector, right? Like old school, like draws like like vectors on the on the wall, right? But the idea was I wanted to do one where I have a hand pointer, like a like a like a like a hand wand, like a laser pointer.
But what happens is in my hand, there's a laser pointer, and like you move it around, and as you move your hand, it acts like a laser pointer, and the laser projector projects where it's going. But you can also draw shapes with it and lines. Am I making myself clear what what it's doing? So, like you have your hand almost like a laser pointer, but instead of it being a laser pointer, it's just a remote control that knows where it is in space, and the laser projector is throwing the laser up on the wall, but instead of just drawing a dot, it can draw shapes and lines and all kinds of stuff, as well as play vector games like Star Wars and whatnot. No, and it's because it's RG it's RGB.
You know who does a lot of laser work? Scott Eymendinger. Anyway, so here's my here's my here's my thing. I built the hardware, I got the basic software up and running, and I have a lot of spare parts to help somebody build a second one. But if somebody wants my spare parts, so I have most of an RGB laser, it needs a little work.
I have a lot of the control electronics, and I have all of the 3D models for all of the remote control parts. And I got the remote control working and talking to the laser projector. I got all everything working. I don't have time to write the software, and I'm not gonna have time to write the software for the next year and a half because I have other things to do. So this thing is just sitting in my closet taking up space.
So if somebody wants to take on the software side of it, I will give them all of the hardware ideas and my one to test, and then they can build one and we can both have one. Yes, it does. Alright, so if you're interested, let John know. Alrighty. This has been a Cooking Issues.
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Subscribe to the shows you like, tell your friends, and please join the HRM family by becoming a member. Just click on the beating heart at the top right of our homepage. Thanks for listening. This is Lou Bank. And before I ever went on any agave road trips, I was taking daily trips on the G line from Manhattan to Green Point, Brooklyn, where I live with a couple of my Marvel Comics co-workers.
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