Hello, welcome to Cookie and Juices. This is Dave Ron Your Host of Cooking Choose coming to you alive! Not from New Stand Studios because we're shut down today. But I'm in the lower east side of New York City. We got Nastasia the Hammer Lopez in Stanford.
How you doing? Okay. We got we got John back in uh in uh you're you're chilling over there in Murray Hill now, right? Or is that Murray Hill what you call that place? Yeah.
Yeah, that's that's the neighborhood I know. We got uh we got uh Jackie Molecules. You won't be able to hear him because uh with the setup that we're working today, uh he has to uh he can't both run the setup and talk on the setup. So Jackie Molecules is here in spirit, and in fact, he's back on the board today, which is you know it's nice, it's always nice to have Jackie Molecules on the boards. And we have uh we were supposed to have uh Olive Oil Nick on.
I don't know his last name, so I call him Olive Oil Nick. Uh but because of uh what? Coleman, Nick Coleman. Nick Coleman. Because uh because the olive oil tasting kind of has to be live, uh, and we can't go live because of uh various uh quarantining issues with the um with the current state of the Omicron.
Uh we're gonna have him uh early in the new year, right, John? Have we already rescheduled that or no? Working on recycling, but probably uh so today instead we have as we usually, as we try to every year, we have Phil Bravo here to do his uh voiceover skills and his grinching. Uh by the way, Phil. Yes.
What's up, Dave? You still, you still are wasting your magic voice. You, Phil, you're a punk. Like, God has given you a gift that you waste on a consistent basis. So Phil has.
I teach the children. I want you guys to listen. Phil, you don't have a job right now, Phil. Oh, I know. It's so magical.
It's great. And unfortunately, because we're on Zencaster, and uh apparently Phil sounds like he's talking to a microphone that's across the street from where his body is. Uh you can't get the full effect of the kind of like, you know, the deep gravel uh in uh in the Phil Bravo voice, but he's given this gift. Uh it's not like he doesn't deal in kind of music or or recordings or things like this, but he has decided instead of taking his voice, which God gave him, instead of doing that, he's decided to make his life's work teaching people how to make the most irritating noise on earth, the recorder. So he teaches small children how to take the most irritating musical instrument on earth back to their houses so that their parents have to listen to the horrible one note whine that a recorder makes if they blessedly don't overblow that damn thing.
Is there anything worse, Phil, than an overblown recorder? Uh I think it's awesome, man. It's overtones. Come on. You just gotta, it's all about it's all about perspective.
So there's a perspective in which an overblown recorder. By the way, when I say overblown, I mean you blow on it too hard and it makes that horrible dying donkey cow noise thing. You know what I'm talking about? Uh anyway, it's a horror show, and uh you you you're an embarrassment. I love you, but you're you're an embarrassment for wasting your voice.
You know what I'm saying? Merry Christmas. See what I'm saying, people? You hear that voice? You hear that voice?
And also, uh, first time uh first time on the show. We uh have uh Joe, and I'm gonna I'm gonna work on your last name, Joe. Joe Gutisha. Did I get it right? Yeah, you got it.
Yeah. Serbian name, which I just found out uh today, Serbian name. Yeah, uh by the way, Joe is a poet, so maybe we'll get some poetry uh at some point in in this. I don't know whether everyone knows this. Joe, friend of Nastasia, uh Nastasia, Nastasia, poetry major back in the college.
I don't know if that's a actually. It's a first one first thing I ever learned about Nastasia was that she was a poetry major. Let me ask you this. Did she say that to you before or after you said that you were a poet? Because that'll be weird.
That's like for someone Nastassi's age to show up and be like, hi, I'm my name's Nastasia. I was a posing major in college. It was like that. You literally said it was the first fact, though. I'm not sure.
Well, who started? Was it me or you? I don't know. I mean, I'd have to look at I don't know. We'll have to look at the footage at the store.
Right. At the store. At the store. In line at the Dwayne Reed. No, no, anyone.
Anyone? Anyone. I was a poetry major. I was a poetry major. Joe's like, oh, I'm a poet.
I'm a poet. And then that's how that's how that happened. Is that right? Is that pretty much my clothes? Dwayne Reed.
Yeah. Dwayne Reed. Sorry. The hard rounds. I would say, like, uh, for those of you that uh aren't from New York, uh, how do you describe the Dwayne Reed?
Oh. Um, I don't know, Phil? John? I mean, it depends on where you're from. Like, if you're from Ohio, I would say it's like uh it's like a truck stop, but without the showers.
Wait, you know, it has it has everything you need, but you really don't want to be there. Right. It's like a CDS. Yeah, but it's not the same. If you go to a suburban drugstore, no, if you go to a suburban drugstore, right?
You're going to a suburban drugstore, you walk into the drugstore, you you do your stuff, and you leave. You're there's not like this, there's not like this like uh seething, like this seething thing between you and the people who run the store. It's not like a it's just not a thing, it's a different vibe. A suburban drugstore doesn't have the same vibe as Dwayne Reed. Yeah, Dwayne Reed is upset you're there.
Yeah. Dwayne Reed, Dwayne Reed is weird because they're selling you drugs, presumably to keep you alive, yet they wish you were dead. You know what I mean? It's a weird thing. I can't explain it.
If you're not like, I can't explain it. Imagine, like, uh, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's just like something that all New Yorkers, because it doesn't even matter whether it's actually a Dwayne Reed, right? It could be a CVS, could be a right aid.
They're all Dwayne Reed's to me here in New York. You know what I mean? Anyway. Uh so Joe, I found out today, uh, because I I asked him about his last name, is of Serbian descent, but has never been to Serbia. Yeah, what a shame.
It's a shit, right? Which, and the reason it's a shame is because I need a connection for the world's most expensive cheese, which is from Serbia. Is it really the world's most expensive? It is the world's most expensive cheese. I'm a little bit upset with it though.
They're right outside uh, you know, uh, right right in Serbia, there's a nature preserve, right? And on that nature preserve, they have a uh herd of Balkan donkeys. I'm not making this up. This is all true story, true facts. They have a Balkan donkeys.
And they're like, you know, as you do, you have these donkeys, you're like, hell am I gonna do with these donkeys? Right? So they have these donkeys, and they're like, let's milk the donkeys. And so they milk the donkeys, but it turns out donkey milk doesn't easily, first of all, you don't get that much milk out of a donkey. I don't know, like that's not like a phrase anyone uses, but you don't get that much milk out of a donkey.
And donkey milk doesn't make uh cheese very easily. In fact, there's an Italian group that's been working on because they also have some uh domesticated donkeys that get milked in Italy, in Italy, and uh, and I think also in no, that's camel milk, the other one. Anyway, so like donkeys don't produce that much milk, and it's hard to make a good cheese out of it. So these folks in Serbia mix the donkey milk with like 40% goat milk, right? Because the goat milk, you know, we all know goat milk makes a decent, a delicious cheese, right?
And everyone likes a mixed milk cheese. So they they basically they make a soft, almost goate chev thing that is 60 60% donkey and 40% goat. And it's called, I don't know how you would pronounce it, but it's P-U-L-E. I'm gonna call it puel. So this cheese is the most expensive cheese in the world.
They don't ship it. You have to go to the donkey preserve in Serbia to pick it up, right? And last I checked, which was a while ago, it runs about $600 a kilo. $600 a kilo. So that's that's it's an expensive cheese.
But you know, you're not buying a kilo. You're buying like, you know, like a like a little uh like uh John, what's your favorite uh tiny size French chev uh like form? What what would you what do you like? Like uh you know what I mean? Anyway, so I I know you mean so choose your favorite size like that, and uh it's like that.
And so that tiny thing only runs you back like you know, 60, 70 bucks or something like this. So you can, you know, all you and your buddies can get a taste of the world's most expensive cheese, you know, without breaking the bank. But I'm a little disappointed that you've never been over there. I feel if you did go there that you would taste the cheese for me. I don't need to taste it.
I need someone, I need to talk to someone who tastes it. Okay, yeah, I would gladly do that for you. Um I don't have any plans to go anytime soon. I'd love to, but doesn't look like it's more cards right now, but maybe it's a secret card. So the secret, the secret donkey cheese card.
Yeah. All right. Uh all right, John. You got anything? Uh you got anything for uh for the because this is the last show of the year, right?
This is it. This is the last show of the year. This is the this is it. This is the last show of the year. Uh first, I don't know if anyone's listening live, but I can't be in the Discord right now.
It messes with the audio, so sorry for that. Um okay, but other things. Remember I can be in it. I can go in it. Okay.
Oh, thanks. Um guys, we have eight, seven, eight days left on the Sears All Pro uh Indiegogo. We are so freaking close to uh crossing that finish line. So if you haven't bought it yet, help us get there. It would be awesome to you know meet this uh meet this goal and actually be able to come out with this product.
Or or alternatively, if you don't want to do that, photoshop an image of Nastasia's head, my head, and John's head flushing down a toilet and send that to us so that we can enjoy that uh that image, right guys? All they'd have to use is our Rockefeller Center Christmas card thing. Yeah, yeah, you like yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that flushing down the toilet, and that's that's the alternative, right, Sas? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Merry Christmas. Give me some Merry Christmas, Phil. Merry Christmas. See, what a waste.
What a waste. I know. That's the thing. I like Joe. Joe's introduction is he's a poet.
And let me tell you about his Serbian ancestry. It's mine is Phil, you're an offense to God. I mean, it's true though. I mean, that's true. What if let me ask you a question?
Let me ask you a question. What if, like, what if it turns out that you could like pull jump, like, you know, pole vault? What if what if you could pole vault like twice as high as anyone else on earth? But you're like, nah. Listen, I'm I'm 42.
What do you think all of those Olympic pole vaulters are doing when they're 42? They're not pole vaulting around Brooklyn. Yeah, but you never did it. And your voice is gonna last for at least another week and a half. You know what I'm saying?
It's like it's a big thing. Your you know, your voice may not last forever, Phil. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you know, you you know, lit listen to listen to uh, you know, listen to some old singers. Although they're using their voice all the time.
Is that why singers' voices kind of go because they use them all the time, or does it just happen as you get older? No, they theoretically they don't go. Male male singers, uh like opera singers, your voice doesn't really mature until you're 40. So I was just waiting to mature, Dave, like a fine donkey cheese. Well, remember, the donkey cheese is fresh.
Well, fair enough. I am not. Well, that's for sure. Uh but real quick, just to add one more thing about the Sears All Pro. Uh, so that means there's eight days left to claim the cooking issues secret perk.
If you go to Bookerandvax.com, it there's a pop-up for it, but you get five dollars off the Seals All Pro, and Dave is gonna make a pie marches on video kind of thing, five to ten minute video of him going through the prep work and making the pie, and you'll get an annotated recipe as well. So you can finally hear what Nastasia and I have been dealing with for the past couple months with all the. So uh, so fair fair notice. I'm not gonna get into I'm not gonna get into Pine Marches on, I'm not gonna get into Monroe, Boston Strauss, and you know, nobody in my in the business wants to hear about it. Nobody in my family wants to hear about it.
Like, no, like literally nobody. I went okay. No, Dave. I'll say this. John, John once set a timer.
I started talking about pie in one of our daily phone calls. Set a timer. 42 minutes later, still talking about pies. I had not stopped talking about pies at Pie Marches On. And John was just like, yo, yo, yo, yo, Dave, I gotta go.
And then he hung up the phone. Did we do last week when we went to Kitchen Arts and Letters Day? Yeah, yeah. I went to Kitchen Arts and Letters. I was talking to Matt.
Yeah. I was talking to Matt Sartwell at Kitchen Arts and Letters, who you should buy, you know, you should buy all of your Christmas cookbooks and whatnot or holiday, whatever. You should buy from them. So I went there, of course, to talk about what John. What was I talking about?
Pies. And you didn't clock that one, but it was forever. I I bored the pants off of a guy who only thinks about cookbooks 24-7. I was able to make him bored about pies. That is, you know, where, you know, that's that's my level of of interest in this particular in Monroe Boston Strauss and his his pie making.
All right, but that's I'm all I'm gonna say about it. I'm not gonna actually talk about it. I'm not gonna talk about it. Um so who do we have coming on next year for guests? Who do we have already in the in the pipeline there, John?
Boy, oh boy, do we have a lot of people? We're gonna kick off the new year with Sandor Katz. We're finally gonna have him on after um not being able to tap him in the studio. Then we're gonna have Masa Urishido on from Katana Kitten. Uh then we're gonna have with his new book, because he has a new book.
We're also uh we're gonna have uh Michael Anstending win him, uh the the uh the co-authors of the the book on Japanese cocktails. It should be good. Yep, it's gonna be great. And then at some point we're gonna have the Mofad curatorial team on, as well as uh Dr. Jessica Harris to separately, but they're gonna discuss the upcoming Mofad exhibition, which is an open is gonna be great.
Then we've got another one. We had an opening date. I know we announced it on air. It's been pushed a little bit because of this freaking Omicron. Yeah.
Uh but hopefully still opening in in February. But you know, stay tuned. We'll push that out. Uh the Mofad uh opening the the new date on our socials as soon as we have them. Yep.
And then uh we're gonna have Adam Di Martino joining us as well. And then talking about mushrooms. Yep. Mushrooms. Francisco.
Can I tell you something about mushrooms? Can I say something about mushrooms? No. I was at the I was at the New York Botanical Garden, the one in the Bronx, not the one in Brooklyn. And by the way, I gotta give Brooklyn their props.
They do a better job than New York in dealing with kind of food-based plants, like on a consistent level. They do a lot of talking about it, which I I appreciate. If you ever go to the New York Botanical Garden, right now they have the train show on, everyone's going bonkers. Everyone, every year everyone goes bonkers for the train show. But it when you you go into this giant conservatory and they get from one wing to the other, they have this underground tunnel that like looks like you're inside of a corrugated metal tube, almost like a mini quantitative hut tunnel that you're going through.
Almost like you're going into an underground bunker from like area 51, but you have to walk through it. No windows. They should do mushrooms there, don't you think? They should have a mushroom thing at the New York Botanical Garden. I think that would be nice.
I think it's a good idea. I'm gonna go ahead and guess that a lot of people are doing mushrooms at the New York Botanical Garden. Okay. Okay. That's uh that's fair.
That's fair. I mean, if you're gonna. I mean, I don't know. I I like am I the only guy that goes there for the plants? Is it just me?
Am I the only one? I like plants. I thought you like trees. I like trees. I'm getting to like plants more.
I am a tree guy, but I'm I'm beginning to think about plants more kind of generally. Whereas you hate trees, love flowers. Yeah. Right. But you don't you only started hating trees because I like them so much.
Is that true? That is true. You and Booker hate the fact that I like trees. Whatever. Yes.
It's alright. Whatever. Uh all right. And so who else we have? Yeah, you were about to say something else.
Francisco Magoya of Modernist Pizza and Modernist Breadfame. And then uh Nick from Grove and Vine is gonna come on as well. So talk about all the olive oils, yeah. Yeah. Uh so the the modernist get get all of your get all of your pizza questions ready for when uh John, can we do Nick on is there Val what day is Valentine's Day?
He will go on about using his oil as like aphrodisiac and massage and all that stuff. Valentine's Day is a Monday. Is that the December? No, that's the day. What?
No, the Valentine's Day is on a Monday on the 15th is when uh Francisco Magoya is coming on. Oh, and then when's Nick come on? Uh hopefully the following week on the 22nd. Oh, that's too bad. But if people are gonna get nasty with his olive oil, we need to do it the week before.
Yeah. I mean, but that that's just gross anyway. You know what I mean? Unless he wants to go back to the like Olympic era. You remember, like um, you ever remember reading about the old school Greeks they would put in the Olympics?
They would they would they would put olive oil all over their bodies and then they had these like weird scrapers and they would scrape the filth and the oil off with the scraper, like similar to the thing that you use on a tablecloth to scrape the uh to scrape the crumbs off the tablecloth. My favorite thing about that story is uh do you remember when we all used to read about the uh you know the Grecian athletes uh and their oil baths? You're saying you never read about that, Phil? I've never read about that. Where the hell did you oh went to school in Florida?
Sorry. Okay. That's true. Uh we have good plants, though. Yeah, yeah, you do have good plants.
You do have good plants. What it's Nastasi, you never you you don't remember this? No. John, anyone? I think I I think I remember something.
I wish I remembered something like this. My god, what did you guys learn about the Greeks? Like, what? Like Archimedes? Like, what were you learning?
You weren't learning about athletes and oil and scrapers? What the hell? I'm not even a sports guy. I don't know anything about sports, and I know how the ancient Greeks used to scrape the oil off their bodies. Come.
Why do you still remember this? I remember every dumb thing. I forget everybody's name, I forget everybody's face, and yet I can remember random stories about people and random facts from when I was a child. It's it's it's a curse, actually. It's a curse.
I'd be better off if I remembered people and like appointments, you know? Anyway. Uh from Jason, oh, you have anything else, or should I answer some of these questions? Answer the questions. All right.
From Jason, uh, I have a gear question. Finally, after 11 years of low temperature cooking, Jason, I know you've waited a long time for this answer, so here we go. And I I'm just gonna make it up. I I apologize in advance, Jason. I'm making this up off the top of my head.
Because I gotta admit, I didn't give it serious thought beforehand. Every week I'm like, I'm gonna answer it next week because we have a guest. This week I don't have a guest, and I still haven't thought about it, but I'm gonna give you some answers anyway. Finally, after 11 years of low-temp cooking, I ordered a chamber vacuum machine, the Vacmaster VP215, which a lot of people seem to like. I've never used it, right?
The VP215 is Vacmaster's, uh, I'm pretty sure that's their oil pump unit. Uh, aside from bagging stuff to cook, what are your favorite tricks or uses for it? All right, now uh the VP215, if it's the one I'm thinking of with the small, small bless you, small oil pump in it. I don't know how uh many, how much moisture, right, it can actually remove. So, you know, with the problem with removing uh moisture from something with an oil pump is that uh you you you swamp the oil and then you have to clean it.
But the most recent fun trick is the uh force cooling and like reinforcing the crust on uh breads. I will say uh so you take a hot bread, hot bread, and then you put it in the vac and you and you close it. If you put it in and you just run the vac, you're gonna blow the, you're gonna explode uh a soft crumb bread. Because when bread comes right out of the oven, the the starch hasn't really fully set up yet. It's too hot.
And so it's actually, even though the crust is firm, the inside's quite fragile. So if you uh run a hard vac on it, it'll blow off. So, like what I've been doing recently is putting like a, you know, like a like a cheesecloth uh around the bread so that this stuff doesn't get sucked into your pump. And then just like doing it for like a couple of seconds and then pausing, wiping down the inside of the machine and doing it until it cools down enough that you can suck a harder vacuum on it. You can make a bread 100% sliceable in under 15 minutes from coming out of the oven, which is pretty crazy, right?
Um, you have to do it in like short bursts, and afterwards you have to make sure you clean out the oil sufficiently. The other tricks I really like are obviously, you know, if you've if you've never had a vacuum machine, a real vacuum machine before, wow. I don't even know who that was, but you know, I hope you had a Kleenex nearby. Uh the uh if you've never had a uh a real vacuum machine before, you gotta do the old school trick where you put like fruit or vegetables. Uh like so, for instance, cucumbers work great, uh melons, even though I don't like the taste of them, they work great.
Uh apples and things that are harder, they don't go as translucent, but pears work quite well. So you slice things into chunks or pieces and you put like a flavorful liquid into the bag, you suck a hard vacuum on it, and then you know, you you force inject it in, and all the stuff looks amazing. Like all of a sudden fruits look like amazing pieces of jewelry uh and they're infused with flavor, or if you don't put a liquid in, they just get uh compressed down and they they're like denser. So that's like you know, the original watermelon trick was you didn't actually infuse anything into the watermelon. You just boom, smash the watermelon flat so it was a denser, prettier uh watermelon.
On that same idea, flash pickling in a vacuum machine works great for things like very thinly sliced onions, which I love. Red, go red, please come on. Red, red pickled onions are the pickled onions to beat. Am I wrong about this? Yeah, no, they're great.
Love them. Uh but you don't but you you like them once they're pickled, but so pickled ones don't give you nightmares. Yeah, right. Yeah, the raw give me nightmares. So pickling is enough.
Pickling is great, yes. That's enough. Okay. Uh good to know. And uh the other fun thing is things that uh have issues with them, cooking issues.
So things that are uh like that are like grease sponges. I'm looking at you zucchini, and I'm looking at you eggplant. So, like when you're gonna do uh an eggplant, um an eggplant fried eggplant like for for Parmajan or something, like I tend to squeeze the ever loving snot out of eggplant before I salt it and then I squeeze the the piss out of it before I uh before I bread it and fry it. Some people will pre-nuke their eggplant and they nuke it to kind of collapse the structure down so that the structure fills with water and won't absorb oil. But I saw Phil go off and I know what he's gonna say.
What? Something about squeezing the eggplant. Oh god. I absolutely was not. Oh.
No, God. I had a legitimate food question, but that's okay. Remember, remember, Phil, first you have to slice the eggplant. And then after you slice the eggplant, only then can you squeeze it. So it's a little, you know, it's a little bit like uh closing the barn door after the barn burns down.
Anyway, I know I'm mixing metaphors there. So you slice the eggplant, uh, you salt it, you put it in the bag, and you smash it, and it goes flat instantly. And then you can uh, you know, they're real thin and they fry up beautifully with like zero zero internal grease. Now you want some grease in the breading because come on, you know what I'm saying? But like you get very little grease in the eggplant when when you when you do it that way.
Is that a good list of uh tricks to do with the vaccines? Yeah, good job. All right, and good job. Oh, pat me on the back. Uh Phil, what was your food question?
Well, it was actually just like the you know, be in the dummy, right? Like, so what's the actual benefit from suit? Like those were all the things that weren't necessarily sous V, slow cooking. So, what's the actual benefit of vacuum sealing versus just my kind of like old school, you know, use the Ziploc bag and you know, is there an actual is is there a whole lot of uh benefits? It's funny that's it's funny that you call it uh old school because actually the vacuum machine came first and the ziploc was meant to imitate the vacuum machine once we weren't allowed to use vacuum machines in restaurants anymore.
So like the the ziploc technique was developed in direct uh in directly because of the New York City's uh ban on sous vide in restaurants directly. Like no one was doing that prior to that. So, like, you know, everyone was running around trying to figure out how to not use a vacuum machine, and only that caused uh the ziplocks. Ditto with uh rolling things in plastic wrap and all of that stuff. Everyone uh already had the vacuum machine.
It's so weird, right? Um, so the the vacuum machine for certain things, the the answer is no. 90% of the stuff that you want to do low temperature, you can do with a Ziploc. However, the vacuum machine is just more convenient for uh for certain things, especially if you don't want to have a lot of oil. You need a lot of liquid in the bag, like oil or otherwise to get the uh Ziploc trick to really work well.
Um, and certain things do certain things taste, I think worse in under a high vacuum. For instance, chicken breast, I think under a high vacuum, the texture kind of suffers, but um it's better for injecting flavors into things. So, like I don't particularly like low temperature um shrimp, but if you're would need to marinate shrimp, putting it in a vacuum bag injects the marinade into the shrimp. But for cooking itself, creme en glaze, uh, if you cook creme en glaze in uh a ziploc bag, it tends to still take on um kind of the sulfury egggy notes, whereas if it's vacuum packed, it doesn't. That's the one place where I'm really gonna say the vacuum is like a hundred percent necessary.
Um, other than that, certain flavors, like I say, have better penetration in a vacuum than they would in a ziploc. But no, there's you you you're you're fine, Phil. You're fine. Nastasia, did you want to make a joke about the penetration with the vacuum flavor? You guys gotta get you guys gotta get your head out of the freaking gunner's.
Jeez, Luis. This is you know the holiday show, people, holidays. Merry Christmas. Yeah, jeez. Uh from uh misplaced enthusiasm.
Does Dave have a good way of removing static from machinery? Uh for context, I have a flat burr coffee grinder that is a static monster ever since I removed the clump crusher. The clump crusher, in order to get a more consistent particle size and fewer fines. Uh, I've thought uh about possible solutions like having some stainless wire in the place of the clump crusher. I like that word.
You like that word? Clump crusher? It's okay. Yeah. Clump crusher.
Love the word. See? See, the poet knows. The poet knows. Someone, Stash, you don't even appreciate someone was sitting around one day and was like, what are you gonna call this thing?
Like uh this thing that like, you know, stops. So what is a clump crusher? First of all, right? I'm sure some of you are asking, what the hell is a clump crusher? Let me finish the question first.
Uh oh, and uh the grinder is mainly aluminum with some titanium coated burrs, if that helps at all. Oh, and I'm already doing a spritz of water on the coffee beans to tame it, but God help me when I forget to do that. All right. So a clump, let's say you have, by the way, back I haven't spent money on my espresso rig in a long, long time, right? So, like when I was buying stuff, they didn't have any clump crushers, right?
But nowadays, in the era of kind of zero retention uh grinders, a lot of people have grinders that grind directly from uh the burrs in through a chute into a porta filter, right? So the portafilter is the thing that you you know that that holds the coffee grounds when you're making espresso. It's the you know, the thing that with the handle. So a clump crusher is after the burrs. So, like after the burrs, if you don't have something right there, when things are grinding, they fly out of the burrs.
And as they fly out, right, they tend to kind of fly everywhere, and there's a lot of static electricity just because coffee tends to build up static electricity. So even if the machinery is all metal, if the coffee doesn't touch any of that metal on as it's spraying out of the burrs, it can have some static on it. So, and it can clump up where the static uh, you know, where the coffee particles clump together, they clump up and et cetera. And if they can spray everywhere. We've been having, by the way, static nightmares.
Uh, here. I've been having static nightmares with my with my flour, with my flour mill, and we had this issue. Get this, Stas, you're gonna like this. I won't say what I was making, but I had a graham cracker crust. I don't want to trigger you, nostasia.
Yes. All right. So I was because I was doing working with the book. I don't normally measure pie stuff or anything like this, but like because I'm working on the book, I'm trying to measure what's going on. So I had one of those SILPs, right?
And the SIPA, you know the SILPATs that have like the outlines with the with the diameters on them so that you can figure out how big your dough is. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Yeah. So SILPAS are non-conductive, right?
Because silicone is non-conductive. So anytime you're doing something that has like a lot of static or can develop a lot of static. So I have I have dough with hat, which has some like liquid in it, and I have SILPAT, and then I have a rolling pin, which is wood. So, and I'm not touching the dough, I'm just rolling it out. And so we were doing, I was doing graham cracker, the rolled in graham cracker crust.
So I had these finely particalized graham crackers, and I rolled it in, and then uh Jen, my wife, is who's helping me out, picks up the silpat and starts walking over because I was doing it on my on my table, not in the kitchen. I was doing it on the table so that I could like really gauge, you know, big. And so she picks it up, she starts walking over, and all of a sudden the graham crackers come alive and start flying up, but so much so that it was getting in her eyes. She's like, what the she didn't know what the hell was going on. I turn around, I see the graham crackers flying into her eyes, and the graham crackers like going everywhere.
It was the craziest, it was the craziest static experience I've ever seen in a kitchen is these graham crackers attacking my wife. It was nuts. It was nuts. Anyway, crazy. Nastasia was like, I just wish it was you, Dave.
I wish it had been you. I just wish it had been you. Yeah, she she got it in the eyes. All I got was, you know, is that then later, do you know the feeling? Do you know I hate sand, right?
You know I hate sand. Yes. Yeah. Does anyone else hate sand besides me on this on this uh? Yeah.
I don't mind sand. Yeah, I'm just great. Yeah. I think that I think the world cleanly divides. I don't think there's people who are like, yeah, Sand, I could take a take it or leave it.
You know what I mean? It's like sand is the worst. Phil, what do you what do you think? Well, I'm actually I can kind of take it or leave it. It depends.
I like sand on the beach. I don't like sand once I get home, you know? Contrarian. Always contrarian. Graham crackers on the ground.
Graham cracker particles on the ground is the same as stepping on sand. And so, like the stuff, it's hard to get it all up. You know what I mean? And then every time I step on a little particle of graham cracker, I'm like, it's not as bad as having a sticky floor. Nastasia hates movie theaters for a different reason.
The thing I don't like about movie theaters is the sticky Coca-Cola floor. The sticky floor, is there anything worse than lifting your shoe and having it stick to the floor at all? I also love that you're going through a list of all the things you hate, and you're like, you're such a contrarian. What? Oh, yeah, like you're not a contrarian.
You teach kids recorder. No, I find the middle ground, you know. Come on. What's the recording? Recorders are never in the middle ground.
You teach kids recorder because you hate parents. Admit it. All right. Back to misplaced enthusiasms question. So uh the clump crusher is there to do a number of things.
It's a it's a cool name, clump crusher, but really, if you don't have a little gate there, uh the grounds are gonna come flying out and they're gonna spray everywhere. And the ones that haven't hit a piece of metal that's that's grounded to the rest of the unit are gonna have their static on it, and they're just gonna be like a crazy wild hair flying everywhere, right? There's gonna be everywhere. So my question, uh so one of the issues that people have with the with the clump crushers is that um they retain grounds. So remember that the clump crusher is coming after the coffee has already been ground.
So I don't really understand why you would have a more consistent particle size, or in other words, why the clump crusher would affect. I mean, I could be could be wrong because again, like I'm behind the times when it comes to this kind of technology, but I don't understand why the particle size distribution in your ground coffee or the fines would be overly affected by the clump crusher. It seems to me, and for most people online, that the thing that they get really pissed off about is the retained grounds uh in it. And really, like in a zero retention situation, yeah, the clump crusher is gonna be a problem because anything that does have excess static is gonna stick. So fines will stick to the clump crusher more, right?
But then the next time you grind coffee, right? Uh it's already been saturated with fines. And so it like after your first grind, you know, you should be consistent. Now you're gonna get old, nasty coffee. That's a different situation.
Uh, but the answer is there's no good solution to what sorry, the answer is there's no good, uh there's no good solution. You could do like a double, uh you could do like a double baffle situation, but I don't I don't see a good solution. Maybe someone in the Discord or someone can get back to me with it with a good solution for it. Sorry, sorry about that. Was that an okay answer even though I didn't answer it?
Yeah, good. Uh from balloon knot. I know I answered this a little bit in case it was a direct problem you had to solve before, but balloon knot wants to know. First of all, are any of you guys decent at tying knots in balloons? Really good at it.
Really? Yeah. Is this one of those things where you say you're good at, or are you actually good at? No, I'm really fast and really good, whether it's balloons or water balloons or jelly balloons. Really?
Pick Nastasia first in the water balloon fight. Yeah. Pick her first. What do you think of do you know now Nastasi? Are you familiar with this new these new cheating ways of doing water balloons?
We should have thought about it. We should have thought of it. Are you okay with the cheat? Yeah. Really?
Yeah, it's genius. Uh uh, you don't think. Well, but the thing is is that like, you know, on certain things, you're like, no, you have to do it the right way, or you're a terrible person. Like you hate in bananograms, you hate the two-letter words. No, but the I just think that's a genius invention.
The only, I mean, it's not very, it's very kind of anti the earth, right? Because it's a lot of plastic you throw away to do it. Yes. But uh, I mean, to me, there's like some honor in like actually being able to wrap that sucker around your finger and like roll and pop it real quick without like getting you know, without popping them. So I mean I'm kind of happy.
This is a skill. After all these years. Here's something I didn't know about you that uh I've learned that you know in a water balloon fight summer, that's my that's true. That's true. Uh all right, so balloon one uh balloon knot wants to know uh how do you prevent cooked whole crabs from turning black when chilled and stored after cooking?
I I tease the answer uh a little bit, but um so crabs uh and other decapod crustaceans uh in their you know it's not blood, they don't have blood, they have like hemolith, which is kind of like because remember, they have an open circulatory system, they're not like uh not like mammals. Um they have more or less of these things called hemocyanids, right? So uh remember Nastasia, have we ever talked on air about horseshoe crabs? Somewhat, yeah. Yeah.
Does anyone know can you eat a horseshoe crab? Is there any meat in a horseshoe crab? We looked into this, Dave. We did look into it. And what do we find?
I don't remember. I will look while you're talking again. All right. Well, horseshoe crabs are horror shows. I mean, on that we can agree, right, Nastasia?
They're horrifying horrifying. I love them, but I hate them. You love the that they exist, but yeah. Joe picked up uh some mating ones once and held them up in the air, and they still clung on to each other. That's true, love uh when I was uh uh a small child, like eight or nine, I went to a sleepaway camp, probably too early, probably too early, probably shouldn't have gone, especially me.
And uh we it's in Cape Cod. So Cape Cod is uh is a cape, hence the name Cape Cod. And it it's you know off the coast of Massachusetts, and it looks like kind of like an arm. Anyone who knows what I'm talking about looks like it looks like a Rosie the Riveter arm thing, right? And on the elbow near a town called Chatham, there used to be uh it there was like a long like spit that came that came out, like a long like peninsula that came out, and and it wasn't connected to the ocean.
It wasn't a barrier island, it was actually connected to the Cape. The Cape, by the way, is just a big piece of rubble that was deposited uh in the ocean uh at the end of the last ice age. That's what that's what it actually is. It's actually very recent, it's not an old thing, anyway. I mean, old compared to us, but not old compared to the rest of the geographic crab we have.
So uh when I was a kid, that was still connected. And so there was a thing called Pleasant Bay in between the land on Cape Cod and this spit that was the you know the outer outer beach. And when I was a kid, we took a boat across that and we anchored uh right near the outer beach where there was nothing, and there was a horseshoe crab mating bonanza, and it was just you could not step without stepping on a horseshoe crab. And this was only a couple of years after the horrible, or maybe like a year after the horrible experience I had with the multiple brood cicadas that came out in New Jersey when I was a kid. Like, if you've ever been part of a multiple brood cicada thing where they sound like screaming triffids and they're they're falling everywhere, and you can't walk without stepping on cicadas.
You can't go anywhere without hearing cicadas. Like, if you've ever done that, imagine that with horseshoe crabs. I was kind of traumatized. And then only years later did I learn that they used horseshoe crab blood for medical things, and at the time it was very expensive. And I was like, I know where all the horseshoe crabs are.
We could go back, we could become millionaires on horseshoe crab blood because I wanted to kill them all anyway. And then I later found out that it was very rare that you have this like incredible, like huge group of mating horseshoe crabs. Anyway, uhcyanin. So that is the stuff in horseshoe crabs that they use. I don't really even know what they use it for.
Uh, but all crabs have more or less of it, and because it's copper-based, right? Uh, certain enzymes in that are there when they go bad can make it go like kind of either bluish or black. And so what's happening most likely with your crabs is they're not being cooked enough, right? So, like certain uh crabs that sustain damage or uh crustaceans that sustain damage when they're alive, you can get black spots on the shell, and I think that's kind of related. But if it dies and isn't cooked, right, it can go black, or if it's undercooked, uh like parcooked, undercooked, and then chilled, it's gonna go black because the enzymes haven't been uh deactivated.
So I would just say uh if you're gonna parcook and chill, you have to parcook, chill, and then fully cook quickly, or par cook longer, and you shouldn't have that problem. Is that a decent answer? Yeah, and they're not edible, they've only been used as bait and something about the COVID-19 vaccine. Really? Yeah, but I don't understand it.
So they're used as bait for what? What eats them? Eels. Eels eat them because my experience is is that they like you know how like when a regular crab washes up, maybe you see a claw, maybe you just see the the top part of the carapace, and something has eaten the rest of it, right? Horseshoe crab, when it walks up, it looks like a whole horseshoe crab, it's just dead.
Nothing's been eaten that thing, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh what?
You're gonna say something? Dave. From Dobrik, uh, hey Dave and the team. Uh, for some reason I moved uh out of the United States uh and many of my cookbooks uh bought in the United States call for insecure number one and number two. From what I understand, number one is 94% table salt and six percent nitrite.
Uh while number two is nitrite nitrate and uh 90% salt. In Poland, where I am now based, there is no readily available products with these ratios. Uh I can buy so-called salt pecklova, which is 99.3% table salt and 0.7% sodium nitrite. Uh the important thing, people is trite versus trait. Trite versus trait.
Uh undefeated, I realized I can buy pure nitrate uh and mix it myself with table salt. Now my source for all this information is Wikipedia. The increment information given there uh is given in unitless numbers, as in 6.25% of nitrite and uh 93 uh percent NACL, blah, blah, blah. This unit uh lessness is giving me pause. Is it in grams?
Is it mole number, or perhaps these are fluid ounces or or feet? Uh if this is in anything else than grams, what is a good source of these ratios of units in weight? I suspect it's a mole number. You know, you guys remember what moles are? Anyone?
Anyone, anyone? Okay. Yeah, in chemistry. Sweet. Sweet.
Appreciate that. Appreciate that. So like, so like every every every compound, right, has uh a number associated with it that is the weight of the atoms in it. And if you if you a mole of that weighs that weight in that atomic weight in grams. That was not a clear explanation, but in case you guys are wondering what a mole is, it's 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd.
I did I had a difficult time explaining this to you to Dax, right? So it's like it doesn't matter what it is. A mole of cars is 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd automobiles. There's not that many automobiles, but obviously, like a mole of anything is 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd of that thing. And it just so happens that uh, you know, grams to atomic units, that's the conversion ratio.
So anyway, uh back to the question. Also, in old books, I see people using uh potassium nitrate, aka salt, peter. Nah, I wouldn't do that. I don't really want to use uh that as I imagine night uh nitrite is preferred substitute. All right, this is the this is getting really in the weeds.
Is it getting really in the weeds, people? Uh all right. So Dobrik, don't use just use the uh the the stuff you were talking about that's got nitrite in it. Just use the nitrite unless you're curing ham, right? So the the only reason to have nitrate in a cure is because it's go it needs to provide a cure over a long period of time.
So most of the things that people are curing are uh ground products or things that where the the cure can penetrate rather quickly, in which case nitrite is what you want. So most all old recipes, unless you're doing hams or whole muscle cuts, really should be using nitrite instead of nitrate. I am gonna guess that ain't nobody writing cookbooks based on molar weights. That's just a guess. I haven't done the actual research, so I would bet that they're doing it uh based on uh gram percentages of uh sodium uh nitrate.
That's that's my guess. Um that's my guess. What do you think, Snaz? Uh I mean don't quote me on it. We'll I'll I'll ask Sandor Katz when he comes, although I don't know how much he knows about nitrate or or anyone in the Discord can uh chime in with their thoughts.
Was that good enough, Stas? Was that good? Yes. All right. Wait, wait, wait.
What many elements do we have left? We love to talk about Montreal. We have to have Phil sing. What do we have left? I don't know.
I'm just reading some questions. I mean, have we gotten through all page? You tell me when to stop. I'll I'll answer them quickly, all right? In five minutes.
Nikki. Phil, are you ready to sing in five minutes? Oh, I'm so ready, Stock. Is Phil is Phil taking us out of the year. Hey, Dave, what did you say?
Three potato sacks. Wait, what is it? Three potato I've said many things about potato sacks, but what what about three potato sacks over the head? Is what? What Phil sounds like.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't I don't know. Uh the first thing I heard was I sounded great. Now I'm here and I sound terrible. I don't know what to tell.
I mean, Phil, the voice sounds great. It's just the the the sound quality, uh at least something to to be, you know. Phil has got like Phil is the thorough Ravencroft of today. Okay. Phil is today's thorough Ravencroft, not as tall as Thor Ravencroft.
A little disappointing, but you could be the new Tony the Tiger, Phil. Phil, give me some they're great. Great. Jesus. I love that you're like basically like, you know, not as tall.
Uh you don't want to look at him. You don't gotta fucking radio. I I listen, I did not, I did not say anything. I did say something about your physical appearance. Heights not physical appearance.
It's just you're not a one-to-one substitution for Thorough Ravencroft. You're also alive and he's dead. So how's that? There, you won on that one. You know what I'm saying?
I did. I'm like a I'm like a mole of thorough Ravencroft. Yeah. Although he did live to be 90 in change. He did lead to be 90.
And thorough, we always talk about Thoral every year when we have Phil on, because of course, Thorl, although Boris Karloff did the Boris Karloff did the narration of the Grinch in the in the original and only Grinch I will watch. Uh it was Thoral Ravencroft that sang the song. And so like that's you know, that's why that's why we'll Dave, Dave, get to the question. Oh, we didn't talk about it, that's what I'm saying. Talk about it.
Let me just answer this question. Hey Dave, this is from Nick Hill. Hey Dave, why do different uh gases affect water or liquid differently? I.e., why does CO2 in water versus nitrogen versus oxygen have such different textures? Well, first of all, nitrogen, oxygen, I don't know anyone that oxygenates stuff.
Oxygen's usually a problem in uh in in liquids. Uh nitrogen is being used because it's not very soluble, so you can use uh you can put a lot of pressure with nitrogen, and then when it when you release the pressure, you get tiny micro bubbles because it all comes out of solution very, very quickly. So that's why people are using nitrogen to like increase the head, uh for instance in things like Guinness or uh or in like uh these new like nitrogen cocktails where people are like foaming it out. CO2 is very highly soluble in um in in gases. So to me, the the big uh comparison is between carbon dioxide, which is very soluble, but has a very tastes like carbonation, and nitrous oxide, which is laughing gas, which is used in whipped cream, which is also very soluble uh in liquids, but provides a kind of sweet, uh creamy uh feeling.
As to why they have, I mean, your your tongue has certain uh receptors uh and enzyme uh pathways that allow us to taste CO2, and that's why we perceive CO2 the way that we do, as opposed to other uh things. And presumably that's so that we can taste, for instance, things that are fermenting or going bad, presumably, but who knows why we evolve that way. Um, nitrous is a little more interesting in that God knows why we perceive that as sweet. I have no idea. But so, like how we perceive the gases is gonna depend on how fast they're coming out, how how soluble it is, and then the specific nature of the gas.
Was that a good answer, Anastasia or no? Yes. Well, you seem like you even I think it was a good uh answer. Simon wrote in, hi, uh Simon Stark, is there any reason I shouldn't use food-grade essential citrus oils and cocktails in place of the traditional twist? I'm a home bartender, so I may zest one day, but I'm not using uh the juice for a week.
I got tired of flack from my family for the sad rose, scalp, citrus on the shelf. The essential oils seem to work well, and I only use lemon, orange, and grapefruit. Anything should uh I should know, or is this okay? The problem with essential oils is that they're very hard to dose unless you uh dilute them in alcohol and spray them over the top. You can do that.
I don't, I mean, I've never experimented with I've never done a side-by-side with uh with like diluted sprayed citrus oil versus actually doing a twist. If if you what I recommend that you do, Simon, is you're not gonna hurt anyone, so don't worry about that. But like I would do a side-by-side, do a triangle test, right? Three cocktails, like two one way, one the other. See if people can tell the difference on a repeated basis.
And if they can't tell the difference, then yeah, sure, do the thing that's easy. I mean, for me, like the uh the act of doing that, especially if you're gonna do a drop, right? So, like in a in a in an old fashioned where you're gonna drop the citrus peel, it's nice to have that there because it continues to add aroma and it's got that burst of color in an otherwise brown drink. Uh so there you go. Was that a decent answer there, Snow?
Yes, yes, yes. All right. Uh I get one I got one more, right? Then two uh two for the new year. I got two left from the new year I didn't get to from TPO.
LM. Uh hey Dave, I bought a CMB, that's Becker uh tap for Seltzer, and it's great, but when I put a soda or cocktail through it, it comes out only as foam. I've tried different pressures for dispensing, but to no avail. I forced carbonated keg at 40 psi for cocktail and 30 for soda. Do you have a tip from my issue?
Uh cocktail's gonna foam. Ain't nobody can actually do a good job dispensing a highly carbonated cocktail. I've never seen it done, right? You can torque the pressure. Yes, uh, but here's some hints.
Uh, you need a much longer dispensing line after your cold plate. So you need to put it through two cycles of your cold plate after it comes out of the keg, two, not one, two. And uh that should be enough of a line to slow it down so that it's coming out at a relatively uh low uh a low differential between the uh line and the head. You'll get some initial foaming, but it should calm down. And then the little, there's a little knob, little knob on the right hand side of that tap that you can adjust to uh tame it.
And if you tame the flow, put it through two things of cold plate, make sure it's really cold when it comes out. The soda should be fine. The cocktail, I mean, I think that sucker's always gonna foam, but that's me. Uh okay, was that decent? Now we're gonna we're we're we're on to on to Hermie and Chris and and Phil.
Hermie and Phil in Montreal. What do you want to start with? Alright, do to do this do Montreal, do Montreal. Go. We went to Montreal.
That was it. Yes. No, I mean greenhouse. We ate bagels, we stayed in a tree house. There was a grease fire, and uh we ate all right.
Let's go and re let's go in random order grease fire go. Uh fire. So this was at the end of our first we entered Montreal, I mean, entered Quebec, uh, ate dinner in Montreal at a really nice restaurant, and then moved farther north up to Montombon for our where we were gonna stay in a tree house. The Laurentians, oh nice, yeah. Yeah, and so we end up hike two miles in the dark to the tree house at 11 p.m.
Start a fire in the wood-burning stove. We accidentally put candles on top of the stove, the candles blew up with flames. Yeah, we doused it with water. We doused it. Well, it was on start heating up the place or just have anything whatsoever because we were struggling so hard to like get the fire going.
But then so we we got it going, and then we realized we hadn't moved the tea lights, so we hadn't like I got a spatula or something and tried to like move them off with the melten wax like spilled onto the furnace and the floor, and the third time that happened, it caught fire outside, and then stupidly so you tried to do this three times. And like that was the dumbest thing we could have done. We should have just done nothing, which is eventually what like re remedied the situation was nothing. Like we just stood there. I mean, you wanna the start they wanted this one to like run out, and we probably should have.
But the fire calmed itself and nothing was damaged. Surprising. That's that's that's nice. Have I ever told you my Montremblanc story? No, no.
I was a small relatively No. I was at uh we went to a a ski a ski lodge called I believe it's called like Grey Rocks or something like this. And uh I was a kid, right? So I wanted to do downhill because all kids wanted to do downhill, but we were doing cross country, right? And this is back before skating.
This is diagonal cross country, right? And so I was like, oh man, I really want to do downhill, but like, you know, they were like, no, we don't have downhill gear, we have cross-country gear, and furthermore, you don't have a lift ticket. So being the little idiot that I was, I cross-country skied up the downhill slope, and everyone on the lift was like, the hell's wrong with this kid. What is wrong with like people were yelling down from the from the from the chair lift, you're going the wrong way! You're going the wrong way!
And I was like going up the mountain, and then of course the the the cross-country skis, they suck going downhill, they don't have an edge on the sides. It's not a telemark ski. So I'm like, I'm just like snow plowing, like why snow plowing my way down like a freak show all the way down the mountain. That's my Montreblanc story. Wow.
Dave, your your your childhood sounds like some kind of mix between the Beverly Hillbillies and Succession. You're like the Gale grad who summers on the Cape. And then you're and then your cross-country. Oh, my cross-country skis weren't quite exactly what I was looking for. All right, Phil.
All right, all right. Uh now. Hey, listen. The other thing about the Laurentians at that time is that the cross-country trails that we went on, and it was butt cold. I remember that.
They were maintained by monks. And so they were there were monks wearing, I swear to swear to God, wearing the full-on monk habits on snowmobiles. And if you've never seen a monk wearing a habit, like grooming a ski trail in a snowmobile, you haven't lived. You haven't lived. My waiter's name was Sylvan.
I still remember him to this day. Sylvan was the waiter. Sylvan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right.
Sylvan. Sylvan. Yeah. Oh, all right. Yeah, he was Kevicrois.
Yeah. He was Kevicois. By the way, okay, no, wait a minute it was Grease Fire, Treehouse. That was the same thing. And uh bagels were not that good.
Bagels at St. Vietnam. You didn't like them? Not really. They weren't like they were hot.
I mean, Joe, your opinion on bagels is kind of meaningless here in California. Excuse me? No offense, California, but I mean, come on. I mean, maybe I had like higher expectations because I thought Montreal was I mean, okay. We had some bagels at one bagel shop in the entire city.
Maybe there's more than that. No, we went for there. Yeah. And also, people, Nastasia enjoys poutine. Even though it's got French fries in it.
Because they've gouged some stuff here. Right, Joe? Did you like it? I I liked it, yeah. I mean, it wasn't the traditional poutine.
They threw in some nanny nanny. They went to let's look. They did just say it. They went to Pied De Couchon, they had the foie gras uh poutine, and you don't need to put foie gras on a poutine. You don't need to do it.
We had the poutine, Dave. You did not have it at Pietro Couchon? I had Foie Gras there. But the poutine we had was at like some hole in the bar in a village right before Montemblanc. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh also before we get into Herm and Phil, I know we're gonna run a couple minutes over, but I apologize. I can't let this go. Uh so everybody knows that John, I think everybody knows, everybody knows that I can I can say this. John's girlfriend's family owns a kalamazoo grill.
Now, I've said on this air, Kalamazoo grill is the grill that costs more than an automobile. All right. The Kalamazoo grill, well, it costs more than a bad automobile. Like it's like it's like it's like a low to mid-price, it's like um it's like a Hyundai. It's like a it's like a sonata, right?
So like you could either have like a Hyundai sonata or you could have like this Kalamazoo grill. But uh the sonata, the people who built it don't sign the inside of it for you, right? So this grill is so grilly, right, that they s the workers sign the inside of the Kalamazoo grill, and we're all like, hey, hey, how good could it be? Now John, for the first time ever used it, go. It was really, really intense.
I've never worked with a piece of kitchen equipment that gets as hot as that did. I used it to finish steering off this prime room I made in the oven, and it was too intense for the prime rim. The amount of flare-ups, you know, just because of the high heat and the grease coming off of it, it was it was wild. But I mean, it would be really fun to, you know, get the flames more under control. I asked other people to get it started, so I think they went a little too crazy.
He's sweetie. Yeah, you're fake. Get close to the mic. I need to hear about the Kalamazoo. Were you running it on gas or are you running it on wood or coal?
On wood. Can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, okay.
Yeah, no, running it on wood, it was really intense. For those of you that don't know, for those of you that have never done wood fires, like wood fires, wood, not coal, wood fires go from zero to ah real quick. And so uh when you're cooking with wood, if you're not like used to cooking with wood, you end up putting like a lot of wood on, and then it's really hardcore. I love cooking that wood, by the way. If this, if the thermostat on the Kalamazoo is you know good and and true, it we maxed out at over a thousand degrees.
Yeah. Wouldn't keep going yet. It was screaming hot. All right. So for for for those of you that uh for those of you thinking looking forward to cooking on it again at some point.
Those of you to do some math at a thousand degrees, uh the radiant heat per square meter of uh cooking surface that is being released, guess in watts, guess per square meter, how many watts for a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. I don't know, Dave. Just say it. That's why I asked for a guess. I know you don't know.
I j I literally did this calculation yesterday. So like I know the answer. It's guess. Five hundred thousand. Oh, that's really high.
I'll give you a the sun is sixty-four million watts per square meter. So, how many watts is this thousand thousand degree grill per square meter? I don't know. 20,000. Very it's pretty close.
Anyone else? Anyone else? 30. It's 30. 30,000 watts per square meter.
That is insane. Insane, right? And when you take it down to only 500 degrees, right? It is like a lot, lot less. It's only like, you know, a couple thousand watts per square meter.
You know what I mean? Like five, six thousand watts per square meter. So like that that that extra, you know, push up there causes the radiant heat to just freaking skyrocket. Just freaking skyrocket. And so like stuff will just instantly catch fire, including you.
I'm I'm surprised the grill made it. The grill was fine. Grill was totally fine. Yeah. Really.
Yeah. It's it's an impressive piece of equipment. Nice. Did you look for the signatures on the inside? It was too dark and I was too busy cooking, so I did not.
But next time when it's light on, I'll take a closer look. Yeah. All right. All right. All right.
So we're on to the last two things of the year, right, Nastasia? Is there anything else? Did I miss anything? No, hurry. We're over time.
Okay, okay, okay. So everyone knows who listens to this show that Nastasi and I, they love the uh the Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer. Some idiot, by the way. Look, you might be a good person. I don't remember your name, but they wrote an article for the Atlantic saying how all of those like shows, including Rudolph, are bad, and then rehashed a bunch of like dumb old stuff about how all of the characters in the uh in Rudolph are problematic.
Yeah, no duh. No duh. Like, you know, no one's like, oh, Kramer versus Kramer sucked because like they weren't nice to each other. No, come on, man. It's like it's not about people being nice to each other, right?
It's just it's the show that you watch. Like, go look at that Atlantic article where they where they say that all of the shows are bad. Nothing interesting in that article. Nothing interesting. I am a fan of the Rudolph.
Right, Stas? Yes, we love it. We quote it. We love it. We quote it, we love it.
Now you had Joe watch to see if he could find the error and he couldn't find the error. Right. Yes. I couldn't find yeah, I couldn't find the error. I didn't know what I was looking for.
Once I found error, I was like, okay. But then your own son came up with a like logical explanation. Yeah, my own son is the genius. So here's here's the story. So for those of you that don't know, Rudolph is a is a reindeer with a red nose, okay?
And not just like he's a little bit drunk. By the way, you know what they almost didn't get to make the uh that whole thing because they were like, they was gonna think that the drunk reindeer. We can't have a drunk reindeer with kids because it used to be like everyone's like, oh, the red nose meant that someone was drunk. That was like an old meme before memes, right? And uh so somehow, like by making it that bright, I guess, like a light literal like light bulb, they were like, everyone was like, We're we're okay with it.
So anyway, so you have this they have this reindeer with a red nose, and everyone is shunning the reindeer. Santa is shunning the reindeer based on his looks, you know, like uh the reindeer are really mean, they don't let him play in the reindeer game. So you have uh, you know, you have like the who uh who is it doing the who is the teacher? Which which reindeer was the teacher? I forget.
Uh Blitzon, Don? I thought one of those, one of those. It's like, we're not gonna let Rudolph play in any reindeer games, right? Right. Anyway, the the best character in the whole thing, obviously, is Yukon Cornelius.
Everyone wants to be Yukon Cornelius. Yukon Cornelius, the guy that is the actor who played uh Yukon Cornelius uh last name is man, I forget his first name. He actually uh fought in World War II and was uh one of one of the people who uh helped liberate uh one of the concentration camps. Interesting character, Yukon Cornelius. But Yukon Cornelius, yeah, Yukon Cornelius.
I mean, everybody is there anyone that doesn't love Yukon Cornelius, Nastasia? No, no one I know. Yeah, no one that I no one that you respect doesn't like Yukon Cornelius. I mean, he's he's awesome. Everyone says everyone in that show is mad.
Look at Yukon Cornelius. Do you think he what do you think his lifestyle is like quickly in one sentence? Yukon Cornelius. Is he married? Does he have kids?
What's this deal? Go one sentence. Don't we say I think he's a furry. I think he's a furry. What?
I think he's a thing. I think I think he and the bumble are a little closer than they're letting on in the show. Uh that's what I think. And he can do whatever he wants. Look, Yukon Cornelius, Yukon Cornelius, like he's just very accepting, right?
So like he's like, he's you eat what you like, and I eat what I like. I mean, he's great. No matter what you do, like he is like, he's like, he's fine with it. You know what I mean? He's gonna save the day.
He's Yukon Cornelius, you know? Although he did have that one awesome line when he said to uh Rudolph and Hermy, even in a land of misfits, you're misfits. So he he did throw down on that. So anyway, so we used that with our loan officer yesterday. Yeah, yeah.
So we're like Nastasi and I are trying to get this business loan. It's it's months and months and all this stuff. And then like they like the the lady we were talking to is like, I've never seen something this effed up before. And I was like, even among misfits, you're misfits. Like that was doing the whole thing from the show.
I think she had seen the show, so she knew what was going on. So anyway, so you have this red nosed reindeer, and you have this uh elf who wants to be a dentist. We won't get into that, but he wants to be a dentist, doesn't like making toys. And uh his boss, it's all coming down to this. His boss in the show is uh I call him the head elf.
I don't know what he's actually called, but he has this kind of like round face and like like he has like a goatee. And he is mean, he's a mean guy. And he has this very, very gruff voice, right? And he's like, Why weren't you at elf practice? Like that's how he talks, right?
Like, literally, that's how he talks. And uh so Santa shows up, right? And they're and all the elves are together, right, at elf practice, and uh, you know, Hermie's off doing, you know, like pretending to do dental work on a on a doll. Uh, and later the head elf yells at him. He's like, We don't need any chewing dolls.
Like that's just yelling at him with that voice. And uh, and so when he introduces the music, because Santa is looking like a like a D-bag. I gotta be honest, Santa's a giant D-bag throughout the entire show, right? And so he's sitting in the chair and he's got his hand on it, he's got his head on his hand, he's like not paying attention, he's like looking around, he's doing anything. Mrs.
Claus is being a freaking gem. She's like paying attention to these freaking elves. These elves have been working hard on this song called We Are Santa's Elves. And the head elf gets up, and you see his face, you see him, you expect some sort of mean son of a gun. And he goes, and remember, it's for Santa and the one and a two-a-and and then they start doing the whole song.
And the first time I saw, I was like, What the hell? Where is that voice coming from? And then literally right after, Santa goes, needs work, I have to go. And he leaves, and then you know, Mrs. Claus is like, oh, don't pay any attention.
And then she leaves, and then he's like, He's right, that sounds terrible. He starts, goes back into his old voice. So I always thought this is a mistake, this is an error. They like for some reason, like maybe the head elf died, and they needed a voiceover, and so they did an entirely different voice. And it always stuck with me.
And I mentioned this to Dax this year, and he right off the bat goes, didn't miss a beep. That is his Santa suck-up voice. Yeah. And I was like, I was like, this whole my whole world like disintegrated, and I was like, oh my God, like I hadn't thought about this whole like elf hierarchy where this freaking elf has to code switch in front of Santa and act like one human being or one elf in front of Santa, and then is an entirely has an entirely different voice and language when he's talking to his other elves, and it's not, and it's like entirely mean. So he's like, he's a bully, he's like a toxic workplace guy on the elves, but then whenever he's talking to Santa, he has this entirely different persona.
This blue when I realized it wasn't a mistake, that just shows how deep that show is. That they built that into that show, that just shows how deep that show. Suck on that, Atlantic writer. You just don't watch closely enough. You like take other people's like dumb interpretations of like what's going on in that without actually looking at it.
For instance, Yukon Cornelius Nastasia, what does that man have on his waistbelt? Gun. A gun. Man carries a gun. And does he have does he have gunpowder for that gun?
Yes. Yeah, because what are the life-sustaining supplies? Guitar strings, ham hocks, and gunpowder. Yeah, and cornmeal. So we know that the man, we know that the man can make scrapple.
We know that the man can make scrapple because he's got ham hocks and cornmeal. All right. So the man knows how to make scrapple, and we know he's searching for a peppermint mine, so we know that he's gonna freshen up afterwards, and we know he has a gun, and we know he has gunpowder and guitar strings, although we never seen him play the guitar. Do we? He doesn't play the guitar at the end, does he?
He doesn't know. I think it's for the snowman. Yeah. Oh. See?
Anyway, so man, but he never he never he never fires a gun at the bumble or at anything else. He he he he's completely non semi-nonviolent solutions to these issues. I mean, he's an amazing guy, Yukon Cornelius. Anyway, uh leave you, I'll leave you with that on the way. Anything else to say to people before we uh Phil take it away with his uh with his uh yearly grinch?
No. John, Joe, Phil. Well, anything to promote? Buy this year's old bro. Buy this year's old.
Joe, you Joe, you you Joe, you push in any poetry, pushing any poetry. Um, no, I'm not gonna push it, but I'm I mean, yeah, I have a book in the works. Yeah, you gotta you gotta push things. You don't go on something unless you're pushing something. Come on, everyone's pushing something.
What? Yeah, once it's released. When's it released? Maybe I'll have when is it releasing? Probably like sometime next year.
We'll race. You and I are gonna race. Do it before Dave. Do it before Dave, please. Releasing the book.
Yeah, yeah, race to the books. Uh, Dave. Oh, come on. So I was like two years ago it was supposed to be released. Come on.
Dude, I want an answer. When is it? First of all, it's it's Rocktober, but I don't know. I was supposed to hand it in in October for a year's thing, so I don't know. I haven't spoken to uh my editor to figure out like a new time.
I need to get her this section on on heat transfer, which is why I happen to know exactly how much energy uh 170075 degree uh grill is going to be putting off per square meter. That's why I happen to exactly know that because I was working again on my heat transfer section of it. Uh Joe, get yours out before Dave. That was Okay, yeah, we should have an episode where we read from each other's books. I I like that.
I like that a lot. And uh what I appreciate most is that Nastasia only wants Joe to finish the book just to make me feel bad. So it's not to make Joe feel good. If she wants Joe's book to be done so that I feel bad. I want you guys to read sections of each other's books on air.
That'll be really fun. Yeah. That would be a lovely smashing time. Smashing. Smashing.
All right, all right. So hold second, hold a second. Patreon people, we appreciate you. Thanks for uh joining us for this first year that we're uh uh at the new stand studios at Rockefeller Center. We appreciate you.
And uh we have uh Phil Bravo. Uh and Dave, before I start, I have my one thing to push. If anyone is looking for a last minute Christmas gift, make a donation to Bloom Haiti, B L U M E, Building Leaders Music Using Music Education uh in Haiti, BloomHate.org. Amazing organization, and I promise Dave zero recorders. Uh okay, let me ask you a question.
Are you signed up for cameo? Can people go on cameo and have you do voice messages for them? I'm not, but I can do that now if you'd like, Dave. Yeah, go find Phil Bravo on Cameo. Phil.
Yeah, come on, man. Come on. This is I can't. Maybe this is why you get no work in voice and invoice, because you're doing it from like across the block. Is this better or worse?
Better. Better? Better than before, but not as good as it was when it's at its. Oh, yeah. Give me a little bit of fill before you say that.
Alright, right, right, right. Without further ado, Phil Bravo. These are some lyrics created for Dave. And let me tell you, when you ask Nastasia, do you have any mean lyrics about John? Uh she comes up with a lot of things that aren't able to be said on air.
Stay close to the mic. You're going in and out. I'm right here. Alright, we're going back to micro. Son of a gun.
Even even among misfits, you're misfits. Dave, give me the intro. I want that. Uh better da better da bomb. You're some mean ones, Dave and Stoss.
You really are some heels. You're as cuddly as a Rhodovap, as charming as Dave Chang, Dave and Stoss. Dave majored in philosophy, and somehow now all he does is talk about ties. That uh we had uh John has a PhD, but now it doesn't have to bite. Wait, what?
Phil, you you you left. I I heard pie, and then you left. He's walked out of the room talking about PhDs. What the hell? Dave, I'm back.
I'm here. My lit my my mic is out. My mic is out. Yeah. Listen, if you if you hire Phil on cameo, he promises to use like uh uh his iPhone.
You're not a green person, right? You're a blue person, aren't you? I'm a blue person. Alright. Do you have more?
But that was great, but I don't know because you faded out. I don't know you whether you were saying more or not. I think that my microphone clips, man, but you nauseate us, Stas and Dave. With a nauseous supernos. John has a PhD, but now just fetches city bikes for Stas and Dave.
Ouch. You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel that you put in the spinzall for about five minutes, then you press it through some cheesecloth, put it back in for another five minutes. And that's what I had. Dave, there's there's so much food stuff in here. You got cactus, peel, garlic in your skull, dead tomatoes with uh moldy purple spots.
You know, there's a lot of material in there. Yeah. Well, Phil, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thanks.
And ha happy holidays to everyone, and we'll see you next year on Cooking Issues.
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