Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Joined in this intercontinental cooking issues uh edition by Nastasia the Hammer Lopez live from an undisclosed location in the middle of the Nile River in Egypt. It might take her a second because she's got a mute and unmute because she's literally on a boat. How are you doing?
How are you doing? I'm good. I'm good. Can you hear me? Yeah.
Yeah. So uh well, hold on. I'll just say everyone else who's on. It's no, it's theoretically no tangent Tuesday, but here we are. We're about to go on a tangent.
We got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. Hey, what's up, guys? How you doing? We got uh John is uh at a different undisclosed uh Heidi Hole uh in the uh small state best state of Connecticut. How you doing, John?
Doing all right. Yeah, and uh Jackie Molly what'd you say? Getting better, my back. Nice, nice. Uh and better, my back is thrown out, so yeah, well you throw out your back.
You know, you know how? Like all that heavy customer service mental lifting, you're like, you know, one more person spins all broken. You're like, I can't take it, my back. Anyway, uh and uh Jackie Molecules, where are you uh this fine uh day Mexico City? Ah really, man.
Oh my god. Man, man. Yeah, we're really gonna kind of end up today. We're we're a north, south, east, and west kind of crew today. Um, so Stas.
I mean, I'm assuming you've gone back, Jack, and and and gotten some more uh Florida Calabaza case it is because if you haven't, that just shows bad judgment on your part. Actually, the plan is today. Um I'm showing some friends around who haven't been here. Okay. And the plan is to go to the market today.
So I mean, okay. I have gone to I have already had my meat bucket meal though. So that that much has been done. So meet meat bucket in Florida Calabaza. But more importantly, a place I have never been, but have always desired to go.
Nastasia chilling in Egypt. So what's it like over there? It's really it's like incr it's incredible. It's like nothing I've never I've ever like come across. It's it's fing amazing.
Um I'm like oh sorry. Sorry, it's there. Um yeah. The food is right now I'm eating watermelon, popcorn, and white wine. Okay, let me ask you this.
Watermelon, comma, popcorn, comma white wine, or some sort of melange. Yes, commas, commas. Commas, commas. Uh so uh how's the watermelon? Is it some sort of like fancy dancey watermelon or is it just good because it's so dang sunny over there?
No, it's just good because it's so dang sunny and the peaches are amazing, and the bread, like all the fresh pita I had ash cake made, you know what that is? Like you put the the bread underneath the fire ash and then let it rise and like on an open fire in the desert. That was amazing. That sounds good. Um Yeah.
Well, how's the date game? Not dating, the date game. You would you would love it. You would love it. Yeah, you would love all the dates.
There's like hard and soft and sweet and like not so sweet. I mean it's yeah, I'll bring back you some back. Nice, nice. So uh like have you been eating in like restaurants or is part of the tour group? Or both.
No, com combination. Like a lot of like open desert cooking. I don't know why. I like that. Um I like that a lot.
Some restaurants. Yeah. Yeah. Some restaurants, and then now I'm on the boat, so the crew cooks. And that's all like traditional Egyptian food.
And even the boat food is good. Yeah. Really good. I mean, I'm on like a they're called yeah, th it's like a boat with like from the twenties with the big sails. It's really pretty.
And there's the whole like tour group is Italian, Argentinians, uh, YouTubers. Oh Jesus. Yeah. Uh and the Italians only only talking about uh pooping and food, are they? Is it only is it only talk of poop and food?
You know, I I like I like them the best. They're really great. So yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.
They're great. They're really funny. So let me ask you this because my uh my in-laws once uh took a river, not a river boat in the American sense of river boat, but a boat on a river in Europe tour, and their assessment was boats are floating petri dishes. What do you think? No, because it's so dry here and that it doesn't feel disgusting.
Right, right. So like a like a boat on the Danube. Petri dish boat on the Nile. Fine. Yeah.
Nice. And uh no and we we talked about this a little bit. No Agatha Christie, no murders yet. No, but but people on the boat think that the YouTubers are f are not real. So What do you mean not real?
Like they're not actual humans? I mean I don't there's a place you could find out. What's that thing called? It's on the internet. What's it called?
YouTube. YouTube. Yes. If they're YouTubers, you can go look up their YouTube videos. No, I no, I know.
But it's a long, it's a long we're it's a it's a mystery right now. It's like an Agatha Christie type thing. Also the internet is like spotty. So it's not like we're yeah. I don't remember Death on the Nile very well.
Uh I saw the movie, it was from the 70s. But uh because the whenever I think Agatha Christie, I can only think of the uh murder on the Orient Express uh one. And you know, spoiler, everyone did it. So but I don't remember what happened in Murder on the Nile. John, you should remember because uh you're freaking Belgian.
You're Belgian, so you should know everything about your boy Ercule Poirot, right? Isn't that when you're born as a Belgian, don't they be like, hey, here's here's your it's it's like being Swedish with ABBA. You like you you get you get the the aircule pass, no? What happened in that in that murder on the Nile? I have no idea.
I want on the Discord, by the way. You can call your questions to no tang no tangent, yeah, right. 917-410 uh 1507. That's 917-410-1507. If you're a Patreon member, if you want to become a Patreon member, uh, where do they go, John?
Patreon.com slash cooking issues. Uh-huh. Uh now. Now I want to know on the Discord. Also, you can get on the Discord if you're joining the Patreon.
I want to know what percentage of people think Nastasia would be the murderer in this situation, and what percentage think she would be the person murdered. I doubt there's anyone who thinks that she's completely uninvolved when it happens on this boat. Am I right, Stas? She has to unmute. Whenever you unmute.
Uh what do you think, John? I think the clear answer is that she would be, she would be an accomplice. That's the clear answer for me. An accomplice. Oh, that's totally, that's totally on point.
She would cause it to happen. Yeah. She would be the puppet master. Right. No, I would be the one that everyone tells that they did it.
I would be the one. I would be the confidant. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. Oh, because uh originally when you started talking, I thought you were gonna say Patsy.
Like they're gonna blame you even though you didn't do it. See now there's all these different roles, right? So you like you're the you're the confidant. You made it happen. Here's what happened.
You said, wouldn't it be nice if they were dead? Oh my god Don't you wish they were dead? You would keep saying that until they did it, and then the the person would be like, You told me to, you told me to, you told me to. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That was like last night on the boat. Yeah. Hey.
Good job, John. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, uh, this all checks out. Uh this all checks out, by the way. And just to remind you, Nastasia, that low-level crimes that you commit in other countries won't get prosecuted in America when you come back, but high-level crimes will. Just as you know. Just as you know.
Okay. Yeah. I'll remember. Okay. Uh all right.
So who do we got as upcoming guests, John? Uh wet wet people's whistle. We have uh the folks from Joy of Cooking coming out in June. Oh, that's gonna be fun. We that's gonna be fun.
So like it's been a family cookbook since the 30s, people. In case you didn't know this, it's been a the Joy of Cooking was a family, was it's a family run operation. It was taken in and and kind of taken away from the family for a little while, and then kind of the control was given back to them like two times. It's a fantastic story. We're gonna have them on about like family and cooking and like doing a cookbook like The Joy of Cooking in the modern era.
It's gonna be a lot of fun. So can't wait for that one. What else? That's right. We have uh Bob Florence of Moromi Show You coming on to the good as well.
He Good Soy Products. Good soy products. Yep, great soy products. And from Mystic Connect. Yep.
Yeah. Just barely got got their toe in Connecticut there. Just barely not Rhode Island, Mystic. You know what I mean? Shit barely.
Yeah, true. Um then it looks like we're gonna have the two founders of Made in Cookware coming on. For all for all your potential. So listen, when we have made in on, the the reason we thought this would be interesting to you folks is because I know that uh and you know, John and John and Anastasi and I, like we, you know, believe it or not, we talk uh outside of this. And uh we think that a lot of people not only like do they make products that you know our listeners might be interested in that you guys might be interested in, but I think like a lot of people who listen to us are kind of like in between a lot of worlds and might be interested in how these businesses got started, right, John.
Yeah, agreed. Yeah. Uh yeah. They're two young guys. I mean, it's a really new company and they're in a lot of the best kitchens in the country.
So yeah, they've been and they have, you know, we have some of their products and they're great products. Yeah. And uh also uh on uh Rancho Gordo, I mean, they make great they make great beans, and someone asked me uh what I do with the yellow eyed, uh yellow eyed um uh beans, and I will say this. So no one reads it anymore, I don't think, but uh uh Matt and John Thorne used to put out a newsletter and there's a compilation of their of their work, and it's uh it was really good writing. I want to say maybe in the 90s, I think this stuff came out like uh serious pig was one of their no, was it serious pig or something on the fire?
I forget the names of the books, but I read them all. But they lived in Maine for uh a long time and they did a lot of writing on Maine cooking, specifically on main potatoes and main beans. And so I kind of went down a beanhole uh it, you know, reading that stuff, especially when I'm working on my new book. And there's three really great varieties of main beans that are baked beans. And everyone from Maine knows that Boston's baked beans, I mean, that's just something that tourists say, Maine is is baked bean land, right?
And so the three varieties of beans that are uh the big deal there for baked beans are soldier beans, yellow-eyed or stebin beans, and Marfax beans. And so far I've experimented with Marfax and Yellow Eye, but I'm doing fundamentally uh, I mean, I'm doing some stuff I can't talk about yet because I don't know whether it works, and so I don't want to get people in uh you know involved, but I've been doing basically baked beans. I just bought a ceramic bean pot. I've been doing that versus doing it in a coon recon. So I do a very traditional kind of soak, long cook with um uh Crosby's molasses, of course, Crosby's molasses, uh pork, uh, you know, uh oil, onion, uh uh mustard powder, mustard powder people, mustard powder, and just you know, letting it cook uh you pre- what you do is you pre-cook it till they're tender, and then you put it and you and you bake it off slow for like eight hours.
And I have to say, they are delicious, but I'm not ready to quite give out the actual recipe yet, because I'm still working on it. Is that fair, John? Yes, fair. Yeah. And the difference between I've been doing a lot of work on evaporation and exactly how much water the beans absorb and how much you want them to absorb.
And there's a huge difference between uh when they become tender and eight hours later when you take them out. Uh and I haven't run the tests on how much of that is just the fact that you have molasses in it and it just gets progressively darker as they cook, but they go in as a much lighter color and they come out like dark, dark brown, baked bean color, and it's really kind of amazing. And I really, anyone who's never cooked with yellow eyes or Marfax's before, Marfax is very hard to get uh a hold of. You have to order it shipped uh direct from uh someone who grows it in Vermont or Maine. But um, but yellow eye you can get from Rancho Gordo.
All right, is that enough to answer that question someone had, John? Am I good? Yep, good. All right. Uh Quinn wrote in.
Uh did I uh cut off? Is that all the guests we have that we know coming up or what? Yes, correct. Still working on some others from listeners suggesting the working on more, yeah, what we have to talk about. Okay.
Uh Quinn wrote in uh question. Uh I'm getting into making my own masa, so we're gonna be talking about, you know, uh masa, not uh, you know, masa, the the corn, the corn product masa, right? So we're gonna be we're talking about nixtimalization people, the process of using an alkaline, uh, you know, you you you you par cook uh typically corn in an alkaline solution, typically calcium hydroxide, although you can also use potash or there's various alkaline uh solutions you can use to do it. You parcook it, uh, then you soak it, then you rub off uh, you know, a good portion of the skin uh that you've kind of solubilized with the uh with the alkaline. You uh drain it, rinse it, and grind it, and there you have masa, which makes uh you know nixamalized masa, which is why tortillas taste like tortillas and not like cornmeal.
Um so that's what we're talking about, in case I don't know, in case you don't know. Uh I'm getting into making my own masa, going off your old archived instructions on the blog. I wrote how many thousands of words did we write on that, Stas like 4,000 words on masa back in the day? Oh, we lost we lost her internet, her internet got cut off. Yeah, yeah.
Well, she's on a boat in the Nile. I mean, you know, I can't get internet on the boat here either sometimes. You know, you're in a boat. Um I think it was like 4,000 words. Although, you know what?
I tried to read some of the old blog posts, John, and like they got reformatted when like, you know, when we got turned into a Russian porn site and then a Russian Cialis site for a while, like some of this stuff got reformatted, so it's hard to read because everything now is percent signs and all this other garbage. You notice that I did not. Let me I mean I'll I'll take a look at it. Yeah, anyway. We'll see what we can fix.
Uh of course, I immediately went to experiment with using a flavorful liquid in the process. So typically water is what you use. You use calculus. The reason calcium hydroxide is a good uh thing to use as a base is because it's not extraordinarily soluble. So you're not gonna like heavily OD on calcium hydroxide, I mean, flavor wise, OD on calcium hydroxide in uh in the water as a as opposed to using other basic substances.
But typically you do it in water, not in in flavorful liquid. Um, of course, I immediately went to use experiment using flavorful liquids. I was also tempted to save the liquid, but even with the alkaline uh protection, I was be squeamish about saving something like poultry stock after sitting at room temperature for many, many hours. Could I potentially do the initial simmering stage and then hold the entire mixture around 60 C for a much shorter steeping time, or is that just a recipe for overcooking the corn? Um 60 C look.
I'll tell you from my bean experiments, Quinn. Uh increasing the temperature of the water radically increases uh how fast things absorb, radically increases how fast things absorb uh water. Um I would think 60 is a little bit high because uh starch will actually start uh swelling uh at that temperature. Um so I would go a little bit lower. But you listen, this is all stuff that you know I could that could just be tried.
I would actually argue to go lower temp for longer as a probably better thing, right? Like cool it down and let it go longer at at refrigeration temperature if that's what you're gonna want to do. Uh my second idea, this is Quinn's second idea, is to do the initial simmering with a flavorful liquid, then it is cooling down, swap that liquid for fresh warm water at the same with the same proportion of calcium. I think it'll probably leach out a lot of the flavor. I don't even know how much is going to penetrate because a lot of the stuff that goes in is water, so the heavier molecules, I don't know over the short cooking time how long they're gonna make it in.
What do you think, John? I don't know. I am not sure. Yeah. I mean I've never done this, but yeah, I don't know.
I mean, look, so uh Fabian von Hauske of uh, you know, uh Jeremiah Stone's partner at Contra and Wildair back when he was uh, you know, one of the times he was an intern with us at the French Culinary Institute is when we were doing a lot of the nixtimalization uh stuff. And, you know, our most successful um non-standard nixtamalization was to nixtamalize rye. Now, uh calcium hydroxide isn't strong enough to nixtamalize rye before it's overcooked. So I had to use lye, uh like lye, and then uh and then rinse it and then put calcium hydroxide in to give that classic calcium hydroxide taste to it. And I got it was a pain in the butt, but they were delicious.
The rye nixamalized rye tortillas are great. And if you have someone else who will make them for you, I highly recommend that you have someone else make them for you. They're a real pain because they're extremely sticky, because rye itself is extremely sticky once it's hydrated. Um we experiment so Fabian, who I will call fabulous because I always have, so to make that mental substitution in your head, uh, he had always said that his grandma used to cook chicken with cow, which is calcium hydroxide, but I can't remember whether it was actually cow or a related substance called uh techasquite, which is actually a mixture of salts. So techusquite is uh like it just, you know, it's like uh it's a non-pure salt.
So it's partially sodium chloride, it's partially partially sodium carbonate, partially sodium bicarbonate, and uh and a bunch of other things. So it's alkaline and salty, and it's used as a as a flavorant, but also as a meat tenderizer and also as something to keep things green because uh it'll keep things green. Because uh when you shift um green vegetables into a basic regime basic meaning alkaline regime, they don't turn color, but they also get mushy faster. So one of the interesting things about mixtures of basic salts like texquite is if you have calcium in that mix, calcium, because basic things also make things mushy. So if you have calcium plus something that's basic, right, then you can keep something very green but also not overcook it at the same time.
So it's an interesting phenomenon, but but Fabulous used to say that his grandma would cook chicken with it. So we did some uh tests of making chicken stock with cow and also with lye and I was not able to get something that I liked it in fact one of the problems was when I went to go neutralize the uh the the product afterwards to make it not so basic not so alkaline uh the fat in the chicken saponified and it tasted like soap uh or I don't know whether it happened during the procedure it was what but after I finally made it neutral enough to taste it but I didn't even taste it when it was basic because it was very basic. By the time I could taste it it had saponified and taste like soap. So I would just be wary of making something extremely basic that has a lot of fat in it because you might get some off flavors. This is was this an okay answer uh John yep good answer.
Anyway uh DJ mustard uh again I need someone on the Discord to weigh in DJ mustard we said this a couple times ideas on good veggies to grow in a home garden I'm zone 7B I have not had a garden DJ mustard I have not had a garden in in years and years and years but I will say this back when I did have a garden I was in a similar zone on the coast of you know near the coast of Connecticut over there and do you guys have a garden John Yeah my mom has a garden stock with bench from Home Depot and things like that. Yeah I mean if you live in Connecticut what if you live in Connecticut first of all find a good seed store near you. If you live in Connecticut, you're blessed because Baker's uh Baker's Creek, I think, heirloom seeds, they're that out of old Weathersfield. Yeah. You can go to Weathersfield, which is like a quaint little Connecticut kind of a McGillakuddy there.
You go there, you stop in, you can get some sort of like, you know, kind of farm eated table, like foody stuff at the thing, and then you go, and you know, it's quaint and all this. And then you go to the seed store, and the people who are working at the seed store actually grow the things that they sell. So even though they ship nationwide, they know exactly how the stuff grows in this neighborhood. Remember, it's not just your zone, it's the actual dirt you have, right? That's why, like, you know, uh, that's why Stokes Farms tomatoes, uh, even though the temperature regime might be the exact same as someone that's 20 miles away, the combination of temperature regime, water and dirt and husbandry is different.
Um, and so they're they're a different product. But like, you know, the the person who is there can recommend, and it's much better to get recommendations from people that actually grow stuff, not just based on the climate, and I'm not an expert in any of this, but not just based on the climate, but based on exactly where you are. And I'll tell you, you the thing that as a non gardener that uh uh was shocked me was stuff that grew great the first year that I had it. Man, by the second year, the pests had really caught on. You know what I mean?
You guys get anyone else get this problem when they're growing? Stas, you grow stuff in the garden a lot, right? The second year you plant something, the pests are like, oh, that was delicious last year. Oh, yeah, she's not here. That was delicious last year.
Not here, yeah. You know what I mean? That was delicious. I'm gonna eat all of it. You know what I mean?
But if I ever have any land in this zone again, I'm going to plant pawpaw trees. Pawpaw trees. Get you some pawpaw trees. Because they don't ship well. I've never even had one, but I would plant it taste unseen based on what people say.
It's the it is the I'm told tropical tasting temperate fruit of choice. Because, you know, everyone knows no, no one knows, but I like uh may apples, which are poisonous, po like deadly poisonous when they're not ripe. Delicious when they're ripe. I mean, delicious. But the problem is you have to fight the chipmunks and squirrels to get to them because they're also gonna eat all those suckers.
Um I would get a pawpaw tree. John, get a pawpaw tree over there at your mom's house. You can get them shipped. They grow them in Jersey. What?
Huh? I don't know. That would that's a good idea. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah.
If I grow them in Jersey. Yeah. You grow them in Jersey. And if you plant a tree, right? Couple trees, then like, you know, it's like you plant it, you don't get anything for a couple of years, so there's no immediate gratification like with gardening.
But once they take, it's a freaking tree. You get it year after year. You know what I mean? Really? I love trees.
And I theoretically love pawpaws. I mentally love them. Someday, I forget who it is. Someone keeps writing in, threatening to send it to us, but then we never we never actually make contact when it's pawpaw time. Let's not have that happen this year, John.
Let's not sleep on pawpaws this year. Okay. Yeah. I've only ever had a Native uh American, uh, you know, American native to this country, in other words, not your non-Asian and non, you know, European persimmon once. I stole it off of a tree in a in a horticultural garden in Washington, D.C.
So I also don't feel like I know anything about like uh American persimmons, do you, John? No, I do not. But I've never, I've never, I've never been like if someone said to me, if if I woke up in the morning, someone shook me awake at night and we're like, Dave, you're never gonna have another persimmon in your whole life, I'd be like, okay. Uh I mean, like, if you never I mean, I'm not saying I don't like persimmons, I like the concept of them, but if you never had one again in your life, you wouldn't be like, oh man, right. Agreed.
Yeah. And this is a challenge. I want to feel as though it's something that I crave. I just don't. You know?
I want to. Anyway. You know who uh Nastas I know she she can't, she's not on, but Nastasia's friend Joe made the that persimmon compote that we spoke about a year or so ago. Remember that, John? Persimmon compote?
Yeah. I was so shocked someone made a persimmon compote. So then when I finally met Joe, I was like, talk to me about the persimmon compote, and you know what? He didn't even remember it. He didn't even remember it.
I'm like, who the hell makes a sip persimmon compote and it doesn't remember it? What the hell is that? Hey, listen, here's another thing I would plant. Obviously, get apples, right? Obviously, plant apple trees.
Again, I'm gonna only recommend trees. And if you're gonna get apple trees in this zone, get yourself a copy. Uh it's old, it's but not out of date and small. So, like, you know, you can get Burford's book and all there's a bunch of like very, very comprehensive books on growing uh apple trees, uh, especially in in this region. But get the um Brooklyn Botanical Gardens book on apple trees.
Brooklyn, if you if I don't even have a garden, and yet I own about two-thirds of the collection of Brooklyn Botanical Gardens uh um books on gardening for the home, and they are absolute treasures, classics in the field. They're very short, they're very cheap, and they're very to the point. So they'll they have a book on you want to grow potatoes, which by the way, everyone should grow potatoes once in their life, twice in their life, three times in their life. Joe, you ever grow a potato? No, I never have.
Tell me about it. I mean, I know you know what? Actually, I grew up sweet potatoes. Uh different. They are potatoes.
I mean, they're different. They're not the same. It's not uh it's got the word potato in them. That's true. In the way that a a love apple is a potato, if not an apple.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But not they're botanically not related, I guess is what I'm saying. True. Starchy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
True, true. But the thing about potatoes that I didn't realize until I grew up. First of all, it's like a lot of fun, right? Because you put the potato in, right? And the potatoes grow around this, uh like like near the surface where they're growing.
So what you do is is, and they make for this purpose these kind of like uh potato sacks, but not like potato sack, like you jump in. It's more like a like a like a like a top hat that like opens up. So you start it low, and then as it grows up, you keep mounding more dirt around the stalk so that it'll grow potatoes deeper, right? The idea is that you don't want potatoes to just grow at the surface. You want to get a lot of potatoes out of a very like narrow thing because you're doing it on your deck, right?
Or whatever. And so you you keep mounding it up so that you can get uh a larger depth of potatoes, right? And then at certain point you stop and it throws off all the leaves and stuff like this. But not only are potatoes delicious, I recommend getting uh potato at a farmer's market because they haven't necessarily been treated with uh sprouting inhibitors, right? And then you cut up the potatoes and then you let the potato parts sprout and then you plant those.
Um potato leaves are gorgeous, potato flowers are gorgeous. Potato plants are gorgeous. They grow relatively quickly, they're relatively easy to grow, and at the end you get potatoes. What kind of win is that? We have a caller.
Caller, you're on the air. Hey David Gang, uh Josh from Norfolk here. How you doing? Uh so I'm I'm well. How are you?
Good. Not in Egypt, I'm jealous of that. Yeah, me too. Um so I'm I'm doing a bottled cocktail for an event this Sunday. Um Blanc vermouth, campari, and clarified strawberry, which are popping off here in Virginia now.
Um I'm trying to do that. Let me write this down. Hold on a minute. Let me write it down so I can see it. So like are you using dole?
Are you using dolan? Or what are you using for your Blanc Fermouth? Uh either Dolan or either Dolan or uh Acha, which is like a Spanish vermouth we have. Okay. And uh, but it's uh it's a it's a sweet white, not uh not a dry white.
Uh I'd say like off dry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like like similar to the dol. Yeah, okay, okay. Not the Dolan dry, but like the dole.
Yeah, okay. You say Dolan Clarified Strawberry, what else? Uh Kempari. Okay. All right.
Question. I got it really. So the plan is to just carbonate them in uh, you know, ECs and then uh bottle them. Um and I'm trying to figure out whether best practice would be to uh just make like a Houstino out of the Kempari and the vermouth with the strawberries and then dilute that down, or to just use clarified strawberry juice. Uh well, okay, so normally if you're making a spirit that you're going to age, right?
Hustino is always uh a like a different process. You get a different taste, right? So like making a banana Houstino tastes different from making a um from making uh banana ju clarified banana juice and adding it, right? Because what happens is is that a lot of the stuff in the rum, like a lot of the polyphenols and whatnot, kind of get attached onto the banana. So the banana, like the banana is adding to the liquor but the banana is also subtracting from the liquor does that make sense so I would think that in especially in a long drink that's gonna be carbonated right I would think that too much would get stripped out of the Dolan or whatever the vermouth and the compari in the Houstino process.
And now it could be delicious it could be what you want but it's actually gonna lower your overall yield to do a Houstino right and in a long drink where you actually have the space to make it up with the strawberry, I think it's just gonna be much more cost effective and brighter tasting right because you can make the strawberry and then freeze it and then it's good, right? So like you can make the strawberry today, clarified strawberry today, freeze it and then thaw it and it'll be great in like six months as long as your freezer is good, right? And so I think from a um from just from the fact that it's gonna be a long drink anyway and uh I think you're gonna strip a lot of the characteristic notes of the vermouth and the compari that you're kind of going for and because of the like kind of the money you're gonna lose in that especially for a long drink, I would say clarify the strawberry. Does that make sense? Yeah totally thanks.
Yeah no problem. Uh let me know how it works out. Tweet me back and tell me how how the drink is I would just be I mean I obviously you know this but the the Kampari Kampari takes over in a good way I love Kampari but obviously compari is like rides over the top so it's gonna be an interesting balance to get it to get it right on. But you know I do love Campari. I do not I mean like I Yeah, I'm gonna go real light on it.
Yeah. Yeah, I love Kampari though. It's uh it's for a pairing with a dessert and stuff, so I'm kind of looking forward to a little bit of bitterness to you know cut through the richness of uh of the dessert course. Yeah? What's the uh what's the dessert?
Uh I don't have the menu in front of me. It's the chef doing it, but the plan is to be like kind of oops all strawberries. So um a couple different ways over like a pretty simple cake. And uh so you wanted to keep a strawberry drink, but then you know, still have something that's gonna cut. I mean, even like jack it with a little citric acid just to brighten it up.
Yeah, no shame in that. Or in Kampari a lot, if you uh uh the champagne acid is nice because it really pushes it in a wine direction and like pushes it away from a citrus direction. So with vermouth and um and compari, especially carbonated, if you want to like make it taste really kind of different and not citrusy, like try don't you know, whatever. Just try the champagne acid, which is you know the the uh six percent, so three percent uh lactic uh acid the by the crystal form and three percent um uh my god, tartaric acid, right? So it's three percent tartaric and three percent lactic, uh to make the same as lime, and it's like a little bit, not a lot because it's you know quite sharp, but a little bit of that.
Try it. I think you might you might like it. Sounds like it would work well in that. If j again, like typically we'll add like a bar spoon just to brighten it, but it definitely brings a winier note to it as opposed to a more citrusy note, which I I do uh I do appreciate. And I also appreciate the Captain Crunch reference, oops all berries.
Although Captain Crusader. Yeah, Captain Crunch is one of those things that I really I ate a lot of it growing up, and every time I ate it, I was like, why am I eating it? You know what I mean? Every time I ate it, I'm like, why am I eating this? I mean, like, two things that I did every single time when I was a kid.
Burn the hell out of the roof of my mouth with pizza, because who's waiting, right? And uh the roof of your mouth, how much does that hurt when you have your skin like like coming off like like like you're in a cave uh coming off the top of your mouth from the burnt pizza? No one likes that, right, Joe? Hell no. You know what?
I never had uh never had the Captain Crunch. We didn't have sugar in the house. Oh, well, look, you weren't missing what am I missing, yeah. No, because Captain Crunch is an extruded cereal, and I love extruded cereals. But Captain Crunch, even though it contains no grease, tastes greasy, and I don't know why.
And also, it's the hardest thing. It's physically hard, right? So, like a pizza that ruins the top of your mouth. When you eat a bowl of Captain Crunch, at the end of it, you're like, my mouth hurts. What the hell am I doing?
Like, not your teeth. Your teeth break right through it, but it's that roof of the mouth. John, back me up on this since you I'm sure you had this or or or or Jack. Come on. No, I do not back you up on this.
I am actively against you, and as matter-of fact, like I have a bowl of Captain Crunch yesterday. And how's the roof of your mouth? Yeah, okay. Alright. Listen, the joy of being a human is the ability to disagree with each other.
Very true. Yeah. We are nothing if not creatures that try to do it. I do not like it. And all berries, I mean, like, that's just like that's just like that's just like juiced up tricks.
What the hell is that? All berries is just like I only like the original Captain Crunch. I don't like all the other ones. I don't like the peanut butter, I don't like the berry. Oh, peanut butter.
Yeah. I I I think we had Fruit Loops in the house a few times. Oh fruit loops, I mean, it's all the same stuff. It is. It's all the same natural.
Well, it's all extruded stuff, but I feel fruit loops. I feel fruit loops weren't as hard on my mouth, maybe because they weren't as sharp. They're round. You know, fruit loops are like mini donut-y things, but they're hard as hell, but like for some reason they didn't do it. You know, like uh someday we should just do like a cereal aroma because I've studied cereal.
I've done I've studied cereal quite extensively. We should have some one of the cereal experts uh on. What so like if you didn't have a lot of sugar, uh Joe, what was the cereal that you had in your house? Cereal choice. It was honestly, it was it was it was honey nacherios.
Those are good. That was basically that was basically it. Or oatmeal. But you know what? You know, actually, I was just thinking about just the other day, and I don't know why I brought up Fruit Loops, but does anyone feel the same way as me?
Like when you order pork pha, I think it's only pork. Uh the glaze that they use on the pork faw reminds me of the taste of Fruit Loops. Not per se like a particular flavor, but something about it. There's an essence of Fruit Loops in pork pha. I'm gonna have John uh comment on this as the resident expert.
What do you think, John? I don't know. I've actually never had pork faux. So I don't even know if I've got chicken. Yeah.
Okay. Not can't uh, yeah. Sorry, Joe. Okay, no, I just a beef all day, everyday kind of a dude. Beef all day, beef every day.
Oh, speaking of beef, from uh uh Papa Wagyu, we had some uh uh Picanha, which what was the what was the story with that one? It was so delicious, though. Uh we'll talk about it later. We'll post it. It was so delicious.
It was so stupid. Oh my god, it was so dumb. This tasted so good. Anyway, um uh all right. Oh, on cereals though.
In my house, I mean life. Life is a great cereal. And frosted mini wits. Life, was that Mikey likes it? Yeah.
That was Mikey Likes it. Yeah. Yeah, he didn't die from Pop Rocks, by the way. No, right. Did I tell you I met the inventor of Pop Rocks?
No. Yeah, he took a class with me at the French Culinary Institute, I believe, on, I don't think it was Hydrocollege. I think it was low temperature cooking. And he was one of the people who worked on the team that uh did Pop Rocks. Really?
Yeah, Pop Rocks is are amazing, right? And it and it used to be maybe you still can, you could get custom pop rocks made by there's companies that have it, because what you do is is you essentially make a sugar candy under extreme pressure in uh CO2. Then you release the pressure, it fractures, but like there is CO2 still trapped in it. That's how it works, right? Got you.
And and uh it was huge in the early uh to mid 2000s. Pop rocks were everywhere in all fine dining. Ever all fine dining went through like the same three phases. Like first everyone was like, well, everyone's using Tonka beans now, and they're like, eh, it's not so good for you. So they stopped doing that.
And then everyone's like, oh, we're all using menthol now. And everyone's like, oh, that's actually gross. And then everyone, like the crystals. And then it's like, oh, everyone's using pop rocks. John, you remember this?
Are you uh old enough to remember this? Anyway, neutral pop rocks. So what people do is they would they would uh I think it was Chef Rubber or someone would sell neutral, just non-flavored Pop Rocks, and then people would just mix the neutral pop rocks with whatever flavor they wanted and make you know the pop rock a du jour. Well, you know, the the the the that chocolate company, Tony's, has a and I'm not a big fan of white chocolate, but I had to taste it. They have a uh white chocolate raspberry, um, I can't remember what they call it on the packaging, but it's basically raspberry and pop rocks.
Yeah. Pretty good. I mean, I like Pop Rocks. Uh so Mikey did not die. That's not true.
Uh, from uh Pop Rocks and Coke, I believe was the was the I thought it was Pepsi. Oh, it could be Pepsi, I don't know. Some a soda product and pop rocks did not kill him. But it is true. This part is what I'm about to tell you is true, according to the guy, that they had a truck that was full of pop rocks once, and it got caught in a storm and had a massive leak, and the truck uh was damaged by the pop rocks reaction.
Someday they'll find it the pop rocks reaction. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. That's what he told me.
Could be a lie. But that's what he said. I'd like to see what that truck looked like. Deformed. I would like to remember what that guy's name was.
I mean, I think one of the greatest coups that cooking issues ever had was we had the uh, you know, the inventor of Fudgy the Whale and Cookie Puss on. I mean, that was sick. Oh, that was great. Yeah. Uh all right.
Josh S. writes in any suggestions on doing waffle in waffle infused whiskey without a hydraulic press. Josh, I have good news for you, my friend. Uh the hydraulic press is completely unnecessary for the production of uh waffle infused whiskey. What the hydraulic press does is vastly increase your uh yield, right?
So if you're willing to lose more product and you're willing to put and also remember, so people, here's what we did. I cooked waffles. I used my waffle recipe. John. John, this is my American waffle recipe.
All right, I don't want to hear it from you. Okay. It wasn't a leak. Oh, I thought you used eggos. No.
What am I? An animal? Am I a brute? Come on. Hey, egg goes are tasty.
Uh now we're gonna have to agree to disagree. I do not like I do not like eggos. I do not like egos. I do not like them, Sam. I am.
I do not like them. I mean, yeah. I mean, it's definitely a t uh I know they're not good, but I I enjoyed them, and they're definitely like a child of themselves, I think. I mean, I could I could maybe see using them as a component in something else because they are a thing. They're like a thing.
You know what I mean? But like, I don't know. I'm not I mean, I I like their advertising campaign, Joe. Yes, Lego My Ego is a was a good advertising campaign. Uh anywho, right?
No, we made waffles. You know what I mean? But American style waffles. Not not Brussels, not uh not Lies. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Not Stroop. We just made American style waffles, which I love them. I grew up making them until I was 49 years old. All I ever made and knew and loved was American waffles until I went to Belgium and was like, I'm an idiot. And now I realize that all of our waffles are vastly inferior to a common grade uh Belgian waffle of any variety.
And right right or wrong, John. Yeah, no, very right. Yeah. I mean, like our waffles are like so l ego's are a different style of waffle. That's like a like, you know egos are based on like this, I don't even know what they would be called, but like a very thin waffle iron that looks like the kind of early cast iron waffle iron pans.
They're they're thin waffle. I don't even know what they would be called where they come from. I I don't really know, right? But what I think of as like the m the waffle that you get that w what we used to call when I was a kid Belgian waffles, right? Right.
Uh that most closely mimics what would be known in Belgium as uh the Brussels style, right? However, ours is ours is not good compared to theirs, right? I don't think it's a matter of oh, it's just different. No, sorry, Brussels, this stuff's better. What do you think, John?
Yeah, agreed. Yeah, no, it is it is better. And then the Liege. Uh well classically, no. The classically they're yeasted, first of all.
Uh, and uh they whip uh the egg whites and then um put the egg whites back into the batter, that provides nucleation sites. So interestingly, most of the recipes that you'll read, the the whipped egg whites go in before the rise. And you're like, why would you do that? The egg whites are just gonna go flat. But what it does is it provides nucleation sites so that the entire batter really aerates.
And so you get just like kind of massive amount of aeration and kind of a really good uh yeasty uh thing, and they're just light and their waffle irons just kick the crap out of our waffle irons. They just kick the ever loving crap. Like like they get like really freaking hot. And they're heavy. Heavy.
And they're heavy. So even like the super heavy. Even the the waffle iron that people use at home in Belgium is not the same waffle iron that we use at home here. It's heavier, right, John? I mean it's not as heavy as the commercial ones, but it's still heavier than the one that we use here.
And so it's just because no one here has had a decent waffle, the ones that we eat taste good. So we're not like, oh, you know, uh this is bad. You know what I mean? But it's the kind of thing that then when you have the other one, you're like, Oh my god, I didn't know that there was this other level of waffle that was attainable. Fair, John.
Very fair. Yeah. So uh regular American style waffles, which, by the way, here's how you can tell that your waffle game isn't very good. And this is the way I live my life until I was like, I say, like almost 50. Is if your pancake waffle, if your pancake recipe and your waffle recipe are basically the same, right?
Which so the difference for most people between their pancake recipe and their waffle recipe is strictly the amount of oil and or butter they put in, right? You need to have a decent amount of butter or oil in a waffle recipe to get good release from the pan, whereas you can lower the amount when you put it in a pancake. I don't. I use the same amount of butter in both because I'm not afraid of putting butter in my pancakes. You know what I mean?
You know what I'm saying, people? I'm not afraid of it. Uh but that's the main difference that most Americans do. And that's just not the ideal. If you have a good iron, that's just not the ideal waffle spec, is the same as pancake.
Makes your life easy, right? Because you only have to remember the one recipe. And hell, you know, you can make waffles and pancakes on the same day, pour some into the iron and some into a griddle, right? But it's just not going once you had this other kind of waffle, it's just not going to be the same. But, anyways, so what I'm talking about here is you're fundamentally making a uh uh American style waffle, which is a pancake with you know about twice what a pancake would have in terms of oil or butter.
I would make sure you put vanilla in. I would not go totally dry. I would put some sugar into that waffle more than you would in a Brussels style waffle because that's typically an unsugared waffle as opposed to liege waffles. Then let it cool, slice it into strips, put it in, soak the and and you what I would do is I would get a container, I would uh put the the strips in, and then basically fill it to cover the strips just exactly with uh your your whiskey, right? Cover it and let it sit.
Just let it sit. Let it sit. Now, then what I would do afterwards, after letting it sit for whatever, it doesn't really matter, is I would um I would dump it into a hydraulic press, and then I would press the hell out of it, like really press the hell out of it. So I would get almost a hundred percent of my product back. I also was squeezing it so hard that I squeezed all of the butter back out.
So we used to have this like whiskey butter that would float on the top, right? So we would get these, we would have these uh you know these containers, and then you would let the containers after you press it settle for a day or two, and at the top you'd have this amazing whiskey waffle butter, and like that stuff was crazy to use uh for cooking, right? It was great. Uh and then you would you you would you know decant off of that or like you know, get we would use separatory funnels to to anyway. Um, but you can accomplish pretty much the same thing with a super bag, just squeeze the ever-loving snot out of it, man.
You know what I mean? It's just you're not gonna get your yield, the taste will be good, but the yield won't be as high. Is that uh is that fair, John? Yep, fair. The science slut writes in, and uh I w I wish I could have gotten uh more information on on this uh for you, but we're gonna read it anyway.
Maybe someone in the Discord can help us out. Uh I recently had a good, a really good mezcal flavored with a local wild avocado. The flavor was impressively clean uh with fresh avocado notes. Any tips on how one could recreate this uh with such a mushy, volatile fruit as an avocado. So that's interesting.
And it made me think of uh made me think of many things. Uh first, I'm wondering what kind of avocado they use, whether they use so like, you know, like most of the avocados that we get uh here in the US, um, most of the ones that you you know that people use for things like avocado toast are a variety of avocado that are very high in oil, right? But there are varieties of avocado that are very popular in in other places that are fairly low in oil, right? So they're lower in oil, um, sometimes like brighter green, less of that kind of olive color to it. And I'm wondering whether this local wild avocado is maybe a lower oil avocado.
I also am not clear on well, uh huh. I'm not clear on whether this is like a soupy thing, like they blended the avocado in, or whether this is a liquor that's kind of clear-ish with like avocado in it, right, John. Were you clear on what they what they meant? Yeah, I think I think what you're you're saying is what Yeah. What, clear or soupy, goopy?
I think clear. Yeah, I don't know. Because you know, there's the it could be of a false thing and there's a lot of debate on it, but some people say that avo avocat, the uh the uh Dutch uh egg liquor was originally based on a an avocado liquor, but then when it was remade in Holland, it was made with eggs, and then other people are like, oh, because they don't have avocados. Other people are like, that's garbage, right? So it could be the soupy thing.
See, the problem with avocado is obviously as uh as uh the science slut points out, is that it oxidizes, right? And so there's various things you can do to prevent oxidation. One of them is alcohol, because alcohol will uh inhibit uh polyphenol oxidase enzymes. However, it's not a hundred percent, right? So, like um, you know, you want to put as little oxygen into the mix as possible when you're making it.
So I wouldn't blend it forever, you know. You know, you might want to mash it with ascorbic acid. So like ascorbic acid uh will prevent uh oxidation for a while, but it will then go away. So I think some mixture of ascorbic acid and alcohol will stabilize it, but not for infinity. So like what they might do is alcohol, ascorbic acid, then bottle it and then slowly bring it up to a temperature that will kill the enzyme but not make it taste uh too cooked, right?
You have to be careful when you're heating alcohol in a bottle because remember the alcohol boils at a much lower temperature than uh water does. So you have to be very accurate with your temperature control to not blow up a bottle when you're when you're heating it. Um but you also and that'll actually, you know, as you heat it a little bit and stuff's volatilizing, that'll actually help strip oxygen out, which will also stabilize it more. Um, but I I would try this, but I don't know of any other magical party trick that'll that'll make it happen, but maybe someone in Discord does. Was that uh was that okay, John?
Yeah. Also, strange to say, uh Haas, right? So when uh when most of us, I mean, you know, most of us think of an avocado variety, we think of Haas, right? Haas, uh uh again, this is from memory, but Haas is a um, so for my wife's birthday, I bought her they they make these uh they make these vases now, right? They that uh one for an acorn and one for an avocado thing.
So it's it's basically, like uh for a designer, like 10 steps up from sticking a bunch of toothpicks into an avocado pit and putting it over a glass of water. You remember that when you were a kid? Everyone did that when they're a kid, right? Toothpicks avocado. So these are like, you know, you get them at MoMA design and they look nice and you can grow an avocado for a while and then plant it, right?
So I was gonna go do it, but like I'm never gonna grow an avocado in New York City to the point where it's gonna make an avocado fruit, right? That's just never gonna happen, right? Because I'm not gonna have multiple trees, and I live in New York City and I don't have a lot of light, and so that's just not gonna work for me. So what is it that I can get out of an avocado plant? Because I only care about things I get things out of, right?
What what can I get? Anyone? Anyone? Leaves? The leaves.
But Haas avocado leaves, right? So like the original Mexican cultivars of, or not the original, but Mexican cultivars of uh avocado, of which, and remember, avocados are like uh a member of the laurel family, right? And so a lot of those have um aromatic leaves, like Lindera benzoin, which you know is an amazing aromatic thing, or uh sassafras, I think is a laurel, isn't it? And then um uh bay laurel, obviously, laurel, like you know, uh bay leaf is is is a laurel, but uh avocado is related to those. And and so like a lot of them have aromatic leaves.
Uh Haas is not one that has a good leaf. So if if I when I go to the supermarket, I keep looking at it and all I get are haases. I need to find an avocado with a pit in it so I can get the leaves because it's not so easy to get fresh leaves here. Uh maybe I I just haven't looked hard enough, but like uh I would love to be cooking with uh avocado leaves, right? Those those Florida avocados are huge.
They are big. Huge. And not as tasty. Those might be the ones that are less oily. Listen, look, yeah, well, there's Florida, the being the big bright green ones, and they're also in my market, they're labeled as Dominican.
Yes, Dominican. Uh, but you know, I remember uh the first time I went to Columbia, the country, and they, you know, they gave me these those avocados, and I was like, yo, this isn't oily, and they're like, yeah, this is the way we like them. So it's just like I think we're accustomed to liking the very oily ones, and I think that the the uses are different. You know what I mean? It's like the non-oily ones don't make such a good avocado toast, but they are good at being themselves.
You know what I mean? But since again, I mean I only got to eat it once, and then I get the leaves, hopefully forever. So, you know, I want the leaves. And anywho, huh? Uh yeah, so uh again, memory serves Haas is a hybrid.
So it's part part Guatemalan, part Mexican avocado. But people who uh people say that the the certain I don't know whether it's true or false, that that certain leaves from certain of them are not only bitter but bad for you. But again, I have no idea whether that's true or false. Not an expert in that, in that. Um Warren Johnson writes in uh something that's bum been bugging him.
Oh, it was a joke because I was supposed to do it during the insect episode. Right? I liked having the I liked having uh the millman on for the insect thing because it wasn't our normal, wasn't our normal ball of wax, and I had to keep on working to try to make it about food. What do you think, Joe? I enjoyed it.
I'm glad we just stay away from the food. Talk about eating things and like it was about more of like the the small microcosms of the Yeah, like the food systems, the systems. Yeah, which is not our normal, not our normal uh purview, but yeah, it's okay. It's okay to talk about something different. Anyway, Warren Johnson wrote in for uh last week.
Not an insect question, but something that's been bugging me. Is there anywhere on the internet that is currently selling one quarter inch reinforced braided bev seal ultra polyethylene hose that uh I recommend? Now, uh so I have everything else but this hose, and I cannot find a suitable non-PVC option in Canada to hook everything up. Uh any hit hints on tracking this down. So I'll say this again for anyone who hasn't heard me rant about this.
I am not against polyvinyl chloride in general, although many people are, right? It is a plastic, it has its uses. Uh it's much easier to do PVC drain pipes than it is to do cast iron. Although I had to do cast iron because the last time I had to do plumbing, New York City still required all cast iron for the drain. Nothing is less fun than well, okay.
That's not true. Nothing in plumbing is less fun than cutting and hubbing together cast iron freaking pipes. You know what I mean? I hated it. They're so freaking heavy.
I used to have to carry 10-foot lengths of these cast iron pipes on my shoulders from the local plumbing supply down east Broadway where I live, like sneak it into my elevator because I wasn't allowed to do the work on my own, and then like ruin my like my cutters cutting the cast iron pipe. Like you because you have you score it and then it goes kink and breaks, and then you put it on the free-and-these hubs, and the hubs suck. So, like, the reason you're using the cast iron, right, is because it supposedly is like so like rough and tumble that it's gonna last forever. And then what am I connecting it with, Joe? Freaking rubber hubs.
Freaking rubber hubs. Anyway. So I'm not against PVC. However, I don't want my beverages flowing through PVC. And everyone believes that PVC is okay.
But if you've ever bought new PVC hose, the plasticizers that they use in the PVC to make the PVC hose flexible smell terrible. Terrible. And if it tastes and smells terrible, as I would like to say, tastes like poison, probably is poison, right? I mean, there's plenty of things that poison you can't even taste. But if it tastes like poison, I mean it's probably poison, right?
Yeah? Anyway. Uh and I would run taste with PVC hose. Everyone's like, oh, PVC is fine. You can't taste it.
I don't know what you know why? Because they're drinking only soda. I drink only seltzer, right? So I taste every bad flavor that goes in because A, I filter the hell out of my water, right? So that there's no chlorine taste in it.
You ever go to someplace and the local water tastes like crap and then they carbonate that local crap water, and then you you like when you get a seltzer, you're like, oh, how am I gonna drink this whole thing? It tastes like death, right? I mean, how many times does this happen? Oh, all the time, right? But if you filter it, right?
And so if your water tastes like poison and you're used to poisonous water anyway, then what's a little uh what's a little uh leaching in? Sure, your kids will uh, you know, your kids will go through puberty when they're freaking 10, and who knows what's gonna happen to them later on and like all these other negative things, but you know, you're not tasting it because your water already tastes like poison. Um, PVC, I've done the taste tests and I have never had PVC uh tubing the flexible stuff that didn't produce an off-flavor. Now maybe it's possible that if I stuck it, you know, in a lake, or not a lake, you know, in a in a river and let fresh river water run through it for a month and a half and it leached all the chemicals into the environment to kill some fish downstream instead of me, right? That maybe it would uh not taste bad anymore.
That's possible, but why would you do that? The answer is polyethylene. Polyethylene does not provide a taste to uh the um I also don't like uh PVC wrap for that reason. Anyway, uh here's where you get it. Marr Sales, M-A-U-R-E-R sales.com, and good news, they ship to uh regular humans as well as to um uh companies.
And unfortunately, we should update the video, John, because the video, the company that we recommend that I use for over 20 years stop selling to people. Anyway, uh Justin writes in there's been several questions about induction burns lately that were answered on the show. What about ovens? I have an ancient wolf gas oven now that some uh that uh wait, that would be happy to replace with uh induction units, so I guess a range, right? Well, you don't have induction ovens, right?
I'm not sure about replacing the oven itself. The large size is convenient and the heat of the pilot makes some tasks uh like yogurt very easy, but the single chamber doesn't hold steam for any real time. I've used newer, horribly expensive rationale comedy of it in work and would love to get some sort of steam capability. I listened to the episode Dave did interestingly, uh, about tiny A Nova uh about the tiny oven. I'm curious to hear your thoughts about non-gas oven solutions beyond uh ANOVA.
Um listen, Justin, if you have the money, yeah. Like electric ovens are fantastic. If you have the money and the power, because a lot of the newer ones can be set to a lower temperature. I have never had any personal experience with the larger fancy ovens like the Gagana's, because I've never had like I don't have the power, frankly, in my apartment to be able to use them. And I also don't have the 10 grand to drop on them, but I hear they are fantastic.
And if anyone wants to invite me to their house so that I can play around with their fancy big electric oven. Although I have to say, back in the day when I used to buy stuff from restaurant auctions, I bought myself a half sheet bloggic. And this is back when I had uh, you know, a hundred amps of three-phase power in my loft when I lived loft living. And that thing freaking cranked. I love that thing.
Um anyway, listen, Max O'Plun. Uh, I have a lot to tell you about renovating your kitchen. I know you're gonna do it in a couple of weeks, and this might have come in last week, but uh I don't have time to go through it today. I'm gonna get to your question uh no matter whether there's a guest or not. You hear me, John?
We're gonna get to that because that's important, right? And uh Jameson also, uh with your with your Dave Chang about pizza and stuff, I gotta go listen to the references and we'll talk about it next time on cooking issues.
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