Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live, but wearing a mask. Uh from the uh heart of the city, Newstand Studios, Rockefeller Center. Uh joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas?
Good. Yeah. So, like uh, you know, if you listened last week, I I had the COVID last week, and I'm on my last day of having to wear a mask in public according to the CDC guidelines. So apologize if I sound a little bit muffled. Yeah?
No. Sound great. Oh, thanks, John. Yeah. Also joined as usual with uh John, the customer service uh extraordinaire.
Uh Nihula, how are you doing? Doing great. Great, thank you. Yeah. Better now that I got my D-trix.
Uh well, we'll talk about that later. And we got uh rocking the panels. We got Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing great, Dave.
How are you doing? I'm okay. I feel good. You know, I felt not so good. I felt not so good last week, but you know, if you're fully vaxxed and everything, you know, you bounce back pretty quick from this, uh especially because I guess the old Macron, whatever, what's the new variant called?
The one I got? BA2 or something? Something like that. Yeah, BA Baracas. Uh and of course, on our California panels, I'm assuming you're in California, rock rocking the YouTube stream.
How you doing, Jackie Molecules? I'm in DC, believe it. Oh, freaking DC. What are you doing in DC? Um, I am uh overseeing the radio station that I built here, full service radio at the Lion Hotel, and uh training people on how to use it themselves when I'm not here.
So wait, wait, so wait, did you leave and go back, or have you always had your fingers in that pie? Well, the hotel's obviously reopened now. They changed ownership, so they're they want to reopen this radio space. Um, some consulting on it, basically. And you're like, you know, listen, it costs a little more than you'd think to reopen something.
You can't just turn it off and on like a spigot. You gotta, you know, it's gotta be re-upped. It's cost some money, am I right? You are right. Yeah, absolutely.
Just goes to show people you can't just turn somebody off, turn off their turn off their money tap, and then expect to turn it on at the same price. That's not how life works. It's just not how life works. Not how it works. And hey, not not to start you on a tangent, but um, I just have to say I I forgot how ridiculous jumbo slices of pizza are in this city.
I had one last night and they're just absurd. I don't know if you've ever experienced the DC jumbo slice, but I have not. It's a trip. I've heard of them. Like how big, like enormous.
Three three feet long? Oh, what's ridiculous? No, no, no, not three feet long. But there's a place up by Columbia University, I think it was called crown pizza or something like this, that used to serve an absurd o New York slice. It was the equivalent of two and a half regular New York slices.
For those of you that never had a New York slice, a New York slice is a thing, it's a size. No one's like, what size of slice do you want? It's like a New York slice is a New York slice. Am I am I wrong here? No?
No, you're right. Yeah. For sure. But there was a place that catered to college kids that was like, we're gonna have big slices, and they were known for that in the 90s. It was like, you know, we're the place with the big slice.
It's only a little more, but it's twice the food. All right, this one looks like it's 17 or 18 inches. Oh, so it comes from a large pie. Yeah. The pie itself is oversight.
It does. Yeah. It's the pie itself. Yeah. And is the idea when you have it that you're supposed to feel like a the wonder of being a small child again?
Can you remember what it's like holding a slice when you were a kid? When you were a little kid, you got a slice, you're like, oh my god, it's this big thing. You remember how awesome that was? Yeah, I guess that kind of happens with a jumbo slice. It's just it's just uh logistically kind of hard to eat.
You can't really fold it like a normal slice, you know. It's it's a big undertaking to eat one. So Nastasi and I had Nastasi and I had this intern at the French Culinary Institute. His name was was Cliff. He actually does a lot of videos.
You can see him on was that Eater he was doing videos for or Yeah, I think so. Peter, yeah. Cliff. Cliff, Cliff Endo, he went by on, I think on his thing, uh, even though his last name is not that, it's uh Gulliber. Anyway, so like he was he's a large, he is he is a large and imposing human figure, like a large, large man, like just a towering giant.
Like uh to me, he always reminded me like he looked a little bit like a uh like a Palauan Orson Wells, but much taller. Is that accurate? You say Stas? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Uh or early Orson Wells, like the handsome Orson Wells, not like the the late devolved into his own Phil Florison Wells. And um, and then at the same time, Jeremiah Stone from Fabulous and Jeremiah Stone Contra Wild Air, you know, fancy folk here in New York City, he was working in our amphitheater. So they were both in their chef whites, and and Jeremiah Stowe, in case you don't know it, is a small is a smaller man. He is not a large man, right, Stas? Yeah, small man.
And so we found this tiny, almost novelty whisk. Remember this, Dus? And I believe we gave Cliff the novelty whisk, and we gave Jeremiah, we had this, we have those giant like hotel whisks that are for, I don't know what they're for whisking for, because no human can can wield this whisk. And then we also gave, we got the smallest, like pan, smallest sauce pan, that's ridiculous tiny pans that they use for presentation at the table. You know what I'm talking about?
Yeah, yeah. And like the biggest one. And I can't do we give Jeremiah the big ones and Cliff the small ones or vice versa? But then we took a series of pictures of like FU scale. And it was it was fun.
Rest us? Yeah. Remember when Cliff didn't dilute the cocktail we served and everyone got wasted. Well, yeah, but then there was the flip side when Cliff saved us when he started over, he started over diluting that one drunk guy's cocktail, remember? No, I don't remember that.
Remember we were at this party, and the guy would was coming to us, and he kept on coming to us, and rather than shut him off, only Cliff would make drinks for him. And he titrated that guy's drinks down to zero ABV over the course of the night. Which was, you know, on the one hand, not I mean, like he wasn't paying. It was a party, it's fine. If someone's paying to do that, you can't do it.
You have to cut them off and kick them out. But in a party, I thought maybe it was an okay thing to do. This is an interesting ethical question. See what you guys think. See what you think at the Discord.
Let us know. Speaking of the Discord, uh, if you're listening on Patreon, call in to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. You can also, if you're a member of the Patreon, chime in on the Discord to do anything like that. If you want to know how to be able to do that, then uh join our Patreon.
You want to give them information on that, John? Yeah, uh, go to patreon.com/slash cooking issues. And there's a bunch of membership levels. Uh obviously the more you pay, the more awesome stuff you get. So go check it out.
Yeah. I feel like I sound crazy. Do I sound crazy? No. No?
All right. You know why I feel like I sound crazy? Because I'm hearing myself in my own head and reflected in my mask and in my earphones. You know what I mean? So I sound like I'm in one of those Houdini boxes where I got to escape, and Nastasia's praying I won't, so she can saw me in half and have real blood come out of the box.
Yeah. I mean, I I can just imagine. It's like for those of you that have never met like Nastasia, she has this, she has a uh she has normal joy and she has Nastasia Demented Joy. And I love the Nastasia Demented Joy face. I like that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so like I'm picturing her just with the look of demented joy sawing through my body in one of those magic boxes. You know what I mean? And you know what? I'm okay with it.
I'm all right with it. Yeah. Uh well, you know what we could do next time is we can do like you know, like that band Lightning Bolt. We can just like basically just take a mic, put it in your mouth, and then just duct tape it to your face. Oh, yeah.
That's awesome. Oh, that is cool. Yeah, yeah. As long as I I was I'm glad you didn't go the Gigi Allen route and have the microphone go into a different hole, because that would be unpleasant. Yeah, I don't know.
I still think do his fans ever forgive him for not dying on stage like he promised to do. I don't know. That guy has an enigma. I mean, here's the thing about it's disgusting enigma. I used to listen to all of that kind of stuff growing up.
It's just not good. If you go back and you listen to it, like musically, it's just not good. You know? I don't know. Whatever, it's not a show on music.
Uh but uh interesting aside, so yesterday I went with Dax, who's my you know younger child on our first college visits uh uh, you know, ever, and uh we went out to uh Lafayette and Muhlenburg, which are in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Now, if you've ever driven out that way, as soon as you get over the border into Pennsylvania and all the way over there and down, you're in what I consider to be interesting culinary territory, and you're in like a territory that like a good chunk of my family comes from. So, for instance, like over near in Pennsylvania near Philadelphia, some of you might know this, right? They don't call what do you Nastasio? What do you call a sandwich with Italian cold cuts on it and like oil and vinegar and like shredded lettuce and tomato on like a long roll?
What do you call that? Italian combo. Okay, if you weren't gonna a hero? You call it a hero? What do you call it?
I mean, like people as I I know where we're going with this. I'm like, there's I got a lot in my head right now. Yeah. A sarni? Sarni?
Ooh. Where's that from? Whoa. Yeah, I don't know. It's my British um friends.
Call them sarnies. Whoa. Yeah, I like Sarni. No offense to your British friends. They're there's they're mistaken, but what do they call it in California, Stas?
Oh, wait. Where are you? Where where's your family at, Stas? What do you call these things? Uh I don't know.
Sub. Subs? Mm-hmm. That's valid, right? That's I think probably the most popular statewide.
What do they call them in Connecticut, John? Subs. You call them subs? What would the what is Nardel Nardalini's call it? They call them subsidies.
I think so. Subway is also based out of Connecticut, so I think it's a good thing. Milford, Connecticut, yeah. Uh yeah. Zepp is the longest one I've read.
Long Island definitely hero. Long Long Island. Well, that's where uh, you know, the New York areas where that hero ain't nothing but a sandwich thing was from back in the day, remember? Who uses grinder? Yep, yep.
Where's grinder? Oh I think they do. All my gay friends use grinder. Ah, zing. Zang!
And a grinder ain't just a sandwich! Uh oh man. That's strong, Stas. I'm gonna give you a pound on that. My hand sanitized, so it's all right.
One day, maybe for Patreons, I can go back and make a best of compilation of Star Zangers. Stasengers? When they hit. Yeah. I'm the only one that knows what a chef's kiss tastes like.
Tastes like alcohol and sadness. Uh so all right. So anyway, in the Pennsylvania area, they're called hoagies, right? Hoagies. And so my my wife's family grew up eating these things, these hoagies, right?
Uh like from a you know, place called uh Westchester, Pennsylvania, and Chester, Pennsylvania. Chester, Pennsylvania actually is where their family's from. And anyway, so like they go to this place called Phil and Gyms, it which is and that place now, they do this fun thing. I think I talked about it before, where they'll separate out the wet from the not wet so that you can ship the sandwich or carry the sandwich, like you know, for a long way, and then like put it together at the last minute, like a like a McBeal DLT. I talked I talked about this before.
So, Dax, who doesn't understand geography at all, was like, we're in Pennsylvania, let's get hoagies. I'm like, you're in the wrong Pennsylvania, dude. But I'm like, fine. Because we're in Easton, which by the way, I'm gonna throw you under the bus dots. This is like one of Nastasia's ancestral homelands, is is uh Easton PA.
Yeah, yeah. Land of the Crayola factory, Lafayette College, and Nastasia's roots. Yeah, right, Saz? Yep, yeah. Do they make the bats there too?
Ooh, what bats? Baseball bats. Really? I'm just asking. The Easton is a bit popular baseball bat.
Oh, yeah, I don't know. John's looking it up for you. Um, the guy I didn't mention, I mean, it's for me, it's like, you know, Crayola, they still make Crayola there, and you can go visit the Crayola factory. That's not my point. So we're like, hey Dax, uh, I'll find you a Hoagie shop here, you know, in in Easton.
We'll take Hoagies home for dinner. The Hoagie store, by the way, don't ever do this. It was a place in Easton, very highly rated. I'm not gonna throw them under the bus. It said that it closed at 4 p.m.
All right, you guys with me? Close at 4 p.m. says so on the web. Closes at 4. All right?
On their own website, what times they say it closes, does? Four. Four. What time did I get there? 358?
3. 3 45. Closed. The guy was still in the shop. We're closed.
Closed. I was like, hey. Because of course he doesn't speak where I'm from. He doesn't speak like, you know, New York, New Jersey area. Hey.
And you know, I tap where a watch used to be back when I used to wear watches. He's like, sorry. Yep. Shut this. Don't do that.
If you say you're making sandwiches till four, it's not like midnight or two and you're really tired, you want to go to bed. If you say you're making sandwiches till four, make the sandwiches till four. You don't know if they got there early for the breakfast shift. There is no breakfast shift there. And I don't care.
Don't say that you're gonna make sandwiches till four then. Be like, you know when we stop making sandwiches? When I feel like it. You never closed one of your bars when there weren't enough customers at the end of the night? Ever.
Not ever. You know why? Because you do what you say you're gonna do. And you don't know who's gonna show up or why. What you do is is over time, if consistently you don't have enough business to stay open till a certain time of day, then change your hours.
Yeah. That's kosher. Change your hours. Closing early, I drove back, right? Because I had driven all the way out to somewhere.
So I had driven all the way back through traffic, right? Hitting the pedal in the middle. For any of you who don't know, driving down some of those Pennsylvania routes, they are wall to wall with cops. All right. Like flies on poop.
Cops, all up and down that road. I'm trying my best to get to the sandwich shop so I can get Dax's freaking hoagies. And I get there and the guy's shut down. You don't know who's rushing to get to your place. I even told the guy I had a lot of bad traffic to get here.
No sandwich. So Dax went home with no hoagie. I was bent. I was bent. So for those of you that don't know, like New Jersey, basically Easton's right on the border.
You can, you could throw a rock from Easton and hit New Jersey, okay? So I'm like, Dax, find a Hoagie shop on the way home. I know it's going to be New Jersey. It's not the same. Make sure it says Hoagie.
So he finds his place called Hoagie Heaven in Princeton. Princeton's a beautiful town. I've never been to it. But for those of you that don't know the geography, like it's an hour out of the way to go from Easton to Princeton and then back to New York City is an hour out of the way. All right.
I've been driving since 6:30 in the morning, P.S. You know what I mean? Taking him around to places. Okay, okay, fine. And like Dax wants his hoagies.
Jen will be happy, even though we're eating in COVID-style housing now. So like we have to have our dinner in shifts. You know what I'm saying? We have the what Dax calls the foamite dinner. He calls us all foamites.
For those of you that don't remember back in the early days of the pandemic, a foamite is like an object that will give you the COVID, that'll transmit the COVID to you. So he no longer thinks of us as people, but merely as human foamites. Anyways. He brings them, we drive an hour out of the way, we go to Hoagie Haven. By the way, their sandwiches, they're good, right?
They're good. And they call them hoagies. Whenever we got the Italian BMT equivalent, they're classic. We bring them home. I get booked or tuna, of course, because that's all he wants to eat.
Kid's gonna get mercury poisoning, he's gonna go full pivot on everybody. It's nuts. Anyway, the kid would eat nothing but salmon, tuna. The kid is unhealthy. He eats only fish.
And uh, you know, and and I tried to buy him the mercury-free freaking tuna. He's like, I don't like it as much as the he's also a cheap date for tuna, which is weird because he's expensive on salmon. He likes chunk chunk tuna. So for those of you that don't know in in oil? Yeah, yeah, in oil.
So for those, well, for those of you that don't know how tuna works, right? Solid tuna is what you normally think of as chunky tuna, and chunky tuna, tuna chunks is really just flakes of tuna packed into a can. All right, okay? That's why it's cheaper. Anyhoo ha.
So we bought him the mercury-free one, he's like, I don't like it as much. I only like the one with the mercury in it. I hate the aftertaste. Yeah, yeah. So, but the kid, you can't get it for him because he'll eat like he'll eat like four cans in a day.
And I'm like, that's like two months' supply for a kid. Anyway, whatever. Have you introduced him to any other type of, you know, uh fish? Like a sardine? He likes sardines.
Anchovies? He would eat me out of house and uh home in skinless boneless sardine. But of course he likes a skinless boneless and all. It's crazy. It's interesting information.
That's very good. So Jen, my wife, who's gonna come into this story in a minute, she sends me a picture, like midway through one of these, you know, days that we're having, and she's like, penguin feet, thermal breaks. I'm like, you know what? Made my day. Made my day.
So, anyways, so Jen, who grew up eating the hoagies from Phil and Jim's. We bring all these things home. I'm having my uh my the sandwich with her, and I'm like, yo, what do you think? And she's like, it's good. I'm like, what do you mean it's good?
She's like, well, it's good, but it's not a hoagie. I'm like, what do you mean it's not a hoagie? And she goes, this is literally what she says to me. It doesn't have that hoagie taste. I was like, what does this mean?
What does that even mean? It doesn't have that hoagie taste. Anyway, so that was yesterday. So, but we went to Lafayette, which is right in Easton. Then we went to Muhlenburg, right?
Which I think I told you before, every time I hear the word Muhlenberg, I sing Lukenbach, Texas with the word Muhlenburg in my head. And this, and even though the guy's name is Muhlenberg, not spelled like the animal, they have that their mascot is the mule, the animal. And they're one of the Muhlenbergs had a walking stick with a mule on the top of it, a carved mule. And I have to say, I kind of want that stick. I kind of wish I was a walking stick guy now, so I could go steal the Muhlenberg walking stick.
Anyway, that's not my point. I did not know they have, for a small liberal arts college, they have the best ranked food like almost every year in all of Pennsylvania colleges. I did not get to eat at their food place. It is a shame. Yeah.
But you know what's 15 minutes outside of Muhlenburg, John? Leonardsville, Pennsylvania. Uh, well, I don't know. But Crumbsville, Pennsylvania is about 15 minutes outside, which is the home of our favorite, our favorite meat shop, D-Trix Meats. Now, you and I know of this place of our own accord separately before we knew each other, right?
Yeah, I've known about this place since 2004. Yeah. And so why don't you describe the D-trix? It's right off the highway. The place just reeks of smoke in the best possible way.
You go inside. There's just I like it's a pretty small space, but they're just like four or five aisles of different pickled things and jellies and jams, and then there's like a nice little dessert section. There's a great freezer section with every type of meat or poultry that you could think of. And then like what, three or four deli cases of just smoked meats that are delicious. Ring bolognas, uh, they make my favorite beef jerky, killbasa snack sticks.
I mean, just so much good, good stuff. And it's really old school in the sense that they only take cash. Get this. They're like, hey, listen, don't worry. If you don't get what you want, well, they don't talk like that.
They're like, well, we'll we'll ship out, we'll ship it to you. I'm like, oh yeah, how does that work? He's like, well, you send us the order, we figure it out, we tell you the amount that it is, and then you mail us a check. Swear to swear to God. We mail you, you mail us a check, and as soon as we get the check, we'll ship it out to you.
Amazing. I'm like, what? Just get with the just do Venmo even. They take money orders as well. I'm sure they would take, I don't know.
I was like, do you take American Express travelers' checks? You know what I mean? Like, it's the craziest thing. I'm sure you're best. I'm sure you could pay them in deer or in gold bricks, because you could also bring your deer there to get processed.
Yeah, exactly. Anyways, so anytime order it. Yeah, yeah. Anytime, like uh either uh my my cousin Brady or or I or John are passing through that neighborhood, we're like, yo, yeah, you gotta go with Dudrick. So I I got John his order, I got my order, I got I got Brady his order.
But what I what I always get there is a thing, it's an interesting phenomenon for those of you that don't know Pennsylvania cured meats. There's a thing called Lebanon Bologna, okay? Now, it's spelled Lebanon Lebanon is like Lebanon, the country, Lebanon. And bologna bologna is like bologna or like bologna the city, right? It is no relationship, and also what you know, what John got the ring, the ring bologna, no relationship at all to mortadella.
American bologna is mortadella without the chunks of stuff in it, okay? That's what American bologna is. And by the way, for those of you that didn't grow up in the 70s, 70s, there were two, there were two lunches. There was bologna sandwich and there was PBJ sandwich, both of which have been completely written out of childhood lunch histories, right? Like no one gets PB and J's anymore because peanut butter is basically off limits to most of the schools that you know my kids at least went to, you know what I mean, because of allergies.
And I just don't think people eat bologna sandwiches anymore. Bologna is delicious. I balone It is, yeah, but it's been maligned, I think. It's been nobody likes it. It's been much maligned.
Yeah. Do you prefer Stas, where are you on baloney? I don't like it. Okay. Why?
Because it we grew up not liking it? We had a lot of it growing up, and it was like when we were really poor. We'd eat a lot of it. It was it was a poor person's food starting in the 20s. It was developed as one of the first things that was vacuum packed and sold that you could buy very cheaply.
It was used in a lot of institutional uh um uh environments, schools, prisons, whatnot, uh in you know, programs to feed people, so it got a bad rap. But it is delicious. There was once a uh a big uh strike because I think I think it was in a prison because they were like, we don't want our bologna sandwiches cold, we want them hot. A hot bologna sandwich. By the way, a fried bologna sandwich, money.
Very good. Money. Never had one. Oh never had one. That's good.
Wait, but do you do mustard on your bologna or mayonnaise? Both. Ding. Yeah. Yeah.
It needs the white bread, and if you don't, even though it itself isn't emulsified sausage with a good bit of grease in it, you need that mayonnaise there to like, oh yeah, oh, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, anyway. Anyway, leaving lemon and bologna has nothing to do with that. And I grew up eating it because my grandma grew up eating it, right?
So they've been what it is, it's it's imagine, Stas. You remember the summer sausage and uh and the beef sausage from like when you were a kid and like someone would send you like the what was that company that used to do that? The one with the baskets. Remember what I'm talking about? Yeah.
So it's it's it's a beef sausage like that. And it's but it's the it's the most acidic cured beef sausage you can get, okay? And then it's dry and it's they smoke the living snot out of it. And that is Lebanon Bologna, and it is delicious, but it's only from that neighborhood. Like, so you got it from Pennsylvania, like from that and actually from Lebanon, which is not quite there.
But anyway, if you've never had Lemon and Malona, get it. It's delicious. Don't wuss out and get the sweet one. Get the original first and then move to the sweet. That's my point.
That's what I always get there. And my car, instead of smelling like teenagers and dogs, smelled like smoked meats all the way home. But I brought some things. So remember how many times have I said on the show, first of all, I brought uh Nastasia and my our favorite candy, the uh the gets. I'm gonna go, I'll go to the ad right there.
If you want to eat after me, you want me to hand this out after the ads? We'll hand it out after the ads. We'll have a little bit of an advertisement. We'll come right back with cooking issues. Today's episode brought to you by Ora King Salmon, everybody's favorite fish.
And today we have Michael Fabro from Aura King Salmon. And there's something I've been curious about. Like a lot of fish, anyone that's ordered fish for a restaurant or been to a fish market knows that no matter how sustainable someone says the actual fish is or the fishing is, that it's it's a world of contaminated styrofoam box nightmares. It's just styrofoam everywhere. But uh, you tell me that Oracing has made a very concerted effort to not be part of this kind of styrofoam economy.
Yeah, we don't pack and ship our aura king in styro. And like if you go to the Fulton Fish Market, for example, it is incredible the amount of styrofoam there. Ours are packed in it's uh corrugated box with a uh aluminum foil film. You would only see this in the wholesale trade, but it's kind of like our calling card, the give me those salmon in the silver box. The current box is not fully recyclable.
This has been a goal for us for a long time. Because with seafood, you have to have like good thermal insulation. But we are in the works of a project to have a fully recyclable box, which we hope to come out with pretty soon. Hey, yo, give me the salmon in the silver box or a king's salmon, everybody's favorite fish. And we're back.
Uh in that break, I pounded an entire seltzer with no breathing so they wouldn't contaminate you guys. Do you enjoy that? Right. Okay. So uh what I brought for you guys to taste, first things first.
Every like Nastasi and I, our favorite candies are these Gets caramel creams. I love these things. Did you who else grew up eating these? Did you grow up eating these things? Yeah.
Yes. Yeah. It's caramel with like a little like grease, like a solid grease puck in the middle. I love them. Grease sugar puck in the middle.
To me, this is the ideal candy, right, Stas? Mm-hmm. Okay. Secondly, I brought the only pretzel that contains fat, like a large amount of fat that I hard pretzel that I am for. Now, for those of you that don't know, in general, I'm extremely anti-fat in a pretzel because of fat.
Fat in a pretzel makes it more cracker-like. Some places put a minor amount of fat, a tiny amount of fat, it's okay, but I don't want my pretzels to be cracker-like. These pretzels are A, sweet, which I don't generally like, and B, contain fat, which I don't generally like. Yet the combination of it all is somehow, I think, enticing and delicious. I don't think it is the same as a hard pret regular hard pretzel, but I think it is a valid product.
Now, these are made, these are called Ruthie's pretzels, and they're only available in the neighborhood right around Dietrich's, right? They're from a place called Fleetwood, Pennsylvania, and you can get them at a they're made at a place called Shady Mountain Market. And I think what these guys do, because I have their I have their what their ingredients list is flour, which undoubtedly is Snavley's, because everyone uses Snavely's flour there, soft wheat flour, brown sugar, yeast, salt, right? So that's the what they consider the solid base. Then sourdough, butter, oil, and water.
They don't c are very blonde, so I don't know how much alkalinity is in them, right? But they don't call out an alkaline ingredient, but I think that they do have some bit of an alkaline boil or alkaline wash in them. But I think what they do is they add a little bit of oil to the dough itself because they're much bigger than a standard hard pretzel, and yet they don't they don't destroy your teeth. They have an interesting texture. And I think that they fundamentally think they they brush it with butter, bake it, and make a soft pretzel, and then dehydrate the soft pretzel.
And I think they're great. This is something that needs to be investigated more. What do you think? What do you guys think of them? They're good.
Tastes like a dried-out Anti Anne's pretzel, and I mean that in a really good way. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm for it. Uh so the caramel cream, you guys can look up now.
The other thing, as John uh intimated, can I have one more uh uh tissue, please? Uh as John intimated, uh, this place has row after row after row after row after row of things of meat in in jars. Some of them have been a little bit of a duds. I had their pickled chicken hearts once, and I was like, you know what? I don't ever need to have a pickled chicken heart again.
Okay, fair. But I got something for us to try. This is the the ring bologna, which is also not bologna, it's it's baloney. It's it's be it almost looks like a kilbasa, and it's it's in a ring, hence ring bol ring ring. This is the hot version, pickled hot in a jar.
And I have uh I have a uh a no touch mechanism where you can where uh I'm gonna get my I'll get my slice here and then you'll pass around and we can I have I'm I'm not trying this. This is a live try. Hold on a second. So I was thinking this was gonna be like a smells good, like a Vienna finger. Did you guys grow up with Vienna fingers?
Sort of canned sausages, uh hand or one of these things. I'm gonna say I like it. It's not for those of you that grew up with Vienna fingers, which are canned sausages in water. Or I guess I've had can I guess I've had pickled pickled red hots before. It's kind of like a pickled red hot.
You know what I mean? It's good. It's a good product. It's a good product. All right.
Enough enough of Dietrich's and uh Pennsylvania Dutch uh foods, but for those of you that have never done the Pennsylvania food trips, I would go ahead and do the Pennsylvania food trips. What do you guys? Are you co signing on this, Judge? Yeah, 100%. All right.
A lot of good food in Pennsylvania. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I was like, what am I missing here?
She's like, you should get the scrapple. I was like, first of all, I already have scrapple in my freezer. And second of all, I'm gonna be driving around all day, so I don't think I should put scrapple in my car. And third of all, you know, how much liver do you have in your scrapple? They're like, of course there's liver liver in our scrap.
What's what's they almost they looked at me almost like he wanted to punch me? You know what I mean? But he didn't punch me though. He was very nice. Uh, because of course I went and had to take money out to buy all the stuff I bought.
Yeah. They do have an NTM on the site, which is practical. Yeah, but just to show you what kind of neighborhood it is, like they're like, like the maximum amount without having to push other is like $140. They're like, do you want to take out more than $140? You're like, dude, whatever.
Anyway. Uh on the Patreon from Johnny Shakespeare, uh, my initial question was is it possible to carbonate by carefully measuring dry ice, placing it in a Cornelius keg, aka the corny keg, adding chilled liquid, and then placing the lid on. Uh I recently came across a Reddit Ask Me Anything with uh John uh was it's Ness? I never knew. Uh owner of niche soda shop uh Galco's in Los Angel uh uh in um Louisiana, LA or Louisiana?
Where's that shop? Anyway, LA, where he was commenting on methods of carbonating and mentioned the following. Uh the second way to carbonate is to use dry ice. It breaks down, uh, you get a real fine bubble that will stand up. That's what we call pinpoint carbonation.
Is this what he's referring to? All right. Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Uh listen, I don't know, but I'll say this.
Be careful. Uh look, if you accurately measure uh the dry ice, then you will be able to know. And the larger the vessel that you're pressurizing, the kind of less dangerous it gets because you have more wiggle room, right? So every liter of uh every every lead, the the most you're gonna put probably into a soda is about four volumes of CO2, and a volume of CO2 is two grams per liter. So every liter of uh product is gonna have at most probably eight grams or so of dry ice, right?
If you go over eight grams per liter of dry ice, you start creating an explosion hazard, right? Because it's going to pressurize it way over the amount of pressure that that you want. You start getting much, much less, and of course you don't have enough carbonation. Not to mention the fact that dry ice, uh it's a it insulates itself pretty well. So what happens when you throw dry ice into a container, unless you have a lot of time, is you freeze a layer of liquid around the dry ice pellet that insulates the dry ice so that it doesn't uh sublimate as quickly, and it actually takes a good bit of time for you to get the kind of carbonation you want.
So you can shatter the dry ice, but of course, dry ice is incredibly hard, so it's much harder to shatter than regular ice is, and then somehow mix it in. To me, it's just a huge pain in the behind. I just wouldn't do it. Of course, you don't really need to chill your liquid beforehand, as you say, because you're adding dry ice to it. Uh but as soon as you start doing it in small bottles, it gets, I think, exponentially more dangerous because if you measure it wrong and the pressure gets too high into one of those bottles, if you've never been next to a soda bottle that explodes, then you've never been next to a soda bottle that explodes.
And I hope you will not be next to a soda bottle that explodes because it is a nightmare. Um that answer that? Yep. Okay. Um Sargon Dylan writes in uh what temperature do you want your water bath on for a rotor vap and how much vacuum do you use?
Uh so what we're talking about here, by the way, just you know, it's a like a quick, you know, if you don't know what rotary evaporation is. In a distillation, you uh heat a liquid until the volatile parts of it, and that's usually aromas and flavors and ethanol, if there's alcohol in it, start boiling off. After it boils off, you then uh have to chill it so that those vapors recondense. And one of the, one of the, it just it's what it is, all of the energy you put into boiling, you have to put at least as much energy into the condensing to get everything back. That's just physics.
That's just thermodynamics. You have to do it, right? So in a rotary evaporator, the entire system is under a vacuum. The vacuum lowers the pressure at which everything boils, so everything boils at a lower temperature. You still need the same amount of power to boil, and you still need the same amount of cooling power to recondense.
So that the temperature you set the boiling at is directly linked to how much of a vacuum you pull. The harder a vacuum you pull, the lower the temperature at which it boils. That is a strict relationship that is governed by like a the boiling point pressure curves, and you don't get to choose, right? So the temperature at which it boils is strictly set by the vacuum. And the lower the vacuum, uh the lower the vacuum, the colder it boils.
In other words, the lower vacuum means more of a vacuum. So if you want everything to boil at a low temperature, because for instance, you don't want uh your fancy herbs and whatnot to get heat damaged, right? The lower you want the temperature, the more of a vacuum you have to suck on it, right? Now, you asked a separate question, which is what temperature do you have to set your water bath? And how hot the water is around the vessel that you're boiling with is not the same temperature as the product itself.
Typically, in a in this situation, because you're heating through glass, there is between 10, 15, or sometimes 20 degrees difference Celsius between the product on the inside that you're boiling and the water bath that you're using. So I would set your water bath about 20 15 to 20 degrees hotter than you want the distillation to go. If your distillation's ripping, right, if you're distilling a lot, then uh your product is gonna be cool a lot cooler. It's gonna be closer to a 20-degree delta, uh 15 to 20 degree delta between your water bath and your and your product. And if you're distilling very slowly, if it's a stuck distillation, then your distill then your dis your product is gonna get up closer and closer in temperature to your water bath.
So uh that's what I would do. Is that is that clear? And the way you feel how hot the product you're distilling is is put the the back of your hand. If you cook a lot, your fingertips are very bad at sensing heat because you've burned them a lot, right? So typically I use the back of my hand, which I don't burn very much, or the back of my fingers when I need to sense heat.
Um, and so you just put the back of your hand against the spinning neck of your flask, and that temperature is fairly close to the temperature your product actually is if you don't have enough money to buy an actual temperature sensor, which I guess people do now. Anyway, the covered and smothered? Yep. Okay. Uh Babino wrote in, I'm currently in a rental unit with a gas stove and really poor ventilation, a non-venting range, it just blows uh blows out air upward and through a charcoal filter.
That thing is fundamentally useless. That is a joke. I don't even know why people are allowed to market those as things. That's like that's like one of those things when uh I don't know, I don't know. It's it's like you get a huge gash on your hand and someone draws a picture of your band-aid around it.
You know what I mean? It's like it's an absurdity, it's an insult. Those things are an insult. They do make good uh indoor uh hoods for people who need to deep fry inside and basements and stuff like that, but those hoods are fantastically expensive. And if you're not changing the filters out on a constant basis, then it ain't doing squat, right?
By the way, activated charcoal only lasts for a certain length of time. Yeah. So if you if you have you're like, uh, this this hood is great. It's got it's got a charcoal filter in it. It was uh we put it in like eight years ago.
No, that's not how that works. And and also not every activated charcoal is the same. The the the chemistry of how charcoal filtrates has literally filled many volumes of work, and I recommend that you just dip your toe into the weird world of charcoal filtration just so that you can see how tweaked uh different kinds of charcoal are, right? In terms of how they operate and what they operate. Anyway, um Bobino says that uh their stove is located next to a window.
What are some options for ventilation while I'm cooking? I've considered a twin window fan, but I worry about the dust buildup. What do you think they mean the dust buildup? Like how dust eventually just like clogs up a fan, but you just have to take it apart and wipe everything down. That's what I would do.
Yeah. So okay, so you can get so like it also depends on how nice you want it to look. Like I used to live in the Garment District, and the classic look in the Garment District was a piece of like a CDX crappiest plywood possible with hand jigsawed circles, and then you would buy the the fans that had the four mounting nuts, uh the four mounting flanges on the outside of the cage, and you would have twin fans in the cutout plywood, and then that would be duct taped into the window. Anyone who's ever been in kind of neighborhood where I used to live has seen this setup. And the benefit of those is you can get to all the parts to to clean them.
Yeah. But I would get a slightly nicer version or get it made. If you, if you can't find us a system that is the exact size you want, there's an uh an outfit called send cut send in in uh I think they're in Utah. And you can send them a two-dimensional picture, and they will, they will uh, I think they use water jet. They will cut out whatever thing you want at very reasonable rates out of whatever you want.
Stainless, aluminum, if you're a weirdo, titanium. And so you can make like a very nice cutout that is like metal stainless and have it mounted exactly in your window with cutouts for the fan. So I would get the fan, and then I would get those things, and then just keep it, keep it clean. Unless you meant you're worried about dust coming from the outside and going in, in which case, then you need to get fans with uh with auto louvers on them, right, John? Yep.
Remember, none of these are valid technical, uh, so you have to be careful that you're worried about grease fires and whatnot, so you have to keep them clean so there's not, but that's the only thing I would do. And I'm hoping uh for your sake, Babino, that that the air naturally wants to go from your living area into your kitchen and out your window, because if you're pushing against a gradient, then it's gonna get much harder for you. Was it covered and smothered? Yep. Okay.
Uh Bradley uh Christenton writes, uh, I'm thinking of doing cocktails on tap, something like a Tom Collins or a gin and tonic with clarified lemon or lime. Are there recirculating pumps necessary to keep it from separating, or is it just a good shake enough? Does it vary based on ABV? Uh it doesn't really I wouldn't say it's an A B V thing. It is true that things will settle over time, but literally just an up down, up down is enough to redistribute that stuff.
So I think a recirculating pumps a couple people used to use recirculating pumps just because they were having issues with with the code. I forget what it was, but like if it was constantly moving, then it wasn't rebottling, and if it wasn't rebottling, they could legally do it, right? There was something really stupid about that, some really stupid reason that way. The other reason people use recirculating pumps is to carbonate itself. So you're recirculating through a carbonation stone.
But in your application, or some people would recirculate through a uh a chill loop to keep it cold without having to actually uh refrigerate the whole keg. All of those are valid or less valid reasons to recirculate, but I would think just distribution of the product is not is not that necessarily a good. Now the the the when you're in a corny keg and you're uh remember it distributes from the bottom. So if anything settles out, like this is the main problem you're gonna have. Like if you do, I'm not saying your clarification is subpar, Bradley.
That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is if your clarification is subpar and you have stuff that's settling to the bottom, that stuff gets dispensed first. And so um, you know, you might get a slightly different, if it's been sitting for a while, you might get a slightly different pour uh as stuff settles out. This is especially true on things that are naturally suspensions, like a lot of uh um uh Amari, for instance. Uh and those, you know, once a day, boop, boop, upside down and back is good enough.
Covered and smothered. Yep. Is that a Waffle House reference? Why are you saying that all of a sudden? Did you go to Waffle House yesterday?
No, anytime I deal with a photographer. Okay. I was talking to Travis who's shooting the book. Got it. And I don't know where they get it from, but like back when I I was I used to do like food styling with like uh my sister-in-law Ridge and other people, like we would like do a bunch of stuff.
They would take like 8,000 pictures and would be like, You got this? Yeah, covered and smothered. And then that was it. That meant it's done. We have every photo we need.
It might have come from Waffle House. I don't know. Do you know what I mean? That's what I thought too. As soon as John said that, I was like, I feel like saying covered, smothered, and capped.
You know, that's my order, yeah. What's capped mean? Well, with mushrooms. Oh. On a waffle?
No, in the hash browns. All right. Yeah. I don't want I love mushroom gravy though. Yeah, that too.
Yeah. Uh yeah, I don't know. So it possibly comes from Waffle House. You know, I've never been to a Waffle House. Whoa.
Yeah. And and as a bad father, neither have my children. Snob. They don't have them in New York. No, I know, but should go to Waffle House.
Yo, I passed one in I passed one in Pennsylvania yesterday. And Dax goes, Waffle House, what's that? I was like, Oh my god. They don't have tuna. Well, no, but Dax will do anything.
They don't have tuna in Waffle House. I don't know. I was explaining to him the Waffle House index for natural disasters. He's like, what do you mean? Like hurricanes?
I'm like, yeah, like hurricanes. Like Waffle House, they just don't close. Like, you know, unless unless the Waffle House has literally been picked up and thrown into the ocean, like it's serving food of some kind. You know what I mean? Uh, but I didn't bother with the house.
Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, listen. I grew up, and listen, uh, no offense if anyone listening owns one, but I grew up with the International House of Pancakes, and I went back to it and I was like, yo, I don't like this. So is Waffle House.
Yeah, except for the Boysenberry syrup. Their boys and is pretty good. Okay, okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay. So for those of you that is is IHop all over the country or no?
Or is it just East Coast? Uh I would assume it's an international house. I was thinking the same thing. Well, a lot of things say they're international and aren't, dude. Like the Royal Canadian Pancake House.
It wasn't, it was neither Royal nor Canadian. It was a pancake in a building. Anyway, but my point is IHOP, what it was known for when you were a kid was they had not just the one flavor of syrup, they had like four. Right? They had more than that, I'm sorry.
Really? Oh, yeah. But all I remember is there were there was that that wooden cart that would be at the table. Yeah. Everything was stuck to it.
Yeah, dude. That's the money right there. So there was the maple-esque one, maple similar, mate, you know, maple like syrup, right? Which is the one all the parents went for. Yeah.
And then they had, I think they had strawberry, but but the one that all the kids went for, and we I don't know who Boyson is. I've never seen their berry. Right? But but the boysenberry syrup, that was the one all the kids were like, ooh, ooh, boysenberry, right? Am I right?
Yeah. Yeah. That was it. Fond of memories. But I went back as an adult and I was like, yo, these pancakes just aren't.
Doesn't hold up, huh? Well, look, the one I went to in Connecticut didn't hold up. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
Also just watching a short cook of Waffle House. I suppose they say that. Yeah. Yeah. I'll say the IHOP pancake I had tasted a lot like a bisquick pancake.
No offense to Bisquick pancake people, but offense to you. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like if you grew up with a biscuit bisquick pancake, God bless you, you're fine. You know what I mean?
It's like it's okay. It's just like any of you guys bisquick pancake people? No. Stas? No.
No. All right. No. Yeah. I mean, look, Bisquick is a look.
Having bisquick in your house, especially if you have kids and you want to get them into baking and like, you know, flour that already contains uh fat and rising agents, it's not a terrible idea. It's not a terrible idea. It's just doesn't make the best pancakes, in my opinion. Or the best biscuits, in my opinion. Uh Kevin Stademeyer writes, uh, hey everybody, I got a boatload of wild duck breasts, 16 of them that are all fairly small and crucially without skin or fat.
Listen, I'm glad that whoever your buddy is got you the wild duck breasts. Tell your buddy to leave the freaking skin on. You know what it was? I bet you they didn't want to pluck it. Maybe.
I bet you I bet you they were like, I'm not plucking these things. This is a pain. And they just rip the skin off, and the the like somewhere in a pile, you know, in some marsh somewhere, is like a bunch of feathers with a skin, which imagine how sad it is finding like this the feathered skin of a bird empty. Anyway. Yeah.
Uh, do you think that's what happened? Probably. Why else would you do that? Yeah. Especially for 16 of them.
Yeah. Maybe a couple. It's like you messed up the plucking behind if you're doing all. All right. I I I can see where Kevin's going with this.
Uh, I got these for free, so I can't complain. True. True. But what's the best way to cook these and do them justice? They are a few ounces each and relatively thin as well.
Well, you're just adding, you're like, they're also they're kind of thin. Um, I look, here's the issue. I don't do a lot of wild duck. Um I would not, I would cook them as quickly as possible, low temp, right? And then I would sauce them appropriately, and I would make something crunchy.
Like you almost want to like buy some regular duck skin and just crisp up the skin and make like ducks, duck skin chicharron, or like buy some. I know it's a different, that's what you kind of want to do, right? You want something crunchy, but just because I mean I love duck breast, but you I would be craving that crunchy skin with a little bit of fat. What are you guys with me on this or no? I think I'd probably grind them up with a little fat bag and make meatballs.
Meatballs. Probably. Listen, meatball. All right. Meatball.
Meatball. Hey, listen, you ever done this? You ever done this? You're like, I'm gonna make what was that? There was that famous place that used to make it.
Uh I'm gonna make, I did this once. I'm gonna make duck hot dogs. So I got all this duck breast, right? And I got all the fat, and I chilled it all down, and I did the double grind, and then I, you know, I put my bowl in. We had the ice chips, I did the emulsification, I did all this spices, I got all the spices right.
I mean uh uh skins, of course. Come on, please. What am I? Come on, come on, come on. Anyway, so uh I pipe them all out, right?
And kitchen obliterated. I'm tired, I'm tired to death, right? I made these things because I wasn't really set up to do it. You know what I mean? Yeah.
And uh Jen goes, yo, these uh these taste like hot dogs. I was like, uh he did all his work, took all this, and it tastes like a hot dog. So I'm just worried that the meatball might just taste like a meatball. Maybe. Yeah.
If you look, you can go John's route and make meatballs, or I would say uh cook them for no longer than uh 30 minutes at 57 degrees Celsius. Okay, in a water bath, pull them out, and uh, and then just um I would immediately sauce them and serve them with something crunchy. Slice them thin, sauce them, and serve them with something crunchy. That's what I would do. I would test at least one.
The issue with wild ducks is that they can get very, very livery. Some people like that livery flavor, and some people uh detest that livery flavor. Uh so you gotta let me know what you want. Or, you know, go go go the go the John route. Meatball it, meatball.
What do you think of meatball as an insult? It's like a loving insult, I think. Kind of like dirt bag as opposed to comeback. Yeah, all right. Uh all right, Zev writes.
I'm getting ready to make the full-time switch to induction, but I'm sad to give up my copper sauce pans. They heat so dang evenly and look so nice hanging in my kitchen. Have you found or seen any reliable and effective retrofit options? The steel disc converters seem cumbersome and inefficient if they don't make great contact with the pan. You're correct, Ziv.
Uh curious to hear your thoughts on these. In my head, I feel like it should be possible to attach a steel disc to the bottom of the pot permanently using some sort of thermoconductive epoxy, but nothing I can find online seems to have the adhesive conductive heat resistance and water resistance properties needed for the job. Zev, no one has no one has solved your problem yet. Um the closest thing you can do is, and I've tried this and it sucks, is basically turning your induction unit into an old school French top, right? Where you're like way overheating it.
But the the issue isn't, because remember, at the end of the day, you're going to be as efficient, even though you're poorly transmitting heat. But the actual temperature of the metal that you need to heat up, instead of it being like, let's say we're gonna boil something at 212, instead of getting that metal at like 212, you're gonna need it to get it like 350 just to do a 212. Because you gotta remember a French top is ripping hot, right? And that's why you can conduct from the solid metal of a French top into a pan. Because they are ripping.
So if you're not willing to make your induction unit rip that hard, you're not gonna get a good thing. And I haven't found a good system for bonding a plate to the bottom. But if I think about it, uh I will uh figure it out. Quinn, I will get to your question uh next time. More on cooking issues.
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