Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Your Shoes coming to you live on New Stan Studios at a Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? Good.
Back from your California trip there? Yes. Yeah, you have a good time in California? Yes. Except for in San Francisco.
Let me ask you a question. Oh, I know. I know. We have we have our San Francisco issue. Hey, here's a question for you, Stas.
Ready? Well, we'll go through it. Remind me, San Francisco. You gonna remind me? Yeah.
Yes. Uh also, as usual, we got uh we got John, we got customer service. Uh John, how are you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah.
You're in New York City these days? Yep. New York City these days. Yep. Yeah.
And we got, of course, Joe Hazen in our freaking Rock Center booth. How are you doing? I'm doing well. How are you guys? Yeah?
I mean, uh, you you probably have the most to report. Not that you want to report it, but you know, there you go. And uh we got uh Jackie Molecules chilling uh now where are you now, dude? Come on, man. Where are you?
Los Angeles. I'm home. Los Angeles. I'm home, LA. All right.
Where do you live? What part of Los Angeles are you from? Or where you where do you live? I'm from New York, whoa, whoa. Oh, first of all, I don't even know why I asked, because you could say anything, and unless it was literally the Hollywood Hills, I would have no idea where it is.
You could just make stuff up. And I have no idea. I would have no idea where you are. Uh and we were supposed to have a mushroom farmer on the uh like a literal mushroom farmer. And if anybody is listening, uh from the New York Botanical Garden, this is the botanical garden in the Bronx.
All right. For those of you that don't know, we have two very good botanical gardens here in New York City. We have the Brooklyn Botanical Garden and we have the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Now, they were founded, I think back when Brooklyn was its own city, right? So Brooklyn's kind of, even though Brooklyn's one of our five boroughs, they're kind of a pain in the behind to the to the rest of us because they didn't, when they integrated the two cities together, they didn't want to integrate their systems.
So four boroughs, I can borrow a book in in if I'm from Staten Island, I can borrow a book in Manhattan and I can return it in Staten Island where I live, because the library system's all the same. Staten Island, Bronx, same. I can I can get it. If there's a book in the Bronx, I can get it sent to me, right? Queens, not a problem.
Remember, Queens envelops, envelops Brooklyn. Brooklyn is completely surrounded by Staten Island, Queens, and Manhattan and water. I mean, that's it. I mean, it's completely enveloped. And yet, Brooklyn's like, no, our library system is different, and we're not going to combine them.
You guys have your library, we have ours. And they did the same thing with their botanical garden. All right. Now, the Brooklyn Botanical Garden is an amazing. It's awesome.
It's like a jewel. It's not as. I wish they had handled their reopening differently in COVID, but whatever. That's what it is. It's a beautiful place.
But the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx is one of, it's it's what got me through the pandemic. Remember, Stas, you remember when people were like, what is there to do in New York now? And I was like, I don't know, there's the botanical garden and like we have some parks, and I couldn't think of anything else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
So in the botanical garden, there's this thing called the Enid Haupt Conservatory. Now, the Enid Haupt was a very, very rich lady, so rich that she was able to keep herself alive until she was like 101 or some crazy thing. I mean, I think she was just transfused with money on the constant basis. And she paid for the redoing of this big old glass conservatory that looks kind of like Hugh Gardens, you know, everything's based on Q. Anyway, in order to go through the conservatory, you have to go through this underground tunnel made of corrugated metal that looks like it looks like you're getting shot out of somebody's colon.
It's like corrugated metal and it's dark, and there's no plants in it. It's the only place. Whole freaking, whole freaking botanical garden. No plants. I was like, you know what you should do down here?
Mushrooms. It should go mushrooms in that tube. Even though, I don't want to hear about it from you people, even though mushrooms are more closely related to people than they are to plants. They're not plants. I think the average person would enjoy it.
Yeah. Anyway, we were supposed to have a mushroom farmer on. I could have asked them about it, but they uh apparently couldn't make it. Farming mushrooms. Yeah.
Anyway, uh, if you're listening live on Patreon, uh call your questions in 2917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And if you'd like to know how to listen live and call in questions, uh, where should they look us up, John? Patreon.com/slash cooking issues. Yeah.
All right, now back to San Francisco. Stas. Lady on my floor is is moving uh uh out of the buildings, right? So, you know, she's like, I saw her, and you know, she has the dog dog sniffing me. I'm like, oh hey, smells my dogs, which is the dumb thing that every dog owner says when another dog is sniffing you, right?
Oh, he smells my dogs, right? How many times have you heard? You when you hear it coming out of your own mouth, it's absurd. You know what I mean? Because you've heard it so many times.
Anyway, whatever. It's it's what it is. It's it's like you know, the equivalent of talking about the weather. Anyways, so she's like, Yeah, I'm moving, I'm moving, I'm getting, I'm getting out of this city. She doesn't talk like that.
I'm moving, I'm getting out of this city. I'm like, oh yeah, where are you going? She goes, London. I go, you have to get out of the city, so you move to London. I was like, London's like the same place, different accent.
And she completely disagreed with me. Completely disagree with me. Don't you guys am I wrong or is she wrong? I think you're wrong. You think I'm wrong?
I think San Francisco is much more different from New York than London is. I mean, London's huge, it's a pain in the butt. People are jerks. They have good food and they have a lot of culture, and they sp they speak English. They're more like us than San Francisco is for sure.
Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, I'll say. Oh, yeah. They have a they have a they have.
You know what I mean? It's like, I don't know. I I I would feel much more at home in the fence, San Francisco, but I feel much more at home in in London than I would in San Francisco. Aside from like, you know, I don't know. I don't know.
Whatever. Yeah, I agree. London's like the most New York city outside of New York. I agree. Yeah.
And what is it that you hate about New York that's fixed by moving to London? You know what I'm saying? That's the other thing. I mean, I guess I'm uh sure they're different because like you're gonna travel to Europe. Yeah, to other places in Europe.
All right, but that's becomes your Philly. France becomes your Philly. Wow. France becomes your Philly. All right.
I hadn't thought about that. I was just thinking about it strictly on a city basis, not on a uh leaving basis, because as everybody knows, as soon as you move to a big city, unless you're rich or a specific kind of person, your life contracts to a two-block radius. You know what I mean? Like, like this will be Oh, you live in you live in the big city. No, actually, I live in like a four-block, five block radius, and anytime someone asks you to go like far afield from that, you're like, oh God.
Stas, what do I gotta do to get you to cross a river? Uh we never cross a river. That's right. Like, e like if you had to clean up, if you had to clean up somebody's like, you know, murdered body, and you had to cross a river to do it, you would hire a task rabbit instead of going to do it yourself. You know what I'm saying?
Because you don't want to cross the river. Am I wrong? Yes. Yeah, all right. Uh yeah, the only river she crosses is when she's getting out of dodge and going back up to Connecticut, right?
What a nightmare. Anyway, all right, sorry. All right. So we're since we don't have a guest, we're gonna answer uh a lot of the Patreon question. But Stas, you want to talk about what are these things here that are sitting on our desk?
Well, Joe. Oh, I forgot. I forgot. We have a whoa. Oh, family show.
Sorry. I believe you're talking about uh a male, a male chicken. A male chicken. Uh do you know that there's an actually a bird called Cock of the Walk? It's an actual thing.
I was told by my what's a bird of file called? A bird lover? What are the what's what there's a word for him, right? People who like love birds. My cut my my nephew and and my uh brother-in-law are are bird people.
Cock of the walk. Yeah. Where's it from, John? I'm assuming you're looking it up. It's orange and black.
Uh let's see. Ornithologists? Ornithologist. Oh, that's a person, one who studies birds. That's a studier.
So just like a hobbyist bird. Yes, it's yeah, the cock of the walk is a South American bird. Now it's kids all coming back to me. The Andean cock of the rock is the national bird of Peru. Ah, man.
We should have asked our man about that. Yeah. It was a bad connection, so it was hard to get through. All right, so Stas also. I mean, one more thing.
Uh we have Joe. Joe, pronounce your last name so I don't mutilate it. It's Joe Gutesha. But like how much of an emphasis do I put on the tug? Gutasha.
Like is that uh it's a T, so I want it to sound like a T. You don't want it to be D'd out like gooey. Yo! Well, sometimes that happens. Guda Sha.
Yeah. Do you hate that? You hate it a lot? No, I don't. And uh Joe is a fresh New Yorker.
He's a freshly minted New Yorker. That is true. How are you like it so far? Uh I'm still adjusting. Yeah.
Uh you know what, you know what? I'm gonna ask you in about 20 years. You know what you're gonna say? What? Still adjusting.
Still adjusting. Still adjusting. You know what the best thing about New York is? Have I already told you this? This is what I tell everybody.
So the best thing the honestly, the best thing about New York, they the one thing that that keeps me loving the city, like after everything, is that the thing about New York is that because it's such a like a uh a garbage disposal, like it just chums you up and spits you out. Like as soon as you show up in New York and pay your first rent check, as soon as you say you're a New Yorker, you're a New Yorker. I mean, I think that's the best thing about us. Like we're from everywhere. Like, you know, and like, you know, even if you've lived in New York for eight billion years, you try to flex on someone saying you're a legitimate New Yorker and someone else isn't, and you'll get smacked right down to the street top.
You know what I mean? I mean, I think that's the best thing about us. You know? Unlike some other cities I know where, you know, if you haven't been there 18 generations, you're fake. You know what I mean?
Whatever. You do you feel that way, Joe? Um, I don't know. It would feel dishonest still for me to present as a New Yorker. It's it's not about it's you don't have to present as a New Yorker.
It's as soon as you feel you're a New Yorker, you are. Okay. That's the nice thing about it. You know what I mean? That's what's so cool about it.
You know? And then as soon as you feel like you can't hack it anymore and you need to move to the burbs because you have some sort of I don't know, then you're not anymore. But you can still say you are. If you've lived here for an appreciable length of time, you can still say you are. What do you think?
What do you think, John? Do you think if you live it if you live in Manhattan for like 10 years or Brooklyn or Queens, whatever, and then you move out to like, you know, New Jersey. How long can you say you're a New Yorker? I think once you leave New York. You can't anymore?
You think then you say I was a New Yorker. But what about when you're traveling? People ask you, where you're from. The city. Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. I I told everybody in Mexico I was from New York. See.
Then I said I lived in LA. From New York, I lived in LA. All right, that makes sense. All right. I'm from New York where I live in LA.
From New York? That makes sense. You know? I'm from Palo Alto and live in New York and have like since forever. I mean, but like, you know, I haven't been back to Palo Alto since I was like three.
So it doesn't really count. Uh John, you want to tell them about what we have coming up on uh uh the Patreon and uh for Patreon subscribers and people that are coming up soon. Yeah, super exciting. Next week we have Francisco Magoya coming on to talk about uh modernist pizza, so it's gonna be great. Then the following week we have Nick uh from Grove and Vine, and we're gonna do an olive oil tasting.
We're gonna have Kenji Lopez on on a Monday at a different time, but we're gonna have him on in person. So just giving everyone a heads up that that's coming. Just got the walk book. Haven't read it yet. Yep, I've got to read it.
Uh James Hoffman, Matt from Kitchen Arts and Letters. James Hoffman Coffee, Coffee Genius. Yep, Coffee Genius. A lot of people have been asking for him. Uh then Matt from Kitchen Arts and Ledges is gonna be making a guest appearance soon to talk about some classics in the field.
Um, and we are still working on running a 20% off of most authors' books coming up. I don't know if that applies to modernist pizza. If I guess no, but um, I'll be in touch with him. And we also wanted to thank Well if he does, we have to figure it out right now because yeah, I mean, I'll email him today. Yeah, yeah.
Um but he wants to run that promotion after we have the guests on the air anyway. So we have a couple of days, but whatever. I'll find that out for everyone. Um, and then we also have been meaning to call out two people who sent us some products recently, uh long time ago, Yandu Vegetable Umami. Uh by the way, yeah.
Good product. Great product, yeah. Yeah, you mentioned it on air a couple weeks ago, and we didn't have the brand name, so I wanted to everyone to know about that. I legitimately use it in my house. Same.
Even even in non-vegetarian applications. Oh, we gotta talk. If there's time at the end, let's just let's go out on vegan Fridays and Eric Adams and like what's going on here and like the it's the verbal language. It's not vegan Fridays that bothers me, aside from like the weird cast of like Catholicism that it, you know, putting on a Friday when anyway, but like let's go because the language that's surrounding it is I think troublesome. But we'll we'll do that later.
Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. And then we also want to thank out uh Mike from Toronto Panatone. He is obviously in Toronto and he sent us a pantatone right before the holidays.
We forgot to thank him on uh you know publicly for it. It was one, it was probably the best pandatone I've personally had. So thank you, Mike, for that. And he cut off a piece of it and then threw it out the window masked uh at the in the height of the pandemic, tossed it at me and drove. I had to I had to like I had to like make sure it didn't fall into a puddle of filth.
Hey Nastasi, remember when we were moving in the uh we were moving stuff into uh Eldritch Street back when we had the lab, and I'm trying to stay clean and we're moving all of this like big heavy stuff. And I was that was your your favorite shirt. Well, I've got my favorite shirt, my favorite, uh my favorite uh, you know, like uh guyabera that Jen bought me when she was working in Panama. It's like it was that peach colored like linen, like the whole nine yards. I'm like, I don't want to ruin your shirt.
So I take it off. I'm in a you know shirt sleeves, because of course I always wear 8,000 shirts, you know what I mean? So anyway, so like I take off the my outer vestments. You said guard it with your light. I put it in the back seat of my car.
Nastasi's like, opens the door and like just like bustles it with her butt into. Now, it's hard to beat a New York City filth puddle. Ugh, yeah. It's like dirt, dead rats, oil, and like street sweeping garbage, melted snow, water, and spit. And in this particular location, the shavings off of Coconut Foot's feet who live next to us and kept shaving his feet into the sidewalk every morning.
Remember that? Remember Coconut Foot? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So shirt goes right in there. I'm like, it's done. It's done. I'm so angry.
It's too it's too wet. I can't even burn it and give it a decent burial. It's like it's over. Uh that's our relationship in a nutshell. Anyway, back to Yondu.
We should get that. Maybe they'll uh want to sponsor because I legitimately think it's a good product. Yeah, no, I agree. I agree. Yeah.
I'll try and find her email again. But uh stupidly, whenever I use it, I sing this cat man do song with just Yondu. Okay. I'm gonna use Yondu. I'm gonna use Yondu like that, like stupid, dumb.
Just dumb. This is the problem of cooking alone, and like, you know, you just have to sit there and sing things to yourself. You need some form of infotainment. I have no infotainment in my kitchen, so I should maybe should rectify that. Anyways.
Yeah. Uh so Stas, you have some stuff here. That's not for me. That is from Joe. It's from Joe.
All right, Joe. What do we got? Yeah, I brought some bruise from Mexico. Keep your face in the mic, Joe. It's not about his face in the mic.
All right. All right. So what are you doing? It's about my voice. Okay.
So I can't see them from where I'm sitting. Yeah, those are panditas. Uh they are enchilada-flavored gummy bears. Alright. Alright.
What? Well, let's try that first. And then we do the rest of them after the class. All right, listen. Gummy penditas enchilados.
Let's see here. This is the it's not a mouth noise. This is the crinkling of the bag, which is Nastasia's reason she doesn't go to movies. Hold on. Give me a mouth noise away.
They're good. They taste like uh gummy bears rolled in um in that uh Lucas powder. I could use more spice on it though. I could use a little more acidity, a little more spice, but I'm gonna go ahead with good. But Stas, you like your gummy bears tacky like that, or you like them harder?
I like them like this. Do you know what I like? I like when you get the hairy bow bears and then you let them go stale. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Why is it that a stale hairy bow is good, but a stale marshmallow is bad? Because even a white stale hairy bow is good. Yeah. Anyway, I like them in all of their phases. Uh Joe, uh the two Joes, what are your favorite uh stage of gummy bear?
You like them fresh or you like them, uh you like them hard? I don't have a exact preference. They're both they're both great, I guess. All right. And what about you?
What about you, uh Wacky Jackie? What do you got for me on your gum? What's your gummy bear preference? Fresh. Mmm, fresh.
Do you like pectin based candies? Like, like those uh, you know those fruit wedges, those heart, those pectin fruit wedges that like they're love them. Yeah, they're good, right? Love them. Yeah the kosher yeah i don't i don't mind those yeah i think they're delicious.
And they're like uh what's the uh when that when the French make them and they make them all high end they're like pet free pat the free yeah yeah but i call them fruit slices open the white one open the white one all right this one says oh which by the way like my favorite gummy bear yeah are the haribows but the uh you can only get them in Germany they're called Saft S A F T, which means juice in German and I believe they're like 75% fruit juice they set a whole new bar for gummy bears. Well we gotta get them you gotta ship them here and we'll try them. I found them on Amazon I'll get some for us next time all right get them yeah we'll we'll expense that stuff and uh we'll even sing their little jingle Haribo Mach Kindelfro Underwachs not Ebenzel right yeah yeah and you know during the holidays during December time if you I don't know why but if supposedly you bring chestnuts to the haribo factory you can trade chestnuts for gummy bears well whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa what first of all you know they're opening a factory in the US out of if they haven't already opened it it's in construction right now uh a new factory in the US can you pull that chestnut business here in the US? Can we go to the US factory hand them chestnuts and get gummy bears why I really don't when I went when we were in Germany in Berlin um they were like oh yeah everyone goes around this time to uh to collect chestnuts and bring them over to the factory I'm like that's interesting I wonder why that is the case and no one knew why like tooth fairy but with chestnuts this is a good fact Joe this is a good fact I think our I think our listeners are would will enjoy uh enjoy this fact. Yeah.
Huh. It's kind of like the Pope's hat. You know about the Pope's hat? It there's a ratio. If you carry a skull cap around with you at all times, and you happen to meet the Pope and you hand the Pope your skull cap, he will try on your skull cap, and if it fits him, he will give you his old one, and if not, he'll hand you back yours, but the Pope is still Yeah, yeah, it's a thing.
Is he still walking around like Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's all it's it's one of those things, it's like if if Nastasi were the Pope should be like, oh, the hat thing again. Oh God. That's what right, Saza, you would hate that. You would call an end to that creation.
What's the ratio, John? The fruits of the forest are weighed and then exchanged for prepackaged haribo products at a ratio of ten to one for chestnuts. Wait, ten to wait, ten chestnuts, one bear, or ten bears, one chestnut? By weight or by unit? By kilogram.
And then five to one for acorns, according to the number of kilograms. Acorns? What are they gonna do with acorns? Only chestnuts and acorns without shells will be accepted, the company said. You have to shell the acorns?
Oh my god. Wait, wait. Which is the ten? Ten bears or ten nuts? Bears to nuts, I think.
So if I show up with a pound of shelled chestnuts, I get ten pounds of gummy bears? It can't be. It can't be. That's that that is a that is an economically non-feasible ratio. John figure it out.
So what do they think about it? Are they doing something with the nuts that's kind of helped the process of making the gummy bear? Originally organized for children in 1936. The collecting and weighing of chestnuts is annual now an annual event for both young and old. That's what they feed the Umpalumpas.
Alright, so we got these things. I've actually had these, but not this brand. Arc. How do you pronounce this? Pronounce this for me.
In uh pretend it's it's a Well, don't drop it, don't drop it! Oh god. Alright, so I'm looking at these things. I've had them before. Joe, here, take this one.
Joe. So these are graham crackers with marshmallow bloblets and like I think coconut usually, and like half of the bloblets are pink, and the other half are like uh are white. It's like a checkerboard. It's like a checkerboard. I've had these before.
I'm gonna go with a solid. Oh, this one's not graham cracker, though. It's like a buttercracker. Let's try let's try this, guys. Already?
Okay, sorry for the mouth noises. I like it. Oh. Artificial strawberry on point. Mm-hmm.
Kind of tastes like Nestle Quick. Mm-hmm. What I like especially about this, no fruit was harmed in the making of this product. You know what I'm saying? Like, there's nothing, there's nothing natural about that.
I'm gonna guess uh, where's the pri I'm gonna guess margarine for sure? Is there anything? Let me um see if I can read this because it's undoubtedly in Spanish here. Uh they have a they don't want you to know anything about the nutrition, so they print it black on foil. So it's even if my eyes were still a young person's eyes, it would be completely illegible.
Now we'll worry about it later. So, Stas, that's your favorite so far? I think so, yeah. You don't want to try Yeah, yeah. You think it's Principe?
How do you think you pronounce that? Principe. Príncipe. Those are my favorite. Those like fueled me and my team in Mexico.
You know what uh in my in uh my stepfather's family when they're making fun of someone who's like uh very delicate. Prince Pesa delegat. You know what I mean? Like, she's the she's a delicate princess. You know what I mean?
And so we're trying sorry, sorry, people, but we gotta try all these things for you. So what I'm looking at here are Principes. You must have had these in your checked luggage, Joe, because uh they got the ever loving heck beat out of them. They're still, they're still, let's see, it's uh all right, here you go. By the way, do you know what I had recently when I was in the airport that I haven't had in decades, but I love, love, love them?
The Keyboard Corporation, these are the elves that live in trees, Keebler, and they they they cook bake things. So they have various little snack packs that are cookies, little cookies, usually buttery cookies, crossed between a ritz and a saltine. You guys know I'm talking about these cookies? Yeah. And the combinations are regular cookie, cheese cookie, and then the other combination is peanut butter or cheese in the middle.
The money, money, money, money, money, money, money, money combo that I found, I saw, and I haven't had since I was a kid. The combo to end all combos is the cheese cracker with the peanut butter on the inside. That is hyper money. And I I had that in the airport, and it made airport travel so much more. And I was like, uh, oh, that bright orange, that bright orange, fake colored, like cheese colored cookie with that peanut butter in.
So what are your what are your guys' thoughts on the uh principe's? I like the chocolate in it. I like it, yeah. Reminds me of a cookie I used to have back in Paris when I was a kid. Can't remember the name of it though.
Hmm. So, like, yeah, what's nice about the chocolate filling is it's it's real greasy. You know what I mean? It's like almost it's it's almost like it's a liquid. You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Alright, I'm for it. And it's very cocoa like. Do you do you guys like chocolate flavors where it's like you can literally taste a cocoa powder? It's like uh, do you like Tootsie rolls?
Yeah. Yeah? Because they are Tootsie rolls are objectively bad. If you had never had a Tootsie roll before, and someone was like, I made this, you'd be like, the texture is good, but it sucks. You know what I'm saying?
But because you grew up, but because you grew up having them, you're like, I love this. This is good. It's also the kind of thing where like it's so in handy. It's it's like it's you know the you know the um the Southern Italian cookie mostaccoli? No.
So there a bunch of different things are called mustacholi, but the one that like that we eat, right, is like basically it's just honey and flour worked together into a paste and baked, and they break your teeth. They're they're absurd. You know what I mean? They're ridiculous. And then the first time you eat it, you're like, this sucks.
Then you eat another one to be polite, and the third time now you want them again. I'm sure Tootsie Rolls are the same thing. It's like you have to get over that hump. No one tastes their first Tootsie rolls, like, all right. Do they?
Am I wrong about this? I could be completely wrong. I like the flavored ones. Isn't that like a Starburst in a tube? Yep.
Yeah. All right, Starburst is a delicious candy. That's great. Starburst. That's right, yeah.
I think uh, have we talked about Starburst versus Haichu? No. No. I believe, I believe that the high chew, while I like the flavors, a little too waxy sometimes on the chip. Yeah.
What are your guys' thoughts? I mean, John's with me. What do you what do you guys think? I don't like them. You know, but do you like Starburst?
Yeah. Yeah. What about Twizzler Red Vine? Twizzle. I like.
Whoa, you you're a red vine? You're a red vine on a twist? I don't like it. I don't like either. Do you know why I like them?
Starch based candy. It's a starch based candy. I love a starch-based candy. All right. I don't like red vines at all.
Really? Because they don't have flavor? I do like a Twizzler. Do you not like the red vines because of their complete lack of flavor? Um, not just that.
I don't like the texture as much, but like I grew up in a weirdly enough, I grew up in a kosher home. And uh we had our licorice that we had was made by Joya. Oh yeah, yeah, I know them. The Joya licorice is dynamite. I have not had their licorice, but of course we've all had their fruit roll ups because they invented the freaking fruit roll-up and they're out of Brooklyn.
Brooklyn. What's your favorite fruit roll-up flavor? Mmm, Apple. Ooh, I'm an apricot man. Apricots are good too.
Because I love myself some dried apricots. This is some New York history for you, people. Uh if you want more New York uh related food crap, just uh ask and we can go on uh forever and ever and ever. Uh but we should not, right? We should not.
I should not. Uh Biff Ditt wrote in, hey, oh, I shouldn't have done this one because this is more just talkie talk. But uh Dave, you mentioned quickly that you got into the food business and uh Michael Batterbury found you. Can you actually fill in that blank from what I can remember? You were doing sculpture in Brooklyn after college, then somehow got a job teaching at the FCI.
How did that happen? Not Brooklyn, my friend. Not Brooklyn, Manhattan. I've always managed to somehow keep my feet firmly planted on uh on the island. So when I moved back to New York uh after college in '95, uh we, you know, I went to Columbia for grad school.
So we were like way, way uptown, and I lived up there for a little while and then moved into the Garmin District. This was so at that time, people were already saying, Soho's so expensive. No one, no artist could live in Soho. It's too much money. And artists were moving out to Brooklyn, and so people were like, I remember when like Williamsburg was a freaking nightmare.
I would go over there to work, right? So I had jobs in Williamsburg. I was working for a uh uh sculptor named John Kessler who had his studio over there, and it was an entirely different planet back in the in the 90s, like Williamsburg, you completely, completely unrecognizable. Um anyway, after uh grad school, uh I went uh I moved to the garment district. I lived in an illegal loft, and that's where uh I started buying commercial restaurant equipment, and then because it was illegal, so I originally built a kitchen that was completely hidden.
Like so uh, because I wasn't allowed to live there. Our bedroom was hidden, so like the bedroom was exactly the width of a queen-sized bed and had a and had a wall so that you wouldn't even know there was a bedroom there. It was unfindable. It was in this like secret hallway. And then the kitchen, I built a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf on casters that floated the entire uh bookshelf a quarter of an inch off the floor, so nothing was visible.
And then I built a wall out where the kitchen was, where the sink and all the kitchen was, and the entire bookshelf wheeled in and completely closed off where the kitchen area was, so it was completely invisible, like completely. So, like it was like if someone walked in, they would not know that anyone lived there, except for we had a shower. And what I said was that I'm an artist, I do a lot of welding, I need to be able to wash up. So I put a shower in, and that was legit. Like they knew I had a shower.
Uh then back in New York back in the day, we used to have something called a Fox Police lock. Now, a Fox Police lock, if you if you look at any old school, they're they're they're gone, they don't exist anymore. But what it was is is that you know, we used to have these black like blast doors in in uh our loft buildings, and the locks on them were these giant steel bars that would you'd have a you'd pull out on a knob and you'd rotate the knob, and just like an old school dungeon, it would make that old school dungeon noise, and these these I had the cheap one with only two metal bars, but the real hard hardcore people had four metal bars, top, bottom, left, right, and the bars would just expand out and go into the cement of your wall, and it would take like it would take a bulldozer to break your door down if you had a Fox police lock. So I had a Fox police lock, and then I just never answered my phone, and I wouldn't answer the door if people knocked, and I realized the landlord was never gonna come in. So I started collect I went from having a completely hidden kitchen to having a commercial deep fat fryer, uh a commercial two-door deli case uh glass fridge, which is life-changing but also incredibly inefficient, uh, uh a garland, six burner garland with a salamander, and so I started customizing restaurant equipment and I was moving away from art uh and I came up with the idea of Museum of Food and Drink actually.
And when's that thing opening up? February 22nd. Yeah, and so I was trying to transition into the food world, and I came to the attention of Michael Batterberry, who hired me actually to write history pieces until because I, you know, I was a food history guy, until he realized I was also a food tech guy, because I had been helping Wiley out. I befriended Wiley because Wiley was hitting on Miley, my sister-in-law, who runs the food network magazine now, but at the time was writing for Time Out New York. And the rest, as they say, is uh history.
I started writing for Food Arts magazine, and then he got me hired onto the FCI. And there you go. There you go. Is that a great answer? Yeah, done.
All right. Uh from Oxy, why do you press down an espresso shot dense into a machine into the porta filter? But to tamp a mocha pot is not done. Oxy, my friend, it is a matter of pressure. In a uh in a commercial espresso machine, you have like uh many, many bars of pressure, like 135, 140 pounds per square inch of pressure going in there.
So the idea is to make a very finely compacted puck and you want a very even percolation through it. You're barely getting like any pressure at all in a mocha pot. In a mocha pot, you're boiling stuff and uh it's percolating up through the through the uh coffee grounds into the pot, but the pressure is, as we say, minimal. If it's not, you're in deep, deep doo doo. So you if you compacted a mocha pot too much, you're not gonna get the percolation you need, it's not gonna work.
Is that a decent answer? Yep. They're entirely different, by the way. The next time someone says to you that I know many people who love mocha pot coffee. You guys all know what I'm talking about, mocha pot, right?
The little hexagonal or octagonal things, right? Uh it's fine to love mocha pot coffee. It's not espresso. Okay? They're different products, they're different products.
And the next time someone conflates them, just drop whatever you're doing. I don't care whether you're doing surgery on somebody, just drop the stuff and walk out. Don't, you know, don't be mean or anything like that. Just you have to, you have to get your you have to get yourself out of that, out of that situation. It's just a bad situation.
Um Brandon Bird, when uh with modernist cuisine turning 11 years old this year. Can you believe that? 11 years old. Dang. Not so modern anymore.
This is the problem with using the term modern. Like modern art is from like almost a hundred years ago. It's like it's a 50s. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. And people don't make modern art anymore. No. It's dumb. It's a dumb term.
We're even done with postmodern art now. Yeah, post no, postmodern art was back when I was doing it. And it was like, you know, at least like come up with a dumb term that no one understands. And then you i you could widget it, right? Like, ooh, structuralist.
Post structuralist. You know what I mean? Ooh. You know, neo-Marxist post structuralism. At least these are just like widget words that you can move around.
Yeah. You know what I mean? And then every 20 years you can change their meaning and whether or not you like the people who wrote about it. But modernism, I mean, modern is supposed to have a word, modern. It's like Nouvelle Cuisine.
Yeah. People are short-sighted. Anyway, uh with modernist cuisine turning 11 this year, it's like, why don't you just call it now cooking? You know what I mean? And then you can look back at like the 1970s and see like, you know, the old Conran's ads or like old Macy's ads where people were like right with those goo goofy 70s fonts.
You know, 70s is coming back? Did you guys see this? If you guys look through furniture design manuals now and like food stuff, like the 70s is huge again. Why? I I don't know.
What's the worst era that you hope never comes back? I don't know, the dark ages sounded pretty terrible. I mean, for food though, for food. Oh, for food. The 80s were pretty trashy.
70s and 80s are pretty. I mean the 90s we had some good stuff. I don't know. Yeah, 80s. Early 90s?
Do you hope never comes back and what era do you love the most? Uh uh, early, late 80s, early 90s, never again. And wait. Oh, that's your time. I don't know.
Well, that as my I don't love, but what about early 80s? Like totally frosted. You like that? No, actually. No?
Mm-mm. All right. I love the memory of it, but when I see it now again, I'm like, yeah, that wasn't so good. But my memory of it is that it's fantastic. I carry a picture of my wife from the 80s in my wallet with me at all times.
And I used to show it to people. And they would she got so mad at me that she threw the picture away and then her mom gave me another copy of the picture recently. So her 80s picture is again. What happened to the permanent? What do you mean?
The hairstyle, the permanent. What happened? People don't do that anymore. Do they? Stas, do people still do that?
I don't know. Get permanents? Have you seen someone with a permanent recently? No. That was a thing.
You never got a permanent, did you, Sas? No. Mm-mm. I love that. All right.
With Modernist Cuisine Turning 11 this year, low temperature cooking and sous-vie techniques have been popular for a decade or so. I would say they were able to write the books because the uh the techniques were already popular. That's what I would say. Um in uh my estimation, what are the best new techniques or applications that have emerged in the years since Modernist Cuisine's publication? Curious about both low temperature cooking with circulators and combis as well as actual sous-vid using vacuum machines.
Also, Stas, uh Josh Bell is on record as enjoying Genesis's Genesis's Supper's Ready and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, which are both squarely in the Peter Gabriel era. Huh. Did you know that, Sas? No, we only had the one date, as you recall. Yeah, but you know, you you like you know, you like any sort of Phil Collins reference, and now you have even less you have even less in common with him.
Yeah that he chose a Gabriel Genesis, because you're not a you're not Peter Gabriel person, are you? No, really. I mean, Sledgehammer was a good solo first effort, right? Sledge. Yeah.
Good video. Um Brandon, I'm not exactly sure I understand what you mean, because like new see, the the crazy kind of explosion of creativity that happened in that time was about a certain like going after a just a boat ton of different pieces of equipment. Like everyone was racing. People had just me, I had just figured eBay, I was buying stuff on eBay before people like bought kitchen equipment on eBay for Wiley. This is why I was able to get them stuff so cheap, and even though we didn't have any money.
And people were just getting all kinds of lab equipment. And there was this huge explosion, which I guess you could trace pretty squarely to what Ferran and a bunch of other people were doing over in Spain. And um it was also a huge moment in history because people with the you know, this is before that. This is in the you know late 90s, people really were looking not as much at France anymore, and because of Spain, and we're looking at Spain as and they understood that that the finest of fine dining and what was going on didn't have to be centralized, didn't have to be French, didn't have to be like kind of what we grown up classically thinking. And it was kind of a mind explosion moment.
And I think that that same level of creativity is ha happening today. It's just not in that same vein anymore, right? So I think that, you know, what's happened over the past, you know, five, ten years with uh fermentation, with uh, you know, various kind of um, you know, new fermenting of new products, like the stuff that Jeremy and Rich are doing, and uh, you know, like this kind of uh even even the explosion like 10 years ago of uh, you know, new charcuterie products and all these sorts of like uh just attempts to control your environment, I think are where going forward. But I don't know that of any new amazing technical uh techniques. I mean, we develop new techniques all the time, but nothing on the order of you know, using a circulator or low temperature cooking, which I believe is the biggest fundamental change in how you think about cooking that's happened in like you know, 200 years.
So it's like, you know, it's like you have you have fire, right? Then you have like controlled fire in ovens. That's a big deal. Refrigeration's a big deal, and then figuring out low temperature cooking is a big deal in terms of how it changes the way you think about the way food cooks. And so, you know, it's unlikely that something's gonna make that big a dent again soon.
I don't know. What do you guys think? Yeah, yeah, it's definitely not been, I don't know. I don't want to say not exciting, but it hasn't been exciting me personally the last couple of years, the food scene. Yeah, but I think you're just burning out.
Yeah, it could be. I mean, the thing is like you you know what you have to do? You have to the pandemic is damaging you. This is this is the thing. It's like uh every you have to every couple of years, you have to have an oh my god experience somewhere.
You know what? The uh the other night I went to Zuzu's out in Hudson Yards. If you guys haven't been yet, it is excellent. That place was really, really delicious. Yeah?
Yeah, great Mediterranean food, really fun. It's with a lot, a lot, a lot of the old stuff from Nomad, the Nomad Hotel. Yeah. Uh front and back of house. And yeah, the food was really good, really exciting.
So what was it that surprised you about it? They did this duck a l'orange play, but inside the sick the cigar boreck. So, you know, the phyllo dough-shaped thing that's like in the spiral, and they stuffed that with duck, and then this like really nice orange glaze on top was really delicious and fun. Um this uh steak au poivre on a kebab was really good and just fun and innovative. I don't know, it's just it was it was a really good meal.
I'd recommend going. Kababo Piv, what cut of steak did they use? Filet. Yeah. Yeah, that was good.
I'm okay with it. I think people need to stop hating on the filet because even though it doesn't have that that much flavor, it's texturally amazing. It's got its place. It's got its place. I feel like you know, everyone who knows about food has hated on it long enough, and now you can just be and like, yes, there's not that very much of it that's in a cow, so to only want to go eat fillet is a huge mistake.
But that doesn't mean you have to hate on it. Yeah. You know? Agreed. Yeah.
Yeah. LA Now New York Joe. What are your thoughts on steak à poivre? Steak au poivre. Um I don't have like a really memorable experience eating one.
No, this is LA. You need to get some steak à poivre in you, man. But we know a really good club. Yeah? Yeah.
For steak à poivre. Are you talking about the other place? The place we went. So Nastasia, so imagine like two rail thin, long hair, pretty pretty boy DJs. Beautiful, man.
Pretty boy DJs. That's all you need for Nastasia, plus a disco ball, and you know, that's it. She's good to go. But it's a great club for anybody that wants to go dancing, right, Joe? Yeah, no, they played really great music.
They're very friendly. You can go right up to them and dance. The DJs he's talking about. Oh, yeah, the DJs. They even take requests, which most DJs don't.
Yeah, they played uh my favorite Italian disco song. Which is Tivoglio. Uh Joe. And Dave danced. Yeah, yeah.
Joe. Uh so listeners, longtime listeners in the show might know you as Mr. Persimmon Compote. Oh yeah. Why don't you talk about a little bit about that?
I don't think you know that. Why don't you talk a little bit about persimmon compote? Persimmon compote. You apparently made a persimmon compote for Nastasia and she enjoyed it. Do you have no recollection of this?
No, but are you kidding me? If I made a persimmon compote, I cook, I cook like every day. You know what I mean? Are we sure it was persimmon? It was persimmon.
It was persimmon. Yeah. Okay. And like some it was in the summer. I would be like persimmon.
Was it Hachia persimmon or foo you? You made it, dude. You put it on pancakes. Yeah. Yeah.
You remember that? No. Oh, okay. This is it's struggling to come up. Um.
Yeah, how did I do it? Is that what you're asking? I just want to know like where they came where it came from. Where it came from? Well, I like persimmon is kind of a fruit I've recently become enamored with.
And I've made compost in the past with like raspberries and blueberries. Nothing fancy, but then I was like, yeah, let's like heat up a saucepan and throw some persimmon in there, reduce it, put in I don't even know what kind of- I might have used coconut oil. What? Oh no, you're gonna throw it in there. Alright, fine.
Go ahead, go ahead. Uh and you probably used honey, not sugar. Maybe some sugar, some cinnamon, perhaps. I like the Nagman. I call it na in our house, it's Nagman.
I don't know why. But yeah, persimmon. It was just I thought, like, why not persimmon? And I mean, that could flip that on. Like, why persimmon sure persimmon.
Yeah. Well, I like to make a few. And which persimmon. What's the taste of persimmon? That's the thing.
No, I won't. I can't. I can't describe persimmon. Like it's one of those indescribable. It's like an apple.
Not quite, though. It's like a peach. No. Creamier in a way. It depends on which one you're having.
My favorite is the hachiy, which like really gets soft and ripens, like almost like a custard. And when you bite into it, it's it's viscous. It's like liquid. See, and you hear the tone of your voice, viscous liquid. There's something, and I don't mean this in a negative way, or as I I like to say styles, what's the word I always use?
Uh pejorative day. Yeah, pejorative. Uh there's something. Do you know where that comes from? This is a short, terrible story.
We're in Japan and we got a piece of equipment, and Dave's telling the Japanese who can barely understand him, this piece of equipment is weak. It's weak. And they're like, I don't understand weak. Uh with the word weak. I don't know.
And Dave was like, I don't mean it in a pejorative way. And they're all like, what? Like they don't understand weak. Yeah. Anyway.
So like there's something deeply revolting about persimmon. And I don't mean it in a pejorative way. What I mean is there's something that when you eat it, it there's something frightening about the flavor of a persimmon. There's something kind of like you're eating something that you shouldn't. There's something kind of like there's something like to me, there's something like kind of like uh like almost not like full animal, like not like animal note, but like something like other, there's something other about poop flavor poop, like the um like that molecule that what's her name used to talk about?
Jasm the jasmine stuff. Uh yeah, whatever that molecule is. There's something like that. It's like it's part textural and it's part that like non-acidic fruit aroma that like non low acid fruits, like I find like deeply disturbing. You know what I mean?
So like when we eat things like canistel, which I love, right? I s I put acid on them. You know what I mean? Because otherwise, like I'm like, it's a little bit repellent, like like if you ate a bunch of it, you would throw up. You know what I mean?
It's like there's something that my body is rejecting in it, and I don't know what it is. And for me, persimmons like that, but I like it. It's good. Anyway, not in the way that beets taste like filth. I mean, like, you know, but like a different thing.
You got but you guys don't get that? It must be a weird mental thing. No, yeah. I encourage you to investigate this feeling further because I also don't know what part of the persimmon you're referring to. Because it's not you're probably eating it when it's ripe, no?
Like you I've eaten them bled, I've eaten them dried, I've eaten them, I've eaten them hard, I've eaten them so I mean I'm not talking about the astringency. I can deal with astringency. Yeah, okay. Come on, man. I'm grown man.
Okay. Um anyway. I don't know. It's you should read the poem Persimmons by Lee Young Lee. It's a lovely long poem about that features.
It's nonfiction. I'll read it to you, Dave. It sounds like it's about persimmons, so it's nonfiction. They exist. Persimmons are real.
Um that's not what constitutes nonfiction or fiction, but whatever. All right, Joe. Uh that is not what constitutes fiction. Like I can write a fictional story about you, Dave, and you're a real person. Nah.
Nastasia would disagree. She'd say, I am what? Half a man. Yeah. Half a man.
Uh Alexander writes in, uh, I just want to come with an update. So remember, Alexander wrote in about um potatoes. So back in the day, you're supposed to throw sticks into the bottom of your birch sticks into the bottom of your pan. Uh, put your meat on top of the birch sticks so it stays above, and so that you know the birch. I don't know why you don't just buy a steamer basket, but instead you use birch sticks, right?
So, you know, those of us over here where we don't have birch sticks, what we do have is steamer baskets. But I'm sure the birch sticks added Rome, I'm sure it's great. You remember back like uh 10 years ago, everybody was cooking everything in hay? Yeah. Oh my god, everyone was like, That's the hay!
We're cooking in the hay. I love the the the best part about getting older is seeing these like things cycle in and out, just seeing them cycle. You know what I mean? I didn't mind the hay cooking, you know. Let me ask you a question.
Stas, you remember hay? Remember when hay was a big thing? Kind of. Okay. Have you ever had something cooked in hay that was not viciously overcooked?
Like viciously overcooked. Jordana and I did our clam bacon hay, and it was good, fine. Do you like overcooked uh pencil eraser clams? I do. I don't mind them.
I'm just- I'm asking you legitimately. It was fine. Fine. I think it's one of those things where it's more fun to do it than it is about the taste. And why hay and not seaweed?
We didn't find any seaweed on that beach. But you found hay? Yeah. Were you cutting down dune grass, which is destroying the habitat? Yeah.
Lunatic. Uh okay. Alexander writes saying, I want to come with an update. I did a test and boiled a bunch of almond. Don't cut down seagrass, Doz.
What do you think keeps the beaches from washing into the ocean? Uh do that in Cape Cod and you'll get decked. Do you do that in Cape Cod? And that's like, you know. Anyway.
Uh. I boiled a bunch of almond potatoes. Remember those, those little potatoes, starting with cold water. This is important. Cold water lit on, just like you would with uh, I'm not gonna pronounce it properly, pen at penic penet.
Uh uh, only without the actual meat. I used a long time to heat up the water, around 30 minutes to one hour to get it to boiling, and boiled it for over three hours. None of the potatoes burst, but they got softer than they did at Christmas time, where my dad said he boiled for three hours. Uh so here's what I think is happening. Your slow boil, I think is the key here.
I'm pretty sure that what you're doing is the old Jeffree Steingarden trick of uh by bringing up slowly the enzymes in the uh the pectin methyl pectin methyl esterase enzymes in there, which remember are the opposite of pectinase. Pectin methyl esterase in the presence of calcium will cross-link pectin and make it very, very stable, right? So pectin methyl esterase, acidity, so any vinegar or anything that's added to liquids, uh, anything like that. All of those are going to strengthen pectin. So the very slow bring up is gonna allow those uh pectin methylesterase enzymes before they're deactivated, they get deactivated above 65, 70 C, somewhere in that range, between 60 and 70 C.
Uh, allows them to do their thing and stiffen those freaking potatoes so that they don't burst. This is my guess about what's happening. It maybe in the real recipe, maybe there's some acid. I don't know, from the meat from a marinade from a marinade that drips down and maybe also strengthens the potatoes. I can't tell you, but I'm guessing it's the slow bring up that's helping you.
What do you guys think? Anything, anything? Yeah. Yeah, stash. Okay.
I got time for one more question. Hold on. He also wants to add uh someone asked about shaking a couple of weeks ago and about dry shake versus not dried shake. And Alexander feels that just if you just shake that ever loving snot out of it, you can do it with one shake with an egg white. You can just get a nice foam with one with without it without a dry shake.
I don't know. These are tests that need to be run. Uh mood therapist writes in a question for the show. I've tried clarifying tamarind a few times, and it always has a super fine cloud of stuff that drops out after the fact, but it's too fine to be caught by even a coffee filter. What is it?
And is there a trick for dispensing uh with it without spoiling the flavor? Thanks. Um, so unless you have a very, very, very strong centrifuge, a lot of these things, things that don't come out are typically uncharged uh items, so usually not proteins. Most of the uh, well, unless they're soluble proteins, but it's not usually that if they set things that eventually settle are typically particles of um non uh non-charged polysaccharides. So starch and starch breakdown products.
I'm pretty sure that that's what's going on in the tamarind. There's some uh there's some non-charged polysaccharides that are floating around, and because they don't have charge, the wine finding agents can't really act on them, and because they're not pectin and not pe uh or uh uh or hemicellulose, the enzymes can't break them down. So I think what you have to do on that is just uh rack it, just rack it. The other thing you can do is you can try to um re-put just filth in it and then spin the filth out, and some of it'll stick to it. But anything that you're gonna add to it that will hard stick to things like that.
Like bentonite is also gonna strip a lot of flavor. But that's my guess. For instance, uh certain bananas, even very ripe bananas that aren't Cavendish bananas, have a lot of starch in them, and that that they don't uh clarify easily unless you have very high powered centrifuges. But I'm pretty sure that's what's going on. Tamrin, best tasting, ugliest thing.
Am I right? Yeah. Ugly, delicious. Do you when you buy Tamarind? Do you buy when you buy whole tamrind?
Do you buy the sweets, the sours, or the mediums? Uh I don't know. I've I've never bought tamarind, actually. Really? Yeah.
I love tamarind. Unless they have the bug holes in them. You get the box home and they all have the bug holes, that kind of ticks me off. I like them all. There's a medium one.
The really sour one I think is too much. The really sweet one is delicious. The one that's right in the middle. I believe it's Thai. Did I ever get you this sauce?
There's a Thai product where they they don't make it into a brick, but they completely take all of the ugly veins out of it and all the seeds and just pack it so that you could just you know how fast you can eat tamarind if all of that stuff's taken out of it? So fast. So delicious. Pure tamarind. Without all the I like the crystal lee sugar stuff, and but sometimes I just want pure tamarind, you know?
Is it what are you eating right there? Tamarind candy? Just one of uh Joe's uh Tamarind candies. I was telling me to open, yeah. Bull Boli pica.
Sorry, give me give me some have these guys have some have this while I uh I'm gonna say. Uh from Will Klein, as a connoisseur of bubbles and carbonation guru, uh, I wanted your uh my uh opinion on pouring technique. I've recently seen videos of bartenders pouring carbonated beverages uh down the stem of a bar spoon, stating it helps to mix the components of the drink and preserve bubble potency. Uh I'm of the opinion that that would be more surface area than pouring down the side of the glass. Your insight would be appreciated.
Uh the podcast has gotten me through many over uh overnight work shifts. Thanks. And I can't wait for the Sears All Pro. Me neither, Will. Me neither.
Uh I'm gonna go with you on this. I think what pouring things down a bar spoon does is a cool bar trick. Basically, that's a cool bar trick. Um, but I I'm a firm believer in tilting the glass, pouring it until you have a liquid surface. And once you have a liquid surface, I just I drop the glass down and pour it directly into the liquid.
But that's that's just always what I do. I've never actually done a test where I've, you know, uh measured the carbonation because measuring carbonation is a huge nightmare. Almost, you know what I was doing the other day, John? Measuring the surface area of potatoes. How would you go about measuring the surface area of a potato?
Oh, I would take tinfoil. Ah. Ah. And a planimeter. Look up planimeter, kids.
That is a that is a fun piece of equipment again that no one within five years, everyone's gonna have a uh their iPhone will be able to do a complete 3D scan and tell you the volume and the surface area of everything. But now I'm still wrapping potatoes in aluminum foil, spray painting them with black paint, spread spreading the aluminum foil back out, and then tracing that with a planimeter to get the surface area of a potato. From Maximo 95. Uh, hey, Dave, Nastasia, John, Joe, and Joe now. Uh and Jack, come on, man.
Come on, Maximo. Leaving Jack out. Leaving out the molecules. Come on. Quick question.
We're thinking about getting a Buchner funnel, which is a terrible word. Uh Buchner funnels, okay. So for those of you who never used a Buchner funnel, uh, it is a terrible word. It's a like typically white ceramic funnel with a rubber stopper in the bottom of it, and in the in the in it is a flat perforated plate. And you're meant and what you're meant to do is you're meant to stick a filter paper into the Buchner funnel and then shove the Buchner funnel into an Erlenmeyer flask.
Erlenmeyer flasks are the triangular ones with the flat bottoms. One that has a vacuum takeoff, and then you put the vacuum takeoff onto the Erlenmeyer flask. You pour your crap into the you wet your filter paper so it sticks down to all the little holes. Make sure there's no no empty, you know, holes that are showing. You pour your crap into the vacuum uh Buchner funnel and it filters the liquid out and leaves a solid behind.
Am I clear? Am I clear? Now, this works great in a lab, horribly in a kitchen because the Buchner funnel is gonna clog up instantaneously. So unless what you're trying to do is get a very small amount of precipitate on the filter paper out of a reaction, like some sort of, I don't know, you're precipitating potassium permanganate or some kind of crazy thing, but you're not doing in a kitchen. It is not, in my estimation, a good piece of equipment to use in kitchen scale environments.
That's uh that's that's what I'm gonna say about that. Was that what? Yeah, we gotta wrap up now. What I have one more. One more, one more, and I'm done with all the Patreon ones.
All right, John, can we do it? I guess. We'll sell two more Patreon ones that came in earlier, but yeah. Steve Goodwine writes in I've noticed that I get better browning and better crust when searing proteins such as steak, pork chops, burgers, etc. in a skillet on the stove with very little oil.
That's the key that they're talking about, very little oil. Uh I get best results when I put a small amount of oil in a preheated skillet and wipe most of it out. Is there anything approaching a standing if there's anything approaching a standing pool of oil in the pan, it takes a prolonged cook to achieve a similar look. Why might this be? Listen, uh, Steve, I'm actually doing some tests on this.
I mean, not as we speak, because right now I'm speaking to you, but uh I'm testing a lot of this right now, and a lot of this has to do with whether the meat is raw or whether the meat is cooked. If the meat is cooked, it can't conform to the pan, right? So if you're if you're searing something that's already been cooked like low temperature, because it is it can't conform, you need enough oil to actually touch it, right? So it there are different different issues to look at. I'm assuming what you mean is raw meat.
And it's an interesting question. I'm looking into it. We'll talk more about it uh soon. All right. And did you have two more Patreon things we need to do we need to get to them now?
They're not time sensitive, no. All right. And then what was it? What was it, Stas that we said we were gonna talk about, but I didn't get a chance to? San Francisco, but you did.
No, no, it was something else. Nah, no well. Oh yeah. Now you don't remember yesterday when we talked on the phone. I don't remember.
You know what my mom used to say? If it's really important, you won't remember. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
You always forget the most important things. Hmm. That's life. True. Cooking issues.
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