Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stan Studios, the heart of New York City and Rockefeller Center, joined as usual with Mastasi the Hammer Lopez. How you doing Stas? Good, are you? You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah. You? Fine. Yeah.
Yeah. Nothing great, nothing terrible. Nothing great, nothing terrible. You know what I used to hate, but like it's so true. Uh same, what are they, what they used to say?
Same, was it? Same blah, another day. What was it? I don't know. Same, same garbage another day.
Also, same different day. Oh, yeah, yeah. Remember, family show. I haven't announced you yet. Hold on.
Uh rocking the rocking the panels as usual. Uh Joe Hazen, how you doing? I'm doing great. Yeah, I'm gonna go in reverse because she's a friend, so she can get in uh earlier. We have uh on the phones, we have uh Dr.
Ariel Johnson. What's your how you doing? I'm great. How are you? Doing well.
So we had hey, we have you on because uh you're on this uh you you've just become uh I believe the technical uh term is Ferron approved. Indeed. Yeah, for Ron endorsed, Ferran approved. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh so like almost like a great toothpaste.
Yeah, yeah. So I made you a a stamp, like a better housekeeping ste seal with Ferron with like, you know, the two the the two flanked by like the Michelin stars on either side of the word Ferron and approved underneath. So we gotta get that made for you. We'll uh send it off to like stamp stamps.com or something. Amazing.
I would love that. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Uh and then like whenever you're like sending off a you know how like like uh Stas, you you you're like you remember when you were a kid and you you would like write letters and then you would be like pop pop like on the envelope. We could just go like pop pop.
I feel like people don't write anything anymore, like no one's ever seen a real stamp anymore. Right? The kids growing up, they're never gonna they're not gonna have stamps. When you when I was a kid, you loved stamps. Yeah.
Stamps were cool. You know what I mean? Ink pads. True. Yeah.
Stas, you used to like the ink? Yeah, yeah. Area, yeah. Ink pads. Uh Joe, what about you?
An ink pad man? I did, yeah. Yeah, of course. I love ink pads. What an unholy mess they were, though.
And the in the in the 80s and 70s, they were kind of low quality. They dried out real fast. You know what I mean? It's that weird linen stuff. I'm I'm sure that now there's only artisanal ink pads that are amazing and quite expensive.
I'm sure that's how I'm sure that's how it's gone. Space tech polymers to keep things uh moist. Yeah, moist. I love that word, you know it. Uh and uh well, there was an artisanal pencil shop, but COVID took it down in the lower east side, right across the street from Scar's Pizza, which people love the scars pizza.
Very good pizza. Really? Yeah. They they sure do. People love I but here's the thing.
I think Scar's Pizza is good pizza. I it's very good pizza. I think people love it out of all proportion, right? Yep. I like it a lot.
I think it's good. But like, you know, I wouldn't saw off my arm for it. You know what I'm saying? I mean, what pizza? What do you saw your arm off for?
I have not had a pizza I would saw my arm off pizza. That's the most obvious question. I would saw my arm off for a lifetime supply of Vash Ram Mondoy. Right. Well, what's the food you would saw your arm off for?
That's the question. Well, is it like, are you called upon to saw off your arm and then have to choose the food you do it for? Or is it a spontaneous arm sawing that we're talking about? This is an excellent point. I haven't thought about it fully.
I'm gonna go ahead and say that you're gonna have to saw off your arm, and therefore you get to choose the food that you then have the supply of. So what do you got? Where do you go? That's a tricky question. I mean that I would give up a limb for.
I don't know. No, no, no, no, no. Ariel stipulated that you're gonna lose the limb, but as a consolation prize. And in exchange, you get a uh a a never a never out supply of some thing. Yeah.
Or you never lose access to it. Yeah. Yeah. Eggs Benedict. Um eggs benedict.
But you could literally make that, I guess you wouldn't be able to anymore. It'd be hard. It'll be hard d'urf. Yeah. It'd be harder to get that Hollandaise sauce in order.
It would be. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Like. Although holiday sauce is so funny.
Everyone gets so bent over Hollandaise sauce, it's the easiest thing in the world to make if you just think of it as a hot mayonnaise. Yeah. Just think of it like a hot mayonnaise. This is true. And then like do people think of it as something else?
What do you say? Alright, it just seems like it seems obvious to me that it's a hot mayonnaise. And I'm curious what other people would uh well, people freak out about it. They're like, well, I gotta clarify, I gotta do this. It's mayonnaise.
It's hot mayonnaise. Just make a hot menu's. You know what I mean? And then like that's it. You know?
And like if you're worried about uh if you're worried about the what's it called? Um the freaking, you know, the whatever, dying from salmonella, just you know, it can be hot enough. You can make it hot enough, you know? Exactly. Um, she's not on approved easier to make thanks to it.
She is fraud-approved, endorsed. What's the difference between endorsed and approved? I did I did say Yeah, but that's not like what the award is. But that's what it says on the website. Okay, okay, Ariel, tell us what the award tell us what the actual award is.
Okay. So um there is a so the organization that does the world 50 best um has a list uh now called 50 next, which is not ranked, so everyone is uh, you know, technically equals on it. Um technically we know who's best. Young-ish people doing uh important things in food that maybe aren't attached to a restaurant and um you know deserve some attention for being cool and groundbreaking, um, and don't really fit into like a 50 best restaurants list. So I've been named to the class of 2022, um, which is super cool.
And uh they've had a few, I guess a few chefs that's on their like best of the best list. They have many lists, um, endorse certain people on on this 50 next thing. And I uh have received the endorsement of Ferran Audria, which is uh pretty pretty cool, actually. Nice, nice. So like who on the list in a Highlander situation would you take out first?
Um there can be only one, not 50, only one. There can be only one. Well, I don't I don't uh I don't know all of them. Um button find the one take out the person you don't know. Yeah, take out someone you don't know.
You know what I mean? That's I think that's a good price. It's kind of like going going to uh getting what what I hear about getting to prison, and you have to start a fight with like the toughest other person there to gain respect. I think yeah, just going in uh surprising somebody and then everyone else would be afraid of me, would be the uh highlighter situation. I'd go for it.
Uh if I went to prison and I tried that, it would go very, very badly. If I if I bear in mind with this list, we're all like a bunch of nerds. So um draw your conclusions. But yes, uh sor sorry Dave, I have to agree with you that if you were in prison and did that, it would probably not go well for you. So so poorly.
So poorly. Yeah, yeah. Uh I'm pretty sure I would get uh what's the technical punked out very quickly uh if I if that happened to me. Anyway, um all right, where were we before that? Oh, so what I haven't actually announced, uh John and uh okay to okay to it.
So uh John Ariel, you don't I don't know if you know this, maybe you do. Uh John is leaving soon, Booker and Dax, but uh because he's gonna be doing something uh really interesting. What what do why don't you tell people what you're gonna be doing, John? Yeah, I've accepted the position of executive chef at Temperance Wine Bar in the West Village. Um by the way, it's called it's called Temperance.
It's called Temperance, but they are in fact not a temperance organization. Very true. Yes, it's kind of a they they don't serve temperance beverages. No, I mean they but they might. Maybe I don't know.
They might in addition to, but not it to not be not to the exclusion of uh regular wine. Yeah. Yeah, it's not it's not a carry nation hatchet wielding temperance kind of a a locale. That's not the vibe. Yeah, no, definitely not.
Uh yeah, wine bar where they've got, we've got uh 150 ones by the glass and soon some tasty food. Yeah, yeah. Sound makes that it's you know, whatever. You know, obviously a little like nervous about getting back into the into the industry full swing, but you know it's gonna be a good opportunity and just looking forward to it. And I've never been a chef before so it's nice to finally, you know, after I've been working in this industry since 2008 to like get up to that level and you know it'll be fun to do things my way.
So let me see. So art history professor then worked in the kitchen, right? Museum curator. Museum curator. Yep.
Both fine art and museum of food. Museum of food and drink, right. Then like, you know, with us knuckleheads. Yep. Yeah.
And now back to back to the line. Yep. Right? So like uh so I mean trying to think of the trajectory. So then you're gonna start a car dealership.
Yes, exactly. Yeah no it's been hard settling down and finding you know I mean that's probably the only way to really make money, right? Yeah that's true out of all those yikes well you know yeah it's good to know John you choose uh big money big money cash money professional love it yeah yeah love being poor. Yeah yeah yeah love it good business uh yeah well uh congratulations uh thank you so now uh you know we we have to we're feverishly looking for uh you know someone who can uh fill your shoes which of course is gonna be very difficult find someone thank you yeah I mean definitely we're never gonna again I mean the odds of us having s you know someone with the Connecticut knowledge that I love so much are gonna be very low odds. You know small state?
Yeah I know small state best Dave on the Discord they want to know if you'd accept uh remote except remote what remote John. Oh, remote John. I don't know. This is something that Nastasi and I are gonna have to deal with. Listen, Nastasia's gonna put out the uh what's it called?
And you're gonna have to run the gauntlet of Nastasia. Nastasi, give like a typical, give like a typical, like uh you can't put a face over the radio, but make a noise that is like no, I mean, I don't feel as passionate about it as when we were hiring like three years ago. Why? We just need somebody like that's like right away. Yeah, wow, that's that's uh you're really uh whipping up the enthusiasm there with the with the.
I just don't feel as passionate about it anymore. Really, I'm just kinda checked out. I'm just kind of checked out. When we like, you know, real we had the time and the all that, but now we're like, we need somebody now. When you need cash now.
Like, look at that, JG Wentz. Yeah, what is it? 877 Cash now. 877 Cash Now. 877 Cash now.
Yeah. Uh why are we advertising JG Wentworth? I don't even know if they're scam artists or not. I don't know. Are they still even in business?
They are still in business. Oh, wow. Uh, I think that old that old guy, last time I saw him was like two or three years ago. He was a he was a bus driver singing the 877 Cash Now because they were doing that opera-based commercial. Remember that?
Yeah. Yeah. I have an annuity and I need cash now. Yeah. Do you have a structured annuity?
But you need cash now. Yeah, yeah. I have a structured settlement, but it's a good idea. I need cash now. It was so dumb.
It was. It was so catchy. We still remember it's been a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah.
Local new I think it's a local commercial, right? Like, I like the other. They sat a Pennsylvania page. Oh, really? So not that long.
Well, I Pennsylvania's come on. Philadelphia is only like an hour and a half from here. You know what I mean? The other one I used to love is uh Roscoe the Crime Dog. Uh not right uh Roscoe the Bed Bud Dog.
Hey, where's Roscoe? He's working. That guy, you remember that? Yeah, yeah. He's working.
And then like, like, like they want to prove that they can speak Spanish. So one of the guys, yo, Donde está Rosco! He worky. You know what I mean? Like I love that.
As though a dog can really smell the bed bugs. You really think that I mean, literally, they have a bed bug dog. You really think Stas, what do you think? You think a dog can actually smell big bugs? I think yeah, I think so.
They have they have dogs that can smell cancer, so yeah. Okay, they yes, they quote unquote have dogs. But last time they don't actually use them for that, right? I mean they can smell explosives. Yeah, I guess, right?
Yeah, right, and drugs. Okay, so let me ask you this. Uh as a as a uh money, as a flavor chemist. So, like, so we're gonna uh which by the way, that's kind of what how do you how do you describe how do you describe your soul? Ariel, why don't you just describe Oh hi?
I'm uh I'm Dr. Ariel Johnson. I'm a flavor scientist. There you go. Uh my formal training is in flavor chemistry, but I what I do now kind of like extends well beyond that too.
Um, but yeah, my my my roots are in flavor chemistry. But then you did a lot of practical work in fermentation as well, so by uh like bio Well, yeah, so it's also like like re restaurant RD and innovation and uh uh yeah, sort of uh self-trained microbiology, yeah, microbiologist, but I do a lot of stuff with microbes. You're uh you're you're you're breaking up on me, Ariel. But I noticed in your on your website that for the uh for the Ferron approved 50 next list, which by the way, isn't the organization Pellegrino? Are we just like like sidestepping around that?
Nastasia, what's the worst Pellegrino product? The water. Well, uh which one of the waters? Oh, the aquapana? Yeah.
Because it's what? Mouth water? Yeah. Aqua di boca. It tastes like mouthwater to us.
But, and we can say this because, Stas, what are the odds we ever get on a 50 anything list? Zero, a zero. Right, Stas? I guess. Checked out.
Checked out. It's checked out. Um. Okay. So as a flavor chemist, we're just talking about faking something, right?
What were we just talking about? Before that, you would smelling bed bugs? Bed bugs. So uh how can you fool dogs in an airport if you're carrying contraband? Are there masking chemicals you can use to fool these dogs?
I mean, I think it would depend on what they were trained for and depend on the dog. I mean, so like dogs are extraordinarily good at uh smelling very trace amounts of things in the air. Uh they have like really really big uh olfactory epithelia. That's the the surface that your olfactory receptors, the things that you use to smell smell molecules um stick out on inside your navel cav nasal cavity. Uh and they have like tons more receptors than we do.
Um so I wonder if it would be less a feature of like masking the smell and more like overriding their behavior, uh, if you could distract them well enough with something that is like a way better reward than uh being, you know, getting a treat or being patted on the head for smelling uh, you know, contraband fruit or money or drugs. Uh so you might need like a partner for for this situation with some if like perhaps that's like uh rub themselves down with bacon grease, uh that might be effective. Right, right. But what's the what's the odorant? I mean, most drugs are non-volatile, right?
So what's the odorant? What are they actually smelling? Well, yeah, so like when you're I I think when you're training dogs for for this like uh you tend to have the like actual uh like the actual product rather than training them on um you know some kind of pure compound uh so it could be a situation where like for example cocaine is non-volatile but uh some artifact of processing co cocaine is volatile and the dog is smelling that so it's like a secondary signal. So what I think we should do is send one of I'm not saying we should smuggle cocaine that's not what I'm saying but I'm saying what about the strategy of like you have cocaine and then you just like load me up like perfume me with that volatile and have me walk like 10 feet away from you. Then I get full body cavitied right but I don't actually have any illegal products on me.
Yeah. That that yeah that's a that's a that's a clever way to do it. Yeah. So Wiley Well I mean and that's that's how that's how like when you what you know everyone everyone knows what weed smells like uh but you're not smelling THC you're smelling like other uh like volatile components from the plant that like aren't the actual drug right that's why everyone carries those baby papers like that but dogs yeah yeah exactly well Wiley I think I mentioned this once on the show Wiley Dufresne my brother in law uh I set off a whole crap ton of fireworks one year and they were real um they were kind of bootleg fireworks so like if you go up new remember Stas in New Hampshire like right across the border at Seabreeze we went and stopped at that place. It's not like a like a big name firework place.
And the guy's like, yeah, we get them made special for us. They're a little bit not okay. Remember? Yeah. Yeah.
And so, like, and so like we I'm like, yeah, it's fine. So like we got them all and we lined them up, but like they had like twice the residue of normal commercial like fireworks. So like everything was coated in like uh in um like powder residue and like little fine like unburnt metal flakes. Everything cars, everything. So Wiley went directly from our house to the airport, and you could have snuck anything around him because like all the cops were like right on him, like like the cops and the dogs like and like like dragged him to another room.
It was like it was uh yeah, it was a big big nightmare for him. It was a fun show though. It was a fun fireworks show. So there was that. Uh all right.
Um so what else what else we got in one of your last promote the Patreons, John? Oh, yeah. If you're if you have if you're listening live, you want to call in questions to Ariel. The call number is 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507 to call in here to the Rockefeller Center Studios, uh, Newstand Studios at Rockefeller Center.
Uh John, what do you got for the Patreon people this week? Uh there is a 20% off all made-in cookware products if you are one of our Patreon members. Um if you are not one of our Patreon members, this is honestly a excellent reason to become a Patreon member because 20% off is a very big discount and made in makes great products, so you should definitely do it. Yeah, so you could join, and literally it saves you money. You could join and it saves you money.
Very true. Right? Yep. Yeah. Not to mention, like, you know, the discounts we run on the people when they come.
Oh, uh when uh Ariel's coming out with a uh book when when? When is that? It's coming out this fall or next fall. Next fall, fall 2023. But you're allowed to talk about it because you mentioned it on the website.
Yeah, yeah. My uh my my book is called Flavorama, the unbridled science of flavor and the how to get it to work for you. Uh and it's basically taking, you know, uh oh over a decade's worth of explaining useful parts of the science of flavor to cooks and chefs and saying, wow, I wish there was a book to tell you this because you're using it so creatively. And uh it this is this is that book because it did not exist before. Joe, you got a lot of reverb, you gotta have a reverb button over there?
Nope. Oh, too bad. Do I have a reverb? Well, you I think flavorama needs a reverb button. Flavorama!
Like we need like serious reverb, you know what I mean? Nah, maybe next time. Next, when you have a book comes out. I am also when the book comes out, I'll buy a reverb pedal. Go ahead.
I'll buy a reverb pedal when the book comes out and we'll loop it through. You know what I mean? Will that will that be my congratulations present? A reverb pedal? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We'll just do it. We'll do it a bunch of different ways until we get it. Like it's gotta be as good as the Yonkers raceway, like raceway park Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, kind of that level of reverb. I mean, I can give her this. Flavorama.
Ooh, that's dark. Oh wow. Well like that's it's that's dark. What about uh I just saw the maverick? What about slip into the flavor zone on Flavorama?
I only have dark stuff. Should I say that? Like if you're deep underwater in a shark's coming at you. Sharks coming at you. Hey.
Well, that's important for flavor. Uh, because most sharks have uh are have uh an unacceptably high level of uh ammonia in them to be uh tasty, right? So what are they sure do? They they eliminate uh nitrogenous wastes like through their skin rather than through like a urinary bladder. Gross, right?
Gross. That's yeah, real gross. Yeah. I mean, the only thing we pay out of our skin is like garlic and onion, right? Yeah, and uh like like acetaldehyde and some other like alcohol breakdown.
Yeah, yeah, yes. The smell of Sunday morning subway, acetaldehyde, right? That's that that's that you've been drinking smell. Uh now, but how long does that keep coming out of your body though? Oh, uh acetaldehyde?
Yeah. And I don't know, like a day, maybe? I guess it depends on how much you've you've been drinking. I probably look up the like half-life of processing ethanol and then calculate it from there. All right, so is there something that counteracts that so that when you get up in the morning, your coworkers aren't like well, I mean, I guess hydrating a lot and uh because you don't only eliminate it through your skin, you eliminate it through your other wastes.
Uh so the more you're sort of like flushing your body uh with water, I would imagine, the less needs to evaporate out through your skin. Right. I haven't researched hangovers in a long time because I only do it when someone's writing an article and they want to pretend like I'm an expert in it. Right. And same.
Yeah, you know. Uh but the last I read, which was again years ago, was that a lot of the hangover effects aren't actual dehydration. They mimic dehydration, but you can have you'll have those same effects even if you are like a giant floating water sack. Yeah, no, I mean the uh the the breakdown products of alcohol are like pretty nasty. Uh so you're gonna feel those definitely.
Yeah, you ever you ever told So it's not just dehydration. You ever test that anti-alcohol pill that uh Paul Adams, friend of the show, Paul Adams, uh was uh trying where he came to existing conditions and how many cocktails did he pound stats? It was something absurd. Oh, like the whole menu, I think. It was ridiculous.
He took some sort of like uh, I guess something that either like I don't know what it did, like I don't know what it was, but it was something that like vastly accelerated the alcohol breakdown rate. Uh and yeah, I mean, he just powered through the freaking cocktails and walked out. It was nuts. Nuts. Yeah.
I mean, remember, Paul's also the crazy guy. So that that you know, got me the anti-fizz pill and ruined my whole remember we drank that that freaking wine, the sparkling wine, and he ruined it with that freaking pill. Yeah, yeah. God. Was this something that turns off your like uh carbon dioxide taste receptor?
Or we're yeah, it's the famous it's the famous mountain climbing drug that you uh take that ruins the ruins the champagne for you. It's unpleasant. That's yeah. Well, but okay, so so this this drunkenness de processing pill. So you don't get as drunk, but like does it accelerate the like metabolism of the nasty stuff that happens when you metabolize alcohol, or does it just remove your ability to like enjoy being drunk?
Uh we will have to get. I think what it was is that like it took like three times as much to get to the same level. In other words, it's like I think the the point of this p pill drug thing was that you could go out, hang out, then like dose up, and then within an hour be able to drive effectively. I think it was actually supposed to de-drunk you was the theory of it. I don't know that that's a a wise move.
It's probably better just not to drink, right? Um, I I can't wait for self-driving cars. To be honest, like self-driving cars to me are like gonna be the best thing ever. Oh, John's not liking the self-driving car. Why?
Well, I'm not gonna say you're not allowed to drive. Yeah, but like self-driving car, it can keep driving while you're sleeping. Again, the dream is the self-driving RV where you don't have to sit in the driver's seat. You're in the back, making a cocktail, playing a board game with the family. You go to sleep and you wake up in a new national park somewhere.
Yeah. It's already parked and leveled. You know what I mean? You know, they can get some sort of robot to hook you up to the hook up your like, you know, your the black water tank to the freaking like dump. You know what I mean?
Yeah. Self-driving, baby. That's the dream. I would definitely do that. I would live in that RV that drove itself around.
The pain of the RV, well, I mean Nastasia, you you had a I've never lived in an RV for a week or two as an adult. I've only done it as a teenager. So Stas has done it more recently than I have, and and she's not gonna co-sign this as being the dream. No. No.
No, it was not fun at all. You don't want to do that with kids, Nastasia? Like playboard games every night? No. Yeah.
Well, the last time I was in an RV with Nastasia. What's the worst part of it? Oh, yes, that's what's the worst? Um, the people I were was with were afraid to drive it. So I was the only driver.
Well, what if it was driverless? Yeah. Um, yeah, but it's still like the the finding the um the dump situation to dump the waste. That's terrible. That was always an issue.
Yeah, well, I'm hoping that the self-driving one's also self-dumping. Is that I mean, is it getting better? How would that work? Well, how does it drive on it? If it can drive on its own, why can't it dump its own stuff?
It's a computer. It's a computer. It could do it. You know what I mean? I'm stipulating.
The other thing was, uh, so like it's not easy to drive a big vehicle if you're not used to driving a big vehicle, right? So like I wasn't on the I I got in it because they were driving around Florida and we were all working a gig together, but you know, as usual, I flew in last plane in, first plane out. But I get in the thing with Nastasia, and like they're like, hey Stash, go get go get gas. Go get food. Well, go get well, no, but we stopped at a gas station.
Yeah, we needed to do it. And it and like and this this is the noise of an R V scraping against a gas pump. Uh we were like, oh my god. Because once the RV has touched the gas pump, how do you untouch you can't just like you can't just you can't just reverse what you do. Yeah, you can't drive sideways.
It's not it's not a crab. It's an RV. You know what I mean? Awesome times. Awesome times.
Uh that would be a cool feature to incorporate into a self-driving car. The crab, the crab walk, yeah. Uh well, it's not gonna be. My self-driving car of the future, obviously, is electric. Uh now, the other thing was that I remember is they bought the lowest quality alligator meat I've ever had in my life.
It was it had been frozen. That's uh that sounds rough, man. Oh my God. That so like imagine like not like what's like two levels below a ziplock, Nastasia. Like, remember like when you're a kid, those sandwich bags that had the flip over, like they couldn't afford the real locks, so like they put it in the sandwich and then they flip that little Oh yeah, yeah.
You know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Real busted like bags. You know what I mean? So it was it was a wet alligator meat, like all nasty, like hacked up pieces and all gross, and then just put into one of those things and like tossed in the back of someone's freezer, right?
And then a freestyle, a freestyle, a freestyle, a freestyle, a freestyle, a freestyle. And then like we get it out, and then like we thought for its final time, and it's just a spongy, nasty grossness, and we're all like, well, I uh uh I guess we'll cook it. I guess we'll cook it. That was bad, right, so bad. Bad so bad.
Low quality. Yeah, yeah, terrible. Um that's not true. How did you cook it? What'd you say?
Oh, how did you cook it? I'm curious. Face faced with a uh awful circumstances such as this. How do you what's your strategy? Yeah, yeah.
You're clipping up a little bit on me here. Joe, should we have a call back in or no? Because I have a question. I'm also recording on my computer, so I can just send you that. So for the next can Jack can put that in later.
All right. So here's a question that actually uh someone had. Oh, we're gonna get you and Paul on to fight it. Actually, here's what we'll do. Here's what we'll do.
No matter what John's doing, maybe he'll come back. Maybe he'll bring some wine from the wine bar. Maybe. Saswee, are you liking this so far? I know what like I don't think that's possible with any restaurant situation, but sure.
What do you mean? To take inventory to uh No, but we're advertising the thing. Or he we can buy it. Jesus. Okay.
God. Like. And uh and we'll get Paul to bring in his magic pills. And we'll I mean, like, it's impossible to do an A B because you can't you can't have the same person against themselves with and without the medication, right? Well, you'd have to do like a crossover study like they do for uh medical trials.
Hmm. Where like I give it to and you don't know what you get, and we have to do it like three times. It seems complicated. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Yeah. And so science is complicated, don't know what to tell you. If it was easy, anyone would do it. Yeah. Well, if it why it's also complicated, but why is most food science so terrible?
Uh well, food science, the term food science sounds like it should be science that you do on food, and food is like a great, amazing, huge uh thing that we all love. But uh in practice, food science means industrial food science. So the only questions that really get funded are things that help make money for very large packaged food companies. Right, but even though even even those studies I find are often really, really bad because in their effort to control things. Are you talking about like nutrition studies?
Because those are also bad. No, I'm talking about literally where they're trying to figure out the best way to cook something. Their controls are almost always bad. Because in order to, in order to control only one variable at a time, they have to like all of the variables are interdependent, right? So like thinking you can just control one variable and actually figure out what the hell is going on is wildly inaccurate when it comes to actually cooking in most instances.
Yeah, I mean there are like actually there's statistical models and approaches you can use that uh deal with like highly multivariate data like that. Um but uh I I you know I I mean like I guess uh most of food well the uh i if you look at all of food science the the subset of it that's looking at the best way to cook something is like actually a pretty small uh part of it but uh yeah no I think like typically they don't really talk to people or involve people that actually like enjoy cooking and do it a lot so uh often the choices they make are somewhat baffling to someone who like would be accustomed to cooking that stuff. Right. So get this you're a fermentation person, so you might and you might you will have some in like feelings on this. So I was I was doing uh I was doing a little you know poking about to just stay current on sauerkraut because sauerkraut is delicious, right?
Sauerkraut, you like sauerkraut, delicious product that's extremely delicious, yeah. Yeah, good part of classic. Yeah. Hey, by the way, can I tell you something? Not sauerkraut.
Uh I don't think I've spoken about this on the air. So coleslaw, let's just coleslaw for a minute. You guys like coleslaw? Yeah, mayonnaise coleslaw, vinegar, or like a light mayonnaise with a little bit of vinegar. Where are you guys?
I guess light mayonnaise with a little bit of vinegar. Same and celery. Yeah, I think that sounds pretty much ideal. Yeah, okay, me too. Okay, so we're in the same place.
Now, for years, years, years, years, years. I've been a uh quarter the I usually do a half head at a time just because you know I'm not making for that many people, right? So and let's let's leave aside whether we're gonna put carrots or celery or whatever else we're gonna put them. Leave it aside. Uh I put green apple in mine, which I enjoy.
Don't do raisins. Green apple. No raisins. They inflate unpleasant, I find it. What am I, Yoda?
Anyway, so like uh so for years I like cut the cabbage into quarters, then chop out the the you know that the um, what do you call it, the stalk, and then shave, right? The core, yeah. Yeah. Well, first I'll yeah, first I'll usually do like almost like you're doing a monse like for onions. Uh like cut one line that one line down the middle and then shave so that you're you have like you know, quarter.
Not super long strands of cabbage. Yeah, yeah, not super long, but not tiny either. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But okay. Like confetti.
I bought a salad master. You guys familiar with the salad master? No. The salad master food machine. I'm not.
Oh my God. So in the 20s or 30s, there was a called the Grisker. They made the first one that's like this. And it's the very first cone-shaped, like handle cranked, like grater shaver cutter, right? And then uh they got knocked off by the Saladmaster Corporation out of Texas.
I don't know where. I'm gonna say it's plain oak. It's probably not. Anyway, so it's like it's it's just this base that clamps down with a big old handle on it, and you can either put it into the this one section that acts like a chute, acts like a cheese grater, or you can literally just jam the food into the wheel because there's no protections. And they still make it manual.
And I got one of these things to test it, and I have to say I like it. I don't use my I only use now my cuisine art for um, I only use it for like, you know, pestos and and and pie crusts and stuff like that. Because I use this salad master so fast. I had to build my own base because of course, because I don't like I don't like the bases that they have, because you know me. I hate suction cup bases.
Do any of you like suction cup bases? They suck. They don't suck. That's the problem. They they they they blow.
They they never stick. Have any of you ever had a suction cup base before? They're like lowest common denominator, because I guess some people have counters that don't work with clamps, but uh no, they're not a good solution. That's the other thing is that the only clamps that people give you are those ones that are like with that little with the with the where you have to turn it a million times and then it grinds into the thing. We have it's a new world.
Spring clamps. It's a new world. Just ship the thing with a base that can fit down on the ground and spring clamps. And then if you don't want to use a spring clamps, then like give you a non-working suction cup so you can pretend like you can work. But no one has done this.
No one has made the good base yet. You know what I mean? How much does everyone hate the pasta machine base? Because the pasta machine base, you can't even really reorient that little clamp thing. You know what I'm talking about?
Nastasia doesn't want you to have the pasta machine base because she doesn't want you to make the pasta. Sure. You know what I mean? She's like, I designed that base so that you would never use the machine. You know what I'm saying?
She doesn't have anything, you don't have anything against the company making money. You just don't want people to actually use it, right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh that's a that's a garbage clamp.
Garbage. Um anyway. So I took the salad master. So wait, here's what here's where I'm getting to the point. They have a shredding disc, right?
But I started to go nugget. I started to go nugget. What do you guys think of coleslaw? Nugget. What do you mean?
You like cube up the cabbage? So, like the pieces of carrot and cabbage are like the size of like uh like an Advil liquid gel. But thin, obviously, because there's cash. You know what I mean? So it's it it's it's so it's grating it into like in other words, like they're not long shreds, it's nuggets.
So I call it like nugget nugget sal nuggetized salad, but it's an extremely, there's no long pieces at all. What? It's all still very thin. Well, the apple pieces are like uh the apple pieces are uh what is what is that? The apple pieces are maybe like a little under a quarter of an inch in in depth.
That that's the like a quar maybe like a quarter of an inch is the is the is the height of the scallop that the nut so it's basically like a scallop shaped cone, right? That um doesn't do waffle cuts because the scallop goes all the way to the bottom. So it's not cutting, imagine like a like a very large waffle, like a wide whale, but in nugget form. Because they they they they go back, forth, back, forth. And it rips through it, and I think I think the nugget, I think the nugget, I'm I'm for it.
No long pieces. Here's another thing. It's this is unfortunate because it's almost the best thing in the world. You ready for it? Ready?
So you got this rotating cone, right? You're feeding the celery into the rotating cone, and if you hold it with the with the ribs up, most of the ribs don't make it into the salad. The nuggetizer grates and then leaves the ribs at the top and you just pull the ribs off, which is freaking genius, right? Because it cuts around the strings? Yeah.
These strings, but here's the problem. Oh it's not a hundred percent. And when the when the strings do snap and they end up in the bowl, it looks like you've dropped a hair into it. Because it has stripped them, but then it breaks, and that's hard gross. That's hard gross.
Yeah. So I currently still chop my celery by hand. By the way, when you chop that. Do you remove the strings first yourself or uh No, no, no. Fine cross-cut.
Fine cross-cut. As you're going. No, no, no, no, it's fine cross-cut. The strings, I don't find the strings are unpleasant if they're under, you know, if they're short. If they're very short.
So, you know, when you're when you're chopping by hand, you can guarantee that you're every cut's a cross-cut. You know what I mean? So anyway. Um, it sounds it sounds kind of with the with the string removal, it sounds kind of like how you make linen out of uh flax stems where uh you have to. That's how they do it.
I thought they keep it. They beat it, right? Don't they beat it? Or they have to. Yeah, they beat it, but like you beat it kind of like around the around the long uh the long strands that actually become the linen fiber.
So I wonder if you could make so like linen uh and other cloths like it are called bast fibers. Um so I bet you could save the strings from celery and make a uh celery linen out of it, a bast fiber. That sounds like a lot of work. That sounds like a lot of work. You should do that.
Yeah, you know what, uh anyway, look I always think about like look I look at the linden trees because there's linden trees all around here. And uh those have bast in them. But I guess can you imagine beating just sitting there? Imagine your job. Yo, John, go beat on that tree, go beat the hell out of that tree.
No, no, thank you. Um How about John? Where's the radio show located for a couple months? What? Dave, you're like, can you imagine that job?
And I'm saying, John, how about the job where you have to tell Dave where the radio show is located for a couple months? Oh, before I f figure out where the Rockefeller Center is hard to find your way around, people. And it's big, yeah. Yeah, it's big and confusing, and everything's called something Rockefeller Center. Nothing's like, oh, 48th and and and sixth.
You know what I mean? But the entrance is right faces right there across from the ice skating rink. Everything faces the freaking ice skating rink. Literally every damn thing faces the ice skating rink. I think he was talking about when we were moved over to the 51st.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was both, Joe. It was both. And they would never just answer me. What store is it next to?
Can I find Mark Jacobs? Yeah, but that's the thing. I don't shop anywhere. Google Maps doesn't. First of all, Land does research for eight hours on some inane subject, you just can't find the radio studio.
Hey, listen. Suck it up, suck it the hill up. All right, now listen. So back to back to uh sauerkraut. So I was researching the uh the effect of temperature on the uh texture and the different bacterial, you know, um what's the what uh cut stu types of bacteria over the three different yeah community there you go, communities.
Thank you. That's uh I was cool. I was researching something similar myself, actually, recently. So I'm interested to hear what you found. So there was a 2017 study, I forget who did it, right?
And all of the, you know, bloggy blog, McBlogging blogs were like pointing to this study about how, and I'm not saying they're wrong, right? But how the ideal temperature is between 60 and 65 Fahrenheit, which I can't do in Celsius because I that low a temperature I can only do in Fahrenheit, right? And um Yes, same. And right, and they're pointing at this study, right? And and then I read the study, and what's interesting about the study is the quote unquote trained panel hates sauerkraut.
Because if you look at the actual it's crazy. If you look at the hedonic scores, they all score highest on day seven. All of the scores go down as you go through day 21. So all of these sites are like, you need to, you need to go at least two weeks for the uh which one's the third one? It's um uh lactobacillus uh, which is the one that it can costinak mesenterioides.
Uh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one that I always think sounds like uh Luconistock, like uh like Lukenbach, Texas. Yes. So um with Willie and Whalen and the boys. So the point is is that like they're like, well, you gotta do it that long, or it won't be complex enough because you won't have all three communities.
And yet the study they're pointing to, every single one, everyone hated that, and they wanted basically fresh kraut that was only like a week old. So I was like, can no one read a study? Well, so and and you've also identified a uh a common pitfall with sensory science that uh that that people often don't get, which is well, first there's a sort of uh central central dogma in sensory science that uh doing a sensory analysis on the qualities of something is fundamentally different than doing a sensory analysis on what people prefer. Um and if you are doing testing on what people prefer, uh it's it's not actually accurate to call it the best, uh, because that is impossible to to judge. Uh what you can say is that people have the most preference for that, or of the of the uh consumer panelists that we included, the statistically significant preference is for X.
Um, but fundamentally you can't answer questions about what is the best. Uh you could answer questions about what do what do most people prefer, what does the average consumer prefer? What does a uh frequent sauerkraut consumer prefer? Uh and then relate that back to like sensory and physicochemical qualities, but um the kind of appeal to authority that oh well this this consumer panel said this one was the best, uh that's literally based on just like anyone's anyone's opinion of what they like. So yeah, if they if they actually don't like sauerkraut, what you've established is the correct time to ferment sauerkraut for so that people who don't like sauerkraut like it.
Right. But do you I I don't even remember. I should have like, I didn't know we were gonna talk about it. I should have written down what the study was so you could take a look at it. But yeah, I mean, well, do most people actually like fresh kraut better than like two-week and three-week kraut.
I I don't know. I mean, I don't personally. Yeah. And what's your favorite uh kraut temperature there? Uh yeah, like I don't I don't know that I would need it to be held at like 60 to 65, but um generally a cooler temperature uh leads to like slower metabolism by the microbes and uh generally more complex flavor development, I find.
Well, what at what temperature do you think you get more of the risk for softness? And is that risk for softness increased by vigorous? Because I do a lot of pre, some guy looks exactly like uh Senator Grassley just walked through. If it was, you imagine what we would do. Anyway, so like that'd be crazy.
The like the vigorous need the vigorous kneading with the with the with the salt beforehand so that you can get brine right away without adding extra is that have a tendency to make it softer or not? Because like if if your temperatures are higher I think I think with softness, you're mostly concerned with like pectin breakdown um and like mechanical stuff early on I think is going to be like less significant than like enzymatic activity at higher temperatures that break down the pectin. So pectin like it's in jam. And it's also the molecule that that glues uh all plant cells together in case anyone did not know. Right.
So you're you're a fan of the of the pre the pre-need to to to get that brine action going quick or no? Yeah I mean yeah and you like want the sauerkraut to be like limp uh and you need to get the moisture out of it. I mean so like so okay when you're talking about softening it's either like uh you have plant cells the cells are like packed full of water at like high pressure so like curger pressure um so if you like remove some of that water the pressure goes down and the like plant tissue gets limper. So that's like one way to get softness. The other way is if you like then physically unglue the structure around those cells which makes the like solid part break down.
So I think what you want is to like remove remove water uh to to get this like internal pressure down and get some like uh you know limpness but bite uh without getting uh getting too much action of like dissolving that pectin. Um nostasia's been looking all life versus lip sourcing lip sauerkraut I've I've also read that with um yeah with well with both sauerkraut and things like uh you know cucumber pickles uh if you have molds on the on the vegetables at all before you brine them the the molds won't grow once they're brined, but like they have pectin degrading enzymes that then if you like hold the temperature too high will uh will soften it's a little bit more I couldn't hear your handle those started. You're breaking up, but is what you were saying that there's endogenous, there's endogenous pectinases because of the molds, is that what you were saying? Because they're fungi. There yes, there's there's uh pectinases from the cabbage and pectinases from molds, and the the mold ones are like particularly effective and fast at at higher temperatures.
So let me ask this. Now I have to say, I don't want it to be stiff, I want it to be kraut, but I like a little crunch in my kraut. I like a little crunch on my kraut. I don't, I mean, I there's like limp implies soft, but soft isn't limp, right? There's there's floppy with crop.
Two different things. Just so we're clear. Uh so if you can't control the temperature that well in your uh apartment, and if you know it's gonna get above 70 or so, would you would are you are you a kind of a pinch of calcium kind of person or no? Yeah, I mean, I would either add a little bit of calcium chloride, which helps glue the pectin together, um, or I'd start it in this warm room temperature and then keep it in the fridge. So you have like a very long slow uh fermentation, which is kind of like the uh the strategy that a lot of people use with kimchi traditionally.
Speaking of kimchi, oh by the way, I was making some spicy sauerkraut, and someone was like, isn't that kimchi? I'm like, no. No. No. No.
Yeah. No. No. Not in any way. No.
But speaking of, yeah, no, the uh the the the yeah. No. Uh simp sim simple and stupid definitions, yeah. Very annoying. I have to say, everyone likes the look of uh purple cabbage sl uh kraut, but I really prefer green.
You do the taste of green. I like it better. Yeah, like why mess with a classic? Yeah. Uh what about caraway seeds?
Yes or no? No. No? What about afterwards when you're cooking? No.
Okay. How hard do you press? Sometimes. How hard do you press kraut before you use it for hot dogs? I like a lot of sauerkraut.
Press it as hard as possible. There's nothing worse than a soggy bun. Soggy bun. So sad. Yes.
Can we protect the bun from the sog? We need a film. Hydrophobic barrier. Yeah. A uh a film of perhaps butter or mayonnaise could do the trick.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do, I do like that's the thing. So like, you know, people they freak the hell out when you can tell them you're gonna mayonnaise their hot dog, but I think maybe a slight hydrophobic coating on the inside of the bun is gonna stop maybe some of the dreaded sog. That's if I think it's a good thing. Well, it's like putting mayonnaise on a sandwich.
That's like the I like an absurd amount of kraut. In fact, I also like a lot of mustard. I I can add enough mustard to a hot dog to almost sog out the bun because I like mustard so much. But I'm also mustard and kraut. I don't really think I mean I like everyone else's idea of, but like to me, like a hot dog mustard, kraut.
Agreed. Yeah. Yeah. I realize that not what people want. They want to have all like other kind of stuff on their I mean, that's good too.
But always come back to mustard or kraut. Yeah. If someone said to me, if you were like you're only ever gonna have one hot dog again in your life, I would say please make it with mustard and kraut. You know what I mean? Yeah, agree.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um hydrophobic coating. All right. Nine ten, uh nine ten, what do you think?
AG? A G? A G? Uh 910 Aggie? Nine ten Aggie?
Nine ten a G. Yeah, I don't know. Nine tenogy? They'll know. No.
No, no. They know. Yeah. No. So this is a question actually that I texted you before.
And uh so since we have you on, I will read it in its entirety and see what you what you say, since uh they seem to me, you texted me? Yeah, yeah, like months ago though. Don't worry about it. Not recently. Yeah.
Okay. And and don't worry. The c the question is for anybody out there. You just happen to be the best anybody. All right.
Uh I have I have two chemistry degrees. I don't. This is nine ten a G. I have two chemistry degrees and a huge interest in food. I looked into a cross section of chemistry and food uh and stumbled upon the flavorous position, but it is notoriously difficult to get your foot in the door.
Yeah, tell me about it. There's only like a hundred of them in the whole like world, right? Or two hundred, some something stupid. Some some small number. Yeah, it's like it's like it's like it's like having a job as a movie reviewer.
Yeah, it's like well, it's like yeah, like it's sort of like Harry Potter wizard thing. You can't get can't get that job if you're a uh what do they call them? The people who aren't that muggle muggles, right? Muggles. Yeah.
Uh does does anybody have any advice for someone in my position? What are some other food science jobs out there? Thinking about working with flavors and how they inter interact would truly be my dream job. If only we had someone who was writing a book called Flavorama on to talk about this. Uh I've been thinking uh this person's been thinking about yet another graduate degree, maybe at NC State, so I'm not above going back to school.
Thanks. Yeah. Well, okay, so I'll preface this by saying that uh I mean, w one would imagine that all flavor chemistry is the same, but I I came at it more from uh analyzing the flavors in natural products and figuring out how those work rather than building flavors from scratch. Uh so it's sort of two separate but related skill sets. Um I would say, I mean, I think like well, okay.
So there's three, there's three big flavor houses. There's Juvedon, Firmenich, and International Flavors and Fragrances. And uh they all have operations in France, France and Switzerland usually, um in Ohio, and I think there are all in New Jersey too. Yeah. Uh so I would look for jobs in one of those places and um basically take or apply for like any job at one of those companies that you're qualified for, and then uh try to work your way up from there.
Cause um, you know, the the the flavor industry is very uh it's quite like insular and they like promoting from within. Yeah, I mean the place that I know that's like basically a family business. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. The smaller ones, the smaller ones are even harder to get, right?
Well, oh yeah. Well, and and it's also um an end an industry like very they don't uh they patent some things, they don't patent a lot of stuff because they would prefer to not talk about what they're doing. Uh so it's an industry where there's a lot of like trade secrets and secrecy. Uh so to even like get close to getting one of these jobs, uh, you know, the technical skills have to be there, but it's also like they have to know that they can trust you with all of that stuff. Um how hard is it to get a job in like Monel or something like that?
Impossible? Oh, Monell, uh very difficult. Uh maybe maybe, maybe as a like lab technician, um, you could, but I would say there's probably more jobs available at uh either like big flavor houses or other sort of like food processed food companies. Um yeah, I'm not sure at Monell that you would necessarily like learn you would learn a huge amount about uh you know how flavor perception works, uh, but not necessarily any much that would be directly useful for being a flavorist. Right.
Uh which is sort of more of a uh uh I mean there's there's you know a lot of science to it, but you're kind of working more like an artist in some ways or a craftsman. Yeah. All right. Tell me rip through some questions. Should we read this questions?
You're gonna know some of this stuff too. All right. From Jake Rieger, longtime listener, first-time commenter. Started working my way through the backlog mid pandemic and now up into the high 300s. Oh my god.
Uh just got a circulator, but did not have any uh tips for securing my uh they say clips. They mean clips or tips? Clips maybe? Some people secure their bags. Yeah.
Uh clips for securing my bags. I'm also seeing some people using weights or magnets. Uh, what kind of setup do you recommend for keeping things submerged? All right, Jake, this is a good question. Uh so if you're rolling, not in bags, rolling, hating, patrolling.
If you're rolling uh with uh saran, like you're doing tubes, then just roll a couple of uh stainless steel butter knives in the last layer of plastic wrap and your stuff will sink down. We call that the Mollyvere after Chef uh Hervé Molivare who uh came up with that idea. So all of his uh like uh plastic wrap rolled things sink straight to the bottom of the circulator. But here's what I always do. That's a good trick.
It's a great trick. Uh gotta love AirVay with the with the with the with the full mall of air. Now, here's the issue. Uh, people when you're loading a circulator, the m the two one of the most common mistakes I see is people loading circulators such that bags are touching each other. So not only do you have to have your bags submerged, but if two bags are in firm contact with each other, you've just doubled the thickness, which for math people out there have quadrupled the cooking time, right?
And also because the part of the bags that is right near the outside is the most bacterially uh loaded because you've touched that and it mean it you know it's been in contact with stuff, you don't want that to be at the center and actually get the last amount of heat. That's how you get blow-offs, especially if your temperatures are close to where, you know, uh like in in the in the low to mid-50s, right? You agree with me so far, uh, Dr. Dr. Johnson there, you with me.
So here's what I do. Yeah, yeah. Here's what I do. Uh this doesn't work when you're doing seven and a half liter cambros for that thing. I usually just jam uh any sort of silverware in and stuff on top to get the bags separate.
Uh and you can, you know, put put whatever you want on it. What I do is is uh if you're using half-size Lexans or whatever they're called, food tubs, uh, the cambros, I buy quarter sheet, I buy quarter sheet um cooling racks. They're they're really cheap, right? And then you put one in the bottom, and then that means that your stuff's not resting against the bottom. Anything that's resting against the bottom, if you sink something and it's touching the bottom and it's flat like a stake, then it's also not gonna heat you'cause you're trying to heat through the stake all the way to the bottom and that's not good, right?
So you put that first cool. The only thing that's transferring heat is water. So if you're not touching water, you're not getting heat. Right. And if the water's not moving, then you're you're you have a stagnant point, it's no good.
So then what I do is so I have that layer, so you can make that whole layer, right? Then what I do is I take two racks and I put them foot to foot so that there's about a oh three-eighths of an inch in between the the racks. Then I put that on top of the first layer, and that keeps everything in that layer on the bottom. And then I can, depending on how thick it is, I can either get another layer on top of that and I finish with a rack. Or uh so I basically use a series of racks up to uh the top of the of the of the unit, and between bags, I always have two racks back to back so that there's a good three eighths inches of uh open space that water can circulate, and then you're guaranteed everything's gonna be even all the way through.
That's what I do if I don't have the full Molly Vair. Yeah. So it's a vertical stack rather than a horizontal stack. Hmm. I couldn't hear you cut up.
But we'll get it up, we'll get it on the on the post when uh when Jack hacks your when Jack hacks your uh your recorded stuff in, I'm sure we'll we'll uh we'll we'll get it. Uh Lauren Johnson writes in I set up Dave Seltzer tap uh exact same build out uh as it was in a tutorial video, only instead of so if you say exact same, then you can't say only instead of uh only instead of an ice machine, I have a dual circuit coal plate housed in a little refrigerator and have been icing it down regularly. The carbonation is coming out pretty well, but the seltzer is not nearly as cold as I would like to be. Any suggestions? Listen, if you're icing it down, there needs to be dryish ice touching the plate for it to be cold, so it needs to drain because if you have ice floating on the top and and water below, it's actually not that fast of a transfer.
You need actual ice touching the plate melting actively as the uh soda is going through it, or you won't have fast enough heat transfer. Uh Zach from Pittsburgh. How might one make electric ovens better for bread baking, more even heat heat uh uh eat he uh heating iron plates on the other racks? I mean, what do you think, Ariel? Iron plates are a good idea if you don't have even heat, but electric's gonna be more even than gas.
And the issue with a l uh with those is that you need to have enough power in your oven to actually heat up all of that extra metal you're putting in. What are your thoughts, Ariel? Right, yeah. I mean, so uh heat sinks leading to better radiation of heat, yeah, is a great idea. I mean, you would just have to preheat probably with your broiler for like a very long time uh to get it up there, or get something you could heat up on the stove and then put inside the oven.
Yeah, you know, I have to say I've been running a bunch of tests with very low thermal loads with bread, so like just you know, using like uh very, very light thermal mass, like uh cloche situations. And I'm I'm getting some good results, so I don't really know where I feel anymore. Uh rebents right in and see whether Ariel and thing of this. I've got about 200 lemons. They range from normal lemon shape size content to freak enormous mainly pith and seed monsters.
That's what we that's what we're called, right, Sus? Uh what would you do? We're thinking to keep all the pretty ones uh with juice to use as lemons and somehow process the rinds to make a syrup or lemon cello or something. Time intensive is great, labor intensive, preferably not, but life has truly given us lemons. So what they should do is suck on lemons.
Now what do you guys think? Uh Stas, you you you had your lemon cello experience with your dad, but it was okay. It wasn't that great, right? But it was a good bonding experience, no? Yeah.
Alright, what do you think, Ariel? There's a lemon cello technique I like a lot. Uh that I I think it's from Giulio Batali's books, uh, this Italian food writer, where instead of submerging the lemons in the alcohol, you get a very large jar that you can squeeze uh close shut and hang the lemons above the alcohol. So you believe in that technique, huh? It's a pure vapor vapor extraction.
Uh so you get very little bitterness and uh very very clean and extensive uh extraction of the volatiles. You're the first scientist uh that has co-signed that, which is good. I've never tested it, so it's good to know that that is Ariel approved and therefore also. The transitive property of approval, right? So therefore, Ferron has approved that lemoncello technique.
So uh Benz, if you uh if you're making lemoncello that way, you are transitively approved by Ferron Adria. Uh Wizmer, we're gonna get to your Miracle Berry question next time, although we're not gonna be here next week. Next week uh is the Fourth of July. Happy Fourth of July. Go vote in your primaries today.
Uh and uh we will be posting the made in the Patreon people already have it. We'll be posting it on YouTube for the Fourth of July instead of a live episode. Ariel, thanks for coming on. We all can't wait for your uh book. Thanks so much for having me.
Cooking issues.
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