Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from News Fan Studios at Rockefeller Center. Call in all of your questions live. If you're listening on Patreon to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507.
Joined in the usual, as usual in the studio with uh Anastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing? Good. We got John. Hello.
Yeah? Yeah? Hi. We got here in our New York booth, we got Joe Hazen. What's up?
Hey, how are you guys? And for the first time, we're live from Mexico City. We got Jackie Molecules in Mexico City. How you doing? Yeah, what's up?
You sound like you're in Mexico City. Do I really? You sound like you're in. You sound like sound like you're in uh the uh container in the back of a bird is actually. Maybe the chair things are not so similar.
What it sounds like is it sounds like you're locked in a bathroom is what it sounds like. No, I'm not in the bathroom. I'm actually on a balcony right now in Roma, North Bird. That's where Claire lives. Yeah.
Yeah. For those of you that uh don't know, uh haven't listened to the entire oppressive back catalog of cooking issues. Claire, you might remember her as uh the wedding officiant from a couple of seasons back, and uh also uh the first person who called in a question to the show about working her vegetti. Oh my god, wow. Remember?
She did. The Vigetti Chronicles. Uh that went on and on. Yeah. Now, now for the again, uh I'm not talking out of turn here.
She legitimately called in, and I don't know why. She was interested in spiralizing all of her vegetables. Spiralizing wasn't a term yet at that time. So everything, everybody referred to that, you know, style of zucchini string as uh uh the by the brand name, Vegetti. And so she legitimately called and asked what kinds of things she could stick into her vegetti, and of course hilarity ensued.
Now, Nastasia did she actually not know what she was doing. No, no, she didn't. She didn't. Yeah. I don't buy that.
You'll you'll ask her in person. We gotta do that. You know, we since since we've downloaded the entire back catalog, we should just do like a we should just do like all like the the vegetti chronicles as like a little thing for the Patreon people, just like you know, gather the vegetti chronicles into one. We should just gather all of the clair into one thing. We should just take people's guests like favorite punching bag Peter Kim moments.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We'll have like we'll have like uh like guest reels for the people that came on, you know, more than once and had kind of ongoing thingamajigs. Done. Yeah.
Nastasia's sister only came on once, and I was like she was so uh, what's it called, traumatized by uh she remember she was supposed Nastasia's sister was supposed to do dump meals, right? She was supposed to make a dump meal from that dump meal book. That was another thing we used to talk about, people, these dump meals, because the idea of a dump meal just as a as a verbal thing, it just doesn't sound good. You know what I mean? Yeah, horrible, horrible, horrible, huh?
Dump. Hey, you know, you that's what you do like way after the meal. You have the meal, then later on you do the dump. You know what I mean? It's like it's like if you look.
Hey, one pot meal. Sounds great, right? That's like everyone, oh, Instapot. It happens instantly, which it does not, right? All that stuff sounds great.
Dump meal, dump. Anyway. I want to listen to the wine, the wine episode. I want to see how progressively drunk we got. I've never I didn't listen to it.
And of course, it made some people angry. Yeah, and it made some people happy. So I really want to know. Yeah, I think really. Wow.
Yeah. So again, sorry, a little inside baseball. What happened was uh they can listen to it. Well, we have to we have to give them a teaser of what of what's going on. So what happened was uh Nastasi and I decided that we were going to do uh wines made by rock stars.
And so we had a Sommelier slash blue man group uh exile, right? A former blue man groupist, and a uh rock and roll writer, right? Jordana Rothman, right? Oh, that's another one we gotta do a compilation of the the Rothman Chronicles. Uh and then we were there and we had, I think, uh a a wine by Dave Matthews, a wine by none other than Les Claypool.
By the way, Les Claypool's wines, good. Good. Uh later Primus. Later Primus, meh, meh. Not my thing.
I mean, like he's one of those uh musicians that somehow, like as he got older, got less commercial. You know what I'm saying? It's like he got weirder. It's true. He got more esoteric.
That's true. Yeah, I mean, like so esoteric that it's like like the intro to any like recent Primus song is longer than any normal album. For like like an hour, and then the song started. I don't know. Whatever.
Anyway. I love Primus, don't get me wrong. They're touring right now, you know. They're touring and they're playing basically rush songs, I think. Oh my god.
Yeah. That's gotta be something. Anywho, uh, I forget who else's wines uh we had like White Snake. It was a wine not made by White Snake, but like named after the White Snake guy. We didn't have the tool wine, which is why Nastasia wants to do it again, right?
Yeah. Yeah. She's Nastasia's all about that tool wine. Yeah. All tool all the time.
Anyways, so we didn't realize how much wine there was, and I forget who was running the booth. Was it Dave at the time? I think so. No one stopped us. Joe, so it's obviously like imagine you're sitting there, the engineer, we start the show at noon.
Mm-hmm. Like 4 p.m., we're still going. Yeah. And no one says, hey, stop. And and they're just popping bottles.
It was bad. Sounds bad. Sounds like ruckus. It was, it was something. It was something.
Did you turn it off, John? Or did you listen to it? Yeah, no, I didn't finish the whole file. So, and this, by the way, people, just so you know, like this is again more inside baseball for you. But yeah, we'd like to hear from people.
So Nastasi and I are like, listen, basically, if you meet us in the real life, we're kind of like, we're always the same people. Like the people you hear, like here, like we're kind of like this, like similar to this in the real life, right? Yeah. Similar. Yep.
Yeah. I mean, not dissimilar, right? But like we don't necessarily talk about the same things, and our humor might go in a different way. Like, like we don't always talk about food and food tangents. Sometimes our tangents are about other things.
We never talk about food. Well, because you hate talking about food. When I talk to John, I talk about food. Yeah, we talk about food a lot. Yeah.
See, John and I talk about food. But Nastasia doesn't actually enjoy talking about food. True. Like that. Yeah, that's that's the issue, right?
So uh I forget where I was going. Oh, so we're like, hey, listen, we're moving to a new uh network. I don't know if you know this, you're listening to this on a new network. We're uh we're at uh New Stand Studios now, live from Rockefeller Center, and if you had you know a phone call, you could call into 917410 1507. So we're on this new studio, and we're like, well, we could change it up a little bit.
And we and then Nastasia is like, well, if we if we talk more about the stuff that we would actually talk about in the real life to people that we would be talking to in the real life, none of our hardcore listeners would listen to us, we'd lose them all, and we wouldn't gain any new people, and she's like, look at the wine episode. And that's what that's basically the argument. The argument is that is there some sort of cutting the baby in half situation where you can cut the baby in half, but the baby doesn't die. No, you know what I'm saying? Well, I know that Nastasia is the the the queen of the negative thinking.
I would love it, but I I know the truth. What's I feel like uh that our core group would not be happy. I'm not happy with you. That's the uh fun house. Brings us back to maybe a 10-year-old idea, which is the companion podcast called Issues.
Issues. I had a someone had an idea for uh for a video series for the Patreon. You want to hear what it's called? Not here. Where we like people send us stuff and we just void the warranty as fast as possible in the most outlandish way.
Wow, absolutely. It's voiding the warranty. Like that, you have to do it like that. Yeah. You know what?
You know what I need more of in my life? I need like less thinking and more people just handing me things to be like a pitch idiot for. I wish I could just be a pitch monkey. You know what I mean? Like, listen, people, anyone's listening to the sound of my voice.
If I like your product, I I am a good pitch monkey. I but my problem is it's hard for me to be a pitch monkey for something I think sucks. Speaking of which something sucks, I do have a semi-food related thing that sucks that happened. Ready? Ready.
All right. So for those of you, Joe, you grew up, no, wait, you grew up around here. Yeah. No, right? No, I grew up in South Florida.
South Florida. Farge. All right. So if you grew up in this area or were in New York in the 80s and 90s, there was a commercial all the time for a banquet hall, right? It was called the called the Grand Prospect Hall in Brooklyn, right?
It was built in 1899 as kind of a later version of kind of those grand old halls where people used to go have big parties, you know, in in the kind of the Gilded Age kind of era thing. Big old, big old banquet hall. And it was a husband-wife that owned it for decades. And they would have this commercial where it was like this like some some idiot's wedding. And then they would have like these this like old couple, and they go, The Grand Prospect Hall.
But your dream is a reality. Like that. You know, we make oh, we make your dreams come true. Like that. Like it was the husband said one line and the wife said the other.
The Grand Prospect Hall, we make your dreams come true. Like this. It was crazy. And they're I don't forget where they were from or whatever, but like my whole life, I'm like, I'm gonna do an event at the Grand Prospect Hall. I'm gonna do it.
My dream's gonna become a reality. And then, like, you know, we like, you know, my wife and I would be like, Grand Prospect Hall, where your nightmares are fantasy. Like, we just kept on like like changing up the words at the end. And the last owner died during uh pandemic, COVID-19, got sold to the developer, and they're gonna knock it down. They're gonna knock down the Grand Prospect Hall.
It's it's get this, it's on the register of historic places, but it's not landmarked. What? Yes, it's right on that border. It's like everyone's like, yeah, it's cool. We probably should do something.
And then they're like, but you know, nah. You know what I'm saying? Nah. Not cool enough. Not cool enough.
Not cool enough. And uh, you know, that's just yet another one of those things, like seeing Neil Diamond in concert that I'll never do. I'll never have a party at the Grand Prospect Hall. I'll definitely never see Neil Diamond at the Grand Prospect Hall. You know what I mean?
Never. Sad. If any of you who hear this have ever been to the Grand Prospect Hall, oh my God. Remember, I told you guys they had a party every year, some sort of festival that was related to the the whatever culture the owners were from. I forget where it was, but it's an amazing like three-four three-floor party that they would have every year.
And then we were slated to go to it. I forget what it was, and then the pandemic happened. Never. Remember the library party, Dave? How not cool that would be now?
Oh, yeah. So, like uh Manhattan Cocktail Classic back in the day, they would take over the entire New York public library and basically just cover it with a thin film of human fluids of all kinds. Yeah, yeah. It was the parties were inappropriate. And so, like, I remember like one year, Nastasia and I we're like, they're like, hey, you want to make some cock, you wanna do some work at the party?
We're like, okay. And so, like, we do it, and then they're like, You're doing the non-alc. I'm like, okay. They're like, you're doing steampunk. I'm like, what?
And then like I ended up having to carry two five gallon. I I bought, for those of you that aren't familiar with old style American uh military backpacks, the Vietnam era backpack was called an uh like uh Alice pack with a frame on it, right? So it's a steel frame and you could buy a shelf. So we bought this steel Alice pack frame, bought two five-gallon Cornelius kegs, and we uh ratchet tied the two five-gallon kegs to the backpack, and then then zip tied a five-gallon CO2 tank, a five-pound CO2 tank to it. And then uh we put ice into the into the thing, right, Stas?
Wasn't it ice into the cornies so that we didn't have to uh have a cold plate, or did I have a cold plate on my belt? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then I had two soda guns, right, pressurized with this tank on my back, and I carried 10 gallons plus the cornies, plus the guns, plus the CO2 on my back, like an idiot dressed in moronic steampunk avi. Remember, it was like aviator or whatever, like stuff, all night going, and people were like, What do you got?
I'm like, What uh and they're like, no thanks. Because it's it's wasn't that kind of party, right? Yeah, you know what I mean? But it was so inappropriate the the things they had going on there that it wouldn't fly today. Yeah, that's also true.
My back hurts so much. Totally true. The most inappropriate party though, the one where like God literally told us not to do it during the party was that vodka launch we did. I don't remember that. Was that before your time?
Maybe. So I took a uh so poly science used to make or they still make these uh chillers, right? Like the one we used, the one we used for the rotovap styles. Remember that chiller? Mm-hmm.
Right. And so uh the way these circulators, it works like an immersion circulator, but instead of using a heater, it's got like a little motor, and then it's got uh evaporator coils like wrapped around basically like a like a tall hotel pan. You can you picture me? Yep. Yep.
All right. So then you fill that with whatever you want to chill, and it circulates and chills it instead of instead of uh heating it. And then on the back, you could tap into the motor so that you could like push cold liquid out and put it back in. So I modified that and filled it with vodka and ran the ran the pump at minus uh 20, minus 20 degrees Celsius. So I was pulling minus 20, fresh minus 20 shots into shot glasses that we were also keeping like hyper chilled and like handing them out to people.
And that's the file that under something never to do again. Don't ever do that at a party. It was gross. Like all of the first of all, vodka launches, no offense to vodka uh people, but like at vodka launches, all they do is they hire the youngest, most attractive people they can to hang around and make everyone else feel like they look that way when they're having the vodka, which they don't, right? But the the other thing is that they just got completely hosed and the people were falling on the ground.
And at one point, this is where God came in. It wasn't supposed to storm that night, and all of a sudden it started gusting outside like 40, 50 mile an hour winds, and it blew these doors open on the on the floor of the ballroom, and like just a huge bunch of like leaves and wind and rain came in, and it was like whoosh. And I just looked out and I was like, oh, I'm doing something bad. And there's like, you know, people stumbling around, like falling over. It was just a just a nightmare.
And then one of the interns who was working with me picks up as as though I I hadn't gotten enough notice that I was doing something bad, picks up a bottle of vodka, and it just literally she's holding the neck, and the bottle just goes tink and just falls in shatters. She's still holding the bottle. Like God literally broke the bottle so that we would not serve any more vodka. Crazy. Caller, you're on the air.
Hey Dave, it's Matt from Mystic. Hey, how you doing? How's it going in Mystic? How do you uh how'd you survive the uh the hurricane that didn't happen to you? Uh yeah, it was pretty uh it was a pretty easy ride.
Yeah, when you're on Masons or you're on in Mystic Proper. No, yeah, I'm uh I'm closer to the drawbridge. So for those of you that don't know, Mystic Mystic Connecticut has this cute little they call it what do you call it? The bascule bridge. What the heck's a bascule?
Uh the French word for that style of bridge, I think. I mean, they mean like it couldn't it's not like bascule like trips off the tongue. You think they could have just called it something else, like a mystic style drawbridge. Yeah, I mean, no one here calls it bascule, everyone here just calls it the bridge. Alright.
Uh you don't want to get stuck by the bridge. No, no, because then you gotta go all the way around or just wait the 35 seconds it takes for the boat to go through and then uh go back down again. Right. Yeah. So what do you got for us?
Um, so last I just wanted to follow up on last week. The person who was asking about the best ice cream technology at home. Okay. And uh I think the dry ice technique that Chef Steph uh has a video on, which you can just Google like Chef Step's dry ice ice cream is the best at home, just for in terms of like equipment, you need just a sand mixer and um and dry ice. And pulverize it and spin it.
Now, how do they make sure how do they make sure that uh you just gotta let it sit long enough to make sure that nothing happens? That's exactly right. Yeah. Um yeah, and they you know they recommend pulverizing it very small, basically to like a fine powder, um, so that you don't have any big chunks in there. But yeah, they uh I think it's also like if you let it um you basically let it settle and off gas for um a couple hours.
Off gas, that was my nickname. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you gotta let it off. Um did uh did I ever uh tell on air you would remember, did I ever tell on air what I used to like to do to Nastasia whenever we had dry ice? No.
You put it in you put it in the metal thing? Yeah, you put a sheet pan on the counter and uh you know, like a hotel pan, and then you put the dry ice in. Remember that Sus? Bad. Bad.
Real bad. Real bad. Yeah. Well, nice. So you like that technique?
It's useful. I think so. Um it's just in terms of like eat like I've you know, I've used the salt and the ice machine. I love that. Um, which uh also it's a very good result.
Um but you know, if you have a sand mixer and you can get dry ice, that's to me is the um the best, you know. I've used it on a number of different uh style of bases and it works great for for anything. So cool. Awesome. Well I appreciate it.
By the way, uh Chris Young, uh, we gotta coordinate. He wants to do a ninja thing. We're gonna do the new new fake the Faco Jet. Ninja has a Faco Jet. John, you're gonna try to get a hold of the Faco Jet?
Correct, yeah. All right. Well, I saw that. That looks good. That looks good too, because uh I'd be curious to see how that thing performs.
Yeah, me too. Uh you know, I've I've used the paco, I've used the fake Italian one, uh I'll use the fake uh ninja. Yeah. Cool. Um, so the one the one thing I we I did, I lost a walnut tree during the hurricane.
Ooh. Have you ever uh have you ever like used uh walnuts, like a black walnut tree in infusions or anything? I know you're a no, I mean you're a nut guy. Yeah, I I I I work with walnut all the time. If you are gonna use the wood, just uh be careful.
Sometimes it tears out. You should just live edge it. If you if it's a is if it's a big walnut tree, you know, you can go to Harbor Freight and you can get a uh you can get a sawmill delivered to your house, like a band saw mill, and then you can just live live slab that sucker and then have it sitting out there on uh like you know, you you you you you lift it in between and you put little things so that they can dry out. You gotta lift the slabs off of each other. And then uh, yeah, I mean, like I mean that that's what I would do.
If I still had a place in Connecticut, I would uh have a ban uh uh what's it called? A sawmill, a bandsaw sawmill. That's what I would do. Yeah. Because walnut, you know, walnut, I don't know I've never heard of anyone you John, you ever heard of anyone doing anything with it?
No, I haven't, no. No, yeah. Yeah. I would people make like Nochino with it, which is like the walnut liqueur. Yeah, but not with the wood.
They make that with the with the immature walnuts. Yeah. No, but this this thing was this thing was full of the green walnut. Oh, yeah. Then make yeah, then make an infusion.
Yeah, it's a little late in the season. That stuff's very early. Like the this the Southern French from they like pick it very early in the season when they're still soft, and that's how they do those things. Uh right now they should be almost ripe. You know what I mean?
So, like maybe you're gonna go to the ripe, yeah. So yeah, maybe you can harvest some doing infusion. I thought you meant the wood. No, no, I meant the actual uh fruit, the fruit don't let some idiot come chum that wood up. That's valuable wood if it's a big tree.
Okay. They show up, eh, we'll chum it. Jerks. I hate IT. I hate you guys, but this is a different show.
Yeah, all right. All right, that's part of our tree guy show. All right, thanks. Uh talk to you soon, I hope. Caller, you're on the air.
Hey David. David from California here. What's up? How are you doing? Doing all right.
Hey, uh coming to New York City. It's been a long time. So just need some restaurant recommendations. A handful. Well, I'm gonna have to have John do that.
I don't go, I don't I don't really go. I look I had I didn't go out that much during the pandemic, like not at all. In fact, I went only where's the one place I went, the famous place. I went to Keynes. Keynes, yeah.
I went to Keynes to have their the lamb the mutton shop. Good. Good. Yeah. Uh Nastasia took me to uh for Chet here over uh in uh the Rockefeller Center because she loves everything, Rockefeller Center.
And then that's about all that I've gone out to since the pandemic. You've have you have any of you guys uh been to some good places since the pandemic? Coats. I was there two Fridays ago. Really, really delicious.
Really great Korean barbecue with American steakhouse kind of merch to it. I don't know, it was it was really great. Loved it. Really good food. You say American Steakhouse merch?
Merged. Oh merged. Yeah, yeah. Like they're like, we we do Korean food, but we have steakhouse merch in the back. Um where do we go downtown?
Racine, but they've closed. Oh. Yeah. Too bad. Yeah, that's that's the tough thing.
So the last time I was in New York, we went to WD 50, we went to Booker and Dax. Nah. Also, it's been a long time. So go go to uh go to one of Jeremiah and Fabulous places. Go to the Wild Air Contra, like go check that kind of stuff out.
Um, you know, uh, you know, if you haven't been if you haven't been in a long time, go see Stu Pac's place up there, the you know, uh the the uptown stew pack joint and uh just just go to Chosa in Mexico City. Okay, I'm sorry, I can't. Oh yeah. Hey, by the way, Jackie Molecules. If you're in Mexico City, if you don't find the uh squash blossom quesadilla like lady, you are persona non grata.
Look, you know who she is because she's got a trash bag full of freaking squash blossoms. I'm gonna do it. Like a contractor bag. Go to Merced, you go in the entrance where they sell all the pinatas. There's the pinata entrance.
Go in there, hook a right, keep walking, keep walking, keep walking till you get to where they're selling food. She's on the left, kind of near the end. You'll see a trash bag. Oh, right at the pinata stand. Well, not the stand, the pinata area.
The area, okay. Although, hey, a pinata business hit real hard by the pandemic. I don't know what it's like right now down there. I read an article that the pinata. I'm not kidding.
The pinata business got completely obliterated by uh because no one was going to parties. Well, so that that brings up an interesting wrinkle. Uh I I will have my seven year old with me. So the restaurant can't be too frou fru-fru. It does it does need to be somewhat kid friendly.
Somewhat. Well, that's the question. It all depends on your seven-year old. When I was seven-year old, I was like, a hell when I was not in a restaurant, but at a restaurant, I was like, more food, please. And I would eat it all without saying anything because I loved eating all my whole life.
You know what I mean? Whereas if I took, you know, uh my kids, they'd be like, Can I go now? Can I go? You know what I mean? So it that's gonna depend on your kid.
I mean, most uh most restaurant people here well bars don't work, but if it's a restaurant, restaurant, as long as like the kids into it, I think you know the the servers should be fine with it. And even if you're a little iffy about it, there's so many places that are doing outdoor dining right now. Oh, good. Cause the streets of New York area. Yeah, we're the we're the par we're the Paris of New York now.
We're like, you know, it it's true. You know how like in Paris, they're like, no sweat it, just sit outside. Who cares? Yeah. You know, Paris, like, hey, you can even eat here with your dog now.
Yeah, because you can sit outside. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Not your dog, John. Whoa. Hey, hey, hey. Whoa. So so yeah, so your dog is not ill-behaved, John.
She's been acting up the past couple weeks. She chewed through my airpods the other week, which was very I mean, that's like two bites. Yeah, but still, it's like $140. It's like a men, it's like a it's like a men it is, but it's like a mentos. It's like a little it's like one bite.
You say chew through like she was sitting working at it for hours. Picked it apart. Oh. She picked the headphones apart, ripped the middle out of the the way. How the hell do you do that?
She doesn't have opposable thumbs. She likes to be able to do that. I think this is a genius dog. I think this is a genius dog. Maybe.
Yeah. Yeah. So now I have to create her every time I leave. I don't trust her anymore. She's done a couple other things too to be really bad.
Wow. Yeah. You're a s you're a stern dog father. Yeah, I guess. Yeah.
Right, Stas? Yeah. Yeah. Real stern. Stern.
All right. Did we answer? We're we're good, right? We answered? We answered?
Yeah. Yes. Thanks, Dave. That gives me some ideas. All right, cool.
Okay. All right. Uh Kenneth Wu wrote in. Uh, speaking of small grills, uh, and by that, because we were talking before about that portable grill that uh portable grill that I had. By the way, also, I appreciate I got some uh tweets from people from the last week's episode that went and bought uh Quinn's book, and so far the people who have bought the book, you know what they said?
Good things. Worth five worth five bucks. You know what I'm saying? Anyway. Uh so we're talking about this like portable two-pound grill that I had because I went to go shoot something and I needed a portable grill.
Speaking of small grills, does the cooking issues crew have any thoughts or tips on Conroe grills? After listening to Oh my god, 470 plus episodes. I don't remember uh you guys talking about Bintraton or Yaki Tori. Yakitori is a great word. Uh Nastasia, remember when we went to the Yaki Tori joint in um and we were like, we're gonna go get the chicken.
They call it a sashimi, but it's not sashimi, right? It's like they take the chicken, they they they tubify it, they make little tubes, I pr probably out of the tenderloin, right? Out of the breast. Maybe it was thigh, I don't remember. And then they they they just roll it over the so Yachi Tori grills are real hot, and then they you you you put stuff very quickly on them and just color the outside, right?
Or you can't you can do whatever you want, but that's what they did. And then remember they took the three pieces that were kind of just white on the outside and raw on the inside, and they smashed it into like a triangle shape, like a almost like a triskelon, like that, whatever that like three armed thing is. They those little weird shapes. And my feeling on the chicken sashimi was fine. Yeah.
I wasn't like, oh my God. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? I was like, fine. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh we were to the best bar ever. Oh yeah, my God. We've talked about that on air, haven't we? Probably.
I think it will be. We'll never be able to find it. It was somebody's house. I think it was somebody's house. Imagine this.
Imagine that you're in New York City, because Tokyo's like much bigger than New York City. You know what I mean? It's like, it's like imagine if it was like LA but dense. It's crazy, right? So it's like like like New York dense, but like LA big, nuts, right?
Nastasia, imagine like okay, so in New York, right? Imagine somebody shows up at your door, ding dong, and two people are there with kind of a smile on their face. That would be Nastasi and myself. No handle on your language at all. These people who ring your doorbell, they cannot communicate with you at all, and yet they expect a drink.
We thought it was a bar. We thought it was a bar. In retrospect, it was not. Everyone looked amazingly confused. There were a lot of people there.
Conversation stopped. They took us upstairs. To the attic. Well, to like a an outdoor balcony thing, like a sec like a second or third floor porch. Like a sunroom.
Like you know, you know how like some people have like on their second or third floor, they have like a little mini porch with like plants on it and like a couch. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. And then they gave us a bell.
They gave us a bell. And then they they just kind of shrugged and walked downstairs. And we were like, ding. And then they brought us a drink. Best bar ever.
It wasn't a bar. Why did you guys even stay? Whoa. We were like, we didn't know. Like, once you're in, you're like, just keep playing.
Yeah, the sense of obligation on that was definitely. Where this is, but what is what is this bell gonna bring me? Yeah, yeah. Well, we're all trying to like, we're all trying to do some social dance and none of us know the footwork. Yeah.
You know what I mean? And like, we're trying to not be rude. They're obviously trying to not be rude. You know what I mean? Uh and for us it was a good experience.
Because guess what it wasn't? Our house. Oh man. What a trip. We gotta get someone to uh take us back to Japan.
Uh so about those uh Conroe grills. So what we're talking about, people, you've probably seen them in a restaurant where they can't afford or they don't have the license to have like a real grill, real wood fire. So what they do is they they get these little things that imagine it's made out of like fire brick material, so it's that kind of yellowish beige color, and it's uh, oh, I don't know, like uh smaller than a microwave, bigger than a loaf of bread, uh, but that kind of a shape. And uh it's surrounded by metal, and then it's got like holes in it for air, and then a grill goes a grate goes over it, and you're supposed to put a small amount of like charcoal in it. Specifically, you're supposed to use Japanese bingotan charcoal.
Binton charcoal is just very fancy charcoal that theoretically smokes less so that you can cook with it inside. Because you gotta remember, it you know, in Japan, they're coming from a culture where they're cooking, they cooking in coal inside like all the time. You know what I mean? Like, so uh it's very fancy. Uh uh I think Andy Ricker sells some Thai Bintra Tan style things that are like a lot, a lot less.
Uh I never used it. I mean, like a lot of chefs used it because they had to, it was always kind of expensive, and I just like lit regular lump hardwood charcoal inside and just said smoked be damned. You know what I mean? Um and that's always kind of been my attitude. Of course, you know who hates smoke?
My family in the house. Why is it, by the way? Can I ask? How many of you of the f of the four people that are here, how many of you don't care when it's smoking in the kitchen? I don't care.
Yeah, I don't care either. Wow. I don't care. Wow. Joe?
Sorry, I don't care either. Huh. As long as I have an exhaust, it's gonna suck it out, which I do. A lot of people have a ve real like visceral reaction to smoke in the kitchen. I'm surprised because it's it's usually more than half the people are freaked out by smoke.
And all is is this why we're working together? Because we can all tolerate smoke in the kitchen? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's it.
Definitely. Anyway. Uh anyways. So uh how much do you say these uh these grills cost? So the medium size one on coron, which measures twenty-one point three in length by nine wide by eight high.
Yeah. Is two hundred and eighty dollars and out of stock ETA four months. So you gotta get on the pre-order. Yeah. I look I it it doesn't have that much retained heat, so I don't know how much retained heat, although it's true if you're using small amounts of charcoal, if you're using kind of the portable thing that uh I had, which was extremely lightweight, it won't store any heat energy at all.
In fact, it's built to do the exact opposite. So the nice thing about them is they will retain some heat and then they direct almost all of it up. So it's good for yaku too. I'm gonna say it's good. Is it necessarily worth that kind of money, especially if you have access to another grill?
Although I do like tabletop grills. Don't you like a tabletop grill? Yeah. If you if you have a a situation where you can go like outside and have a tabletop grill, Nastasia, you're a fondue fan. Yeah.
What do you think about tabletop grill as like not in place of fondue, but like as like an also fun table thing? Yeah. Now, as someone who actually used to go to Switzerland a lot, what do you think of oil based fondues? I don't really like them. Because they're scary or because you don't like them?
Oh, I just don't like 'em. So cheese and chocolate only or just cheese? Just cheese. You don't like the chocolate either? I don't care.
Not a not a fan? No. Hmm. Did you used to like it? Was ruined for you by the chocolate fountain or what?
No. What chocolate fountain? The chocolate fountain as a phenomenon. Oh, no. I just don't like it.
Okay. I like the boiling oil one, but it's real dangerous. Oh, yeah. Real dangerous. So dangerous.
What do you guys think of the uh stinky banny cautious? You like a banyacota? Yeah. Yeah. Would you ever have you ever made it?
No. Yes. Yeah? Long time ago. Oil and butter?
Just oil? Just butter? What do you think? Just oil. Just oil?
I like a 50-50 split. Does that make me a bad man? You know it tastes good? Anchovies, butter, oil, and carrots. Yeah.
Yeah. True. Uh all right. So is that enough on the grill if I mentioned what I think or not? That works, yes.
Okay. Uh sad to say, uh, Bend a Table uh is going out or is going out of business, but they would like uh they're gonna sell you know, they we worked with them at the at the old radio station. Uh good people, good people. And so their sh their shtick was uh that you know, Ben would go around and find like, you know, nice products like Anson Mills or Geechee Boy or uh what else did they used to sell? Like Spanish preserves, like uh what's the one that you like?
Didn't he have the one you like, the conservas? No, he didn't have those, the Ruhula ones, but he has really I don't know, we got some good spices, we got some good Harisa. By the way, by the way, by the way. Well, I'll finish this. Remind me on those conservas.
All right. So anyway, uh yet another victim of the pandemic. Uh so he's doing warehouse clearance boxes, which uh he says is basically a hodgepodge of remnant inventory for insanely good prices. In other words, if anyone else grew up in New York area, Crazy Eddie was a an electronic salesperson. And uh he would like put a Santa hat on and scream about how Crazy Eddie, where prices are insane.
Like and he got arrested. Yeah, tax evasion, I think. Uh anyway. Oh wow, that's sad. Yeah.
Well, I mean, you know, he made a lot of money, Crazy Eddie. He's crazy. Yeah. So, you know, it's like uh Crazy Eddie, a lot of people have evaded taxes and gone to jail for it. Uh Wesley Snipes, for instance.
You know, um Wesley Snipes and Crazy Eddy in good company. Uh okay. So uh insanely good price. So for instance, um for $65, you get $110 worth of stuff plus another 20% off if you call in. Why don't you tell him what what's going on?
There's a c there's a code clearance. Yeah, when you check out, use the word use the word clearance, uh, all lowercase, and that should get you 20% off of what you are ordering. But it's already been reduced, right? It's like 20% off the already reduced price if you type if you type clearance. And he's got some good stuff.
Yeah. My God, remember Anastasia when we got the boxes, and then we were like, okay, my favorite thing that we we used to have to do, right? Is that um we used to have to, when I say favorite, I mean not. They would send us products and they would give Nastasia some products and and they would give me some products, and then Nastasia had to say that she had cooked with the product. So she would just like make something up on the spot, and it would be just like, and then like it would be completely random.
She's like, I made a cold faro salad. And we're like, I'm like, what? She's like, and then I'm like, well, did you and she's like, I chopped up tomatoes, and then I put it into the far. I was like, did you wait for the far to cool? Did you chill it?
Was there oil? She's like, I just mixed it all together. Yeah. But like, like, it was so funny. Like, it was brutal.
It was brutal. It was brutal. It was brutal. It's brutal. But you love Faro, so you could have said a month.
But I think this was during, this was during quarantine, and they were like, what fun things are you making with your family? And I was like, I'm alone in a lighthouse. So nothing. I'm alone in a lighthouse. It's like there's a song there somewhere, right?
There's there's a song somewhere. Someone write, I'm alone in a light. Don't don't don't don't write. Nastasia will get mad at me if I if I actually if if an I'm alone in a lighthouse song shows up. Do you know that my son Dax believes that he is a reincarnated lighthouse keeper?
Awesome. When he was very young, he came up to us apropos of nothing and said, I used to be a lighthouse keeper. That's so spooky. When he was like five, four or five. I used to be a lighthouse keeper.
And then walked away, and we're all like, whoa. That's strong. So that some uh one more one more strong Dax thing for those that can see the video. So Dax, you know, Dax like wouldn't understand when people were messing with him when he was really when he was really young. So like some guy goes to some kid shows up at our house and is like, uh, I know where you live.
I in a threatening way. And Dax goes, where? And the kid's like, uh, what do you mean? He's like, well, I want you to know exactly where I live. And then he goes, like, he reaches up, no one knows why he did this, puts his finger under his eye, pulls his eye down.
And that's it. And we're all like, whoa, man. Dax is some hardcore dude. Just goes, I want you to know exactly where I live. And pulls his like lower eyelid down.
We're all like, don't mess with that kid. Don't mess with that kid. He'll take you out. Uh, all right. Uh oh, I know what.
So look, there's this thing, this conserve us, right? So so John got obsessed at the beginning of the pandemic with with the what's it called? La bruhula. La brujula. Conservas, which are like good but absurdly expensive tins of seafood, right?
And uh, so he bought some, he gave me one, very nice, and then I saw a can that they had never had in the United States before, baby eels. Now, a can of baby eels. Joe, two bites, two bites, this can of baby eels would be would be done. Two bites. I'm going to the store, I called John.
Hey, John, you ever had the baby eels? He goes, No. I've never had the baby eels. Oh, hey, maybe I'll get a baby, you know, I'll get one for Booker. He likes canned fish.
Maybe I'll pick up one for John too. Hey, how much? How much for the baby eel? $50. $50 a can?
Fifty dollars a can. Like how big a can? I'm talking like a tuna fish can? Yes. Get out of here.
And you know what? Most of it's filled with not baby eels. Water. Water. Water.
Water. As the uh as the flex seal guy calls it. Water. Uh yeah, crazy. So for any of you out there that have had the baby eels and can tell us why it costs so much, just let us know.
Uh Matt Ronan wrote in via Instagram. Hey, Mr. Arnold, have a question about agar clarification. I attempted to make tequila por miamante with Jeffrey Morgenthaler's recipe. So this is like a strawberry tequila infusion thing of majig.
The finished product was a beautiful shimmering red. Are you guys familiar with sh uh do you do you pronounce it shimmera or chimera? Chimera. Chimera? What are you?
Chimera. Chimera stash, what do you? Kind of a shimmer. You're a shimmera? I think I am too.
I think I'm also a shimra. I like that we have an even split. Fight! Anyway. So uh I'm gonna call it shimerical.
Are we okay with that? Because I don't like the word chimerical. Okay? I'm gonna call it chimerical. Are you guys familiar with uh Shimerical colors?
All right, you know how we have, you know how we have three different uh like color sensors, three different cone, right? Red R G B, right? Okay. So this is awesome. So the way that you're what you do is is you stare at one color.
So for instance, cyan, right, which is blue. You stare at it, stare at it for uh like 30 seconds. Don't do anything else, stare at it. What it does is it fatigues those that cone, just knocks it out, right? It fatigues it.
Then you instantly look over and you stare at an orange background. And what happens is is where you fatigued out your cyan, right? You now have a more saturated orange than is possible for you to see. It's an impossibly saturated orange because you've actually reduced like the way your body senses orange is this like combination. It's always being knocked down by this sensor.
But because you knock that sensor down, you can see more orange. It's called hyperbolic orange. How sick is that? Hyperbolic orange. Got one more for you.
I forget what you stare at. You stare at something, and then you probably yellow. Then you stare over at black, and you see a blue circle that is blue but as dark as the black. It's blue as dark as black, stygium blue. How sick is this?
Very cool. Very cool. Uh caller, you're on the air. Hi. Um I have some tomatillo and peach uh kind of salsa, and I was hoping to be able to preserve that.
Um and I was wondering if uh that's something that's safe to can and if it would be shelf stable if I did so. Well, if you can it for sure. When you say can, do you mean like pressure can? I mean, you're gonna kill the texture. You're gonna need to hit it with a little calcium chloride before you uh try to can it uh so that it doesn't break down.
I'm I'm assuming the calcium chloride will help it preserve its texture, but you don't want to add too much calcium chloride. It's puree aid, so it's kind of more like a soft. Oh, yeah. Can't so I'm not really worried about that. What I would do is take a little bit.
Take a little bit. Oh, you don't have a pressure cooker? No, I I I do I have like an instapot, but I shouldn't generally just do canning, like boiling it on a stove. So is is that not enough? It depends on the acid level, honestly.
It depends on the acid level in your uh in your product and in the airspace and how much uh how long you processed it. You can boiling water can anything that's high enough acid. Now, tomatillos are high in acid and peaches are high in acid, and by the way, John wants to talk about peaches in a minute. Uh but so the odds are it's high enough acid, and it's definitely if you if you store it in the fridge, I'm sure it it'll be fine. But I'm I hesitate to say that you know it's also probably got a pretty high sugar dose to it as well.
Um, so but again, what I forget what the number is. You can look up the pH and just test a pH of it. Or do you know what you really should do? You should get a pressure cooker. Pressure cookers are awesome.
You know? Uh I don't think an Instapot is rated. No one has this is why I don't know why they don't make the Instapot just go that little bit of temperature higher. Actually do know why, but they they could get around it if they wanted to. Um But yeah, I mean, like how long do you want to keep it?
How many containers do you have? Uh I have like probably like half a liter of uh sauce. Just like to be able to not, you know, to be able to use like during the winter or something like that. Um and not have to keep it in my refrigerator until Are you a suburban person or a modern? Are you suburban person or urban person?
Urban person, San Francisco, small apartment, small refrigerator. There you go. That was the other thing I was gonna say. Like if I was living my suburban life, chess freezer baby. Everything's in a chest freezer.
Uh uh I mean, is it high acid? I I I haven't tested it, so I don't actually know. But it's um it was kind of like three pounds tomatillas that are roasted and then added uh two peaches to. I mean, look, look up the pH of a tomatillo and see what it is. Uh most tomatillas that I have are pretty acid.
I just look, I might feel fine with it, especially like I might instapot it and just give you that little bit of extra oomph out of it, even though it's not technically good. But I just hesitate on air to tell you that it's okay because the consequences of it are bad if it's not high enough acid and something grows in it. You know what I'm saying? That's all. Yeah.
Um, and would a wec jar be okay in an Instapot? Yeah. Versus a ball jar. I think so. Aren't they designed to can?
Yeah. Yeah. And they're fine. Sure. Yeah, they're good.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you for the help. In instant in Instapot, in any time you're going to try to use something, even though it doesn't actually get hot enough to sterilize, you want to make sure to vent out steam. Uh if you have any trapped air that's not steam related inside of a pressure cooker, it uh drastically affects your cooking time and sterilization.
So just take a look at that and see if there's any. I've never looked up uh sterili trying to do canning with an Instapot. I'm sure there's all sorts of things over the internet telling you not to, but I haven't actually looked at it. Okay, thank you for the help. Appreciate it.
Now good luck. All right. So uh back to a beautiful shimmering red on this uh strawberry tequila. So Matt had the idea to Matt Ronin had the idea to increase uh his yield by blending the strawberry fruit uh uh along with the liquid and then straining, which left me with a large amount of very cloudy strawberry tequila. Uh and then you want to agar clarify it?
Listen, do not agar clarified tequila. Don't do it. Don't do it. Do not do that. Why?
Uh well, because first of all, you need to you can't get tequila hot enough without boiling it off to hydrate the agar uh because the agar needs to be boiled in order to hydrate. So then you're adding water to it, and then it's gonna strip a lot of the flavor of the tequila and this stuff out. I've tried it, in other words. I've tried doing strawberry uh strawberry, I forget what booze I used, uh agar clarification, and I was like, no, this needs to be done with a centrifuge. What you should do is hit it with uh Pectanex uh ultra SPL and then put it into a round uh container that is tall, and then just let it sit for like three days and then gently pick it up and just go pour the clear crap off the top and do that three or four times and and get progressively narrower cylinders until you know you can get the last little bit out and then cook with the last piece.
That's what you should do. Yeah? Yep. Yeah. Uh well.
Real quick before you go into that, your tails of the cocktail. You should plug that 10 minutes. So do it. All right. So everybody.
On September 23rd at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Dave along with uh Derek Brown, Ivy Mix, and Shannon Mustafer are gonna be uh have together speaking on a panel called Rules of the Creative Road, Finding Your Own Voice. Um This is an idea that Dave had a couple months ago, and we've applied for it and got it successfully in. We got some really great speakers. And Dave, you want to give a little pitch just to what you're gonna be talking about?
Yeah, so the idea is is that there's very few semi I've been to a million seminars, given a bunch of seminars, the Tales of the Cocktail, and um a lot a lot of times one of the subjects that comes up is uh how do you come up with new ideas or how do you stay creative or how how do you you know how how do you be creative in in this industry? And I realized that it's kind of impossible thing to talk about because you just talk about your own process and then somebody then what are they gonna what are they gonna do with that? So my idea was well, let's get like four very different people together who have very different approaches to creative process and try to figure out what the commonality is between those four people. So it's gonna be four people, so you know, shannon and Ivy and you know Derek and I all completely different in how we approach um cocktails, writing books, um opening a bar program, developing a menu. And so, but we you know, we had a pre-call that to discuss it, and we all do share a lot of kind of core commonalities.
And so the idea is trying to help you not necessarily try to become the next Shannon or the next Ivy, but how to be the best you possible. That's the idea. Is that a good pitch? It's a great pitch. So go to tales of the cocktail.org and you can sign up for the conference.
Yeah. It's virtual again this year. Yep. Yeah. A lot of other great speakers, John DeBerry, AK, a couple other people we know.
Yeah. Yeah. Not at the same time, I hope. Not at AK and John de not at the same time as ours. AK and John DeBerry are on a panel together.
That's great. Yeah. Yeah, but not at the same time. That would suck. Yeah, that would suck.
Parasitizing on each other. Yeah. Uh from old fashioned villain, my name is Paul. Uh huge fan of your work. I'm doing my best to try and bring your style of cocktail to California, particularly the Ventura County area.
Nastasia, talk to me about Ventura. It's nice. What is it? Like, where is it? Uh it's like a valley upper, like upper valley, like behind Malibu.
So close to the water? No. Behind Malibu. Malibu's on the water. Well, it extends into the canyons, and then there's Ventura.
So it's like on the other side of Topanga. Yeah. On the other side of the mountain. Yeah. So you can't see the water.
No. You're in a bowl. Mm-hmm. Valley. So, like where the valley girls are from.
Yeah, but I'm also from the valley, which is on the east. A lot of valleys in California. But not the Central Valley. Oh. Alright.
I have a would you think this kind of cocktail would work in Ventura? You're the one that knows everything about California and what's going on with the bar scene over there. No, I don't. I didn't do anything when I was there. You're the one where I said, should if someone opened a bar there?
You're like, no, it's a terrible place to open a bar. Uh remember? Uh remember. Uh I have a question and was wondering if you had uh infused caviar into a spirit before and how you'll go about doing it. And the second question was, uh, what if you want to infuse Uni into a spirit without a rotary event?
No, no. Next question. Well, what's that? That's so stupid. Why is that stupid?
The guy wants to put uh look. Whatever. I would say that uh you I mean, like I I don't have any special technique. I would just soak it and see whether or not it tastes good. Honestly, like Uni needs to be so fresh that I think your best option would probably be to just do it the way that we used to do uh oyster w what what those called, those oyster shots.
It's like a bloody merry with an oyster. What were those called? I can't remember. Remember those? Uh do it like that, just because none of those fish flavors are stable.
You know what I mean? So, like maybe if you did it in a freezer, you could get it to last for a little while, but I think it's just not gonna be stable. And I would just do old old school. None of the none of the new techniques are gonna help you get that stuff in there faster, I don't think. That's not that's my feeling anyway.
Um Sculvin Distiller, uh dedicated listener, uh still interested in talking about uh consulting wanted to discuss well, that's not for that's not for the thing. So question was what makes watermelon taste fake? I've centrifuged it, concentrated in the rotive app, and it always tastes fake. Uh is that what concentrated water uh melon juice just tastes like, or is there some sort of black magic or other dark forces that it's at work here? I wanna make a wow, holy crap, that's watermelon cerebral drink, but I'm just failing and failing.
Uh yeah, well, the thing about a lot of things like when they are clarified, lose their characteristicness, their stuff, because a lot of the the stuff is in like the flavor is in the in the pulp. And watermelon juice is just one of those things. So like when you like you just have to like the flavor of clarified watermelon juice, which is entirely different, and frankly, more melon-like. So I don't like clarified watermelon juice that much because to me it tastes more like a melon, and I don't like water uh melon. I like watermelon, but not like melon.
Like I don't like cantaloupe, I don't like honeydew. I don't like musk melon. Uh it's the one thing that I'm like, I don't really like that. I can tolerate it. What?
You hate beets, and you and I both hate a particular beet preparation. People, people. Don't serve a giant undercooked beet that's gonna skitter around on the plate and stain everything that we own. Right, Sus? Yeah.
Yeah. Did you know there's an American girl shop across the street? Well, that's it. If I you know what? If I had known, if Joe, if we had been here a year ago before Amazon hosed our business, right?
Like, I would just walk over to the American Girl shop. Well, what I'm investing in American girl. Oh, what? You mean you're gonna buy stock? No, no, the dolls.
And take them out of the boxes, you say. I'm gonna take them out of the box. I gotta take it out of the box. Gotta show that's love, Stas. Yeah.
It's a child's play thing, Stas. Anyway. Uh, yeah, that was the old joke that I was just gonna take my life savings and dump it into American Girl dolls. Aren't they made up like by 125th Street? I don't know.
I have no idea. I don't have no idea either. I thought you were going somewhere completely different with that. Oh, where was I gonna go? Something with the Sears All and the American doll.
And I'm like, wow, that's it. Well, I'm glad you brought it up, Joe. Are we talking about this? Listen. We said we were going to.
All right, listen, people, people. This is Patreon, Patreon people only. We need to whip, we need to whip people into a into a frothy lather on this. We are it's no secret to anyone that's listened to our show before that Amazon took away a half year or more of our business, and we're in dire straits now at Booker and Dax.com. And in order to get out of it, we are going to do, much to Nastasia's chagrin, another crowdfunding uh situation very soon, like within a month.
And what we're gonna make is a Sears All Pro. Sears all Pro. And what this Sears All Pro is gonna do is it's gonna have a 50% bigger front face, right? So 50% more searing area. And it's but it's the same size.
So it's the same height, doesn't make it any more tippy. You can go on your old torch. The reason we haven't released it already is we're also trying to make our own torch in the same amount of time, one that's got the adapter on it that can't spin around. And also, should I tell them what we're working on that we'll know in the next week? We'll know by next week.
Get ready for this, people. We're going to make it work on map gas. Now, everyone's like, can I use map gas on the Sears All? Answer no. So Searsol, for those of you that you know aren't privy to the other things in our life, it turns a torch into a handheld broiler.
It's been knocked off by a million people. Like it makes me so angry. Uh it makes me so angry. Anyway, so propane is the gas that it was built for. And if you use map gas, not only does it just burn a hole straight through the Searsol, but the size of the Searsol is such that it can't even tolerate that extra heat.
It just throws it away. It doesn't like actually put that extra heat onto your food, right? It's kind of like the Glengarry leads. It's just like throwing them away using that extra heat. So uh, but in the Sears All Pro with a 50% bigger searing area, it can use it.
And we've designed it to actually be more even than the Sears All uh 1.0, even though the Pro has a bigger front face, 50% bigger. So I've used a prototype and it screams. It screams. Screams. So uh we're gonna be doing a Kickstarter, not a Kickstarter, an Indiegogo.
Indie Go Go. Uh, in a couple of weeks, but we're supposed to be um, you know, like I say, whipping you folks into a frothy lather about it. Uh, and delivered uh hopefully before the Christmas time. Right? And that's it.
Wait, are we out of time? Yep. Uh, I have 58 seconds left, by the way. Uh hold on a second. Adam, Adam and Whiskey Vi Instagram wrote in in your book, you write about blender muddling uh cocktail with herbs.
If I want to make basil infused vodka, can I use this same blender method to blend the basil in the vodka and strain and store for later versus using a sous vide method? No. If you blender muddle and store basil anything longer than about 45 minutes to an hour and a half, it's gonna start tasting swampy. Adam, drain the swamp, cooking issues.
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