Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stan Studios in Rockefeller Center here today with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing, Stas? We got John up in Connecticut somewhere at a secret location in Connecticut. How are you doing, John?
Doing great, thanks. Yeah, yeah. We got uh we got Joe over here. Joe Hazen in the booth. How you doing?
I'm doing great. How are you? Yeah, doing well. And for the first time in a long time, we are coming to you live with a telephone number. So if you're uh part of our Patreon, if you're not part of our Patreon, go to patreon.com forward slash cooking issues or whatever, uh, and sign up.
Uh was that wrong, John? Did I say the wrong thing? No, that's correct. That's correct. And call in your questions to 917-410-1507.
That's 917-410-1507. Nice to have another number. Nastasia and I, Joe, we're a little slightly, I mean, like, look, I don't want to imply that we're at all disappointed with anything you do because you're great. However, the all the ones and zeros, we can't spell anything. You know what I'm saying?
Can't spell anything. It's fine though. It's fine. 917-410-1507. It'll take me about how long will it take me to do that?
How long did it take me in heritage to remember that? A couple months. Oh, years. I had to write it on a piece of paper for years. Until people started like whatever.
It's cool to have a 917 number. Yeah, I know. Because we're well, you're not you never changed out of your California number. Yeah. You got like a Covina number.
Thank you. Like uh, you're like, I'd see that as a positive thing. Nice. Well, what is it with people never is it that they don't want to get a new number ever? Because when I was a kid, i.e.
like up until like you know, you just kept changing your number constantly whenever you moved, it wasn't like a choice. Now everyone keeps a number, right? No one wants to change the number. Yeah. I don't think it matters anywhere because of s iPhones.
You save the name. Yeah. Yeah. You ever bought a burner phone I never have I've always wanted to have a burner phone and then crack it in half and throw it away you ever done that you Joe I never had one no maybe maybe we should do more criminal activities it requires to have uh burner phone so uh I just gonna get this out now because I don't want this like every week I have problems with the bike on the on the way up with the city bike on the way up so today so for those of you it's funny it's the subway with heritage and now it's the bike where did I took the bike or okay well it's always transport but I was here early I was here early I was here way early I'm do I I'm gonna be on time people. I'm gonna be on time to this place.
So for those of you that don't know in New York we have these things called city bikes and you know you you you basically you pay a monthly fee you take it out and you have to dock it. Whatever. They're terrible bikes but they're they're very convenient. Uh the problem is is that like after everyone's coming back from COVID, especially because people are lazy. They don't take a bike during the winter right they only take a bike in the summertime uh or when it's warm.
It's impossible to get bikes now because no one wants to be back on the subways because they're still a little bit hinky dinky about the subways. So the bikes are impossible to like get sometimes impossible to park up here. So the the bike that I had to get on the way up get this the kickstand was loose. So every time I pedaled bop bop bop bop bop bop so like like a couple blocks in I see another set of bikes I'm like uh uh uh I can deal with it bop bop bop halfway up right I was about to like okay I can't I can't I can't deal I can't deal with this bike. I can't deal with this bike.
So then I I look over and I start to pull over where the bike is, and then right there, there's like a like a car, like a black car with like the red lights in the back, like it's like some sort of like policey style thing. And then there's a guy standing next to the bike lane with one of those like those special forces beards and those like thousand all in black with a rifle on his back. I'm like, I'm not gonna get him, I'm not gonna swap my bike here. It's not like he's gonna come after you. Okay, anytime you have a guy with a special forces beard and that look on his face and a rifle on his back, all in black, it's just not a good place to stop and hang out.
Joe, you with me on this? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, John, you'd agree with that, right? Yeah.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, don't hang around. It's not not cool. Anyway, so and then like the next time I saw a space, I was within 10 blocks. I was like, well, now I gotta do it.
Now I gotta go the whole way. You know what I mean? And then of course you can't park up here. But I was thinking about it repetitive noise, like repetitive noise torture kind of things. And I I was thinking, like, does this happen to you?
Do you ever notice on your iPhone you you play a song and you think you've told it to play the whole album, but it plays the same song over and over again. But like you're in a shop, like cutting lots of wood, and you have like you're or you have gloves on, or you're like outside, or you're doing and you can't just pick up your phone and be like, stop, stop, stop. And so you listen to the same song for like an hour. No. This happens to me all the time.
All the time. I'll have to listen to the same song for about an hour. The last two times was Al Green, I feel good. Great song. Not for an hour, but great song, and uh uh share strong enough.
Hour, an hour of share strong enough. Anyway, there's not like one minute of free time in that whole hour where you could just go onto your phone and change it. Well, I also have a like a little bit of a mental issue. I mean, we know this, but I mean like specifically a mental issue where I don't like turning a song off in the middle. That's like why like when I'm in a car, like if I only hear like two seconds of it, I'm fine.
But I hate, I hate like rapid channel surfers. I hate I do that rap. I know. That's why one of the reasons I don't like being with you on car trips. Or like rapid moving around on on the radio.
It's like once I'm listening to a song, I want to hear the whole song. Like that's it. So like I need to have my hands free at the moment that the song stops. Because I don't want to like, I I'm not gonna cut it off in the middle of, you know, Cher telling me that, you know, you know, that uh, you know, that she's not, you know, ha, you know, not worth half of her. It's true.
She's telling you. I can't cut her off in the middle of that. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, I need to have my hands free at the moment that the song stops. I need to get over this.
I really it's also the same, like, I don't, I can't like watch like part of a movie. I don't like to do it. Jen Jen's like, yeah, we should go to bed and watch it later. I'm like, yeah, I'll watch it all now. Like I'm getting better with that because anyway.
Uh so what song, if you had to don't think about it. I don't want you to think too long. Saz, if you had to listen to a song for an hour in a row, what would it be? No, uh 10 years gone. By Led Zeppelin.
Really? Joe, what about you? I'm not sure. Um, Morrissey. Oh, Morrissey, huh?
Morrissey. Huh. I just heard something about someone that really hated. Oh, um, you ever heard of the group uh Warlock Pinchers? No.
Out of Denver. Great name. Yeah, they have uh the their best album name. I don't think they were a good band, but maybe they are. But their best album name was uh Circusized Peanuts.
Circus sized peanuts. Yeah. But they had uh an album that where the album, why do you always say album? I don't know why do I say nuclear and coupon. Uh the uh they had a uh like an anti-Morrissey album title.
Maybe someone could look it up for me. Uh I don't think it's safe for work title, but uh anyway. John, what about you? What song do you have? I've given you the most time to think about it, so you better have a fast and good answer, my friend.
Yeah, no. Well, I've already listened to the song for an hour when this album came out. It's I don't know if you guys have ever heard of the band Valfec, V-U-L-F-P-E-C-K. They're really another really great, but I listened to Animal Spirits in a long car ride just for an hour straight. Wow.
Uh no, what kind of music is Vik. Like, yeah, there's some there's some guys from Michigan, so I don't really get the name, but I don't know. They do like if you look them up on iTunes, they come up as like German hip-hop, even though I don't think any of them are German or have a German bone in their body. Um, but it's I don't know, very like contemporary kind of funk. It's I don't know, it's it's really enjoyable.
I'd recommend it. Vervpik. Oh, one last thing on repetitive. So when I graduated from college, the first thing I one of the first things I did was I bought my first car on my own. $400.
Pontiac, 1976 Pontiac Bonneville. A lot of work in the quarter panels, a lot of rust. $400. I could lay down in the trunk head to toe, no problem. Like three cigarette lighters all velour on the inside, blue, nice.
Uh so I spent that that first summer, you know, uh cleaning that up and deep fat frying uh habanero chili rennos while I was training myself for extreme heat stuff and just basically frying, watching Regis uh and Kathy Lee and all the ABC soap operas and Oprah and fixing the car. But that car, uh, so for those of you that you know are my age, we used to have cassettes, and we would rec like one person would buy the music, and then we would tape the, we would put all the music on cassettes, and they would have long cassettes, 90 minute cassettes, and we had these things called auto-reverse tape players. So you would stick it in and it would just you would hear it go click click and it would play the other side of the tape and it would go back and forth, back and forth. So my friend recorded Star Time, which is uh James Brown's four original four box set CD that came out in I think 1990 or something like this. And uh the last couple of discs he put on a tape and it got jammed in my car.
So my car radio was always on and only ever played the last disc of Star Time for like three years. So, like that car was the James Brown mobile. And eventually, when it needed a new paint job, I just bought a bunch of gold cryon and gold and spray painted the entire car gold. And at one point I had uh zip tied a uh cow skull to the front of it. We were driving around with a cow skull.
You know how that thing diets does? Yeah, I do, but I don't remember. Okay. Well, first I'll let you know this. The night I got engaged, it was snowing.
Snow had snowed. Uh, and I pulled the car into a snowbank because I'm like, I don't care about the car. So I pulled it into a snow bank. The exhaust pipe goes into the back of the snowbank, builds up pressure, boom, blows the muffler off. So like I'm driving to the dinner, very fancy dinner, where I'm gonna get engaged with, you know what I mean?
And I get pulled over, of course, while I'm getting engaged. Nightmare. But eventually, so I I kept on tying the muffler back up. And at one point, the muffler fell down again and hit the pavement while I was driving and pretzeled itself, turned itself, and then I tied it up and had Jen hold the muffler in the air from the passenger side as we were driving, and she's like, That's it. It's over.
This car's done. We're done with this. It's over. I was like. Didn't she have to pay for her engagement dinner too?
No. No. What the hell's that? I remember something about you having to have her pay. No.
Because you're not going to be able to do that. No, no, no. What happened was this. No, no, no. What happened was is prior to the engagement, we, you know, obviously we, you know, we weren't married, so we had different bank accounts.
We were living together. And so, you know, we would go, like, I would pay for something, she would pay for something, I would pay for something, she was paying for something. When I bought the ring, that was all my money. So I didn't have any money, but I had this ring burning a hole in my pocket for like a month and a half. Why'd you wait so long?
Because I knew the day that it where I was gonna propose. You have to buy the ring when you buy the ring. This is not crap you have to worry about. This is a what happened. So anyway, so like I had this time where like I had a I I you know, I had this no money, and so Jen was like, Why don't you have any money?
What's wrong with you? What do you spend your money? I'm like, no, no. So like for a while, like beforehand and then afterwards, she's like, Oh, now I see why you had no money. That's what it was.
That's what you're thinking of. But I like how you turned it into a negative thing. No, I just remember I yeah. All right. Yeah, yeah.
I like how it just for some reason, like me trying to do something positive becomes a even that becomes a negative thing. Uh all right. Question for people who uh are on our Patreon can hear this. I like having shortcut things at home, and I don't feel bad about it. Here's some things I don't feel bad about.
I don't feel bad about using bullion cubes. You feel bad about using bullions? No, right? I don't feel bad about using bullion cubes. If I was serving you a soup and it was like a bouillon, I would feel bad about it.
Right, John? You with me on this? Yeah, I agreed. Right. But if if it's just like a base for something else, like I'm gonna be cooking a whole bunch of like uh beef uh into a chili anyway, and I could use water or I could use a bullion cube to start it.
Like it's like it's like salt plus plus. Am I wrong about this? No, no, definitely right. All right, how about this? Here's ones that I also, even though I know how to make it, I'm not I'm not opposed to getting taco spice.
No, me neither. It's great. Yeah, taco spice is good, right? John, thoughts? Agreed.
Yeah, taco spice is delicious. Yeah. Pre-made curry powder. You do not need to feel bad about not making your own curry powder because curry powder is good, right? Now, like, especially if you get a good one.
Especially if you get a good one. I'm gonna go even one further. You can buy ranch powder, which by the way, ranch is easy enough to make on your own, but ranch powder is very convenient for putting on things like French fries and chips. Yes. And popcorn.
Ranch powder good. I'm gonna go out and say that like no one should feel bad. No one should feel bad about using those things. Anyway. Uh, but if you guys disagree and feel that you have to make your own freaking ranch powder every time you want to.
Hey, Nastasi and I had to do this for a living, and it sucks. Like, back when we were doing snack foods, remember this? And we would have to make all of our own flavoring powders from scratch. You know how expensive that is to go buy all the different powders so that you can like mix them into the one powder. Is it marginally better?
Can you tailor it to your own taste? Yes, but come on, man. Remember? Mm-hmm. Yeah, come on, man.
Come on. Uh all right. Now, we got some questions in. Uh no callers yet, so I don't know what that, I don't know what that means. Man, if people don't have any questions, they don't know how to call in.
Remember, it's 917-410-1507. And we're still working on this, so we're hoping that we're hoping that it works out. We hope someone calls in, I think. Nastasia herself is going to answer the call. And drop it.
Wow. Call it and drop it. Drop it like it's a oh, Nestal, because the the hammer has the button. I know. And you're gonna go ballistic if you're gonna be able to do that.
I'm not. I'm always a bad guy. I'm always a bad guy. Joe, I don't know if like this is a theme that you probably already honed in on. I'm always a bad guy.
Joe and John when I drop the call. Joe and John. Super stunned. Dave's not gonna go ballistic. All right.
Uh can you if you do it, can you do the book or goodbye? No, I'm just gonna drop it. You're not gonna say goodbye. If they start on the second question, drop. Are you here that people?
So if you call in, make your first question good. And if there's a follow-up to the first question, drop. Are you gonna wait for them to say follow-up so you can have the pleasure of dropping after they've said follow? I'm gonna drop. So you are kind of like Booker, where like as though the happy birthday song was singing.
Yeah. Yeah. So Booker used to practice listening for the beginnings of the happy birthday song, and then, you know, mime spraying you in the face with pepper spray. And he kept on asking for his birthday for pepper spray so that he could pepper spray anyone that tried to sing the happy birthday song to him because he hates the happy birthday song so much. And we're like, Booker, you can't, you're not allowed to first of all, no one's gonna sing the happy birthday song around you because they realize that you can't tolerate it.
And secondly, like even if they did, like pepper spray is not a proportional response to the birthday song. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. But you have the same kind of reaction. They're like, and uh eye.
I feel like if you don't say uh goodbye, or there's not some sort of like doubt, well, whatever. It's up to you. It's your thing. Josh Sieberg wrote in via Instagram. Do you also hate via or do you like Via?
Don't care. But you don't like the way I say uh what was the word album. There's no L in it. There's an L an album. There's one.
Album. Yes. Album album. And by the way, I know I've said this before. I'm very freaking pro album.
It's one of the things that I I hate to see go. I don't think people listen to albums anymore. I really don't. It's sad. Uh Nastasia does disagree with me when I say this, but uh back when I used to have to pay $14.95 for an album.
Uh like I bought it for one song, but it was never ended up being my favorite song. My favorite song was always a different one. And I don't know that that would happen nowadays. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm.
Um anyways. Uh okay. Here's another question. Congrats on the new digs, by the way. Your breakfast got me thinking.
Well, what do you have for breakfast, John? Oh boy. Uh this morning I had a sausage egg and cheese, but sausage egg and cheese, shepherd boy. Right? Whenever anyone says sausage, egg, and cheese, I have to sing Little Shepherd Boy.
Sorry, go ahead. Sausage, Jake, and cheese from where? Uh coffee market in East Lime. Coffee market. Okay.
I don't know. You've you've traveled in line, so I don't know if you knew what it's like. How was it? Pretty good. Pretty good.
Sad place. Yeah. Sad or rad. You just say sad place. Did you say it was great?
No, no, it's a good place. It's a solid. That's all you had. Uh yeah. I'll tell you something.
Yeah, this morning was a little boring. I'll tell you something. I love sausage patties. I love sausage patties. And I never make them.
Do you make those things back when you you know do that stuff? No. You like a sausage pattern? I do, I do. I love a sausage pat.
I've had someone staying with me and they make me breakfast every morning. In a good way or a bad way? Amazing. Give me give me the breakfast. Oh my god.
Yesterday when you saw me on the thing, I had they made French toast with a persimmon and passion fruit compote on top. Yeah, and uh a salad with avocado on the side and then bacon. Amazing. Wow. Every morning it's like that.
Wow. I know. Wow. Is this here in New York or in Stanford? Both.
Follow me around and make me breakfast. Well, and you're like, hell yeah. Are you familiar with the uh are you familiar with the House Guest Olympics? No. So when you have and you should have done this back, especially because you, you know, you always for some reason have someone staying.
No matter how small your party is. Oh, all right. Let's try this. Let's try this caller. Wait.
What? Caller, you're on the air. Hello? Hey. You are our first caller in a year and a half.
Congrats. What's going on? Yeah, yeah. What's up? Yeah.
Um, so I had a uh a question. So I'm I'm looking through uh modernist bread and they have a recipe for pressure cooked uh potato broth sourdough. Okay. And uh I'm wondering so part of it calls for juicing a potato, then putting it into a centrifuge for an hour. And I'm wondering if that could be done in the spinzall.
Um, so the the centrifuge, I don't know what they're trying to do. Do they get all the starch out of it? Uh let's see. So they uh peel the potatoes, cover them in cold water. But I mean, what is it?
What does it look like? So in other words, like if it's clear, the answer is no. Those guys, like uh both, you know, Chris Chris Young and those guys at Chef Steps and also like Miravold and Magoya and all those guys, they use super speed centrifuges, which get up to like uh like 30, 40,000 thousand g's. And so all of the recipes for the spinzall are designed around what would have been like a a 10,000, 8,000, 10,000 G benchtop unit, even though it doesn't do that many G's it's designed to get the same results as those but um none of the kind of regular bench top non super speed guys that you know we would use it you know the the lab kind of the bucket kind none of those do a high enough uh g force to get starch out so if they're trying to spin the starch down out of it right then it's not gonna it's not gonna do it so if you look if they have pictures and you look at it and the and the liquid is clear then they've gotten the starch out and then that we can't do. But if you um lightly lightly cook it like not enough to um like cause the starch to like swell too much but enough to wipe out the enzymes um or if you add something just to knock out the enzymes then uh you can let it settle and it it'll settle but it's gonna take you like a like a couple days.
Anyway go ahead so was it clear or not um I don't think it's clear and it says uh centrifuges juice one hour at 1000 RPM so it looks like that should be something the spinzall can do right 1000 RPM and then they shouldn't give an RPM for it they should give a number of G's but go go ahead well what's the purpose of centrifugation what are they trying to do? Uh looks like they they take it uh then they put it in like a pressure cooker and they pressure cook the potato broth and they use that as the liquid base for the sourdough. But what are they are they taking the liquid or the solids from the centrifuge? Uh just liquid. Yeah I mean you you can get some of it, but you might not get all of it.
Give it a shot. Let me know. Okay. Well, sure. Nastasa's gonna kill you right now.
Oh wow. Nastasi. See, I thought the buy was nice. Yeah that they I thought the buy was nice. Um, all right.
Josh, back to your question. It's good to get calls again. It's nice. What do you think, Sas? Anyway.
Uh Nastasia loves controlling. John was when John's in the studio, the thought was that John was gonna control it because that's what the thought was. But I think Nastasia likes this as her role. I think she's relishing it. She's got it.
This is a good way. Uh just you know, the fact that we're doing it isn't enough to pay attention. No? All right. All right.
So back to Josh Sheberg. Uh John's breakfast, John's like love of donuts for breakfast, got Josh thinking. Uh he lives in Southeast Virginia, a a place where they grow superior strawberries. Did you know that? You know anything about Virginia strawberries?
How about you, Joe? You know anything about Virginia strawberries? No? Joe? He's he's busy.
He's real busy today. I shouldn't pester him. What about you, John? You heard anything about Virginia strawberries? I have not, no.
This was the first time hearing about it. Me too. I don't know. What is it about Virginia that makes good strawberries? I know Nastasi and I had some of the best strawberries I've ever had and uh from the Santa Monica farmers market.
Those things were ridiculous. No offense to us up here, but they make our I like our green market strawberries up here fine, but no comparison, right? No comparison, no comparison. Like you walk, you walk near. You know how what we something we do really well here, Concord Grapes.
When you go to the the farmers market, right, Stas? Like during Concord grape season, first of all, freaking yellow jackets everywhere. Bees everywhere, right? You're you get at least one in your bag. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, like with at the bar, I would bring sacks of them in and people would start cutting open the bags. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you allergic? Yeah. Yeah.
Because like they're like, what do you mean, allergic? Ah, bees everywhere. Booker would hate it. Anyway, but the smell of the Concorde graves throughout the entire farmer's market is like a huge win. And the strawberries that this you remember the name of the place in Santa Monica?
Mm-hmm. Uh so like that place has these super aromatic strawberries where if you're anywhere near that strawberry stand, you're just like, strawberries. So I'm interested to know what uh Virginia strawberries like. I heard Virginia was for lovers. They still have that as their freaking thing.
Yeah. Yeah. Why? Why lovers? I don't know.
There we go. Uh what would the what what would be the way to make the all-time best Duncan-inspired strawberry frosted donut? Picking up 12 quarts of berries tomorrow. Now, John, you with me? Yeah.
All right. Yeah, I'm here. So the strawberry frosted is a yeast donut, right? Yes. Okay.
So you are in luck, uh, Josh, because yeast donuts are by far easier to make than cake donuts. So, like, you can yeast donut, all you gotta do is make a decent yeast dough. And when you fry it, the dough skins over. And so you don't have to worry about it just dissolving into your into your oil, which is a problem if you mess up the cake recipe. And you don't have to worry too much about grease getting into your uh donut, right?
I mean, it's gonna get a little bit greasy, but you don't have to worry about it nearly as much as with a cake donut. So get yourself a decent yeast donut recipe. And Wiley, by the way, even though he makes yeast donuts now, is a big cake guy because he likes the challenge of cake donuts. Cake donuts are just far more challenging to do, right? Which is why 999% of people who make cake donuts use a mix.
That's just letting you know. Uh in fact, there's a company called Belshaw, the Belshaw Donut uh depositing company. They also make the donut robot. And um years and years ago, like 15 years ago, uh maybe even longer, 18 years ago, when I first uh contacted them to get what's called a donut depositor. Uh I got one and I asked them for the recipe that they said was good, cake recipe that was good with their donut depositor.
And they're like, I don't know. We don't make a recipe, so we don't have recipes, we use a mix. I was like, there's no one. You're the company that makes all of the freaking donut depositors, and you don't have a single from scratch recipe for freaking donuts. And they literally found a guy who was, I swear to God, in the basement.
And that guy had an old recipe that he like emailed me that was like, you know, that old type font that's been mimeographed a billion times, Nastasi, that's like purple and stuff. That's what they sent me. Uh, anyways, so go yeast. Uh, a little thing you might want to think about is uh on the glaze, popping it with a little bit of acidity. That's one of the things Wiley does is he adds some acid to the glaze to make it uh a little acidic.
But uh John, you got any other uh I for if I were you, I would just make donuts with like kind of like an oak, like a decent strawberry kind of thing, and then uh and then just eat those damn strawberries. I mean, strawberries are so good. Like to me, like I take uh like a an okay strawberry and process. Also, Dunkin' whatever. What?
Well, the Dunkin' Donuts donuts are really good. Yeah, don't hate on the strawberry donut. No, no, they're really great. So yeah. All right, listen, let's just have this out now because this is gonna come over again and again.
Like Nastasia, like I don't think you appreciate this aspect of it. And let's let's talk about this for real and for serious. Okay. Um, a lot of things people want to be able to do it once or twice so that they can appreciate all of the variables involved. They don't need to do it for their whole life, but it like they learn more and they appreciate the things that other people make when they have gone through the process of figuring out how to make something themselves, what the problems are, how to approach it, and to do that.
So it's not like they think that they're gonna necessarily even do a better job in X, Y, or Z, but I I guess I I feel like that what you just said is what I imagine people are trying to do, not what you're trying to say that people are what the what? I think when people ask these questions, they're trying to make a better X, Y or Z. And you're saying they're just doing it for the learning process. Well, I'm saying I think that they want to do the best job they can. They want to try to control the variables as best as they can.
And there are things where there are things where you can do a better job at home than you can do on an industrial scale just because they have to make certain cost cutting things. Many things. When was the last time you had the best burger at a fast food restaurant? Oh, well, yeah. I mean, what I'm saying is there's a lot of things where there's cost cutting involved in like most cakes that you buy are garbage because they use garbage ingredients because they're cheap.
You know what I mean? So, like, there's a lot of things where you know, because of cost cutting measures, you can do a better job at home than you can do bide, right? Like stews in a can. You can do a better job at home. You know what I mean?
And and there are things where it's like the people with the professional equipment have an edge on you. Have you have you seen Daddy's home with uh Mark Wahlberg and uh Will Farrell? No. So uh one of the running gags in it is is that uh Mark Wahlberg uh is constantly going into the oven and pulling out cinnamon buns that look just like and smell like cinnabons. And Will Farrell's like, you can't make them, you can't make Cinnabons, you need a special oven.
And then at the end, Mark Wahlberg admits that he's been buying Cinnabons and taking them out of the oven. And he's like, You can't make Cinnabons, they have a special oven. I happen to not really like Cinnabons because they're just so intensely sweet. They're just so incredibly sweet. Did I tell you about the time that I had to drive an hour and a half to get Dax a Cinnabon because he wanted to try and we never had them?
And he was like, oh my god, this is sweet. You know what I mean? Even a kid. They're good. I'm uh whatever.
I'm I'm not saying anything negative about the Cinnabon Corporation. But uh what I'm saying is that there are things where like waffles, like making like the best waffle, like the waffle irons are really good. Like commercial fryers are very good. Uh so it's like it's like potato chips, commercial potato chip lines are very good. It's hard to make uh as good a potato chip as a commercial processor can.
But doing it once, twice, three times, or learning what the variables are, I think A is fun and can help you appreciate other people's work. Answer. Hello, caller, you're on the air. Hey everybody, uh congrats on the new setup. Thanks.
This is uh Josh from North Dakota. Oh, how you doing? How you doing? What do you wait wait? First of all, are you allowed to hunt this time of year or no?
There's no hunting in the summertime, right? Uh turkey season just got over, but there's uh there's always something you can hunt, but uh right now most people are fishing and stuff. You have turkeys in North Dakota? Oh, yeah. Now, turkey, now let me get this straight here because this is something I never understood.
We like oh I you know, here in the New York area, we have turkeys, you see them all the time, like wild turkeys like on the sides of parkways and and whatnot. But these suckers, they sleep in trees. How come I've never seen a turkey in a tree? Yeah, usually uh before dark, they always had to their trees and roost, and then in the morning they come down and that's when you're ready to hunt them. But have you ever seen a turkey in a tree?
Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like you would notice this. I've seen like eagles in trees, I've seen owls in trees. I've seen, but I you think if you look up, I mean, turkey's a big thing. You think you'd notice it in a tree.
They must be, I hear they're a lot smarter than we give them credit for, too, right? Aren't they hard to sneak up on? Yeah, they can be really hard to hunt depending on where you're at, or lots of times you'll get ones around here that are just going into like feed lots on farms and feeding there, and those can be pretty easy. But yeah, if you get the ones out in the wild, they're actually pretty hard. And it's hard to say if they're smart or if it's just they're really random.
Yeah, because you know good vision, though, they got really good vision. Because turkeys, you know, the turkeys when I was growing up, everyone said that the turkeys that they would grow, you know, raise for farms were like renowned for being stupid. And then when I started reading like, you know, hunters' accounts of them, they're like, no, they're not they're not as stupid as everyone makes them out. When I was a kid, you ever hear the old thing, Stas, where they say that turkeys are so stupid that when it rains they look up in the sky and drown? That was a th you know, that was a thing they used to tell us.
Anyways, uh sorry, sorry, sorry to uh go ahead. You had a c you had a question. How you doing? Yeah, good. Uh I was gifted a bunch of paddlefish eggs recently, like three pounds of them.
And I don't know good caviar at all, but I figured I heard that paddlefish eggs are like second best next to sturgeon, so I figured I'd make some caviar. But it turned into a complete disaster. Well, what happened? Did you mean you would during the salting process it turned into a disaster? They broke.
Just trying to separate the eggs from like the egg sack, and I tried a few techniques. I tried using like a drying rack to kind of scrape them off, or then just my hands with water, and they were just falling apart like mush. And I'm thinking they were just too old. I don't know exactly how properly they were taken care of from the fish. Are they like in the refrigerator for five days?
I think by the time I got them. So how big are the egg sacs on those things? Large. And like all the eggs were connected, it seemed like it wasn't like other fish I've seen where you like open up the egg sacks and they kind of fall out. Yeah, I mean, like um I've never, you know, like here, like the the egg sacks that you get.
I mean, we like here on this I don't really only have experience with uh shad, you know. So and those eggs are of course are like super tiny, you know what I mean? And in terms of dealing with the whole with the whole egg sack. Um yeah, I don't know. Maybe it was old.
John, have you ever had to try to cure caviar at all? No, I haven't. I know Jeremy Romanski has done that a lot at the larder, and he has some posts about it on Instagram. You wait, maybe we can uh get him to call in and uh give us uh give us his technique and maybe specifically address this this mushiness problem. Were they previously frozen, Josh?
No, I don't think so. I couldn't hear John. Oh, yeah, sorry, yeah, you can't. So uh he said that uh uh Jeremy Umansky has uh done some uh curing at larder uh and he's done a couple of Instagram posts on it, and then I was saying maybe we can get him uh maybe we can get him on to answer your answer your question. Um but I mean I wonder whether pre-salting it would help, you know?
You think salting it beforehand would help some and I uh sa three percent salted them and let mix, let them sit for a while and then drained it and the flavor was fine but they just didn't really have any like texture at all. They were just kind of soft and I don't know. I didn't find anything too special about 'em anyway. But all right. Well well John's writing down that we're gonna find uh an expert whether it's Jeremy or someone else and we're going to get to the we're gonna get to the root of the problem whether there's a trick that we don't know about or whether or not uh it's uh you know something with the actual fish.
I know that in the real life they add additives to firm them up like borax and stuff but I mean obviously you you don't want to do that they don't do that anymore, right? You don't let that do that anymore do they I have no idea. Anyway um anyway we'll check into it. Thank you bye. Even even people who sent whoa wow by the way that Josh the reason he's the one who sent the pronghorn and the doves and all that stuff.
Cool. So you know very very important uh I didn't get any of it so well I asked you and you're like and you said no I'm gonna what am I gonna cook? I'm by myself I'm by myself what am I gonna cook? That's what you said. Now that you have someone cooking for you every day now you probably want the stuff.
It's true. Yeah. Persimmon compote huh? Unexpected I wouldn't have eaten it. You don't like persimmons?
No, not really. Were they like really give me the were they par dried or were they just like persimmon flesh in sugar like cooked like I didn't even ask. Well, you looked at it. You ate it. They were they were most they were like a compound.
They were juicy. Okay. So like fresh. Yeah. Fresh.
Yeah okay. But not a stringent at all. No. Okay. Um, I've never had a uh like an American like native persimmon.
I've only ever had the commercial ones, the wild persimmons. I hear they're fantastic. You know what else I've never had? Pawpaw. Never had a paw.
I was gonna say I haven't had that either, and I'd really like to try it. Yeah. If any of you guys, oh, you know what I had uh shipped to me? Uh a bunch of real expensive shelled hickory nuts. Man.
Shelled hickory nuts. Oh, Stas is looking at someone who uh was in the full, like Cruella. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All white, super high heels, maybe trying to get high heels. Her, but like her her heels were like maybe like up to my knees, and the dr the coat still hit the ground.
Yeah, basically. Well, maybe this literally was Cruella de Ville. Maybe I'll see a bunch of dead Dalmatians. Uh did she ever kill the Dalmatians or did she not get a chance to? I don't know.
I don't know. Probably not. No one uses Dalmatian for why would she want to kill the Dalmatians? I mean, it's because it's nonsensical. So yet another nonsensical thing.
Yeah. Um, all right. So uh Alex Goden wrote in, hey Dave, congrats on the new studio. I'm wondering if you had any issues with your liquid bread caps cracking. Uh liquid bread is the carbonation caps.
It was never an issue uh in the past, but the last three or four I bought have cracked big time and developed leaks. They still work, but it's messy. Do you have an alternative you recommend? No, you can go metal. Uh I've had that happen.
So when you're going off on, off on, off on, try not to like angle it. We had uh uh a bartender, uh Kendra, who we used to call the Incredible Hope, because she could she could crack a cap like nobody's business. I I had never had it happen before either, but they would they would happen occasionally. We we moved to metal, but the problem with metal is they have a gasket on the inside. So just be a little bit gentle when you're taking the thing uh off and on.
Uh, you know, just you know, try only straight up and down. Try not to do any sort of like uh what's this rocking motion as you go off and on. All right, is that fine? Great. Yeah, great.
From Johnny via Instagram. Uh hey Dave, I'll be brief. Uh I consider liquid intelligence as a Bible. Very nice, very nice. Uh I'm trying to emulate your vision and approach uh using uh every ingredient in in uh different ways, um, analyzing it and playing with uh all the shades of its properties.
In 10 days, I have to send a concept for the patron competition. Patron, do they pay the rappers to put all the rappers into the patron thing? Or do people just like the rappers just like it just ends up in a lot of rap songs? I think it just ends up just ends up in a lot of rap songs. All right.
Uh Patron Competition. I have an idea, but there's a wall between me and the realization, and that's the color of coffee. I want the same texture, notes, and properties and feelings of a cup of an Italian of Italian espresso, but clear. Uh, so like, you know, water-looking but powerful as espresso. I need it to be clear for the color of the final drink, but no idea where to start.
Can you help? Thanks a lot. You have chosen, Johnny. I'm sorry to say, an impossible problem. I have tried to make clear coffee uh through distillation.
I have tried to make uh it just really has never been done. You can you can't, it's like if you even if you distill coffee, like coffee without the bitterness is just not, it's just not coffee, right? Espress especially like espresso, like you can texture it up by putting uh things into it, but espresso is an emulsion, so it's got oils in it, and that's gonna make e even if you just emulsify a different oil in, it's going to get you know cloudy. You could buy some of the acids that you have in espresso, but you're never gonna get kind of those those bitter notes. I would say, as much as you probably don't want to do it, there's got to be someone.
Does anyone make a clear coffee flavored liqueur? I don't know. I mean, most of the coffee flavored liqueurs I know aren't clear, but flavor houses do this, right? On a professional level, but there's no actual natural way that I know of to make coffee clear. That I mean, I just don't have a good answer.
Is that all right? It's fine. Yeah. Uh like clear Pepsi. Clear Pepsi.
Clear pe they still make that stuff? I don't think so, but it's kind of the same idea that we're looking to do, right? Well, except for like Pepsi's all made with like caramel compounds anyway, and they add caramel color to it. Yeah. Coffee, like you make coffee.
The problem is that any separation that gets rid of the color in coffee is also gonna get rid of getting rid of all the color, I'm saying, make it clear, is going to get rid of probably the bitter components, the stuff that make it characteristically coffee. And the the renons of coffee? Yeah. Well, yeah, all of the all of the like the burnt plant compounds. That's what it is.
You know what I mean? And so it's like it's hard. John, have you ever had a good clear coffee thing? No, I don't know. I don't think I've ever even had any clear coffee thing.
I mean, cold brew can be limpid, i.e., you can see through it, but uh, but it it it still is brown and not, you know. You should just get a flavor thing. Do they make that? Probably. You're uh the problem is is in a in a competition like that, you need to have a good story for the ingredients.
Why are we doing these ones first? I didn't see the way it was done. It didn't go that way. That was the okay. All right.
All right, all right. Jordan Bunting wrote in. Can people with the video access see Nastasia's vegan face? Yeah. There she is.
There I am. Yeah. Uh she's hiding behind sunglasses in some sort of camp hat, and she tries to inch off the screen so that you can't see her, even though the whole point is that you can see her, even though that's what you're paying for. But yes, you will occasionally catch like some of the vegan face and the relish. If you want to see Nastasia being really happy, look to the parts where she's hanging up on the collars, and then you can see what Nastasia looks like when she's super stoked, right?
All right. Tyler Chambers wrote in uh have you explored using a pressure cooker or the uh simpleton civilian type, the Instapot for concocting cocktail syrups and fusions and ingredients. Uh, I thought I had a good idea for a quick lime cordial, but the first round came out tasting cooked. Though it was indeed cooked, I was hoping to avoid that flavor. Is there uh such a thing as a pressure cooker that does not use heat?
Uh I know I could use an EC Whipper, but I want to do larger batches and ultimately a delicately cooked citrus stock. Well, okay, so there's a couple of things here. When you heat cordial, the reason to heat cordial is to give it a little bit of a cooked flavor because that's the flavor that's stable. Now, you don't need to pressure cook it. In fact, just bringing it up to a simmer is all you need to do, and you don't need to simmer it for that long.
So I would try just doing that. That's like standard cordial, and that's the only way to get a stable flavor. If you want to get, if what you mean is is that you want to get the peel flavor into uh the thing and have it be fresh, here's what you do. You peel the citrus uh the day before, you take the citrus peels, but make sure that you don't let the citrus dry out after you peel it, because that's what's gonna happen. But anyway, then you you smash up the peels with uh sugar and you make an what's called an oleo.
Then you wash that oleo with the fresh juice, which you can clarify if you want, and then that's gonna give you a lot of the peel notes as well as the uh citrus notes, and you have to titrate exactly how much of the peel you you want in there. That's gonna be fresh, but it's not gonna last. If you want it to last, you gotta bring it up to the simmer, and when you bring it up to the simmer, it's gonna taste somewhat cooked. But I definitely wouldn't pressure cook it because in a pressure cooker, uh, it's gonna go from being like, you know, citrus colored to being extremely brown because you've elevated the temperature even, you know, that extra amount above boiling. Is that a good answer?
Yeah. Also, Jack, who's running the chat room right now, says that Sargon found uh clear coffee liqueur. It's rollingriverspirits.com. Rolling River Spirits. Go there.
Yeah. Moon River Rock. I don't know if you can use someone else's spirits, but thank you. Uh James McCulloch wrote in, hi, I'd love to suggest a new mini segment, classic wheat night me uh weeknight meals. So it's like classic weed night meal.
Well, weeknight. I can't say weeknight. Why am I saying weed night? Classic weeknight meals here. Like that?
Yeah, yeah. Uh to the tune of classics in the field, which is I'm used to saying. We're gonna bring classics, by the way. John, when are we getting uh Matt from Kitchen Arts and Letters back on? I believe it's June 15th.
All right, so remember, for June 15th, people, get ready to uh ask all your classics in the field questions, because we're gonna have the in the studio, by the way. Yeah, Joey's coming into the studio uh answering all of uh your classics in the field questions. So the idea is classic weeknight meals. Uh James would like to hear what uh enjoyed hearing my story about what I do with baccalau when I need to do a quick meal. What are the go-to recipes we use for feeding the family when you've only got 10 to 40 minutes?
Uh thanks and congratulations on the new digs. What do you what do you what do you want to feed the family? Um when you used to you used to be every day you would leave and you'd be like, I gotta get home. I have people in my house in 10 minutes, and then you'll go on the cookie. I think pasta.
So this used to be like an ongoing thing. Nastasia would say, Why don't you make pasta tonight? And I would say, I'm not making pasta tonight. And Nastasi would say, Why do you hate pasta? And I would say, I don't hate pasta.
Yeah. I would do I would do like sausage and broccoli rob it was easy. You like broccoli rob? Mm-hmm. You like the bitter?
Or do you blanch it first? I blanch it first. Yeah, in water? Yeah. What about you, John?
What about you? Do you blanch your broccoli rob? Uh no. I just put it in the pan with some olive oil, a little water to steam it through and some red pepper flakes and salt. Yeah.
And do are other people like, uh, it's unpalatably bitter? A little bit, I guess. I don't know. I haven't cooked that for anyone in a really long time. But we used to do it at the breastlin, and I was just like, if I can just get away with doing it this way, why would I blanch it?
Well, because I think some people are much more the broccoli rob is one of those interesting things where some people are much, much more sensitive to it than others. And so, like, I can eat it just like you're doing it. In fact, I prefer it that way, but then there are people who just can't tolerate it uh unless it's been water blanched first, you know? Joe, you have any feelings on it? Joe, you have any feelings on the broccoli rob?
I love broccoli rob. I love anything bitter. Love ridiculous and broccoli rob together, even double the bitterness. Any beverages bitter? I just have the fancy freaking like uh what's it called?
Treviso ridicchio one where you like just lightly hit that some gun. I I was ruined. I think I've said this maybe even when when I was here, I was ruined because in the 70s, the Ridicchio was such garbage that I grew up hating it because everyone bought it, but it was just such low quality ridiculous that like that's what I thought ridiculous was. So it took me a long time to learn to appreciate it again. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. So uh going to things that have the word broccoli in it. Here's another problem, I think. The broccolini people buy this thing called broccolini, which looks a little bit like broccoli raw, but isn't it so? They're like, oh, I like that.
And then they buy the broccoli rob and they make it the same way, and no. No. No. Uh wait. So back to this.
You guys also like a hot pepper on your broccoli rub, right? You can't have a broccoli rob without a little bit of the hot pepper flakes, right? Yeah. I mean, it's sad otherwise. All right.
So I'll tell you one of my fast things that is a complete mutilation of a Giuliano Buggiali. Giuliano Buggiali uh recipe. And I told him about it once and he smacked me in the face. So uh he does this recipe where he makes uh what amounts to like a roux, like a bechamel, uh, but instead of he uses a stock instead of you know, like a milk thing. So it's like roux and stock.
Uh I think he saute some onion, not garlic. He gets real bent when you use garlic when you're not supposed to. Sautaze the onion uh with flour uh and butter, and then uh stock and then uh steamed asparagus and then put through a food mill because of course he puts it through a food mill, and then he gets all freaked out if you add anything different to it. So by the time I'm done with it, one of my fast things to do was I would just take uh uh a head of broccoli, I would cut off the the very bottom, I'd cut the florets off, and then take the stem. If I had time to saute an onion, I would.
Sometimes I would add garlic because I'm not a purist at all, obviously, because I'm not even using asparagus. I'm using broccoli. And then I would just throw stock, like either canned or bullion or whatever, in a pot, then throw in the big stalks, turn it up to a boil, then throw in the uh, you know, a couple minutes later, throw in the florets so they don't get like super overcooked. And then literally in the blender, I would stick some cheese, some egg. I think I just do yolks or a mixture, boom.
And then uh you don't need cream, but you can. It's kind of gilding the lily. And then you just put once it's done steaming, you blend the whole thing into a sauce with uh pepper and you correct for salt. That stuff's delicious because it's super creamy. And if you if you want to make a real bechamel, you can, or you can just you use eggs to thicken it like they do with some pasta sauces, which is a lot faster.
Uh and uh yeah, yeah, that's uh that's one of my go-to fast meals. Okay, keep going. You know, you know, you don't like it? Good on a creamy, I like do you like thin pastas like creamy pastas? Not really.
I think that sauce, because it's so creamy, is good on a thinner pasta, which uh which I kind of like. I don't I see it as a different you you like you don't like them at all, or sometimes you're okay with it. Ooh. Uh I'm okay with it. Rich McDonald.
What would you say oom about? Apparently there's a super blood power moon tonight, it said on app on iTunes or something on your thing. What is a super blood power moon? But I guess I gotta go back to Connecticut. Why?
We don't have the moon here in New York? You don't see it like rise out of the water. Well, is that what it's gonna do? It's gonna rise out of the water. Sometimes the moon's out in the daytime, but this blood moon comes out of the water, that's how it works.
I've seen how where it is right now, and it's gonna tonight it will rise out of the water. Do you know that Booker is very good at remembering like whether it's waxing or waning by which side of the moon has the knot? Yeah. Can you do that? I always forget which one's which one's waxing.
It's going away, right? Yeah, but I don't know which I don't know which direction it goes. I can never remember. And then every time Booker's like, Dad, you're an idiot. And I've told you this a million times, but it's just one of those pieces of information that I can't keep in my head.
You know what I mean? Anyways. Uh definitely, like if you put me in the middle of the ocean at night, I'm dead. Like I am not finding my way home. Nothing.
I think I'm good at that stuff. Oh, yeah? Okay. Please don't try. Also, like, like, I can't tread water.
Like, if you put me in water and I try to tread, I corkscrew down. For some reason, like the more I try to stay above the water, if I do nothing, I'm fine. I'm floating. Oh my gosh, we have to do the class here. You have to do it.
Remember, you said you would do it once with me. What? My class. Oh, Nastasia's anger class, which is a c like she needs help. No, it's generating anger.
That's why you need so and you said you'd do it once, and it's coming to Rock Center. So I think you remember that if like if my internal, you know, my internal anger subsides. When did I say you said I was gonna do it? No, Dave, you promised me some bet we had, and then you have to. No, this you've made this up.
You're just trying to make it seem like I'm gonna be a Welcher. If by the way, Joe, we're we're anti Welcher. Yeah. Uh see you just as you know. All right, Rich wrote in.
Uh Rich McDonough, uh, mood therapist. Um question. I'm trying to make a sweet almond air, essentially homemade uh orjah diluted uh with almond milk to top a drink. Needs to be light or it gets too sweet. Worked fine the first time using soy lecithin and an aquarium bubbler, but the second time it wasn't anywhere near as stable.
Tried a few variations and even added uh half a percent of Xanthan to help it hold. Uh better, but not great. Any suggestions? Needs to be foolproof for service. Well, I mean, the original Moog Reeds uh kind of airs, if you're actually trying to get those kind of bubbled airs like with an aquarium.
I'm not sure exactly sure what texture you need in terms of light. Those aquarium bubble air things with the bubblers, those things are usually done with uh egg whites or or with some other things. But if you want like stable, like almost like Guinness head, like uh Sam Mason uh back at WD50 would be F50, uh methylcel F50, whip it up, and then every once in a while maybe he would have to we whip re-whip it during service, but like a little bit of Xanthan with some methylcel F50, and that stuff holds like a demon. And he used to I I've actually tested it, but it's it's not it's light, it's super light, but it's it's dense and light. Does that make sense?
Dense and light? It's like a like a like a head of beer. But let me know whether you're the the Moogaritz ones, like I say, egg whites or or things like that with a bubbler, but those are the giant bubbles with a lot of air. And then if it wants more like not shaving cream dense, but like Guinness head dense, try methyl cell F50. I've had better luck with it than I've had with Versawhip, but I've never done it with almond milk.
Um I used to do it with passion fruit, that stuff was good. Uh done it with uh orange, real good. Um anyway, let me know. Uh William Sabados wrote in Hey, hey cooking issues crew, it's a pleasure uh to help support you after years of entertaining content. Thanks.
I've got a question about my newish Coon Recon pressure cooker. Somewhere along the way, I picked up the notion that Coon Recon made ventless pressure cookers. Well, I mean, I've said that for years, so I mean hope. Yes. Anyway, so by the way.
All right. Well, I'm gonna read the question and then we'll get into it, right? I'm gonna try to read the whole question what you think it does. Fine. We don't have a lot of time left.
All right. Meaning if you control the temperature properly, you should never have to listen to the hiss of steam escaping the pot. However, my Coon Recon hisses all the time, even if I'm riding in the target pressure as indicated by the red lines between the valve stems. So on a Coon Recon people, what happens is is that as the pressure goes up, there's a s there's like a uh like a plug with a with a shaft and it comes, rises out of the lid. And there's first line is first ring, which is five PSI over pressure, and then it rises up and there's a second ring, and that's the 15 PSI over pressure, and then you can actually make it go up even further, and then it really starts uh hissing.
And that's how a Coon Recon works. That's why it's ventless as opposed to like the Fagors or other ones where they actually regulate by the only way you know it's at pressure is if it starts hissing. So you actually wait for it to hiss, or the old what are called jiggler ones where there's like a little weight on top of a on top of a hole, and when you hit the right pressure, it goes chch chch chch and it makes a jiggle and it jiggles back and forth, and they're called jigglers. Uh so okay, so that's that's what we're talking about. Uh I suspect that the hissing is because there are three silicon nubs on the bottom of the silicone seal on the inside of the lid.
Uh, was I misinformed about the magical ventless properties of the Coon Recon? Everything seems to work properly, and I use the pot all the time. However, when I hear the hiss, I can't help but dream of a hissless pressure cooking experience. Thank Bill, uh, thanks, Bill in uh Huntsville, Alabama. Okay, Bill, here's the issue.
So uh open your pressure cooker and look underneath it, okay? There, the Coon Recon has uh three or four different I I whoa, I can hear myself in a barrel. Uh safety, safety mechanisms. So one is the actual uh seal itself, the silicone seal on the outside, the big one, the ring. Make sure that things clean all the time.
It's gonna be a world of hurt if it isn't. You'll notice that in your lid there are little slots cut out. That's a safety mechanism because if it ever goes super over pressure, the uh seal will extrude itself out and vent down the sides, right? So that's safety number one. Uh well, no, that's one of the safeties.
The actual steam uh the pressure thing that with the rings on it, if that goes too high, it will vent. That's actually safety number one, right? Now that one shouldn't make noise. If it does, it's leaking. You can try to tighten it uh a little bit.
You could take the little silver plate, the hat off the top and tighten that a little bit. Now, also you need to make sure that uh you tighten from the inside the spring mechanism, it's all good. But where you're leaking is a little thing there, it's got uh it's blue, as you say, silicone, and it kind of rattles back and forth a little bit. And what that thing does is it prevents uh uh a vacuum from going one way, but it also is meant to leak a little bit as it comes up to temperature so that it's venting out uh the product, and then only after you reach a certain pressure is it supposed to steal and be quiet. So what you'll hear is you'll hear if it's working properly, you'll hear shh, and then it'll turn off.
What you're getting is is you must have gotten some grit or dirt underneath that blue silicone thing, uh, or it's gotten hard from uh age and you can uh replace it, right? Or clean it. Now, here's what you should never do. I'm gonna tell you this: never do this, okay? Uh Piper, Nastasi and I were chilling at the Eldritch Street Lab back when we had the Elder Street Lab.
The Coon Recon was making a little bit of noise. So I walked up to it to that little thing that you're talking about from the top, and just took a spoon and was like clack, clack, clack to try to seed it to get it from stopping making the noise. And I hit it so hard that I punched it through the lid. It went into the lid, and then my 15 PSI of stock started shooting straight out of the pot, straight up into the air. It flew.
It hit our 10-foot ceilings and then geysered and versa its way all over the thing while we're running around like like like like slaughtering like chickens to the slaughter, getting coated with burning greasy stock. You remember this, Doz? Poor paper. Good times, though. Good times.
Anyway. Okay, one more question. Two minutes go. Nicholas uh Scoovitz wrote in, hey folks, really glad you're doing Patreon thing. It's great, uh, it's a great idea.
Two questions for the show. Sorry, she might cut you off. No, no, no. First one is about bread. Sorry again.
Uh what are the important qualities to look for when evaluating uh wheat for milling uh and final purpose? Protein content is definitely one, but gluten as well. How is a gluten content and quality reported? And do you have any good resources for finding out these values? I have Adam Leonte's book, but living here in Australia, I don't have any access to the varieties he mentions.
I have other interesting varieties, but now I failed at making flour water pasta. Uh, don't get started, Stas. I failed at making flour water pasta twice, and I suspect it's because the protein and the gluten content of my wheat isn't where I think it is. But I have no real way of telling. Uh and so and also because what's how do you source something that's hard ingredient?
I'm thinking things like, well, I can't get into the sourcing of Neonata because she's gonna kill me. But so we've answered that before. But to your question, what? For whole wheat, whole grain durum, uh, apparently they grow a lot of it in Australia, but he can't get a hold of it. All right, here's the problem when you're when you're milling.
First of all, for pasta, everything people tell you about protein is it's not that it's wrong, it's misleading, right? They're the hardness of the wheat is gonna determine its milling properties. But wheats can be very hard and not necessarily have uh that much gluten. They usually go hand in hand, but not always, because the actual uh proteins that are making the wheat hard, which is what the important thing in milling is, are different from the gluten proteins. Also, you can have a lot of gluten proteins, but the glutins are different.
So that really what you're worried about when you're milling, and the reason you haven't had any good luck is because you have a lot of damaged starch. So when you're making pasta, uh what you need is to make semolina. Semolina does not have any fines in it, and durum is very hard, so it shatters into these particles. They get rid of the fines, and the semolino, because it has no fines, does not have that much damaged starch. If you have too much damaged starch in uh a flour that's meant for pasta, when you starch absorbs almost no water.
This is why if you take uh corn starch and water, right, it gets soupy very, very quickly. If you were to take corn flour and add the same amount of water, it would make a very stiff dough because damaged starch from milling uh absorbs 10 times as much water as undamaged starch does. Also, if you're drying pasta, right, damaged starch uh enzymes will activate it and it'll darken. So if you try to make your own pasta and it's not a nice bright yellow, it's because you have too much damaged starch and the amylase enzymes were reacting with it as it as it as it dried out. Now, uh, so first thing you're gonna want to do is if you're trying to mill your own, is you're gonna try try to get a hold of some uh Durham, some Durham because Durham is not only very hard, so it makes a good semolina, but also it has a lot of gluten, uh glutins in it that allow for it to have that nice hard texture after it's done.
However, the glutins that are in Durham are very um, they're not elastic, they don't snap back, right? So they allow you to stretch out, they give good stretch, but they're not super elastic, so it doesn't snap back. So it's very hard to make decent water pasta with regular flour just because one, you have a lot of damaged starch, so you're adding too much water to it to get the right consistency of dough. Uh two, the glutens in those things tend to snap back, and so they don't react well necessarily for the kind of pasta that you would normally think of for uh water pasta. So you have to think about uh your particle size.
You're gonna have to change up how you sift things. Think about damaged starch. Damaged starch is the unsung uh thing that's going on with a lot of different uh flowers, regardless of the gluten content. So we could talk more about this later. And uh I was gonna talk, but Nastatia says I don't have time.
I got a new french fry recipe for you guys that I developed for the French fry. And John, when are we doing the French fry uh premiere? You're doing that June 11th, I believe. Alright, so on June 11th, I'm doing the uh fries uh premiere that we they recorded before the pandemic. It's got Harold McGee uh doing some like crazy.
Well, kind of. He's like on he's on like a floating French fry thing on a on a pool of oil, and then he's discussing the science. He uses the word parallelopi pin. Can we say that I have to be in LA in September? Can we say that maybe we'll do something in September in LA?
See you in September. We're gonna do some LA September stuff. Yeah. All right. Yeah.
All right. All right. Yeah. I don't care. Okay.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're also gonna be re like pro maybe, I guess, releasing a product, and maybe we can dovetail, maybe we can dovetail the by the way, everyone always asks when we're gonna announce the new product that's not the one that we always have. And it's probably September, right? September in that range. We are hoping to stay on screen.
All right, so I didn't get a chance to tell you about French fries or salmon temperatures, but maybe next time. What? Oh, in studio? Oh, we have a special surprise guest, and longtime listeners will know who it is next week on cooking issues.
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