Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave, our only host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stand Studios at Rockefeller Center, joined as usual with Nastasia. Good. Yeah, we got Joe Hazen here in the booth with us. How are you doing?
I'm doing great. How are you? Alrighty. And we have uh also as usual, uh, our trusted associate, John. How you doing?
Doing great, thanks. Back uh, you know, uh, did we didn't do we have we done an episode since you were back? We did the special MRE episode. We'll talk about that in a minute. And we don't have uh Jackie Molecules on the air today, but he is streaming it out to you live.
So if you have any live questions and you're a follower of our Patreon, uh call in to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh, and um other note about our Patreon. Uh we weren't here uh last week, but uh hold on second, we're getting a little bit of an echo. Is it do you have the live feed up on that computer at the same time, John?
Oh, I do. Yeah. Sorry, I was trying to be in the chat room. Hey, for any of you who remember what it used to be like to listen to live radio, Nastasia is the only thing the only person on earth who still listens to live radio. Is that true, Nastasia?
Me and musicians and rock stars, so what's the difference between a musician and a rock star? Well, I'm like, well, you can be amazing. You mean classical musicians? Rockstar. So, what classical musicians do you know who listen to live music?
Classical musicians? Well, in other words, like what's a musician who's not a rock star? You're talking about your friend Pat. You're talking about our favorite aren't rock stars. So Pat listens to live music?
Yes. Friend of the show, Pat. Our favorite didgeridooist. Mm-hmm. And uh what were we gonna make him a t-shirt that says?
I don't know. Didgered don't. Did you readon't. Don't do it. Although I have have you ever heard him play the Digi-Redo?
Yeah. Isn't he good? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if we're going to be able to do that.
As good as you can be for I don't mean to insult a whole culture's music. It's a terrible idea. I take it all back. Speaking of insulting a whole culture's music, I was listening on my bike ride up. I'll do my weekly bike ride recap.
Uh Boston. Nastasi and I love listening to Boston. Is that not true? We love listening to Boston. I'm not gonna bring up the whole Delp thing, but I also like listening.
So for those of you who think that all of Boston is crappy, there is Crappy Boston and Great Boston. And I I I like both crappy Boston and Great Boston. I was listening to that song, Stas, you remember it? Rock and Roll Band? Mm-hmm.
Just another band out of Hyannis. And for those of you that don't know, Schultz, who's the guitarist, right? And I think they were all freakishly tall, and Delp was normal hype, but he looked short on the album cover because everyone else was tall. Anyway, Schultz, who made all of his own effects. Uh so Joe, did he invent like a chorus effect?
Because like, you know, Delp's got this kind of high voice, but in the rock and roll band is about them going out to Hyannis on Cape Cod. For those of you that don't know the East Coast, like if you're from the Boston, even New York area, like everyone kind of empties onto Cape Cod. It's kind of a thing in the in the summer. And so when he he has the thing about these record people coming and he says, sign the record company contract. Can you hear that in your in your head, Stas?
When he goes, but it's like it's like three delps at once. Did they invent a chorus effect just to have because I don't think that was like common at the time, right? Do you know anything about that, Joe? I'm not sure. Anyway, I want I want to always have it all comes from that uh what is it, the the jazz chorus uh amplifier, usually, the really good chorus.
Yeah. I mean, I'm sure you know Schultz had only the best, only the best chorus effects, which he probably built in his mom's basement, which is how he did all that stuff. Anyway, so like I wish I could have like uh do you remember the movie I'm gonna get you, sucker? I've never seen it, but yeah, I know what it is. All right.
So in that movie, one of the best things is is they actually had musicians following the people around playing the theme songs. So Fishbone actually was walking behind the pimp character playing the stuff. I kind of wish I had like a miniature like ghost of Delp floating behind me, just like screaming Boston lyrics at all times. Wouldn't that be amazing? Yeah.
That'd be great. That'd be great. Uh all right. So uh for those of you that are members of our Patreon. Oh, and Jack's not here.
He has the Patreon list for the shout-out. Do we have it? Can we get the this week's Patreon list for the end of the show? Um last week we didn't do a show, but to keep you guys not hanging for Patreon only people, we have uh we we did a tasting of Chinese MREs versus we have Chinese MREs versus uh American MREs, and I have to say, you'll have to join to listen to it. The Chinese MREs kicked our behinds.
Right, guys? Yeah. I mean, shockingly good. I mean, really like quite good. Like, I would eat that stuff.
Back me up on this people. Yeah, completely. Yeah. Tasted like really delicious. Yeah.
And the American MREs, I have to say, they were a little bit expired. Didn't even really heat that much. Didn't heat that much. Yeah. I mean, I wanted to like the American MREs.
All right, listen, I hear we have a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hmm. Hmm. Hey, there you go.
What's up? Hey, everybody. Uh Josh from Norfolk here. Hey, how are you doing? You got to turn down your background a little bit.
Oh, sorry. It sounds like you're listening to experimental music, which I like. Are you like a John Cage fan? Yeah, we're I'm in the in the restaurant office right now. Oh, nice, beautiful.
All right, cool. Awesome. What's up? Uh so we want to make candied peanuts with like Coca-Cola as the base. Um we're running into like a slight issue getting the coverage right.
We want like kind of a uh like a you know, thin candy shell on uh on them. We got access to everything, um including like induction and stuff like that. So I'm just looking for uh, you know, some advice on the best method best methods to make these nuts. Oh, you you you want me to these nuts? You knew they had to do it.
You knew it had to happen. You did that on purpose. In fact, you're not even making Coca-Cola covered peanuts. You just wanted to have that happen. Oh, that's fine, that's fine.
Uh so I promise it's both. Listen, so are you having a problem with it not getting hard versus other uh recipes that you're using? Is that the problem? Because if that is, I think I have the solution. That is exactly the problem.
Here is the problem I believe you're having. You are you in order to get a crispy shell on the outside, you need to have uh the sugar not invert, right? So if the sugar inverts too much, what's gonna happen is you're going to it's never gonna harden. Now, first of all, the high fructose corn syrup that's in Coca-Cola is like it's gonna make it soft as heck from the beginning. In fact, that's the kind of stuff that I would add to uh things to keep them from crystallizing, right?
So that's gonna i inhibit you right there. But if you add sugar, so Coca-Cola is roughly 10% sugar, let's say, give or take. So if you're gonna reduce that all the way down to get it, or even if you start with a syrup, right? It's also very high acid. And the phosphoric acid that's in the Coca-Cola is gonna invert whatever sucrose you add and gonna make it a lot softer and harder to get it to crystallize.
So I wanna say, I'm like, I don't know if you can just buy the flavors of Coca-Cola without the acid and add the acid at the last minute, or or else like do your candy syrup, take it all the way down, and then add the coke-flavored syrup at the last minute, or just completely dehydrate the coke down to dust, right? And then after you dehydrate the coke down to dust, like maybe add some solids to it, like maltodextrin or something, so that there's some solids for the stuff to dehydrate onto so it doesn't scorch down, right? Then make your standard candy coating and then as it's setting, toss it in the coke dust. And because you might not want it to get that much sweeter, you could add a little bit of hard, non-uh sweet sugars to it, like maybe some isomalt or something like this, or something that's gonna reduce the sweetness, or maybe just the fact that you've added a maltodextrin carrier is gonna be enough. But I think that's gonna get around your problem.
I think it's the fact that you have the HFCS and the fact that you have uh a lot of acid during your boil that's causing it not to set up. Does that sound like it might be the answer? Yeah, definitely. We uh we figured the high fructose was the problem. And then uh you save us the step of tracking down Mexican coke by letting us know, you know, a couple episodes ago that it's always condense up.
Well, okay, so uh what what what the CEO of Coca-Cola said when he told me that it all tastes the same, is that yes, they do sometimes use sucrose, but like they've they organize it to all taste the same and that no one can really tell the difference anyway. Your mileage may may vary. Uh I believe that there is Mexican Coke with sugar in it, although I have to say I've never looked at the ingredient label because I don't drink sugarful non-alcoholic beverages. I'm either drinking an alcoholic beverage or I'm drinking seltzer, and there is no other beverages for me. Those are the only two things.
All right, let us know how it works out. Send us uh send us a what's it called. Joe, you got another call? Caller, you're on the air. Hello?
Hey, how you doing? Dave? Yeah. Oh, awesome. Is that an inside bird or an outside bird that you have going there?
I hear a bird and Nastasia, whenever she has birds in the background on calls, it's like some like vicious seagull that's trying to like murder her. But like is that an inside? No, it's uh it's it's w uh um a couple woodpeckers but uh oh my God listen I hate woodpeckers. Do you like woodpeckers? Oh my God.
My I mean my nephew likes them. He's like they have honor of them God woodpeckers. Are they like little sap suckers that are gonna put like a zillion holes in all your trees or are they those nasty piliated suckers that are like pop bop bop bop bop bop bop bop that like put children it it's the the y I have a yellow belly yellow bellied sapsucker I think. You know is there is there any worse thing to call someone than a yellow bellied sap sucker. And of course they're so puny they're just sitting there just knocking all these holes in your tree.
I don't get it. Like I don't get it. But considering it's a uh family program. Yeah all right there you go there you go all right so what's uh what's your uh what's your cooking issue so okay so COVID has messed up a lot of people and the like and I and I remember you had an episode where you were speaking to a friend of yours who studied this very very intensely like a gozmia, uh um perigusmia, anosmia, et cetera. Mm-hmm.
And I have an idea that I think might might actually help a lot of people. I just wanted to know your uh your take on it, which is um uh so gymnemic acid and miracleberry. My idea is microdosing on those to try to kind of like kick start, you know, your brain reconnoitering how it um uh assesses smell and taste. Do you think that that's a a worthy endeavor? Well, I uh I mean have uh first of all, I would never recommend that anybody take gymnemic acid other than so for those of you that don't know or you know haven't heard us talk about it before, gymnemic acid is a compound uh that is developed from leaves.
So you actually you buy a leaf powder, you eat it, it tastes like the bottom of a rabbit's cage. And uh it's disgusting stuff. It like, oh my God, so gross. But what it does is for about 20, 30 minutes, like literally erases your ability to taste sweet things. Right?
Literally eras erases your ability to taste sweet things. So much so as opposed to miracle berry. Sorry, sorry, go on. Yeah, but nobody likes it. So like in other words, like I remember like uh in classes I used to teach, we used to give the genemic acid to people so that they could mentally understand what it was like to not have the the be able to taste sweet, which is useful in terms of texture analysis and stuff like that.
But you know, occasionally we would have people like cry. They'd be like, I'm not gonna be this way forever. This is I'm ruined, I'm disgraced. Like with honey, honey and whatnot. Yeah, it's just nuts.
So but the Miracleberry might think more people know about the Miracleberry, um, you know, i i what it does is it tricks you into thinking that you know, things that are sour are sweet. I don't really know. Um I I haven't studied it. I have to talk to, you know, the people that we had uh on that day. I think we had we had Harold, we had Bob, uh, and we had Ariel on, I think.
Um, Bob Data from Harvard. And uh I'd have to ask him, but you know, you know, I know that like um I know that a lot of people had kind of more you know drug-induced mystical experiences with miracle berry kind of parties than I ever did. I was always more kind of cold analytical thinking about it, but I don't know how to do it. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
I mean I'll ask you. I mean, it's just just for me, like it's it's I mean, I'm I'm you know, I'm a professional cook and it it's so much so that like 90% of the time I really can't taste anything or it tastes like garbage. And um I I know that there's certain programs that people use where like they buy like um like infused oils and whatnot to try to like you know, re re you know, trick their brain back into it. Yeah and I looked into it. The problem is I'm I'm not a professor, and so I'm barred from you know, all the the other scientific literature.
Okay, well, first of all, I like I'm not gonna tell you to do this. I'm not gonna tell you to do this. So don't I'm not recommending that you look up S C I dash H U B. Don't go look up Sci-Hub. Okay.
And then assuming you haven't gone to look up Sci Hub, right? Then don't go to Google Scholar and search for anything that you want that's behind a paywall. Definitely don't find what's called the DOI, the DOI number. Definitely don't copy and paste the entire DOI string into the Sci-Hub page that you haven't opened and hit go. Don't do that because you might accidentally download uh scientific literature that was formerly behind a paywall.
Don't worry, I wasn't listening to anything you just said. Um if oh okay, so thank you. And is there any way do you do you have the contact table of Ariel or or uh Dr. Bob such that I could maybe reach out to them? Reach out to John uh on our uh customer service line after the show and we'll we'll see what we can do.
All righty? Thank you so much. All right, thank you so much for calling in. All right. So uh where was it?
Back to Patreons. We haven't even started, we haven't even answered any any questions yet. I actually want to give a shout out. Uh who are you guys Spanish cooking fans, by the way? You like you like you like Spanish?
So my mom, for some reason, my mom during pandemic, so like right before the pandemic, we got rid of the house in that I used to have in Connecticut. So all of my outdoor cooking gear, I just dropped onto my mom's deck right before the pandemic. So my mom now went from having almost no outdoor cooking game, she went ape during the pandemic. I mean, crazy. Like, so now she not she not only has my tandoor on her deck, right?
She's got not one, ready for it, two paella cookers. Have you guys seen these outdoor paella cookers? No. They are nuts. They are crazy, dude.
And my mom's always like, oh, do you think that this like you know? My mom is like more mellow. She has a regular human being stove, right? A regular human being hood, like regular human being, everything. And then she's like, Did you?
I got this paella cooker. So I'm assuming it's gonna be some I mean, no offense, Ma. Sack of garbage, right? But I go out there, and the the ring burner on it is the size of a professional paella pan. It's like, how big is that, John?
Is that like 20 inches across? 20, it's like a 20 inches. It's like a carwheel. Yeah. It's like it's like a carwheel size burner.
She cranks it and it's all jets all the way across it, right? And then she whips out a giant, this is the first time, giant paella pan, right? This is right before the pandemic. I just had dinner with her the second time, the first time since the pandemic was over. And even though it was only just like my my sister and you know, her husband and my brother and fiance and us, she brought two paella rigs, two full-size paella rigs.
And I have to say, my mom has turned into this like this Spanish monster cooked, like with these paella pans over the over the pandemic, which is bananas. But she made something that I actually hadn't had before. Strangely, you know that so not paella, which she made one of delicious, of course, you know, with the soccer rot on the bottom, all you soccerat's the crunch. You know, everyone's got their own kind of crunchy rice business. You like the crunchy rice business, people?
Yep. I like the crunchy rice. I like anyone's form of crunchy rice. I like Iranian crunchy rice, I like Korean crunchy rice, I like uh I do Americans have do we have our own traditional crunchy rice? No, not really.
No? Uh maybe? I think you can get that crispy. Yeah, there are old American recipes, uh, like rice casserole recipes, where if they're cooked in a certain way, you can get a kind of crunchy layer on the bottom. Um I have to do more research on that, whether we have, because I feel like we're, you know, we're leaving a lot on the table if we don't have our own crispy rice at the bottom of the pan stitch.
You know what I'm saying? I feel like we're, I feel like we could up our game there as a as a nation. Um, anyways, so but she made this other. Have you ever had this paella-like pasta dish called uh uh fide, I don't know if I could pronounce it right. Fit fidea fidea fidehua.
You ever had this one? Feijoara? Is that how you pronounce it? Is it Brazilian? I'm sorry.
Well, this one's this one is Valencian, but I'm sure they had the same thing. So it's it's in a paella pan, and you you you use these like tiny, what look like like tiny pieces of vermicelli, like, but instead of it, like you know, you know how vermicelli means like like little worms, right? Yeah, right. So, like this is oh, we're getting fishbowled. I love it.
This is our first fish bowl. We're getting fishbowled people. Anyway, so you know, like verm there's no worm that's the size of a vermicelli that's as long as a piece of vermicelli, it just doesn't happen, right? So these are actually worm size, which is kind of gross. But get this.
You toast them off like with oil, right? Just like you would toast off like rice before you were gonna do like a risotto or something. You add the stock and all the other nonsense to it, and you cook it pretty much like a like a like a paella. She did it with squid ink. But get this, as it boils off, right?
You stop stirring it, you don't stir it after a while because you want to make that kind of crispy crap at the bottom. But Nastasi, you might enjoy this. The the pasta stands straight up in the air. Looks like grass, looks like grass growing out of this giant paella pan. And my mom brings it to the table.
I'm like, mom, what the hell are you doing? This is beautiful. What the hell's wrong with you? Like, I just don't expect this out of my mom. You know what I mean?
It's like, it's like these little things standing up, you know what I mean? And then and then you you scrape it and it comes up in one chunk because of the crunchy stuff at the bottom, like a piece of astroturf. And then you're eating this astroturf, you know. I was like, damn, my mom's got the pandemic game. Sounds like it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of my mom, one more shout out. Apologize.
So my mom's retiring this year. In fact, she's retiring this month. So a little shout out uh to my mom. My mom, uh, I've I've said this on the air before, but um, my mom had me when she was 20 years old. She was at Stanford at the time.
Uh she was 20. She took a year off from school. Her parents told her she was never gonna follow her dreams, nothing was ever gonna happen in her life. She was gonna get, you know, that's it. She was done.
Went back, finished, went to medical school at Columbia when I was three, moved out here, started the pediatric heart transplant program at uh Columbia University in 1984, where she was the cardiologist on the first successful pediatric transplant that had been done, has run the pediatric heart transplant program ever since. And I know that like it's very fashionable and correct now to think that uh, you know, uh big data is a lot better than human judgment, which I think in the average is true, but when my mom retires, the world is losing like an amazing clinician. I'll give you just a couple of things that that she's done. So, for those of you that are in the medical uh industry now, right? Uh, you know, there's a huge reaction over the past maybe say 20 years to kind of what's known as heroic actions, trying to take heroic actions to save people's lives.
You know, you're you're not supposed to play God or you're supposed to let people die now, is what a lot of doctors think. But my mom, especially because she's dealing with kids, kind of never had that attitude. So uh she has this crazy sense of how the human body works as a system and what's wrong on an entire like kind of system level basis. So she once ran uh a code. So when someone uh has a cardiac arrest, they they do what's called they run a code, right?
Where they, you know, they try to, you know, get their heart working again. And she once ran a code for two hours on a kid who uh was in need of a heart transplant. Uh and everyone else was like, You gotta quit, doc, you gotta quit, you gotta quit. Ran a code on him for that long. Why?
Because she was looking at all of the numbers, and the numbers didn't indicate that the kid should be dead, right? So it's like, it's like, you know, everyone's like, oh, well, no one, no one lasts this long in a code. And mom was like, well, it's because no one runs codes this long. Kid lived. She uh once had a kid on a table who uh died coded on the table while they were waiting for a transplant.
My mom jumped on the gurney and and did chest compressions to get that kid while they wheeled my mom, giving the kid compressions all the way to the operating room in a different building. Kid lived. They lived through that. I mean, I don't know if they eventually made it, right? Uh my mom also would transplant.
So uh here's another little secret fact. That those of you that have gone any medical procedure, not all medical procedures are guaranteed to you, even if you have money. Like some doctors won't take you on if they think you're gonna lower their percentages, right? In the old days when um it was very kind of you know rare to be able to get a transplant and not a lot of people were on the list, you were shunted off of the list because, well, the that heart had to go to someone who was healthier because you had to put it into whoever had the best chance of survival, right? But uh my mom, because that's not, I guess at the time, not the way that uh kid heart transplant worked, because you have to get a heart that exactly matches the person, she would transplant people that no one else would take because no one else wanted to have their numbers go down.
Everyone wanted their survival rates to be high. So they'll be like, no, we can't do you. Uh, we don't think it's gonna work out. My mom would do it. My mom has given people two transplants when the first one failed because she realized that it wasn't that it was a failing proposition uh all the way through, but that because uh of some other things.
So my mom always treated people like individuals and had kind of an amazing clinical sense. There was someone who was slated to get a transplant once, and my mom was like, you don't need a hard transplant. She had was on somebody else's transplant list. Get this on somebody else's transplant list. My mom was like, you know what?
Looked again, looked at the numbers, looked at the patient, was like, you know what? I think actually uh you have this kind of extremely rare condition. Turns out vitamin deficiency. The kid had a vitamin deficiency, gave the kid supplements, kid didn't need a heart transplant. Anyway, and you know, I know everyone gives credit to the surgeons, right?
And I no offense, surgeons are great, but you know, my mom's the one who was there at the beginning. My mom was the one who stayed with them for years. My mom was the one who, you know, they were always sad when they had to get handed off to the adult transplant. So I'm happy that my mom's retiring, but it's worse for anyone that needs a heart transplant here in here in uh, at least in this country. Anyway, uh enough about my family.
Uh let's do some uh questions. Oh, you guys cook anything, by the way? Anything good? No. I cook something good.
See what you think. So John and I, so John, you know, every morning, John and I have a call where we're supposed to be talking about what I do for the day. Supposed to, yeah. But instead, we end up talking about Connecticut foodstuffs quite often, right? So we're talking about Connecticut food stuffs.
I've never been to Super Duper Weenie, never been Saza. You been to Super Duper Wini? No. How far is Fairfield from you? Like 20 minutes?
Mm-hmm. Why don't you go to Super Duper Wini? No, I will. Do you like hot dogs? Yeah.
What's your recommendation of Super Duper Weenie, John? The New Englander. It's uh spicy relish, kind of like the Connecticut style spicy relish, then bacon, sauerkraut, and mustard. It's quite good. Oh, I like that.
Yeah, I like it. Anyway, so anyone that's heard me talk about Connecticut food knows I'm a fan of steaming cheese, steamed cheeseburger. Get this. So here's what I did. Since I can't really get my family on board with the steamed cheeseburger, but I can get Dax on board with the chopped cheese.
You ready for this? Here's where I'm going with this. Here's where I'm going. It's not a chopped steamed cheese, although now that you say it, that would be great. Anyway, here's what it is.
I did a uh I just did a braised short rib, right? But not with too much sauce. Beer braised short rib, standard, beer beer braised short rib. Then uh I took that, let it cool all the way down, reabsorbed all of its juices, right? Then put that in a hoagie, put like put that in the steamer, put a piece of the of the of the rib in the steamer, put the cheese on top.
Let the whole thing, instead of reheating the rib, reheat by steaming the whole thing into one steaming pile of short rib and steamed cheese. Put it in a hoagie roll, put it in a hoagie roll. You know what it was? Real good. It was real good.
I wanted some sauerkraut on it because I think it needs some acid. Dax didn't. Dax just, you know, ketchup didn't, whatever the house kids do. But real good. It's a try, people.
That's a that's a give it a try. Also, you know what I did? Chicken bullion on the French fries. Now, apparently in Australia, and I know Nastasia has her issues with the Australians, but apparently they have this thing called chicken salt, which is meant to be put onto rotisserie chicken, but also sometimes includes chicken bullion. So that's a good reason to visit uh Australia because chicken bullion on french fries is a good.
Very good. It's a real good. I I you know, I'm gonna everyone's like, Have you tried beef powder? I'm like, not yet. I'm gonna put I'm gonna go get every bullion flavor and put that on my French fries from now on.
Cause why why not? What about with those mushrooms from the M RE? Oh my God. So again, you can't watch it unless you're a Patreon uh viewer. But they had this dehydrated chunk.
This like, it's like imagine um like a sponge candy, but instead of sugar, mushroom. Right? And it was so awesome. I would buy it. If any of you like are a manufacturer of Chinese MREs and know where to get this freeze-dried mushroom block, even Nastasia liked the freeze-dried mushroom bra crunchies.
Yeah. That was good. That was a good. Yeah, really good. Real good.
Really, really good. You know what Nastasia kept saying the entire time we were doing the MREs? Anytime something looked terrible, she'd be like, those that's your MRE, Dave. If we're in a survival situation, that's your MRE. No, yours was just the American one.
Yeah, anything that looked bad. But if it had been the Chinese one, you would have had me have that one. I noticed that when we opened the American one and it had a Skittle pack in, we didn't even get to inventory it because you were already picking out the color that you liked. Which is your which is the Lopez color? Red.
Red's the first color. Yeah. Second color? Uh green, I guess. And all others garbage?
Yeah. Huh. Have you I know you're not a you're not a Pez person. No, but I did bring these Sour Patch kids because there's this new flavor that's a secret. And pass it to Dave.
Oh, but Nastasia's gonna be able to tell because she can tell. No, I can't. And you win $50,000. Oh, geez. Oh, geez.
You know what we should all do, people? And we should all pool our knowledge. It's really hard. I was gonna give one to Arielle because just do the GCM. Well, no, I just want to see if her nose her nose is forget the nose.
Just do GC mass spec on it. Figure out what that's cheating. That's that like what are you, Willy Wonka? That would be cheating. I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime supply of Sour Patch.
Tastes like vaguely artificial, vaguely tropical, real sour stuff. I feel like I've had that flavor before. It's a specific flavor. And there's lots of clues that they give you. But I see you also brought though one of my favorite sour flavors.
Sumac. Yeah. Sumac. People, I saw when I was driving up uh a couple of weeks ago, the sumac's starting to ripen. Is that one ripe yet?
I think this one is. Taste, taste. Oh, give me a taste. Yeah, well, give it a taste. So, sumac, for those of you that don't know, sumac is delicious.
Now listen, here's how you know if it's the sumac that you can eat. Is it red? If it's red, you can eat it. If it's white, don't. Oh, that's good, Stas.
I mean, that's real good. Yeah. So what you do is if you live where sumac grows, in our neighborhood, the majority of sumac is what's known as staghorn sumac. It's kind of hairy, right? So you you you just rip, cut the whole sumac thing off.
Let it get ripened. Taste it first. If it doesn't have a lot of flavor, it's not ripe. If you wait too long, it loses its flavor. So the one nostasi got here is real good.
Then what you're gonna want to do, you can just freeze them as is if you don't have time to uh what's it called? Process them right now, boil them in water, and then it's the best soda. It's so good. There's something about sumac that when you drink it, you have to drink more. You have to just drink a little bit more.
You drink a little bit and you're like, oh, that's good. I want more. And then you have a little more, and you're like, oh, that was good, but you know, I'm done. Uh more. More.
Anyway. Uh, so all right, enough about our cooking. Let's get to other people's cooking issues. That's delicious. Thanks for bringing in that.
Thanks for sharing. Mm-hmm. I appreciate it. Uh, Zach Ross wrote in, uh, I've been making watermelon aqua fresca this summer. It's good, but it's about a hundred times better than that's a lot of times, Zach.
A hundred times is a lot better. In other words, I don't know that there's anything where the best version of it I've ever had, if it was a hundred times worth, I would even put it in my mouth. What about you guys? Like, do you believe that there's a factor of a hundred between something that is edible and something that is super fantastic? That's two orders of magnitude, Joe.
That's huge. I know that's a big number. Yeah, yeah. For those of you that like don't think in terms of orders of magnitude, go watch the Eames's Powers of Ten film. Amazing.
Classic. Amazing. Classic. Um that said, I will just assume, Zach, that we're just being a little hyperbolic and that we're okay. It's about a hundred times better the next day.
Why is this? It seems too simple to just have the flavors meld overnight and be so better. Maybe that's it, but I'm curious if there's something more happening here. Well, uh, I have a note in to uh Harold McGee to ask him, see whether he had any ideas, but he hasn't gotten back to me yet. If I had to guess, what I'd say is this, because I was thinking, well, is it the sugar somehow, something?
But weep, I did some like some preliminary Google Scholar searching on whether or not watermelon, like what changes happened in watermelon juice over the course of a day. I wasn't able to find anything, but here's what I think. If I had to guess, I would say there's some volatile aroma in uh in the watermelon, right, that is being liberated and flashing off, and that you like the product a lot better after that flash is off, right? So I would say it's probably not a chemical reaction or some sort of like reaction within the product itself. It's just a losing of volatiles.
Now it could be that if you're adding the lime that you like the line, the age lime flavor, it could be that there's some reaction with the increased acidity because watermelon's not that high of an acid, it's causing something to precipitate out. It could be that it's auto-clarifying overnight and you're just drinking the top and you like the stuff that the top tastes better. But here's how you test. Take the stuff, if you have a vacuum machine, if you don't have a vacuum machine, you're SOL, and just run a vacuum on it, and that'll distill, it'll flash off some of those top-end volatiles without heating it or boiling it. And if you're getting a similar result by doing that, then I'm guessing it's a loss of volatile.
Is that a good uh decent answer? Doing all right? Yeah. Uh oh, got a shout-out. Uh Erica Lash wants to give a birthday shout-out to uh our uh Patreon follower, Christopher Tompkins titch.
Oh, sorry, sorry to botch your name, Christopher, especially on your birthday. Uh couldn't figure out a better way to get in touch uh without breaking into my husband's Patreon account. I like that she doesn't break into her husband's Patreon account. That's strong, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Uh so I'm gonna give you, is it so? So Christopher is turning uh 33 on uh the 19th. What day is it today? 13th.
So, so he would be turned 33 before. So 33. Let me see. What was I doing when I was 33? So he's a PhD student at the at the Harvard right now, right?
And he was formerly a TA at the at the Harvard class that we that we teach. By the way, we're doing that again this year, Stas. Cool. Yeah, Harvard, live this year. Uh, what was I doing when I was 33?
33. Huh. I don't know. I think I uh I had Booker already. What was I doing?
Who knows? It was a good year. You're in for a good year, and this is your uh this is your birthday shout-out. Uh so what else what else do we say in a shout-out? We should kind of have a Joe, we gotta have some sort of like birthday shout-out.
Like at the bar, we would always play uh in the club. You know what I mean? I mean, I know it's kind of like trite, but I tell you what, when you're in a bar and 50 cent comes on in the club and people are drinking, people enjoy it. All right. I'll look for that.
Yeah? I'll look for something. You look for something? I'll look for something. All right.
All right. Note. Make note. And then and then, you know, we can we'll retroactively somehow, Christopher, give you the uh the, you know, go shorty, it's your birthday. Whatever, whatever, whatever Joe's version of go shorty, it's your birthday.
Uh Aaron from Oklahoma wrote in, hey cooking issues gang. I have a propane grill with a weak fact, so weak that it's it's W E A K with dashes. Weak sideburner. Uh, I use a sideburner mostly for deep frying in a pot. Is it feasible to upgrade this to a bigger, higher BTU burner?
I don't often use a side burner at the same time as my main uh burners and in the grill, if that matters. Thanks. Um well, yeah. But what I would say you should do is don't like upgrade. Here's the issue, right?
Side burners are weak because they're small and they're expecting you to, I don't know what, keep a pot of butter going or something on the on the side, right? We mean like uh do that fancy grill that you have access to. No, John has access to a kalamazoo grill. Kalamazoo grills are built entirely by hand in the United States and signed by the makers. They cost $12,000.
Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Anyway, so John has access to one of these, and yet he still hasn't found our our monocles. I think I can't wait for us all to do this uh program with our monocles in.
You know what I'm saying? Anyway, so do you use a monocle when you use the Kalamazoo group? I haven't used it yet. That house is being renovated at the moment. But you looked at it.
You touched it. I've looked at it, I touched it. Yeah. Looked really nice. Really, really nice.
Did it run off tanks like chumps, or did they plumb that sucker? Plumbed it. Yeah. Damn. Imagine.
But you can dual fuel that, right? You could throw wood into your calamazoo. Yes, you can. Yeah. Or charcoal.
Or charcoal. Yeah. Yeah. I always w thought more people should have the the dual fuel situation. So they could just because as much as everyone likes a chimney starter, right?
Wouldn't you like to just dump a bunch of coal on top of where your gas flame is and go and then walk away and then have it be coal instead of. Weber has that. Yeah? Yeah, my dad used to get that one. Is it good?
Took a little while for it to get started, but you don't have to like do the chimney. You just throw it in there, get it going, and then I don't know, for 20, 30 minutes, it was good to go. And I'm sure it's easier to add more on top. Because you know how like when you add more on top, you wait too long, it doesn't catch right and it's uneven. This one you're like, hey, yo.
Yeah. Nice. Anyway, so you have to report back to us on what that's like. I'm sure that sideburner's not weak. No, probably not.
No. No, yeah. When you're spending $12,000 on a grill your side burner, it better not be weak. Also, like, what does it mean by weak? I've just been looking at uh at you know what?
It's so weird that you asked this question now because I was just doing a lot of really boring research on uh powers of uh different burners and ovens, which I won't get into now because Nastasia is already checked out and on her phone. She would really punch me in the face if I just started talking about BTUs and lots of talking to what? I think. All right. Uh so anyways, so uh yeah, you can replace it, but I think a better thing is to just get an entirely separate unit to go on the side, or just remove the side burner and put the equivalent of a candy stove.
It depends on what you want. You can buy outdoor walk burners, which you know, that's like hi, I'm gonna go crazy, right? Or you could buy like my mom's paella burner, but again, that's a real big flame. Or they make uh kind of dual ring burners where you can have just the inner ring on and just the outer ring. And a lot of people make outdoor, very professional units because professional people cook outdoors.
I wouldn't necessarily go for like the Home Depot or Low style turkey fryer because they're a little low because they're meant to cook low. They're not meant to be operating on a grill and they're a little bit unstable. Even candy stoves, professional candy stoves, which are awesome. You ever use a candy stove, John? Nope.
You know what I'm talking about though, right? Those like in when you're in the kitchen, you would use them for stock. They're low. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, call candy stoves because they need the super high BTUs for doing uh candy and stuff.
But you can put legs on those and lift them up high and just have a ripping burners on the side. So yeah, I would just get a standalone commercial side burner and then, you know, just kind of saw off the old one and put that next to it. You might have to upgrade your um, you might have to upgrade your regulator. And you also have to realize that there are at least two different pressures that uh outdoor propane gear runs on, kind of like a very like a lower pressure one and a more of a medium pressure. So just make sure uh that your pressures match and uh I will not, and I'm being serious here, will not recommend that you do your own gas stuff work.
Just, you know, buy real equipment and don't blow yourself up too much, you know. Um, anonymous wrote in. Anonymous. Hmm. Uh new Patreon subscriber here, longtime listener.
Love the work. I'm from Australia, and we're planning an American themed dinner party next weekend. We've been planning it for a while, but COVID has gotten into the way. It's worked out well being 4th of July. Oh, so we must have missed this when we were in the 4th of July.
Oh crap. I'm planning on. Oh man, I forgot to look up Pie Marches on re. I was gonna that's what I was gonna do this morning. Look up the pie marches on recipe.
John, you have the pie marches on recipe. I'm planning on making pumpkin pie. I have a can of Libby's. That's standard. Nastasi, you like pumpkin pie?
What do you like better? Sweet potato or pumpkin? Uh me too. Joe. You like neither?
You have a neither look on your face. Yeah, I'm not into I'm not really into pies. Is that weird? No, a lot of people don't like pie. A lot of people don't like sweets.
Do you like sweets? I like I love sweets. I the only pie I really like is uh a key lime pie. Ooh. Yeah, but any other kind of cooked cooked fruit I'm not into.
There's a lot of people, my stepmom doesn't like cooked fruit. I like fruit on its own, but not a cooked fruit, like an apple pie. No, no. What about jelly? Like uh like a British jelly, like a mint?
No, no, no, like peanut butter and jelly. Oh, um, yes, I do. I love apricot jelly. You know why? Because it tastes great.
I have an apricot in the in the fridge there if you want. Uh do you uh do you like dru uh I got from the farmer's market got some apricots. Do you like uh I like that your apricot? That's another good question to ask people. Apricot, apricot.
Apricot. Hmm. Stubbs. Apricot. Wow, and from California, so I'm gonna have to take that, John.
Apricot or apricot? Apric. Hmm. Fight. Uh I don't know.
I don't have a dog in this fight. That's like uh I was trying to start a fight over uh last week at an event that Nastasi and I went to over Fudgy versus non-fudgy brownies. Fudgy versus cakey. Well, my my wife is British, so everything, yeah. I'm learning to speak the language properly.
Oh, please. Shalots. Oh, come on. Like, you know that like I love working with you and everything, but if you say aluminium, it's over. No, no, no.
We're out of here. There's no schedule for L. No, jeez. Oh, God. You know, I'm not even gonna not even get into it.
Not even gonna get into it. All right. Dave, five metro recipe. Oh, uh, so how does what kind of crust, first of all, does first of all, you need to go online, look up Boston Monroe Strauss. What's a PDF of it on the Haiti Babel Haiti Trust?
Everything everything that comes out of that person's pen off that person's typewriter was genius. Uh, what kind of crust does he use? Sifted pastry flour, shortening water, salt, powdered skimmed milk, and corn syrup. For the crust? Yep.
Special crust for pumpkin pie. Wow. Huh. Here's the thing I'm gonna tell you. Uh here's the thing I'm gonna tell you.
I'm gonna get back to your question in a minute. We have a because we have a caller. But I would just go on that. Because if he says that he made a special crust just for pumpkin pie, I'd listen. I would listen.
And he uh my memory serves me. You can look it up while I'm doing this caller, John. Memory serves me. He tells you how to make your your own mix, but he says that you're probably better off starting with uh pre-canned, I believe is the is the truth. So uh, and figure out what his recipe for that is.
Don't follow Libby. What do they know? I mean, they know everything because they make it, but come on. All right. So it's the correct brand, though.
Caller, you're on the air. Oh, hey Dave. Hey. Hey, Jordana. Hey, how are you doing, Jordana?
How's it going? How's it all right? How's it? Where are you? You up in Hudson?
I'm near Hudson. I'm near Hudson. What's it like? Is it humid? Is it hu humid there like it is here?
Is it just not too hot, but just kind of gross, that way that only New York gets gross? You know what? It's thick. It's spongy. It's unpleasant.
Yeah. And it's not inspiring, I would say. Oh, you've just you just described my high school life. Yeah. I know that about you.
Um, but we did just visit a friend's garden and we got such beautiful stuff. And so, yeah, I don't know. I'm feeling all right about the world. Nice. How about you?
Uh I'm glad you're feeling great. Good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Dean, do you know why I'm calling? I I do not.
You know how Nastasia uh doesn't like to tell me anything. So if she knows, she hasn't told me anything. Oh, well, I so we did it, Jordana. He didn't really care. That was the uh what?
He didn't care. He didn't care. He didn't care. He didn't care. What didn't I care about?
The flavor of the mystery sour pas. It's not that I don't care. I don't know what it is. Do you have any theories? Well, did you did you even do it in a scientific way?
No, he said it all tastes the same. I didn't say it all. That's not what I said. Anyone who's listening, it said it I said it tastes like kind of sour, fruity, vaguely tropical. Like, I mean, like, you know, berries and tropical stuff.
I mean, what what did you get out of it? Stoff, stop. Can you do me a favor? Um hold his nose. No, I can't.
I'm on the other side of the night. He can do it. He can do it. You can hand me another one. I'll hold my nose.
I don't care. Place place the candy in the mouth. Hold the nose. Are you doing it? Or else I get the hose again?
Hold a second. I'm gonna follow your instructions. All right, ready? I'm following. Okay, so I'm gonna pinch my nose.
I'm now pinching my nose. Now what? Okay, put the candy in your mouth and bite it. Chew it a little bit. Hold candy.
Hold candy, put it in your mouth, chew it a little, and now release your release your nose. What do you experience? What are you feeling? Yeah, I know that. I know that flavor, but you know it.
Yeah. Suddenly, suddenly someone's infected. No, but it's some sort of like tropical plus banana plus like some sort of estery thing. I don't know. I don't know what it is.
What are you guys getting out of it? Okay. Here's what I got out of it. All right. But strawberry banana.
Yeah, but it's got also got some strawberry. It's like a strawberry banana situation. The hammer, the hammer got strawberry. I got banana. And then at one point I got a little bit of cherry.
But stuff, did you go over the clues with him? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh, cherries because it has that cough syrup hit at the end. That little dime tap energy.
That's right. Did I have I ever made you one of my uh my my flaming mo Sazerax with the cough syrup? He doesn't know what it is. Okay, so should we read the clues? Stoff, do you have them up?
I don't have them up. No. Okay, okay. I'm sure we can get people on the Patreon to like like hit us up on this, but go ahead. Give me some clues.
Okay. Okay, ready? Okay. Okay. Yeah, here we go.
Ready? Yes. Okay. Born ready, Georgia. Okay, and this is okay.
Clue number one. It gives laugh and can be a riot. Because when it flies, nobody's silent. Because when it's what? When it flies, nobody's silent.
Wait. Can give a rise. It gives laughs and can be a riot, because when it flies, nobody's silent. It's it's far flavored. Fart flavored.
Okay. Cool, cool, cool. All right. Moving on to clue two. But it could be a banana peel.
Back in the case. Do you know Nastasia's favorite banana peel story? You know, you know her favorite banana peel story, right? No, I don't. We were uh at Harvard, maybe I don't know, ten years ago, so no, no, like seven years ago.
Yeah. You're supposed to say we were in Cambridge. Yeah. We were on the square, Jordana. We were on the square.
So we were at Harvard. We're walking with uh, you know, eminent food author, Harold McGee. Who's a distinct he's a distinguished looking gentleman? He's a distinguished looking gentleman. He is.
And he he came within what, like millimeters, right, Stas, of doing the full like three stooges banana peel fly, like and Nastasia for ever since then, like every once in a while when she's looking off in the distance, she's either thinking of Peter Kim coming in in the bathroom with me, or she's thinking of Harold McGee almost slipping and dying on a banana peel. Yeah. Godfather of science. Can I add one more to the mix? Sure.
Okay. So last year I decided I was gonna learn how to be a gardener. Okay. Spoiler alert, did not go well. Did not go well at all.
Why did did is your soil no good or is your is it just a that you just hate plants? I got shitty soil, excuse me. Yeah. And I didn't build a fence. And so it just got and then at one point I I got infested with tomato hornworms, which are the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.
Anyway, I was I was really feeling myself uh for a bit, and I was sort of gallivanting around calling myself an outside gal, which you can imagine. And I just wanted recognition for my wife, you know, and I was just like, I'm an outside gal. Look at all these amazing things that I do. Went outside, stepped on a rake, and it smashed me in the face, and I got a black eye. Oh that's my that's a God.
Oh my God, please tell me you have surveillance footage. No, I absolutely do not, and I would never share it with you because you're not trustworthy, but it did happen. What? How am I not trustworthy? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
How am I not trustworthy? I gave you the surveillance footage of me literally prat falling with a rake to the dome, you would put it on your Instagram or something. You would hold it over me for my entire life. That you're you're maybe you're thinking of your friend Nastasia. Maybe you're thinking of your good friend Nastasia, because maybe she would do that, but I would keep it to myself higher dossier and just look at it, you know, every now and again when I needed a little mental encouragement.
Because the idea, not only that it has happened in the real life, but happened to someone that I know. I'm just picturing it in my head. Maybe that's even better. Wham. I can't imagine it.
It's like because it rakes people, like you see it in the cartoon, but rakes are long. I mean, Jordan is like, you know, you're you're a you're a normal height person. It's not like you're like one foot high. Yeah. Well, there's nothing you should have seen it coming, but like think of how long it takes the tip of that rake to fly up and hit you right in the face.
You know what I'm saying? It's also, it's also just the level of sort of bravado that I was bringing to the moment, you know. I was like, I'm an outside gal, and then literally smash myself in the face with the floor. Yeah, it's got sh it's got shades of Afro Ninja. It's not like it's not like Grape Stomp lady who deserved it because she was cheating.
You weren't cheating, but that that little bit of a for those of you that can mentally see what I'm about to do. That's the Afro Ninja hit. Right before, right before he does the flip. And you that's a your equivalent, like the outside like gal thing. You give that little head bop with a and then you step on the rake and boom.
Yeah. So I would just say pride, pride goes before the fall. And that's sort of the primary lesson. Hey, well, you know, thank thank God. Thank God that you weren't doing some sort of mamas and papa's 70s garbage and were barefoot or that rake would have gone right through your foot.
That's true. I did a lot of that garbage as well. Yeah. And but you know what? Did you did after that, did you move away from the old school hard timed rake to kind of the more modern plasticky, more malleable rakes that uh don't have the ability to fly up and whack you in the head?
No, because those are really more for leaf piles, Dave. Well, yeah. That's really more for a leaf pile. And I I was looking to do some serious gardening. I was an outside gal.
You've forgotten. You've forgotten the thesis. Hey, do you know what you you know, you know what you're gonna like? You know what, you know what I have a feeling. You want to know what's a good stress relieving tool?
Go get you, go get you a scythe. A scythe? A scythe, yeah. Like a like a grim, uh like a grim reaper. Oh, oh yeah, oh yeah.
They're not cheap. They're not cheap. I think I have one I can loan you, but you have to go to Lyme, Connecticut and get it. But like uh, I have like I have like a couple like hundred or you know, eight, fifty, sixty-year-old scythes that like came with the house that I got before. And I was like, Was there like a a golden, a golden year of scything?
I don't know the modern scythe really. I took down a half acre. I took down a half acre of tall grass in like 40 minutes with a scythe. First of all, you sharpen it and then you get the swing of it, and then you're like, I'm gonna get you grass, and then you're just like whoof, whoof, whoop, whoof, and it's faster than a weed whacker. It's nuts.
Makes the only noise is the noise of you going shunk, shwunk, shwunk with the weed whacker through the you would love it. You personally would love it. And then that's some serious outdoor gal stuff. Yeah. That is some that is.
I do have a baby now, and I fear the message that I would be sending. But I cut grass. I'm aggressive. Not aggressive. My outdoor gal needs.
Listen, if you have aggression, which we all do, and I know you do, Jordanna, right? Take it out on the grass. I don't know. Take it out on the grass. I'll tell you what, if you want to see the scythe in action, the literally the very first Instagram post I ever put up like five years ago or something, is the day that I was like, oh my god, the scythe is the greatest thing.
The very first Instagram post. Okay. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna hit the back wall. There you go of your Instagram, and then I'll and then I'll make the decision. All right, yeah, please do.
I think you will enjoy it. I'm just telling you, I think you will enjoy it. Uh well, actually, I do think that you know me pretty well with regards to the things that I need to do to release my aggression. So you know, because you know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna take you at your word.
As much as I like a two stroke motor, I think that like I hope that I'm the last generation of people that uses a two stroke motor. They're just so loud. Like anyone who's out, like, you know, and about and like he like all of a sudden whips out the two stroke motor, it's like it destroys the whole vibe, doesn't it? No, uh but hey, hey, hey, we're not going there. But you know what I'm talking about.
Like they burn oil, they make that smell, they're loud. Anyway. Disgusting. Yeah. There's a guy staring at us who I think is gonna kill us.
Oh my god. This story, this guy's gonna kill us, right? What I'm here to say is that I think it's a banana. Yeah. And I would I would like your support of this.
Well, I mean, I mean, how do I how do you like how do I support you? I'll support you with anything, Jordana, but like, how do I give you my support? I think there's definitely some strawberry action in there, too. What are the other clues? We're gonna give Oh, okay.
We're gonna give it to Arielle, by the way, so she can also lay in because I think she's a she's a good one. Okay, other clues. Back in the 80s, it came by storm, but not the 80s you think of. Again, bananas, big boom in the 1880s. Oh, but that's real dark.
You think you think we really want me? It's so dark. You mean the stuff that we did, the stuff that the the United Fruit Company did, that's so dark. Imagine like being like, rah-rah, United Fruit. Imagine that?
Exactly. That's so dark. Exactly. So I think you could really write a sort of inverse history of the banana in concert with the Sour Patch Kids Company. Man.
Every time I every time I see, did they change their name from United Fruit to Chiquita just so that we wouldn't have all those terrible associations? Interesting that you should mention Chiquita, Dave. Clue number seven. A lady sings about this kid's flavor. It's on her mind in a couple of layers.
Okay. What lady sings about bananas? Carmen Miranda. She sings about bananas? I mean, I love I love Carmen Miranda, but she's wearing a whole freaking fruit basket on her head.
Oh, she was a Chiquita banana baby? Uh do you ever watch the old Carmen Miranda stuff? Carmen ran it, right? I yeah. I mean, she had a whole fruit basket on her head.
We are I I like some caramel. All right. Okay, Blake says it's just the Chiquita banana lady. Okay, finally, this is the only one I want to ask you about because I actually think you might have an idea. Actually, first I wanna um tell you that clue number four is a dough that twinkles had its origins here.
It's not a star and it tastes pretty near. And I'm very impressed with myself because I remembered that the original flavor of Twinkies was banana. That is true. Do you know they rewr they re-released it recently? And I couldn't get my kids to try it.
Yeah, I couldn't get my kids to try it. They're like, why do I want a banana twinkle? I was like, for history, for history. Why don't you just eat it? Just what I don't understand with my kids, and I hope that you don't have this happen with your kid.
I'm like, you don't have to like it. You just have to try it. Like, why do why do kids now think they have to like everything that they that they have? What the hell is that? Was there any expectation growing up, guys, that you would like uh necessarily everything that you were gonna eat?
Nope. No. No. No. No.
No. Kids are different now. I don't like it. Was there an expectation growing up that you had to like everything that you eat? Oh.
Oh, absolutely not. No. Okay, this is the clue I want to ask you about because this is not triggering anything for me. So I want to know from a bit through a banana lens, if you will. Through a banana lens.
Through a banana darkness. All right. Exactly. A flavor from north and south. Melting pot meets drooling mouth.
See, that's what I'm saying. I think it's gonna be a temperate fruit, like a strawberry, and a southern, more tropical fruit like a banana. That's what I'm saying. So you think it's strawberry banana? Like that is just what the flavor is.
There's definitely a berry flavor in there. And I know don't start with me that bananas are berries. Okay. Don't start with me. But like, because oh, and strawberries are really just multiple aches.
Multiple fruits. No, I don't want to hear it. Like, I would say that uh I think it's definitely a strawberry banana, which is a classic flavor anyway. It's a classic flavor, right? I don't necessarily think that there's any in life, strawberry banana is like a classic, it's like an all-time classic combo.
You know what I mean? And that would give you the kind of north and the south. Although, truth be told, like, because the United Fruit Corporation Chiquita, like, bananas became the most popular, I think, fruit to eat out of hand, like in the world. So everyone in the north eats bananas anyway, and they're all freaking cavendish. But I that's what I'm saying.
But they're all Cavendish. But I do think that perhaps we are overstating the sort of the intellectual project at hand with regards to the mystery flavor of the sour patch kids. I think there may be some strawberry in it. That's all I'm saying. There's something fruity in it that's not like banana fruity that is that I think is, but I mean I could be wrong.
I mean, if they're gonna stick entirely, but I don't think they're gonna stick entirely tropical because they mentioned the northern thing, so they wouldn't also have like, you know, pineapple or what in it. You know what I mean? It wouldn't be that, you know, but I like pineapple. You know, pineapple does not ripen once it comes off the uh once they once they cut it. You know that?
No. It's not what they call a climacteric fruit. It can change slightly, right? And they can hit so here here's the story with pineapples. If you look at a pineapple, you guys know how to pick a pineapple?
You take the leaf in the middle or something? Well, or the size. That doesn't really work. Yeah, you smell it, right? Does it smell like a pineapple?
Eh, it got a good chance. Because here's the thing. It's supposed to, it's supposed to go yellow. It starts going yellow at the bottom. If it's green all the way to the bottom and has no smell, it's underripe, right?
But if you live in a place, if you're lucky enough to live in a place where they grow pineapples, they can let them get what's called like three quarters ripe, three quarters where it's like yellow almost all the way to the top, right? But they just don't ship well. They don't last long. So they tend to pick them right when they get mature, but when they're still kind of shippable and they have a long shelf life. That's why most of the pine pineapples we get just aren't that great.
You know what I'm saying? Uh so you can look at the yellowness, but they can cheat the yellowest because they can ethylene gas the pineapples and they will go yellow, but they won't necessarily get that much better because again, they're not climacteric fruits. I also tried, which I don't think we've talked about on air because we haven't been on air, I try one of those pink pineapples. You try one of those, Jordana. Uh you know what?
I I actually thought about gifting one of those recently, the pink pineapple, but um they're like $40, and then I felt dirty. And so I I I skipped it. Well, uh, I don't think I I thought it was looked, I didn't pay $40, I paid $20. They had them at the Essex Market live. I was like, literally, I'd never heard of them before.
And I was like, pink pineapple. And then I was like, I went to, I was like, how much is this? She's like, $20. I was like, $20. And then like I went and looked it up.
I was like, oh, online, it's like $40 or $50. So I was like, all right, I'll buy it. So I bought it because I smelled it. It smelled good. Cut it open, beautiful, no acid.
I don't like, I don't, I I need acid in my pineapple. I'm an acid pineapple guy. I like acid in my pineapple. But as I said, if you like low acid fruit, maybe you would like it. Do you like low acid fruit, Jordano?
You know, the older I get, the lower, the lower acid I like my fruit. Really? I think I think high acid high acid fruits are a young gal's game. Really? You know?
So, like, I'll tell you, for me, I like uh I like my drinks drier, but I'm still an acid head. I still could, I still could take a lot of acid down. You know what? Can I say one terrible thing about acid? So Booker, my son Booker, which I, you know, I shouldn't talk smack about my kids on the air.
But Booker somehow, real late, like years late, has been gotten interested in that damn warhead challenge again. You guys know about that stupid thing? Oh, wow. The warhead challenge. Yeah, the warhead challenge.
So he sat there and he unwrapped a hundred warheads and he would just start eating them like crunching these warheads. He 36. Wow. 36. And you know, Booker, like, you know, he's not like a rough and tumble, like, I'm gonna have my mouth bleed kind of a guy.
Now, squid ink, he'll eat more squid ink than he'll he like he could you took him out to California when the Humboldt squids were taking over over there, and he would have taken down the entire population. He would have all of it, all the ink. He eats, like I swear to God, when my mom was making that, uh, that I was talking earlier, my mom was making this uh Spanish pasta, pael like pasta, and she made a squid ink for Booker, even though he left early to get on the train because you know how he is. Anyway, so like I had to buy the only container of squid ink that was available because my mom's like, I ran out of squid ink. Can you get it?
Was at Calustian's, and they had only the $50 size of squid ink. And the $50 size of squid ink is, you know, it's a good amount of squid ink. So she's like, take it home to Booker. I know how he likes squid ink. Every surface of my house now is covered in black filth from the squid ink, and that the the sink is just mayonnaise and squid ink.
Because what he does is he gets a jug of mayonnaise. I have to buy cheap mayonnaise. I can't even afford to buy helm's anymore because he just goes through like giant tubs. He'll just take mayonnaise and squid ink, mix them together with a little salt and sugar, and he'll just sit there and house it with chips. House it.
Just house it. Like and and so, like you want to hear something gross? Can I tell you something gross? You just did tell me something. Can I say something even grosser?
Can I tell you something even grosser? All right. Yeah, go for it. All right. He was like, it changed the color of my poop.
Because he ate only squid ink. He's like, Squid ink's healthy. I'm like, no one has ever eaten this much squid ink, Booker. No one knows, no one has ever subsisted entirely on squid ink and mayonnaise before in the history of humanity. So nobody knows what it does to your health to eat this much squid ink.
Because if no one's eaten this much squid ink, anyway. I don't know. I don't, I don't, I am speechless. It's good for you, bud. Yeah.
Good for you, bud. Yeah. That is that is quite a snack. Hey, listen, do you have any pumpkin pie recipe? Uh, do you have any pumpkin pie recommendations?
Because before we get cut off the air, John, John, did you have anything on pumpkin pie for his recipe? What do you put his filling? He gets canned filling. Yeah, he does. Yep.
And it's oh, trust him. Are you a can-filling uh please tell me you're not growing your own cucum bits and then boiling them down and making pumpkin pie, are you? That seems like a lot. I'm gonna be honest. I'm not like a pumpkin pie lover.
I find I find most desserts that are like heavy on the all-spice nutmeg cinnamon lobby to be a little a little much for me. Right. Right, right. Do you know do you like whipped cream? I love whipped cream.
I just want a pie that's made entirely of whipped cream, yeah. See, I like pumpkin pie with copious whipped cream. I don't like it without the copious whipped cream. Huh. I think that you don't like pumpkin pie.
I think you like a whipped cream. I think you like pie crust, and I think you tolerate the pumpkin filling. No, here's the thing, right? Uh what I would like is I would like to kind of invert the ratios. You know what I'm saying?
Like I I love that pumpkin flavor. And I even like the texture of it, but I would like the vast majority of what goes into my mouth to be whipped cream. Like pretty much all the time. Pretty much all the time, I would. Yeah, yeah.
I love whipped cream. So you you just have like a tiny little spoonful of pumpkin pie filling, just an absolute orgy of whipped cream while your son eats squid ink mixed with tubs of mayo and sugar. Have you been to my house for dinner? Because it's basically what it's like. Like people people joke because I go crazy.
I've I've made dinner in your in your kitchen. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I wasn't there. And and that's when Nastasia punked a pregnant lady into insulting my vacuum cleaner when I had let her stay for free in my house. Yeah.
Yeah, Cara. That was also when I almost died on the zip line, if everyone recalls. Oh, yeah. That video footage of my body going slack in the woods. Yeah.
I I made a very I made a nice zip line. Anyway, uh wait, so you can stand on if you like, but I gotta give this pumpkin pie recipe. What is it, John? Give me it. So it is.
It's on page 95 and pie march is on. And the recipe. So for the cr pumpkin filling, two pound sugar, one ounce salt, four-ounce pastry flour, one ounce cinnamon, quarter ounce nutmeg, quarter ounce ginger. Um that's why that's why uh Jordana's not a like all that nutmeg. You don't mind the ginger powder though, right?
Jordana's still there? We lose her. Oh, sorry, yes, I'm still here. I muted you so I could discuss my child's nap. But I I'm I'm I'm in it.
I'm in it. I love a candied ginger. Oh, really? So you like a more uh a hot ginger and not like the ginger powder that's in the in the stuff. Yeah, the the pie you're describing, John John, don't have me over.
It's not I'll be nice. I'll be nice about it at the dinner, but then I I will talk about it afterwards. Damn. Whoa! Yeah.
Whoa. Well, that's rough. Wow. Ouch. Jeez Louise.
All right. All right, we gotta get off. Yeah, and shout outs bye, Jordan. All right, hold on a second. I gotta I gotta do this one because I gotta get the Patreon question out.
Adam wrote in, uh, hey Nastasia, John, Matt, Dave, at least anyone who's not in Italy. Uh long time, first time, uh, Adam from Irvine, California. Where's Irvine again? Uh Bali. Okay.
You like Irvine? No. Go for the question. Uh 34. Uh wife puts up with cooking gadgets and projects as long as I don't make any more overcarbonated root beer geysers in the kitchen.
Oh, that's a nasty. And root beer also like it poisons all the lines. They smell like root beer forever. Well known fact. I'm setting up a small patio kitchen.
What are your thoughts on instead of a grill, getting an UNI 16-inch pizza oven? 70% of my use case is for grilled veggies, 20% for non, 10 for burger, uh, and fajita meat on cast iron pan in there. Basically, I don't actually uh barbecue, just grill. Second question. I'm also thinking of a portable induction burner for side dishes and maybe uh hot pot.
It looks like Ducks Top is the widely trusted brand, but New Wave Gold has better advertised temperature range uh and added infomercial allure. All the reviews I can find online seems sponsored on the slide. Thanks for all the answers, Rance, Raves, and Banter. Adam, this question is actually from a while ago, I think, and we just never got to it. Uh, I looked up those uh induction ranges, and um the temperature range of the one that had the wider temperature range, I think was wildly optimistic.
I think just I don't think it's gonna be uh any any better. They're all roughly the same unless they actually have accurate, uh accurate temperature control. Uh but I think you can't go wrong. I've never used the uh uni myself, but I'm a huge fan of get that and then also just get a grill so you can do grilling. I do almost all of my grilling over ridiculously high heat.
Uh I've redone all of my recipes fundamentally to have extremely high heat cooking. And in fact, uh two weeks ago, I just did a photo shoot for that section of my book. Uh and it's it's the section of the book is what I learned from cooking in a tandoor. What I learned from cooking in a in a tandoor, the miracle of moisture management. And uh next week on the show, uh we have we'll try to get to some of the questions maybe uh that you know weren't from the Patreon listeners, but next week, make sure you tune in.
We have Pierre Chom next week uh from uh Yolele Foods uh in his restaurants and Taranga here, uh, friend of the show, great guy. Uh, we're having him on ostensibly to talk about uh what it's uh what it's like to start a food business, especially one that does kind of import export. So bringing food uh from Senegal over here, the trials, the tribulations, and the rewards thereof. I had a dream. Did I tell you this, Stasia?
I had a dream where Pierre became a billionaire. Oh, yeah, you did. Selling frozen foods in supermarkets. And it was like, you know, like, you know how Paul Newman's face is on everything in the supermarket? It was Pierre's face on everything, and he was a billionaire off of his frozen food.
So we'll ask him next week. He's gonna be on. So send in any questions you have about Senegalese food. We were gonna do it before, but we were switching networks, and so we didn't want him to get like lost in the shuffle. So he's coming on uh next week.
Uh any questions about Fonio, starting a business, foods from Senegal, uh, you know, what it's like to be Pierre, send them to us. Cooking issues.
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