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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're celebrating the food culture of South Carolina with its chef ambassadors.
I'm super excited that it's soft show crab season. Those little suckers are delicious. People think, oh, tomato's a tomato. No, that is uh a good tomato and a bad tomato. So when they come to Hampton, or even uh, you know, even in South Carolina, you can really find uh incredible ingredient.
We started getting lettuce from Micro Leon Farms in Conway. He's it's a super sweet family that runs that little farm. Tune in to Meet and Three, available wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from well, you know, whenever we can make it.
Really, honestly, whenever we can make it. Uh, got uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez up there in Stanford. How you doing? Hello. Good.
We got uh we got John, he's in New York right now, right? Yep. Correct. And uh Matt and his Heidi Hole booth up there in uh Rhode Island uh and Providence Lands or whatever they're calling it now. Yeah.
Um yeah. Uh by the way, Rhode Island people. I'm gonna so I have a bunch of announcements, but first I want to mention this because I know I'm gonna forget. So in pr in uh not in Providence, but uh what's it called? There there's there's a town called North Kingston up there, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So in North Kingston, when I was a kid, there was an all-you can eat. This is gonna be long and ridiculous. There was an all-you-could eat seafood joint called Custy's, which they reopened in Stonington, like sometime in the early 2000s, but it closed right away.
But back in the 70s and 80s when I went, you could go to this place, and it was, you ready for it? All you could eat lobster. Can you believe that? Like, good, good lobster. You know, all you could eat.
And so you know, that's crazy. You'd go in, you know, and like the guy, I was a kid when I went, but like I was uh I was a little I was a little uh little fire plug of a kid I could eat, you know what I mean? Uh and uh I mean I was weak but big, you know what I mean? Husky is what we call it now in the trade. Uh anyway, so like uh I went in there and they were trying to figure out whether they were gonna charge me the kids value meal or the adults value meal, and they charged me a kids, and boy, did I rake them over the coals, dude?
You know how much lobster I ate? Oh my goodness. And it was like I looked up a picture of it from the old school days, and it was like like uh how many of you have like grandparents with a wood paneled basement? Like, or you can kind of picture that wood paneled basement, right? So this entire restaurant was kind of wood paneled, and it had like, and this is I only went once, and I was maybe 9 to 11 somewhere in there.
I still vividly remember it. Like, you know, like you were at a wedding, huge trays of like shrimp. Imagine like if shrimp cocktail like got like hit with the same meteor that like you know uh made those animals big in the in the uh in rampage. You know what I'm saying? Like I'm saying like huge shrimp cocktail.
So you would pound that and then eat infinite lobsters. Doesn't that sound fun? Are they still in business? No, those guys well they didn't get driven out of business. Uh they were also near a college town, which is so weird, right?
There's a college near North Kingston, right, Matt? Yeah, you are Iep. Yeah. So it's like, I mean, I can't imagine opening that. They must have priced it just above what the college students could afford at the time, and uh, because otherwise they would have been coming completely hosed.
I think someone, the record I looked it up, the record was 60 lobsters. Can you believe that? Oh crazy. I mean, like at that point, you're like, congratulations, sir, never come again. You know what I mean?
Congratulations, sir, please never come again. Here's a plaque. Um, but like, yeah, no, they they the guy retired, closed it, and then somebody like there there was still in the early 2000s, like, you know, that 20, you know, that whatever, like 15 year nostalgia for something that had closed, so someone tried to reopen it, right? Uh, and it I just don't I just don't think they got the the numbers to work right out of North Stonington. Anyway, so that that got me thinking there used to be a line of uh kind of lobster joints, like stretching, starting the first ones were like around in Mystic, Connecticut, right before the Rhode Island border, right?
And then they would go all the way up to Maine, all these lobster joints, and then it got me thinking about a restaurant that I never went to, but once I heard the name of it, I've always regretted. Because I used to go to Mystic and Groton back when it was open. I just didn't know about it. You ready for the name of this restaurant that really existed? Yeah.
Don Juan's International Combat Style Cuisine. Hell yes. Yeah. Oh, oh yeah. Don Juan's international combat style cuisine.
Yeah. Yeah. It was it was you should bring that back. Well, that's what I'm trying to do. That was what I just thought.
Really? Well, okay, so here's the story, people. Here's a story. Here's the story. This restaurant was, it wasn't in Mystic, it was in uh it was in a Groton, right?
Like, you know, like across the river. Now, for those of you that have never been to that section of Connecticut, like that is a navy town. That's where, like, you know, that's where electric boat is where we make all of our uh submarines in this country. It's like a navy town. Like, it is like all navy up and down.
There's a big sub-base there. It's like huge. And I look, I'm not gonna completely dox the guy out, right? But I f I figured out, I mean, like, I figured out the name. It was it was a brothers, two brothers, right?
It was it was Donzell and I forget his brother's name, I think Joel or something. They came from a big family out of that area, right? Out of the you know, kind of the New London area. And he went to John the the one went to Johnson and Wales and was like, let's start a restaurant. And they were they were basically just kids, so they were like, What's a fun name?
Because he had spent his whole life cooking, he came from a big family, and I again I did a deep dive, and he's hard to find this guy. And uh I've never spoken to him. But he uh his I think it was his dad was in the Navy for a long time, so I guess, and it's a Navy town. So they were like, Combat style cuisine, Don Juan's international combat style cuisine. And they opened it up and it was a BYO joint, right?
So all of the kids from the entire area back in the 80s who were underage would go there when they were and have their 18th, 19th, 20th birthday parties, and because the owners were basically also you know young, uh, you know, in their 20s at the time, they were like, nah, who cares? And so then it would just serve, and apparently everyone, you know, loved the the food that they were cooking, and it was great. Problem was they expanded to a second location, couldn't handle the expansion, and shut both down. This was in this shut down probably in the 90s. Alright, now you with me now.
So I then traced this chef, right? After he, you know, closed Don Juan's international combat style cuisine. I traced him to a uh lobster shack, then apparently the food there was uh great, right? And then uh he quit that he hasn't been there in a number of years. He was there.
I found a newspaper article that referenced him cooking uh like seafood there in about 20 years ago, right? About 15 to 20 years ago. I call that restaurant, Cole called them. I was like, hi, does this chef still cook for you guys? And they're like, no.
I'm like, ooh, well, how long have you worked there? Uh three and a half years. Well, did he ever work there when you were there? No. So remember, I still don't know that he's alive at this point, right?
So then I find another like reference behind a paywall in some podunk, like, you know, uh Southern Connecticut newspaper rating something I can't get to, but I it's it mentions in the photo the chef's name and then and the owner of this new of this other place. So I go, I find it, it's a seasonal lobster uh like like lobster shack thing near Mystic, and I call those guys. I was like, yo, is uh is uh Chef Donzel still cooking there? And they're like, uh yeah, but he hasn't started again for this season, so he's not in today. I'm like, what what what what what?
They're like in two weeks he's he's gonna come in and he's gonna be working for the season. So we're gonna go there. We're going to uh you know get some lobster, and then we're gonna be like, will you do a pop-up of Don Juan's international combat style cuisine? Right? Yes.
You found a little blurb about it in the New York Times. It's a curious name for a restaurant, it's as curious a name for a restaurant as the food it serves, combining quote the old Southwest, Louisiana, Jamaica, Mexico, Italy, and our own heritage here in New England. Yeah, yeah. I think he had Caribbean roots. Like, you know, I I think I like I didn't want to go like too far into this guy's personal life without talking to him first.
You know what I mean? So, like, you know, I like uh, but uh is the idea that like all of the international cuisines are engaged in combat on the menu of this restaurant? He was quoted once, so uh one of the articles I found on him, uh he was cooking for a uh uh a charity for like a Julia Childs charity. She wasn't there, she was still alive at the time. And uh there they asked him about it because the restaurant had only been closed like two or three years at that point.
So they asked him about it. And I think he just said we thought it was a fun sounding name that people would remember. I mean, it's like 30 years later, and yeah, uh, we remember. You know what I mean? It's like um, so yeah, you know, I mean, I just I would just love to, I would love you know what we need to do, Nastasia?
Let's do we'll make some drinks. We'll figure out a place, we'll do a pop-up, and then we'll have him just come do the the cooking, maybe after he's done for the season. I don't know what you know what he does after the season, and we'll do uh we'll do a whole thing. We'll do Don Juan's international combat uh style cuisine uh thro th throwback pop-up. I'm down, man.
I mean, I'm so excited for this. Yeah, like that. And he doesn't care what we do for uh drinks anyway, because remember the original was BYO. Yeah. Yeah.
Let's do mango lassies. Why? Because that's in international. Do you like those? Yes.
Really? With dinner? Are they good with spicy food? Yeah. I I look, I don't again, I think he can cook a wide variety of things.
For the past 20 years or so, he's been a good thing. I just am craving those. All right, we'll make them, we'll make them. We'll make them for you. We'll make them.
Do you know how to make them or not? Yeah. I mean, I can find a recipe, but we'll make them. We'll make them. But like, you know, as for me, like, you know, that's a little bit heavy on the drink side for me for when I'm eating.
That's also like part of the meal at that point. Whatever. We will make them. If you crave them, we will make them. That's how this is gonna work.
Because uh, you know, because that's what it is. All right, so now uh I got that off my uh off my head. I I haven't forgotten to uh mention it. And if any of you out there have ever eaten there, let us know. Or have any memories of uh Don Juan's international combat style cuisine, which by far and away the greatest restaurant name ever.
It's like how like so on that's on one side of the spectrum of restaurant names, and what's on the other side? What's the worst restaurant names? Oh, I don't know. Uh English is Italian. Oh, Todd English.
English is Italian, terrible name. I have nothing against Todd English, but that's a terrible name for a restaurant. Am I wrong? I thought you didn't like him. I don't know.
Why would I not like him? I have nothing, I've never met the guy personally. Why would I not like him? I just think that's a terrible name for a restaurant. What do you think?
Uh I heard he has a very large head, right? Or is that Tyler Florence who has a very large physical head? They both do. John, what's your least favorite restaurant name? I don't know if I can think of one off the top of my head.
But English is Italian, it's pretty terrible. It's a terrible name. It's as joke names go, it's especially bad. Uh because he's is he's not whatever, I don't want to get into it. Uh now, I think FUDRuckers is a bad name.
Oh, yeah, that's a bad name. Yeah. Yeah. Good one. Yeah.
Nastasia, what are your what are your feelings on FUDRuckers? Yeah. Bad. Bad. Bad, right?
Bad. Um, all right. So now on to the announcements. If you have tuned in, because you were hoping to hear uh the wisdom of Pierre Chom, our friend, uh Chef Pierre Chom. Uh, I have made an error.
He is not on today. You can turn off right now. He's gonna be on on May 11th, so please send us uh any questions. For those of you that don't know him, uh, and I'll I'll reiterate this when he comes on. Uh I first met him years ago when he was uh preparing for his appearance on Iron Chef at the at the French Culinary Institute.
Uh Koji did not, Koji, John's dog, did not know that Pierre had been on Iron Chef, and so was so surprised when I said he was an Iron Chef that he gave a bark. I forget who he was, uh I forget who he was against. Anyway, uh and then uh he took me to Senegal. Uh but the reason we're having him on in particular right now isn't because of his great cookbooks that he wrote on Senegal, which we'll also talk about, uh, but because he started a food business. And I know a lot of you out there listening to this who are either coming up in the food industry or uh or maybe not in the food industry at all, or maybe you're a cook and you're thinking of branching out into um starting a food business.
Uh remember Nastasia that we what we used to work for? Food school. Food school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So if you're looking at starting a food business, uh Pierre has started a food business and a complicated one at that, because it involves exporting a product from uh one country to another. Uh it involves dealing with uh farmer equity because he's you know dealing with uh farmers in um in you know his native uh country of Senegal and importing them here, and you know, he everyone's worried whether or not you know the farmers over there that he's using are gonna the same kinds of things are gonna happen that happened in Quinoa. You guys all familiar with the quinoa troubles? Yep. Yeah.
Uh for those of you out there who are not matter, you familiar I'm sure you're familiar with the heritage now. Anyone working for Heritage has to be familiar with the quinoa troubles, right? Indeed. Yeah. So for those of you that like aren't part of that world, um, what happened was is that you know uh people up here with a lot of money decided that quinoa was the next great thing that everyone should uh eat, and we bought uh so much of it that the people who actually depended on eating quinoa, like because that's what they ate, didn't have it anymore.
And so it was a huge nightmare uh Koji agrees. And the uh so you know one of the things Pierre had to navigate was that. So we're gonna talk to him about that. So if you know, ask us any questions about you know how to make sure that you're not shafting uh the people in the country that you're getting it from. And by the way, he's doing a lot of work on that front uh on what it's like to package, make, sell, distribute, uh, or any random questions you have about Senegalese uh ingredients.
Uh uh get get us those uh by May 11th. And here's the next announcement. So starting possibly next week, but possibly on the 11th, um, we are going to uh reach a long time dream of uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, correct Nastasia? We are going to be recording at the uh newsstand studios in Rockefeller Center. So we will be saying live from Rockefeller Center.
Uh we're not sure if we're gonna get it for the the fourth, uh, but starting um you know, at least by Pierre's on on May on May 11th. And we're gonna record same same time, right? Uh, and we're trying to figure out dotting all the I's and crossing all the T's. We don't know the chat room probably won't work uh right away, but we're gonna figure out how how to get you know all the functionality back to you guys as fast as possible. Please, for any updates on that, look to uh cooking issues on Twitter, look to cooking issues on Instagram or Booker and Dax on uh Booker Booker Dax lab, right on Instagram.
Is that pretty accurate? No, I think we're just Booker and Dax now, right, John? Yep, we dropped the lab. Okay, Booker, yeah, because everyone's like, where's your lab? It's up your butt.
Right. Uh yeah, so yeah, but so Booker and Dax on uh Instagram, and we will keep you posted as soon as we get more information. And last announcement before we get to uh questions, uh you ready for it, people? Amazon is still hosing us for the Sears all. However, however, however, we have a new business.
What's the name of this business, Nastasia? Oh, I thought we hired a new business, but okay. Okay, we hired a new business. Their employees are Nastasia, Dave, and John, and this new business's name that has no relationship to Booker and Dax whatsoever. This completely unrelated business venture.
What is it called, Nastasia? Trailing Edge Technologies. Now we will have to start another business. No, we're fine. Amazon does not believe us.
Amazon does not listen to us. They still think we sell menstrual cups. Now listen, the reason trailing edge technologies is such a great business is because we are the stuff that really happens after all the lifting takes place. Like we're this stuff where if it falls off the plane, what happens, Stas? Uh the plane still lands.
Yeah, oh, yeah. Don't worry. Plane's gonna land fine. Like, you know, maybe, you know, maybe the flight's gonna cost a little more because we burned a little more fuel, but don't worry, you're gonna land fine. We are trailing edge technologies.
So if we and Nastasia has engineered uh a load of Searsols to appear on eBay to be uh and she's using a company that's very good for fulfillment. So we expect it to be the fulfillment to be like as good. I don't know whether it would be just as fast, but fast. No, Amazon style test. No, it's gonna be two to three days.
So everyone's calm down. And then two, no international. So sorry, Canada. Is Canada still international? Do you know my new driver's license allows me to go to Canada without a uh definitely international?
So just the US. Alright. Alright. Well, anyway, we're gonna have a load of US uh Searsols. It is actually in the country, which is why I'm talking to you about it.
It is actually in the warehouse. We're just waiting for the last little weird PayPal nonsenses to get uh updated. However, I can assure you on a stack of choose the religious tome of your choice that uh the the trailing edge technology, Sears Alls, Trailing Edge Technologies is the only authorized reseller currently of Searsols. All other ones are jokers, lies, cheats, or someone trying to swindle you. So trailing edge technologies are are like that's gonna be the way to get it on eBay going forward.
Is this true or false and stuff? Yep. That's that's awesome that you guys have finally figured out a way of making this work through all this nonsense. Anyway, and then hopefully, you know, in four months, we'll have a way to get back onto Amazon. But you know, we we can't wait around and get completely bankrupted waiting for for you know, waiting for the world to change.
You know what I mean? Yep, yep. And just real quick, so when everything's live, just everyone knows, we'll send out a newsletter and we'll post it on our social medias as well, so you guys can find the link right up there and don't have to wade through all the nonsense ones. Yeah, I mean if look, if you if you're interested, you could always just follow Booker and Dax on Instagram or cooking issues on Instagram or on the uh Twitter, right? Yep, especially if you want to hear like updates about when the Don Juan's international combat style cuisine is gonna happen.
But my guess is that's probably gonna be in the fall, right? Yeah. Because we might be doing additional stuff too. Well, also, he's but he's working, right? I'm not gonna like try to take him out of his current job and you know for one night.
Yeah. What? What? What are you saying about me? Nothing.
What? No, come on. It's hard to get you to do stuff. Alright. Alright.
This man erected a teepee for you. Yeah. Yes, I helped him move a piano once, so I think we're even. I helped you move your fireplace. I babysat your case.
And by the way, when you you helped me move the piano, you had a truck because I was giving you stuff like kayaks. Uh I gave you kayaks. We're not gonna go, we're not gonna go into this. This could easily chew up the next 34 minutes. Yeah, now I see why we're not gonna go into it.
No, I don't. Uh-huh. That Booker video didn't get out anywhere. Uh I could see, by the way, right? Oh, sorry.
When you when you when Stas was like, I feel like I babysat your kids, I was like, after last week's show where Booker did the video thing, I feel like I've babysat your kids. But anyway, uh did that video get posted anywhere where I can see it? I don't think so. He's Booker, like He doesn't want to mess up his Instagram with stuff like that. It's well curated.
Okay, so for those of you that like don't know like so I have two kids, I have Booker and Dax. Yeah, that you know the company i i is named after anyway. So like, you know, you know, Booker is, you know, he's on the spectrum, and that's fine. You know, he knows that we talk about it. It's it's great.
And but like he has certain reactions that you just can't like so something happened in literally he just told us he's 19. Something happened in middle school that pissed him off about his email, and so just three days ago he obliterated his old email and started fresh. I'm like, Booker, what the heck, man? He's like, Well, it's done now. I was like, what could have happened in middle school?
He's like, I don't want to talk about it. Isn't that? I mean, like, I still don't know. I don't know. So, you know, the odds of me getting it in a situation where, you know, I mean maybe maybe he'll send the video and we can post it to uh one of our stories or something like this.
How about that? And he definitely, as Nastasia says, you know, try to get him to post something that's not a a very particular subway thing on his uh on his Instagram and good luck. He has a very, he has a very uh you know, a decent following of uh fellow rail fanners on his uh yeah on this thing. New York City Subway, by the way, somehow, you know, I don't know. New York City Subway, I love the subway.
I love our subway system, not back yet. You know what I mean? It's not, it's it still feels a little bit crazy down there in the subway. You know what I mean? Because I think a lot of the normals like haven't gone back to it yet.
Yeah. That makes sense. Does it really? Yeah, it just feels like the you know how like people who aren't from New York, they're like, um, oh, New York, there's so many crazy people in New York. Oh, I don't want to, oh, it's uh, and you're like, no, listen, it's like there's eight million people here.
Yeah. And so you we have our percentage of crazy people, but you see them more than you would see them in a town of like 20,000 people because you know, you know where the three crazies are in that town of 20,000 people, and you can just avoid them or they stay in their house or whatever. And in New York, you see them, right? Mm-hmm. What's crazy now is that like in New York, the people without masks are the crazy people, you know, and you're like weird.
I think it's good though, because it gives you a signal. It's a signal. I enjoy a signal. You know what I mean? Um I enjoy a signal, right?
And then there's the other thing in New York that like uh, you know, if you're smoking or drinking really crappy coffee, you also don't need to wear a mask, obviously. My favorite are the people walking down the street who pull down their mask to talk on the cell phone. Like, what? You want me to lip read what you're saying? They can hear you through the freaking mask on the cell phone.
Whatever. That's not just a New York phenomenon. Just to be clear, it's happening here as well. Really? What?
That the cell phone requires the mask? The cell phone must you can't possibly communicate on a cell phone with a mask on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
When I'm talking to someone in person, though, I do use, like, like, you know, in inside, like when we're all vaccinated and stuff, like, I actually, when there's a lot of noise, I do use the lip references. So it is useful, but it's not useful over a cell phone because they can't see your lips anyway. Um, but like, so Nastasi and I always used to comment, and it's springtime too. Once the weather gets to a certain point in New York City, the flowers and the crazies come out. Right?
So it's like Well, it's because it's it follows like an animalistic thing, right? People start, they they get in heat. So wow, I'm not gonna go there, Nastasia. But family show, we can't talk about procreation. I wasn't talking about procreation.
I was just talking about referring to all these people as though they were animalistic. He doesn't want to see them okay, okay, there we go. Like springtime people they they feel it. They go into heat. Well, all I'm saying is is that also the people who used to like spend most of their time like, you know, yelling at nothing, were yelling at nothing inside, and now they're yelling at nothing outside.
You know what I mean? So it's temperature's better, yeah. Yeah, it's nicer. It's nicer. Yeah.
Anyway, so the subway, like a lot of the what, you know, I'll for lack of a better word called the normals, haven't gone back to the subway yet. And so the the uh relative proportions of the people like, you know, dissolving into themselves in the seats without a mask and screaming at nothing is higher. Yeah. That's all I'm gonna say. Yeah.
Anyway, not cooking it. Too far from the combat style cuisine. The second Josh Bauer would like to ask you, how do you feel about Florida lobster? Why are they asking about Florida lobster? Well, because it's not a lobster.
Oh, it's a different species, anyway. You're talking about like like rock lobsters and things like that. Now you have that freaking song going through my head. Oh my god. That's a gift.
No, but it's going through my head, and the descending rock lobster is going through my head. And now I can see a bunch of people in like 1990, like getting lower and lower on the dance floor during the rock lobster part. The B-52s, for those of you that don't know, like were a band for a while, came back with uh basically two hits, The Love Shack and Rock Lobster, right? And they were played non-stop on dance floors in like you know, my college era, right? Non-stop.
And so uh yeah, it bring it brings that back. They were good tunes though. What like uh does anyone still listen to uh did you ever did they play that on dance floors in colleges when you were uh around uh Nastasia? Uh not that, but you know my favorite Long Island radio station, uh the lead singer of the B-52s always calls in and makes requests because I guess he lives somewhere out there. It's really weird.
Really? It's really weird. Is he like is he like ask for Love Shack? Play Love Shack! He asks for really random, random shit.
Like and can you identify him just by that voice? Yeah, or I got a blur says big as a whale. They realized they were like, wait a minute, is this what's his name? Is this I can't remember his name from the B-52s? And he's like, Yeah.
And then they had him on, like DJing one night because he's not doing anything. Yeah. I would listen to that. Really? No, you can't.
The guy's got a Chrysler. See, it's 20. See, it's 20. You disparaged my station for years. Uh, I did not disparage your station.
I spared you listening to it. You couldn't even go to the basement and pick up your cannolis. Nastasia listens to a radio station. It's so local. We're literally like, it's like when we're talking about garbage and no one knows what's going on.
It's like, imagine that, but like they're broadcasting it in the air, not on the internet. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, just as you know, uh Nancy spoiled the cannolis. So don't go, there's no cannolis in the church basement this weekend. You gotta wait.
She's gonna try to get them for Wednesday, all right? So don't pick up your cannolis. That's what the kind of level of radio station that Nastasia listens to. It's awesome. Come down to the car wash, support the hockey team.
You know what I mean? It's like that. Like that's the radio she listens to, which is fine, but it's not her hockey team because there's a body of water between the room. You know why I you know why I listened to it though? Because they the DJs actually play music that that they want to play and they take requests.
And when I was in LA, there was a like all the radio stations are like, you know, the same. Same in New York. Like, I didn't realize that DJs pre-program all of their songs, and it makes me really sad. You didn't realize that? No, this one DJ was like, so I got an email from this woman yesterday.
Her mother died. She was driving home from the funeral, and she wanted me to play this song, but you know, we pre program here every day, so I'm playing it today. Hope that's okay. And I was like, oh my god, this one was driving home, wanted a request, they couldn't fit it in because that's how pre programmed it is. Like being a DJ is on a radio is an art, right?
Or lost long lost art or something. Yeah, no one's been a live DJ in like a billion years. Well, FMU, they do it. Who does? FMU.
Is that the nine? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I listened to that one too out here in the car. Yeah. Yeah, it's great.
Haven't you seen the movie Airheads or any of the movies or like any of like the cartoons about or like the regular show episodes where like they make fun of the fact that the radio shows are all just big computers now? With pre-programmed plays, I didn't know that. I think it's terrible. And then you know, like the the classic rock stations will play like uh Bon Jovi at five o'clock because they know all the guys are leaving the garage, like uh whoa. Listen, I like Bon Jovi.
I'm not gonna lie to you and say that I don't like Bon Jovi. Um I mean that would be a lie. I would lie to you. I'll be lying to you if I said that. Uh but I never used to call those things classic.
I used to just call them like same rock 103. Yeah. You know, cla you know, like all those stations play the same like five songs over and over. Stop believing. Yeah.
I mean, why would you ever stop believing? Yeah. Paul Hale had the audacity to put a cooking question in the chat. Let's hear it. Uh two parts.
Uh Dave, did you ever figure out a way to keep your bagel seasonings from burning in the oven? Oh my god. I've been using Stella Parks' recipe on and off for two years, which is a 20 minute bake after the boil, but the dried onionslash garlic burns every time. Yeah, it do. Listen, like I don't know the answer to this.
By the way, Stella's great. I'm not like uh I want I'd like to have her on the show sometime. Maybe she'll come on, John, see whether we can make that happen. Um that's you know, Brave Tart. Anyway, so um the Here's the thing.
So I had a nightmare experience last week. So as you listeners know, uh, and I may give you the recipe for it if I if I can find it real quick, but we've been curing salmon a lot in the house just because I just can't afford to buy cured salmon anymore for Booker because he has gone from being uh a full where he would eat basically the three things he would eat were were pizzas, hamburgers, and like and fish products, right? So he's gotten rid of most pizza. He only likes garbage can pizza and uh and hamburgers and and bacon. So he he basically he only eats fish and and waffles, right?
Won't even eat pancakes anymore. So he eats he eats fish, specifically tuna, but I don't want him to get all pivoned out and get all mercury poisoned, so we're trying to limit his tunic fish intake and and salmon. So he like literally before the show, I I taught him how to do uh low temperature salmon. So I do I do uh pre-salt so that the protein doesn't come out, doesn't get that white disgusting stuff. I do pre-salt with a little bit of sugar, 52 uh Celsius till it's warm through, pull out flour on the skin side, butter, pan, sear off, eat, right?
That's I taught him how to do that. So now like at random times in the he'll do it for breakfast, he'll do it for lunch. I'll hear the the uh ANOVA kick on, and he's throwing salmon uh like we buy him just a boat ton of salmon fillet, frozen salmon fillets. I know people, I know frozen, but anyway, it's easy for him. So anyway, so but then he also on top of that eats an unconscionable amount of locks.
So we've been curing a side of salmon every week, pretty much. Uh and just so you know, um I just want to say, like my parents do not give an F about what I wanted to eat. Okay, are you autistic? Are you autistic? Are you?
Are you autistic? Because you sound like it. Yeah. It's like if you're known to the case. You do it for Dax too.
I don't. No, Dax eats what we eat. There's no. I'm sorry. No, Dax eats what we eat, please.
Okay. I mean, like, you know, just come back and talk to me when you know what you're talking about on that one. But uh the It does have to, he has to hit some other nutritional requirements, though, right? Like sailors would get like berry berry if they just ate finish only. We take him to doctors all the time because he won't listen to us on medical stuff to try to get him to increase.
He also eats solid blocks of cheese. Like, you know, that's gonna plug them up. I I what I try to tell him is like if all you eat is cheese, right? That's the equivalent of sticking a cork in your butt from the front side. You know what I mean?
I'm like, you need to eat like a variety of things, you know what I mean? Anyways, so yeah, we go to doctors to try to convince him that he needs, you know, whatever. He does it's part of the thing, it's part of the complex of things. So for those of you uh that want to cure salmon at home, the easiest way to do it, in my opinion, is uh to buy the side salmon. When you're looking for a side of salmon, um try to get one that doesn't have a lot of gaps in the fillets.
So when you're looking at a salmon fillet, you'll see uh like the the lines of the the muscles, striations, right? Look, especially uh in the in the top section near it near the backbone near the head. That's the thickest part of the muscle, and so that's the most force when it goes into uh rigor mortis, and so that's where you're likely to first see signs of uh gaps in the in the fillet that that mean that it's it's already kind of a little soft, and for you want the firmest fillets possible because you're gonna you're gonna cure them and slice them into like NOVA, right? Uh and so you you want to start with a firmer fillet and not with a softer fillet. And the harder rigor that the salmon has gone through, the kind of softer the fillet is going to be.
And you know, it can get to the point where when you pick it up, and I'm sure you know, John, if you've done this a lot, when you pick it up, you know how like your thumb can go through some really soft salmon. Yeah. So that's when it's kind of once if you're starting with that kind of material, you're just not gonna get uh the kind of result that you want. Now, here is where I'm gonna differ because I from anyone who does this professionally. I think it's hard for most people to slice uh salmon nicely, and also if they're kind of big, right?
Um so no one would do this, but if you've ever bought Scottish loin uh cured salmon, right? You'll look and it's just the top section, not not the belly. And that gave me the idea that I'm gonna cure them without the skin on. So I I take the skin off, and so to take the skin off of a side of salmon, you put the the tail section down, you make a little cut between the skin and the uh and the tail meat, right, on a flat board. Make sure you know that the thing's laying out flat, and then hold the knife at a little bit of an angle towards the board and just slice back and forth as you push uh through the meat.
Try not to have it go up so you lose too much uh salmon, and try not to have it go down so you cut through the skin. It's not a the end of the world if you cut through the skin. And then you have the whole salmon skin, right? So you have the whole salmon skin, now salt, pepper, a little bit of sugar, both sides, put it in an oven at 375 Fahrenheit on a piece of parchment until it gets crispy like a cracker, you're welcome. That is delicious.
Never throw that skin away. Then I cut, uh I use the dividing line uh between the the loin, the top, and the belly, and I cut the salmon all the way down the belly line along that white line going down the center. Make sure there's no bones because nothing is gonna kill your slicing of your nova more than a pin bone left in there. Am I right? Alright?
So you cut that sucker down the middle, then flip it over to its, and I would do this after you do it. There's a bloodline of a different kind of meat that is left on when you're curing the whole thing, but I think it's better if you take it off because it's it has a little bit of a metallic taste, and it's also the fat in that meat, in that dark brown meat, it tends to go rancid faster. So carefully trim uh that off. So now you have two blocks, a long one from the loin and a long one from the belly. Weigh that, then weigh out 2.5% of that weight.
So let's say you had a uh a thousand grams of uh salmon, which is roughly a side of salmon's gonna be roughly 930 grams once it's trimmed. So let's call it a thousand. So uh 2.5%, so that's 25 uh grams of salt, and then half of that of sugar. So I'm using a 2-1 sugar. So that's 1.25% or 12.5 grams of sugar, regular white sugar.
You could use whatever you want, but that's what I use. And then here's the miracle. Ready for the miracle, people? Go buy you some hickory smoke powder. Go buy hickory smoke powder.
If you can hear me and you don't have hickory smoke powder, go buy hickory smoke powder. And I like this better because it's a dry application, so it's easy to mix it in with the spices as opposed to a liquid smoke, which then needs to be distributed along with liquids. So you get the dry stuff. I find it easier to measure, it's easier to store, it's usually very high quality. Uh, the problem with it is that when you start cooking with it on its own, if you add a little bit too much, it gets acrid the same way that like over smoking something gets acrid.
So you're gonna use 0.25%. So that's 2.5 grams for a thousand grams of salmon. You could probably go up to like 0.3 0.3%, so like 3 grams per kilo of salmon, but keep it in there. And what you're doing there is now you don't need to worry about cold smoking. You are welcome.
You are welcome. It is delicious. Now you can buy different kind of smoke powder if you don't like hickory, right? But it is just the easiest way to not worry about uh having to smoke the salmon and get a good result. So then what you do, you mix that dry mix up and you evenly distribute it over all of the pieces of salmon on both sides.
I also, I mean, I cut it from a long piece, I cut it in half also so that they all fit in a gallon Ziploc bag. So then you coat it all, make sure that that you know you use all of the mix because unlike a recipe where I'm just pretending to know what's going on, I'm using the correct amount of salt and sugar and everything. Get it all massaged in without being be relatively gentle. Stick it into a bag, use the straw, suck the extra air out of the bag, close the Ziploc bag, put it in the fridge for three days. And every two and a half to three days.
Uh, and every day or so, pick it up, like you know, flip it over, move it around and make sure everything's getting distributed. Then when you're done after that two and a half, three days, I do three days, pull it out, rinse, rinse, put it on a sheet tray with a cooling rack in your fridge for about four hours. You could do two, I wouldn't go much over four, four, five, six. You're trying to like dry it out a little bit, and that last little drying bit is what's gonna give you the nice sliceable texture. Then use a thin knife and slice away.
It's gonna be harder to slice perfect sheets because it's no longer attached to the skin. But because you just cured it fresh and it's nice and firm, thicker slices are going to be nicer than they would be if you uh bought them pre-packaged in uh so that's what I've been doing every week. Um, and it's probably gonna be in the moisture management uh book. So now you make that and then you have it with your bagels. Now we're back to your bagel question.
So, poppy seeds on bagels, fine. Um the uh what's it called? Sesame seeds on bagels, fine. Pretzel salt, which is money in the bank if you ask me, on bagels, fine. Pretzel salt though, pretzel salt.
Get that when you're getting your uh your smoke powder, get you some pretzel salt. Uh by the way, smoke powder also really good if you're doing jerky. Well, like uh Dax has been making a lot of jerky recently, and we've been adding the smoke powder to our jerky uh recipes because I don't want to have to smoke in my apartment, to be honest. Anyways, um where was I? Oh yeah, onion, dehydrated onion and dehydrated garlic.
You put it on the bagels, it burns 100% of the time. I've now tried it five times. I can't get it to not burn. I can't get it to not burn. I followed uh a uh a piece of advice from um Reinhardt, you know, the baker Reinhart, who writes all of the you know, bread baking books that people want, you know, he's one of the more famous bread baking authors.
What is it? Peter, right? Peter Reinhardt. Yeah. Uh and he was like, well, what you do is is you rehydrate the onion and the garlic in uh water before you use it.
And I was like, oh, that's really smart, right? So I took 30, I took 15 grams of dehydrated garlic and 15 grams of dehydrated onion, and I added uh like I think 80 or 100 grams of warm water, and it soaked up all the water. And I'm like, oh, this is gonna be fantastic. This is gonna be great because uh, you know, it's gonna be fantastic. So then uh it turned out that it clumped up with all of my other, so it made putting the the toppings on the bagels a complete nightmare.
For those of you that don't know, when you boil the bagel, you pull it out, you gotta it they dry off pretty quick because you're pulling it out of boiling water. So you want to get your toppings on pretty quickly. And it was a huge nightmare. I made a huge mess with all this clumping, wet like garlic and onion, and then guess what, folks? It's still burned.
It's still burned. So I don't know what they do. Although the stuff that was actually against the bagel didn't burn, the stuff that was higher up, because it was wet and clumpy, it like there was kind of like two layers. So maybe it was only the top pieces of onion and garlic that burned. It's kind of hard to know.
But if any of you has a suggestion, like I'm waiting to hear it. I my guess is is that the people who do it for a living buy a slightly less dehydrated onion and garlic than we do, or they temper it in a way that's a lot better than what I did where it becomes like a soaking mess that then makes it impossible to distribute with um poppy seed and sesame and salt. If I had just done onion and garlic, I probably could have gotten it to work, but I like to do everything, right? I know Nastasia doesn't enjoy an everything bagel, so for her, this doesn't matter, but I I like to do it. I'll give you one more bagel tip since you're not asking people out there.
Could you could you hydrate the garlic and the onion? You know, steep them in water and then partially dehydrate them and then add them to your mix? Probably. I mean, I haven't tried that yet. The very last bagel I did was the one where it was a complete nightmare and a m mess everywhere.
Nastasia, close your ears! People listen to the show for cooking today. I'm actually giving cooking tips, and you're like, uh, who wants to talk about cooking tips? What happened to like the two-minute answer? Like you've been going to I I with yeah, but I've told not just bagels, I've literally taught them how to cure salmon and how to buy smoke powder and how to use it and why.
Great. People are supposed to want to listen to cooking tips. She's she's unimpressed, but chat seems happy. All right. Of course they are.
Anyway, so I'm not surprised. I'm glad that they are. No, yeah, yeah, you seem real bad. So anyway, so listen, so uh everyone has problems if you're if you're deciding today that you want to make bagels, right? Most of the recipes for bagels include malt.
And malt is hard sometimes to buy at this at the spur of the moment. The reason they use malt is uh malt is what's called a reducing sugar. So it increases uh the browning, right? Uh so anytime you have malt, it's not the same, but regular table sugar that you have is not a reducing sugar, but half of the sugar in honey is so you can add uh honey, right? It'll add a little bit of a flavor as well.
But if you want it, if if your recipe has malt in the boiling water, which I I do add some to my boiling water, you you can use honey and it works fine. I also, and I know it's not standard, I add baking soda. I add one percent of baking soda and one percent of uh one percent of baking soda and I think one percent of honey and I think one percent of salt to uh my boiling water. Uh, so try that. I know the the like it's just gonna increase the browning, right?
So the baking soda is just gonna increase the brown browning uh if that's something that you care about. That level will only give you a slight pretzelly taste, not a lot, so I don't want to hear it from you people if uh you know, whatever. Anyway. You can get started with a free sample. Just head to J U.S.
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Get a free sample of Just Egg for your restaurant at J-U.S. Tslash H R N. So Aaron Morgan wrote in by the chat room. Hey, Dave, Hammer, John, and Matt. I grew up eating canned salmon.
This is regarding the canned salmon thing that we talked about. Who knows why the salmon is uh a weird shape, remember? And and we all said that we don't like the bones that are that are in canned fish. Remember this? Is this striking a chord?
Yes. Yeah, all right. I grew up eating canned salmon and learned to enjoy the gritty yet soft fish bones buried in the meat. My mom was born in 1962 with three siblings, and she used to tell us that they would regularly fight each other for the bones from the canned salmon. The most common way we would prepare them uh is uh to mix them with breadcrumbs and egg and cook them into little patties, or if you want to be fancy, croquettes.
And then P. S. When will you return to Roberta's? Thanks, Aaron. Well, you're gonna have to catch us at Rock Center.
Am I right, Stas? That is right. And uh Capri Sun wrote in and he had some Google thing about the cans. So, like why the cans are are tapered and uh something to do with packing, but I don't remember. All right.
Uh okay, uh Lippert wrote in uh via the balancing act email for the class I was doing with uh Jack Shram. I made base for lemon cello with grain alcohol and ended up with two and a half quarts of base. Added two cups of water, one cup of sugar, herbs, and about 45 grams of kinchona bark. That's the stuff that quinine's in. Sat for three weeks, strained it, now I have three quarts total base.
How much sugar syrup do I need to add so this is not poisonous? I know it needs water and sugar, but I'm freaked out uh because the kinchona can be uh poisonous. Thanks so much. Uh Sean Lippert. Now listen, uh, don't worry about it.
If it's if it's if it's not extraordinarily bitter, then you're gonna be fine, right? Because the actual component itself is bitter. So if it's not extraordinary, if it's it's if it's mildly bitter, you're fine. And by the way, adding sugar ain't gonna make it not poisonous. So you should taste it without the sugar and see what the don't mask it at all and see how bitter it is.
And that that should be your guide. The bitterness should be your guide. Um thanks to uh Anish Diora who wrote in with a video about Hamilton pocket watches, which goes back to my great-grandfather's uh Hamilton Railroad pocket wash. I appreciated uh that uh video. Um let me see.
From Chester's Daddy via Instagram. Hey, this is Matt in Brooklyn. Uh first time, long time. I watched yours, oh, earmuff, or like say whatever uh terrible thing you need to say on mute this time, Nastasia. I watched your Seltsa rig video on YouTube recently, and you talked about the proper you hear that?
The groan. About the proper PSI to get a certain type of carbonation. The punch article on carbonated cocktails touched on it too. Uh it inspired a question I hope you might uh have a bit of insight. Uh when talking about different seltzers, people often point out that the bubbles from, say, Perrier feel silky, while Canada Dry feel more sharp.
Is there anything at play here besides the amount of CO2 dissolved? Does carbonation method make a difference for the texture of seltzer or the mineral content? So method, not really. Uh except for any other dissolved gases in the in the drink will have an effect, right? So other dissolved gases will have effect, but the big difference is gonna be with the mineral content.
So the mineral content very drastically affects uh how you perceive um bubbles. Nikki J53 wrote in, hey, following up, uh, my question uh was about flour-based breadings. This is from a while ago. Like American-style fried chicken, not katsu or tempura type. I'm also specifically thinking about the same kind of uh frying on tofu.
I imagine the best binding agent would be to change, would change based on the protein you're frying. Thanks for answering. And this is to show how old this is. Happy 50th. So the question was the best binding agent for breading uh frying.
You're gonna want in in general, like like how well you there's two things that you need to worry about with frying, right? There is the coating itself, right? And so in the coating itself, things like egg are gonna help uh bind uh the coating itself together, right? And uh also uh leavening in it is gonna fluff it out and make it crispy because the those air cells will get uh will puff out, it'll fry up better and get crispy, right? Um but what I think you're worried about is adhesion, which is a separate kind of a problem, the binding to the to the product.
Now, you're gonna want to use a pre-dust for that. Now, some people have said that adding things that have protein to the pre-dust, which I haven't experimented with yet, things like powdered eggs or powdered milk to the pre-dust can increase uh adhesion. I almost always use straight flour for uh adhesion, right? So, like I will do flour, and then here's where people some people put into flour and then starch with liquid and then into a solid again, right? Into like a powder again.
Uh, some people will do a pre-dust and then just into uh a batter and then fry. Um I do I have a starchless wet, so what I do is I do uh egg and buttermilk, and then I do flour, and then egg, and I put the salt and pepper and all that into the you know and spices into the egg and buttermilk and leavening. So I use powder and soda. Uh most people don't use soda. Um I don't have time to talk about why, but I'll talk about it later.
Uh so I it you into the breading, then into the liquid, then back into not breading, into the flour, into the liquid, then back into the flour again, and then if that's not a thick enough coating, do it twice. The problem with tofu is tofu is so wet, right? So wet that you're gonna get some delamination because the tofu itself is gonna shrink drastically during the frying. So uh I think that's why most of the time people a lot when they're frying tofu, you'll get those traditional fried tofu skins, and the tofu itself forms its own fry layer on the outside. Wouldn't that what you would think, uh John?
Because any sort of breading you put on the outside of the tofu, I I don't see how you're not gonna get separation because the tofu is a big thing. Woo! That's good news. That's good news. Yeah.
Uh a hot dog's a sandwich wrote in. You're incorrect. Uh question for the show if it's not too late, but this is probably already too late. I have an abundance of fresh morels because my friends are great. Any suggestions on best use?
I'd like to do something with a little more pizzazz than just sauteing them. Well, I mean, morel's with a cream sauce is delicious. You don't need to just saute them. I mean, is there anything better than morels with a cream sauce? I mean, do you even like morel's rice sauce?
No. Really? Alright, John, you what about you? You like morels? I do, yes.
I told them or I replied to him on the Instagram message to that uh you should do mushroom conserve conservas with them. I had really good ones uh that Jeremy made down at the larder a couple years ago with morels, and it was super super tasty. In oil? Uh oil and vinegar, yeah. Yeah, you need the vinegar.
Now listen, people, be extremely careful with mushrooms. If you're going to keep them moist, right, be extremely careful. Um that is how people die from like that. Is the classic way to kill somebody is to improperly can a mushroom, right? So you either need to properly acidify a mushroom or you need to properly can a mushroom.
If you're putting a mushroom in oil and putting it in a bottle and not treating it properly, you will kill people. Like that is the one I'm gonna say straight up. You need to follow the rules, look up the rules, and then do it. Uh another uh cool thing uh with um I mean, obviously uh risotto with Morels is delicious. I mean it ain't porcinis because it's not, it's Morel's, but it's also any sort of rice-based dish with those morels is good, and they're also good on pizza, believe it or not.
You don't want to let them dry out too much. So, like I would do a pizza and like maybe like sorry, pre-saute them a little bit and then put them underneath the cheese so they're not drying out, but they're also delicious on pizza. Uh from Wowie Zaui via Twitter. I've always wondered what kind of stroke do you use on the DMT. We're talking about the DMT sharpening stones.
I looked them up on the internet. I use a um a 10-inch bench stone, fine, extra fine, the green red, and I love it. Uh, but the price has gone through the roof. I would still wait. Maybe the price will come back down.
I don't know whether the price of industrial diamonds has gone up or what. I have no idea. Uh, but they used to be like like 110 or something, 110, and now they're like 150 dollars, right? John, you and I were looking at them the other day. They've gone way up.
But you're really gonna, even if you don't have like super big knives, you're really gonna want that 10 inch uh stone. You really, really, really want the 10 inch stone. And uh I sharpen uh I sharpen so that like um well if you were sharpening away from yourself the spine of the knife is facing me and the blade is is is against the thing and going forward so I guess in your parlance that is edge leading edge leading right I don't drag it across I do edge leading however for the sharpest possible get yourself some very fine polishing compound and a leather strop and that you always do trailing and I haven't talked about I I uh I once bought at a flea market uh actually no it was a relative's huh now that I think about it um old leather like shaving strop like like wild west a barber strop and it's got like a click it's got a click hasp on it and you click it up high and you hold it taut and you go zoop zoop zip shoop shoop shoop zoop choop shoop and if you've never stropped uh a knife before I used to do it back when I was I was one of those idiots in like 1995 who decided they were gonna use a straight razor because for some reason that's more manly than using like a Gillette even though you know what's great like Mach 3s Mach 3 turbos like they're great you know what they don't do they don't rip your face into tiny shreds like if you I don't care how good you are right like my like m my facial hair is like real like uh what's the word I'm looking for stiff right so like I can't use like the electric like the Norelcos on my face because the neural like my hair is just like if you're Naroko so like like I couldn't use the straight razor, like no matter how long I did it, right? I would always I would always nick myself or get like razor burn or something. And I and then after a couple years, I was like, what am I, an idiot?
I'm sitting here sharpening this freaking straight razor. A couple years. Yeah, yeah. Stropping this straight razor. Like, I have a cup with a brush, and I have to get this like, first of all, Barbasol shaving cream is amazing product.
It's great. And it's cheap. You know what I mean? And it doesn't leave a soapy mess with a cup in your in your mirror, right? And so then, like, I was like, I think first I switched back to Barbasol, and then I was like, oh, Barbasol's great.
Maybe the Mach 3 is also great. And then I was like, and I've never cut myself shaving again. And I'm like, this is much smarter. This is just much smarter. Like technology works, but the strop is good.
Anyway. Ten minutes. Oh, I can easily do that. I only got two more questions. Oh my god.
Vaden, I think I answered this. Vaden Drobenan wrote in, hey Dave. Not to John's satisfaction. Oh, I have no. What's up?
Oh, it's just there's a big space because of the picture. I've been experimenting with milk punches lately, but hate adding acids to the milk to make it curdle. Do you know of any successful attempts at using rennet or something similar instead of uh to clarify cocktails? I I'm gonna answer exactly the same way. So, John, if this doesn't satisfy you, too bad.
I don't know. I think it will work. Test it and let us know. Alright? You got we got a really audible sound of John deleting that.
I like that. That was great. I did it. Yeah, thanks from uh sound design by Sean Newell. Right, click.
Uh I like that you have an old school keyboard. Jacob Schroeder wrote in via email, greetings. Dave recently and briefly mentioned Tonka beans. That's a good word, Tonka, right? Like the truck.
I think it's a good word. Yeah. Uh Tonka beans are a bean that was widely used in um vanilla substitutes way back in the day and were banned for use in the United States. Uh made a huge comeback maybe like 12 years ago in the high chef thing and then kind of left again because people started getting worried about it. And this is why.
I'm curious as to what their current standing is as far as whether they're safe to eat. If I remember right, you would need to consume a absurd amount of them to maybe end up with liver problems. I ask you, fine folks, because Dave has a pension for finding more information than what typical Google search will find. Thanks, uh love the show. Um to the point that most folks are probably annoyed because I bring up little factoids I learned from cooking issues in damn near every conversation I have.
Uh and then, which you know, I I I like bringing up I'm I'm a factoid guy, so I like a I like a factoid. And whoever invented the word factoid, that's a good word. Nastasia was. Or food. Nastasia is such a self-hater.
I can't stand it. It's like I really can't stand it. You got it all wrong. I enjoy eating a lot. I enjoy eating food.
I enjoyed it. You're in the wrong business. I just don't, yeah. You want to be an investment banker. Yeah, I think I hit a limit on like the like.
You are in the business of you are in the business of making products for people to cook with and therefore need to talk about them, and also here in the show in the business of talking to people about cooking things. I apologize for determining this. I should not have mentioned that. Keep going with the question. Alright.
Also, you guys like centrifuges, right? And then he posted a picture of a centrifuge that somebody designed in 1965 where you put a pregnant woman into it to spin her to help pop the baby out. And apparently this is real. Excuse me? Okay.
How dare it to help out, Stas? It's a woman. Who wants to place bets on whether a male or female person uh invented that? It doesn't say who invented it. In 1965, a machine was patented to deliver a baby using centrifugal force.
The machine would spin you, one, I mean, not me, uh, until the baby came out. It would then be caught in a net. And so there's a picture of this lady wearing a net and like what looks to be an oxygen mask with like some weird Frankenstein-y thing over her, like in a weird circular thing with a an arrow saying spin this way. Very odd. Very, very odd.
My guess, I don't I have I don't I'm not even gonna guess because I I don't know. Uh back to Tonka Beans, uh, Jacob. Uh this was in Ireland. It's a Dublin. It's photo courtesy of Dublin.science gallery.com.
So you can look it up there. Um so uh Tonka beans. So originally uh I was worried about Tonka beans, and uh everyone was because they contain Coomarin. So the Coomarin is the um, you know, it's a blood thinner, right? And so uh I was a little worried that you were giving somebody a uh a blood thinner uh you know in with their dessert.
Um but then I once gave uh a lecture to a bunch of flavor scientists, not a lecture, but a demo, to a bunch of flavor scientists, and um one of them was like, no, it also causes cancer. So I didn't look it up, but I was like, you know what? F it. So I haven't used it since then, but I also haven't uh really uh researched it yet. So beyond that, I just stopped using it um at that point.
Um I in fact have many more questions, but oh I'll do one more quick one because this person's gonna do this without me, and I and I don't uh I don't wanna uh Alex Alex uh McLeod wrote in or McLeod, McLeod, McLeod, McLeod, uh via email, uh dear Dave, Nastasia, John, and Matt, the inner door of my oven has cracked. It's an old domestic kitchen aid, and I'm planning to replace the part. In so doing, I will have to disassemble the oven door. This got me wondering, would there be any harm in adding additional insulation when I do? I bake a lot of bread and pizza, and domestic ovens seem designed as much to heat your home as to cook food, given the amount of heat they leak.
I would prefer to waste as little energy as possible when I bake, although I realize it is by nature a wasteful endeavor. There's a lot of research on this, by the way, um, making ovens more efficient. Uh I have limited handyman skills, but I'm willing to try. By the way, Nastasia had a long conversation uh with we had a conversation, like there's gotta be some sort of gender neutral for handyman. What was the other one?
Uh man with a van. Man with a van, and wasn't there one more or no? Were those the two main ones? Doorman, doorman. Doorman.
So like Nastasi was like, Can't you just call a man with a van a mover? And I'm like, no, mover implies that they're licensed and that they're not gonna come back when you're gone and steal your stuff. Whereas man with a van implies that they have no license and that they might come back and steal the stuff that they just moved. So it needs to have. And so then she's like, Well, if you're insulting them anyway, do you have to worry about the the gender neutral part of it?
And I was like, I don't know. I think you still do. I don't know. Because one is impugning, like, you know, I don't know. You just say person with a man, I guess.
It does rhyme though. Like, you know? Well, man with a man, then. Well, is there something like if it happens to be a woman, is there any sort of rhyming thing for a vehicle that moves a bunch of stuff around? Then?
How about sh is schmuck is also mainly a guy, right? Schmuck with a truck? Would you assume that the sh solid effort, but it does not solve the problem. In fact, well, no, it just does not solve the problem. Hey, who are you hiring?
Hey, schmuck with a truck, right? No? Yeah. If you're hiring schmuck with a truck. Anyway.
Back to Alex's uh question. Um I would look the the your oven door is only X, you know, thick, right? So don't mistake adding more layers of insulation to having more effective insulation, right? The most effective insulation is actually a vacuum. Uh the next thing that you're gonna do is would be pure, you know, pure still air is actually quite good.
So the insulation that's in there is uh mainly preventing um is mainly preventing uh uh air from moving around, right? Uh what I would worry about, or what you one of the things you can do if you don't want the front of your oven to get hot is make sure that the surfaces in the oven are very high, uh very low emissivity, very shiny, right? So if they reflect most of their heat, then uh they won't uh then they won't transmit heat as well. So if the inside surface of your oven is shiny, right, and not oxidized. So like if you take your oven door apart, if if let's say the the side that's next to the oven is black, right?
Fine, whatever, that's gonna radiate towards the oven. If the side that's facing the inside of your door is shiny, right, that's gonna help cut down on heat. Then a layer that prevents uh heat transfer through it, usually just by stopping the air from moving and convecting around, that's good. And then if that next surface, the one that faces out into your kitchen is shiny on both sides, that will uh decrease the amount of heat radiated out and will also uh decrease the decrease the amount of uh energy that's radiated in. If you have a door with glass, uh I like glass, but a lot of your heat leaks through the glass, and there's not a lot you can do for that.
Uh I mean you could add another layer of insulating glass, I guess, but a lot of the energy is dumped out of the glass in the front of the oven. But I have to say I like being able to see into an oven. Do you guys like being able to see into an oven? Yeah. Yeah.
I think it's worth being able to see into an oven. Uh all right. So we'll get on to uh next time, which we don't know whether next time is gonna be next week. We don't know whether it's gonna be on the 11th with Pierre Cham. Get your Pierre questions in.
Uh we'll answer the Smash Burger questions and cocktails, and there's another carbonation question that I uh what's it called? Spared nostasia from for now. Um anything else? Well, we're live now. You can go on eBay, search Searsol.
Don't buy the 200 Searsol from the person who's trying to rip you off. What are we selling enforcement? The way you know it's real is that in it says official booker Index sears All, and the description is this is the official booker Index Sears all. All other web pages are knockoffs. It'll be also it'll be in the show, the seller information is trailing edge 45.
Trailing edge 45 because we couldn't even get trailing edge technologies as a what's 45? What is that even? I don't know. Trailing edge one through 44 were taken. Boris Lopez, who is 45 years old and he works.
Forest Lopez, like Forrest Girls. Oh, Loris. Boris! Loris. Well, what's what where did Loris come from?
B is Boris. He is a boy. He is a boy. Does Boris take after the like Russian Ukrainian side? Can I do like a Boris Badnov for this guy or not?
Boris Lopez is looks like one of our listeners to me. Okay. He's 45 years old. And he works for trailing edge technologies. Alright.
And remember, if Boris falls off that plane, we still have the pilot. You're gonna land okay. Yeah. He's not that important. And if we fall over, if we fall off, the plane's still gonna land.
Don't worry. The plane's still gonna land. I want to say one more thing. You know what happened this morning? I was on the phone with Dave.
We were talking about whatever. Whenever we talk, we talked for two hours about nothing related to our business. And I dropped like a coffee cup or something, and then also the phone cut out. And then I couldn't get back in touch with him, and Dave couldn't get back in touch with me. And we finally did, and he was like, Oh man, I thought you died.
And then I thought about how that would have to be part of the updates on the radio show today. That's not what I said. You just made that up. No, you just made that up. You just made that up.
John, does that sound like it? Yeah. Sorry. I have no, I'm not denying that that's something that I might say. I'm just denying I don't remember saying that.
Wow, okay. You're getting old. And I'm getting old. I'd I've done got old. I am, you know, whatever.
You know. 15 more years, and I could theoretically, I guess, retire. I don't even know what that means. What does retiring mean? Anyways.
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