Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the Heart of Manhattan at Rockefeller Center, New York City, Newsstand Studios. Joined as usual in the studio with uh John Hole. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks.
Executive chef of Temperance Bar. That's right. Which is which is not a temperance movement. No, no, it is not. No.
In fact, it is a wine bar. Yes. This could present some SEO problems. I guess. Yes, it could.
Yeah, that's Yeah. Uh Rocking the Panels here in New York, Joe Hazen. Hey, how are you guys? Good to see you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh got on our uh, you know, uh doing whatever he does over in California with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, Jackie Molecules. How you doing? I'm good. Uh we're Stas should be here any minute, but give me for now. Okay.
Yeah. It's so early. It's 9 a.m. where I am. What?
Turns out what? Staying across the street from me. Yeah. So Dave, I was um I was kind of knocked out of my couch for a little nap last night. And I didn't know that Stas was here.
So I'm I'm past that on the couch. And I wake up out of a dead sleep to what I unmistakably was the sound of Nastasia laughing. And it was very bizarre. And I texted her and I said, Is there a chance that you're across the street from me? Because I just woke up to your laugh.
Wait. And then I look out of my window and she's on the balcony across the street from me. Was she staying across the street from you before? Or is this totally random? She didn't tell you.
It's classic Nastasia, by the way. No, I guess Pat lives across the street, like directly across the street from me. And she was just on that balcony with him. I see. And it's just very strange woken up by the sound of her laugh.
Yeah, yeah. Disconcerting. Disconcerting. Yeah. And from our uh our Canadian Vancouver Island outpost, we got uh Quinn Vicile.
How you doing? I'm good. Yeah, I'm uh Booker and Ducks North, I guess. Yeah, north and west. You're the furthest north and west Booker and Dax outposts.
There is. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right. Well, um, what do we got?
What do we got coming up, John? What do we got? Next week we have Matt from Kitchen Arts and Letters. I had a bizarre dream about Kitchen Arts and Letters. Oh.
I had a bizarre dream that there was a special telephone number that our Patreon people could call. And be direct to Matt. And be direct to Matt. Isn't that weird dream to have? It just goes to show I'm thinking about you people too much.
Oh, it's such a weird dream, right? Yeah. And then I woke up half thinking it was real. But no. No, not really.
Uh, Patreon people, call your questions too, 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And what else we got coming up? We got anything else coming up? I'm gonna get Wiley on soon.
Because he's got some stuff he's gonna announce. Gonna get Wiley on soon. And uh, who else? Quinn and I are circling up about other potential guests. We'll keep everyone tuned in uh soon.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Jorge Gaviera's coming out with a masa book in a couple of days. Maybe we'll get him on. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, they should, he should be coming on. We were in touch with our publicist before I left you. So really? Yeah.
I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Uh for those of you that uh don't know, I'm a longtime lover of nickdomalization. I wrote uh a 2011 early New York City Nyxtimalization blog where we visited Torteria, Nyxtamal, learned how to do niximalization, and then did the rye tortilla.
You ever have the Rye Tortillas, John? No, I don't think so. They're a pain in the butt because uh rye, first of all, doesn't uh doesn't respond to cow. You know, the calcium hydroxide for the niximalization of the corn doesn't respond to cow nearly as effectively as corn does. Okay.
So you need to hit it with lye first, but lye doesn't give it the same flavor that cow does. So you do like an initial lye treatment, then cow, okay, then you grind it. And also because of the uh pentasans and other you know polysaccharides in rye specifically, right? It's quite sticky. So yeah, yeah, it's like it's a real pain.
But uh yeah, I hear, not sure. Listen, people, for those of you who are interested in nixalization, we can save all this in case you know Jorge comes on, right? But the real thing, the real takedown, the real pain in the butt for tortilla making is the grinding. Oh, we have a collar. Okay, caller, you're on the air.
Oh, hey, cooking issues. Dave and gang, how's it going? Going all right, what's up? Oh, this is uh Devin the Pasta Troll. Oh, hi, what's up, pasta trolling?
How you doing? What do you uh you've been uh making some pasta, pissing stas off? She's not even here to hear your installs, so it's uh, you know, but it's fine. It's okay. No, I've been making beans.
All right. What do you got for beans? What's what's uh what's going on with beans? What's new with beans? All right, so I'm yeah, I'm steaming mung beans, and they're coming out great, like really uh like bread.
So I'm frying them as patties. Okay with buckwheat and potato starch. But black beans, they kind of suck. And I'm wondering do I steam them longer or I'm not really sure but the mung beans I don't soak I pressure cook them dry right well black beans are fairly thin skinned beans and most people I know can cook a black bean without a soak what's your problem with them they don't get flaky enough they don't get dry enough dry enough wait so because when you when you pressure cooked mung beans right with a little bit of water they get like potatoes right they get fluffy see I don't use mung beans enough that's why like I I guess I just don't have enough experience with with mung beans they are uh one of my favorite sprouts because I detest most sprouts mung bean sprouts are one of the few sprouts that I actually enjoy because they're taste good someone tried to put sprouts on something I had recently my my sister I was like what the hell are you doing? She's like I'm putting sprouts on this like why are you poisoning this food?
What is wrong with you? Like why would you take avocado and put a sprout on top of it fried sprouts are amazing. Well mung sprouts are amazing but those tiny little garbage sprouts that taste like the poison water that they've been filthfully sprouted in those are poison. You know what I mean? Mung bean sprouts are great.
Oh yeah garbage it's uh the mouthful of fiber and dressing it's like uh it's halfway between a worm and floss it's disgusting it's gross like they they taste bad anyway uh, especially, you know, uncooked, because then they also have that raw taste, which I detest. But uh I digress. So black beans, you're trying to do them just with steam. I've never tried to solely steam a black bean. John, you ever try to solely steam a black bean?
I've always just cooked black beans in water because people want that black bean, the liquor in it. And I don't know what characteristics they have when they're steamed. Maybe someone on the Discord knows something about steaming them. Well, to do natto, you you steam them and then you inoculate them with the notto starter. Right.
So they're they're they're soft, but they're not they're not fluffy. Okay, I would parboil the suckers until they're three quarters done. Okay. Drain them, then steam them till they're done. In a similar way that if you were gonna like you can uh it in a similar way, like for like sticky rice, let's say, you can you know, you can soak it for a while, drain it, then steam it.
And like, you know, that'll get you halfway to where where you're going. Um I would say e I would say do a a par either like like a longer a long soak, which is not normal for black beans, to like because you can it's funny when you do when you soak a bean for you know till it reaches r relative equilibrium, I'd also soak it with salt. Uh well depends. Like I don't know if you're if you're inoculating with something, don't, right? But if you don't mind having the salt, like uh salt and actually a little bit of base, like a like a uh soda, uh if you know you don't mind the flavor of it, is going to increase the water absorption capacity of the bean during the soak period.
So you could just do a soak. But I find the soda makes it too it'll if I cook it too long, then it becomes like soup. Yeah, in water. In water, I'd say that's true. But I would I would if you you're not gonna cook it in water, right?
So I was saying like if you're gonna soak it, right? I could you could soak it in a slightly alkaline water. That'll increase its water absorption capacity, you know, relatively substantially. So you you know, you you you can get a um, you know, something on the order of over half of the necessary water into uh into a bean to uh you know that it would take to get all the way uh uh up to cook just during that soak thing, right? Which is why it's faster to cook, and also it's faster to cook because the water on the the you beans need water to cook, right?
So in steam, right, as you're steaming it, the water is coming from the steam and the heat's coming from the steam, right? But it maybe it's just too much to ask to do it, you know, from dry. So if they're prehydrated even, right, in water might be enough to get you going. Right. Then, you know, if that's not enough, then I would try parboiling it, you know, uh, you know, till it's you know half halfway there, uh, and then drain.
Of course, you'll be you'll be removing some of the color if you do that, which could the your black beans are gonna go. Gotcha, gotcha. And last thing, just real, real quick, uh, a report on making mustard, highly recommend it. Um I add in dried onions and like coriander or whatever you want, dried herbs, yeah. And I ferment it for about three weeks, and it's coming out really good.
All right, but a little bit of vinegar too. I add. All right, but like how sharp a mustard do you like? Oh, this is I'm I'm Indian, so this is like screaming sharp. I only use black seeds.
Ah, what's up, Black? Yeah. No yellow. That's not talking about. None of that, none of that like white and yellow mustard nonsense.
All right, well, burn your eyebrows on. Well, so I'm gonna ask you this then. How uh so in the mustard test that I've done so far, I took like uh I think I mentioned I try what I tried to do is grind them in pu almost pure water, and I have some very, very high proof Scandinavian vinegar. It's like 30% uh uh acetic acid. It's it's it's real deal.
Like, like you know, yeah, it's I'm always kind of amused. People are like, distilled vinegar, beep, beep, beep. Listen, I just want the acid. I'm gonna add flavors other ways. I just need it a crap ton of acetic acid, right?
If I want it to taste fruity, I'll add some fermented fruit to it. And the acid is just for flavor. So what I'm doing is I I hydrate it and get that sharpness without the acid at all, but then I can add very small amounts of this high-proof vinegar to it to get the acidity level I need to kind of stabilize it like long term and get that acid flavor without adding so much liquid. So in other words, I can make a very stiff mustard and still have it be really hot if you get my drift. What I what I was trying to do with the super high-proof uh vinegar.
But you think that you you like the uh you like the the onion, huh? A little salt, sulfur on sulfur. With some I like to ferment with the vinegar because uh I soak the seeds first, right? And then I make uh like a little uh salt solution, not and so it's just enough water. It's like how you cook the beans, it's just enough water, so when I blend it after, you know, three weeks later, it is that perfect consistency.
And I would say once the the uh seeds are fully hydrated, you want about two-thirds water, one-third seeds. Right, roughly right there. Wait, so I don't do measurements. You ferment then blend by eye, but yeah, ferments then blend. Oh, okay.
Huh. Because most of the recipes that I have, they they're grinding basically from, you know, with with some period of hydration, but basically from starting. And by the way, when you're grinding, are you using a wet grinder or a blender? I'm using unfortunately it's a blender because uh I gave my grandmother my wet blender. So I just used my Vitamix.
Listen, listen, where do you live? There's lots of cheap, cheap wet blenders now available in the US. Like, you know how it used to be like 350? You can get them down for like 150 now. No, but listen, I was just I was just saying before you called, like masa, right?
Most people who want to make something like masa, right? They they either they're using a hand grinder, hand grinders suck. They use a food processor, and so you have to make it too wet, and then and then you take it from too wet, you have to add masa harina to get the texture back to where you want. Or, you know, you're buying like a really expensive, like dedicated uh masa uh grinder. But a valid thing, and I was about to go re retest it maybe before before if Jorge comes on, I'll do it.
Is if you have a wet grinder, you can food process 90% of the way your masa, right, and then throw it into the wet grinder and have the wet grinder go on it for like an hour, and you'll get the right masa texture. You'll get that kind of table because it's working like a better one. I got one better for you. All right, chocolate melanger. Yeah, no, I've I've used a wet grinder for chocolate too.
Oh, many times. Back in 2010, I bought a wet grinder for the FCI so that we could do we were very early in that like uh bean to bean to bar nonsense over there at the at the FCI. So we were buying the very so like remember way back in the day there was a company that was importing Indian wet grinders, the Santas was was the brand name back in the day. Yeah, we were doing chocolate, but it was actually the worst er it was the worst reviewed product I ever made at the French Culinary Institute. My dream was is to make things with the texture of chocolate, but with other flavors.
And I chose ketchup. And so it was like tomato powder, mustard powder, uh, vinegar powder, a cocoa butter, and like some, you know, some milk solids. And so you put it all together and you let the the mélange, you know, the the the wet grinder run for a couple of days to get the particle size down to where you want. And you you can then temper the ketchup. So it was like, you know, oh, it had some sugar in it too, obviously.
That's a new one. Yeah. So we made ketchup chocolate, and they're like, but it doesn't ketchup and chocolate. I was like, no, no, it's it's texture of chocolate, flavor of ketchup, but I couldn't wrap people's minds around it. But I was able to get it to temper, but nobody, I mean, nobody liked it.
Well, put that, put that on a corn dog. That's that's not gonna be good. Well, it's like a paste on a corn dog. It's not a paste, it's it's like snap. My goal was to try to get the snap of like an eating chocolate, right?
Where it melts at body temperature. I want texture of hard chocolate bar. And I don't know why I chose ketchup as a flavor. I was like, what's something whose flavors I could buy in powder form? Like no liquids.
You know what I mean? And I was like, I could do ketchup. Mustard might have been a better choice. Mustard might in retrospect, in retrospect, mustard might have been a better choice. Except for the fact that mustard's flavors aren't developed until they've been put with a liquid.
So you would have to make mustard, then dehydrate it fully, then make it back into chocolate. Because the thing about chocolate is it it's it's basically a zero moisture or very low moisture product. So anyway, yeah, so like, so like like the wet grinder. Not only right, do you get, you know, whatever, you know, you know, your whatever someone wants to do with it. I don't know what people want to make idlies, whatever, right?
But you can also do great mustard. I mean, I bought the one I have now I bought for Idley uh experimentation, and it's freaking fantastic for that. Duh, obviously, like it's built for that crap, right? So it's like those uh mustards, uh Massa. It's an inexpensive way to get into masa grinding, uh which is just dovetails perfectly with what I was saying before you called, and uh mustards also, right?
So like that's four different applications for your wet grinder right there. And like I'm saying, you can get an inexpensive one now for like like under 200, I think. I think I haven't looked researched in a while. I was looking at them on Amazon. Yeah.
I haven't researched it since the pandemic, so I don't know. You know what I mean? I got mine before the before the the bottom fell out of the supply chain world. Anyway, I would say or call your grandma. Answer my call.
Call your grandma and have her like ship that thing back to you just for some mustard tests. You know? Well, she's only a couple miles away, so I'll just drive over if I need to. There you go. All right, well, let us know how it goes.
All right, take care. All right, bye. Um, all right. So uh oh, also uh by the way, we do have we do have Stas here, Dave, by the way. Oh hey Stop.
How you doing? Hey, how good? How are you? How's it going? So uh I've tasked you while you're in Los Angeles to uh check out uh the uh musical artist, the 80 and change 80 year old musical artist, swamp dog with two G's.
Have you checked out Swamp Dog yet? I haven't. I have had like a million people that I've needed to see, but I will try today. Okay. Swamp Dog had his 80th birthday party, I think, in March, and I'd only recently became aware of Swamp Dog.
John, do you know Swamp Dog? No. You gotta get on the Swamp Dog train. Do I? In 1970 or so, he changed his name from something I don't remember.
He was an RB sing, regular kind of RB singer. He went to Muscle Muscle Shoals, uh, Alabama, and hooked up with that with that amazing kind of rhythm uh, you know, get you know section down there, muscle shoals, right? And changed his name to Swamp Dog 2Gs because uh the reason Swamp muscle shoals, the reason dog is because a dog can do anything and you'll still love it. Like a dog come up, lick you in the face, eat your food, pee on the floor, chew on your shoe, and it's all like, oh, fine. It's a dog.
You know what I mean? That's what he says anyway. So in 1970 or 71, he comes out with a dog. He's touring Europe. He's touring Europe.
Right now, he's touring Europe? Son of a bitch. Yeah. So I don't know what you're thinking. Um I said, check it out, see whether or not he's uh around.
I I I put something on his Twitter to hear anything back. I was like, are you ever gonna come to New York? Because I would totally want to see this guy. He like his album Total Destruction of the Mind and his other album, Rat On, were like like cult hits in like the early 70s, and then in 2014 or 15, he comes out with an album in his mid-70s called Love Loss and Auto-Tune, wherein he buys an auto-tune thing and does crazy things with an auto-tuner. And then I think just last year or this year came out with something called I Need to Get Me a Job So I Can Buy More Auto Tune.
Fantastic. I mean, just fantastic. I'm into it. Yeah, fantastic stuff, man. Fantastic stuff.
Um all right. So uh what have you been doing, Stas? You've been eating any good Los Angeles food or no. Uh Jack and I are having pastries from this Cuban place right now, and it's really yummy. Yeah, what kind of like guava and cheese, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Baba, fashion fruit. I know you love passion fruit. I know you're a passion fruit queen.
Yeah. Yeah. You need to move you need to permanently move to a place where you can grow uh passion fruit in your backyard. But since you hate Florida, maybe Hawaii. You can grow But LA is too cold in the when it gets coldest, right?
You can you grow passion fruit in LA? Really? Yeah. Did you have it in your backyard growing up? Not that, no, but my other neighbors did.
Oh. All right. Well, you know. We all know that Nastasia's plan is to eventually end up back uh in LA. She's uh, you know, Booker and Dax's Randy Newman.
I look, I like LA. I'm not gonna say I love LA. I like it, but you know, uh my family is so like East Coast rooted, it's nuts. You know what I mean? It's like uh pull that tree out of the ground and it dies, you know what I'm saying?
Like I'm uh I'm I'm I'm leatherman bound. I gotta stay in this leather man loop or or you know, it's just not it's not up to me, you know. Anywho, uh I didn't know there was a big Cuban thing in LA. Is that unusual or no? What's that?
I didn't know there was a big uh cu I you know I don't associate you know Cuban food with LA. Is that unusual? Oh, you think we have everything, right? I mean, yeah, there's everything here, but you're right. There's not like especially a lot of Cuban food.
Yeah. I need to go to Florida. I I know, I know. I need to go to Florida and do the Cuban sandwich trip. Yeah, same.
I want to do that too. Because Oh, yeah. I have a I have a place in Miami that's awesome for that. Really? But you know, there's the argument, right?
There's the Miami versus Tampa argument. Oh, I didn't know this. Yeah. I think it's Tampa, right? Isn't it Tampa versus Miami?
That's with well, there's a lot. That's with including something in the sandwich. Hold up. Yeah. Yeah.
Which is actually like a codified law. So I think what we need to do is I believe there's some sort of horrible forest, I'm sure, that's exactly equidistant between Tampa, because that's right in the middle of the state, right? Some there's some horrible forest in the middle there where like the June bugs clog up your radiators in the wrong time of year. We should just meet there and have like the sandwiches and then like fight. You know what I mean?
Oka Jobi. Tampa's version includes salami and might have a swipe of mayo, depending on who's making it. I don't know about that. Yeah. I don't know about that.
Tampa's got guava ween. Got what? Guava ween festival. Guava and ween? Wean the band?
Like Dean Ween? We wish it was Dean Ween. No, it's not Dean Wien. Just called Guava Ween. Oh, like Halloween with guava?
Yeah. You can't carve a guava, Joe. No. You ever heard those? You ever heard this unreleased Dean Ween um uh Pizza Hut commercial tracks?
No. Are they as good as the Spongebob uh quiznos thing? Really? Where'd the cheese go? I don't know.
All right, I'm checking that out. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. I'm gonna I'll I'm gonna post it in the Discord if people don't know it. It's so good.
Were they were they paid for by the Pizza Hut Corporation? No. They asked them, or they they they they submitted and they came back and said, No, it's not gonna work. So they came back with their own. They said, and they what was the truck?
I was like, where's the mother cheese go? They just changed like two words. So what I'm hearing is is that Pizza Hut never aired these, so the best fast food crazy song is still the Sponge Monkeys for Quiznos. Uh yeah, I think it would have to be, yes. That's funny.
If you have not seen the Quiznos Sponge Monkeys, it's the loonyest ad campaign. I can't believe it was put on the the air, but I still to this day randomly will be like, They got a pepper pa like that. Like boom. You know what I mean? Oh my god, I love that so much.
Well, Dean Wien's uh Dean Dean Wien also puts up uh recipes on his website, and his uh meatballs and spaghetti is pretty damn good. All right, that's it. Let's get Dean Wien on this radio program. Let's do it, please. If anyone who can hear our voices has an in with Dean Wayne, then Leno, let's get some Dean Wien up in this piece.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. It's a great idea. Uh hey, Stas, you ready to have the uh you ready to have your hair stand on in? Why?
So, like Quinn was like, maybe we should look into getting someone from the bear on the show. And I was like, you know what? That's what a great idea, right, Quinn? It's a great idea. People would love that.
But then the Stasi would be like, I already know what it's like to go out with a chef. Yeah, no, I think you're right. I think you're right. Uh so listen, speaking of television programs, I was the I was a guest helper. I was a I was a I was an expert, a guest expert on the uh upcoming show Recipe Lost and Found for Meatballs.
Meatballs. Uh that's gonna air on Discovery on Friday, August the 19th. So that's that's this week, right? Yeah. Yeah.
So like uh you could check it out. So like I'll I won't spoil it for you, but uh this person is trying to recreate their grandma. Spoiler, she's dead, so they can't just ask the grandma, trying to recreate the grandma's uh meatball recipe, right? Yeah, yeah. That was like some good culinary investigation on your on your part.
Yeah, well, so the the interesting thing was is that the the grandma was Jewish, not Italian, right? But they lived I remember it was a long time ago we shot it. I believe they live on Long Island, right? Yeah. And and I think the grandpa was an MTA worker or something like this.
This and so, like, wanted a meatball like the ones he saw his like, you know, fellow workers at the MTA eating, and so she came up with this meatball recipe. So we had to figure out what a Jewish grandma making an Italian meatball would do. And they had, again, I'm not gonna spoil it, they had, she just died like a year and a half ago or two years ago. They had a meatball still in the freezer that we can analyze. So interesting.
Yeah. It's kind of like a pulpitone. Well, it's like, I'm not gonna spoil how she did her meatballs, but I will say this. They also had pictures from the 1970s of her pantry, so we could see kind of, or like maybe it was more recent pictures. More recent.
They they could see kind of what she used to stock. You know what I mean? Figure it out. So then there was discussions of how tomatoes have changed over the years, all kinds of things. You know what I'm saying?
But anyway, check it out if you want. Uh uh, you know, if you don't, hey, hey, what am I gonna do? Nothing. I don't know where you live. I can't come get you.
I can't make you watch it. Anyway. Uh Inge Sigurdsson wrote in uh fiber question Is there any way to break down tough fibers? I'm thinking about making thin artichoke chips for a garnish, but keeping the leaves for aesthetics. Well, I don't know of it.
So if you guys know of a way to break down uh like cellulose and lignin, I have tried uh cellulase enzymes. I have tried many things because my goal, and I've been told that the the English, you know, those UK people, uh, people who live in Britain, they've come up with a stringless celery, I'm told. I've never eaten this stringless celery, but I hate peeling the strings out of celery. Is there anyone that likes peeling the strings out of celery? Because it gums up your peeler.
Yeah. It just gums the hell out of your peeler. Those strings everywhere. You can't put the strings, the strings that they don't even, they're so god dang long. They don't come out of your peeler, and then your peeler clogs, and you, you know, you put your your celery flat on like a sheet tray and you're trying to go zip zip zop zop zup, but like after the second zup, it's already clawed.
It's not fun. Nobody likes it. No. So like if you can have a stringless celery, this is why when I cook with celery, honestly, I'm just like, I'm gonna cross-cut that son of a gun, real, real, bah, bah, bah. You know what I mean?
I'm like, I just don't have this patience. Yeah. You know? In fact, uh, for salad and whatnot, I'm a okay, okay. I'll tell I'll tell you this.
I've mentioned this before. You know, I'm a fan of the salad master manual, blah, blah, blah. Oh no, you haven't. Ah, boom. Yeah.
Uh, so theoretically, I think I mentioned this before, if you hold the celery such that the strings are facing up and you feed the celery into the grinder, it will leave the vast majority of the strings as one strip and it'll scrape the flesh off of the strings. The problem is, is that the strings that break off and pop in are even worse than even worse than just chopping the strings into the thing. You know what I'm saying? Like they're e it's even worse. But if someone could make something like that, some sort of like D-stringer, or maybe we could try this crazy celery, stringless celery.
Yeah. I don't know. I'd be interested in trying that. Anyway, when you chop, I'm a I'm a I take the fat end, I cut, you know, maybe a little bit off the fat end, just so it's because who has the patience to wash all of that stuff off near the fat end? Yeah.
Nobody. Nobody. And you know, wait, you know, Andre Soltner, you know, famous chef Chef Lutest, buy the best, waste nothing. But I'm like, come on, Andre, man. I'm gonna because he would save that little endling for stock, which makes sense.
But how often are you making the veg stock? Yeah. I go right in the trash at home. Right in the trash. If any of you out there actually save every veg scrap in the freezer for the day when you make veg stock, let me know.
Shame us. Yeah. Right? Anywho. But then I do I'm a big fan of the uh long cross cuts that the long, like the rip cuts where you rip down the celery length and then cut it into tiny things.
Or do you, or do you because I hate the big half moons in my salad. Yeah. No, I'll at least split the stock in half, maybe even then split it again. So to like fours. Yeah, I split it, I leave it attached at the at the leaf end, and then I split it all the way down the middle, and then I'll do two on the side that go like two-thirds of the way up.
So four. I leave them all attached to each other. In other words, like it they look like a like a like a like a like an onion brush kind of. Okay. And then I'm br b-ba-bow.
And then I line two or three up and beep beep all the way through. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. But when you're slicing celery, I know you already know this, people.
Put the freaking strings facing the sky. If you put the strings facing down, you think you're cutting your thing, but unless you're putting massive pressure. Are you a massive pressure man? I'm not a massive pressure man. I don't like massive pressure on my knife.
I'm like I just like a light rock, boob boa, boom. So, like if you're a massive pressure person, what the hell? Do whatever the hell you want because you're also cutting through the board and dulling your knife real fast. I don't know why you want to do that, but God bless. But if the strings are facing the sky, you're always going to get decent separation on your uh on your on your on your celery.
No? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
So Inge, no, I got no uh I got no solution for you. And I've tried several times using different enzymatic things. I've used vacuums to infuse it. Uh things that are lignified are very hard to break down. I haven't found like a food grade lignin destruction thing.
And you don't want to destroy the pectin specifically, right? You want to destroy lignin and like cellulose. Very hard. So if you can think of something, let us know. You know what I mean?
Or if anyone can think of something, let us know because that that would be, you know, genius. That's a that's a that's a life goal right there. Yeah. Yeah. Uh Tyson has a distillery and wants us to know that Tyson has a stillery.
I don't know which one though, didn't say, right? Uh they have two centrifuges there, though. They have a three-liter by uh a three-liter unit, which uh does, I guess uh I can't really parse what they mean here, which does have been the workhorse for most of the work, but obviously from reading, listening to Dave, I know that uh it's also limited. So earlier this year I scored a much nicer centrifuge. Oh, uh uh 32 uh hundred uh G's, I think is what they what they mean.
3200 G's. So 3,200 G's is roughly similar to most three liter benchtop centrifuges like the Juan, like the one I used to use back at at Booker and Dax before we had uh, by the way, slowly but surely, and since you're not in the loop anymore, John, we're slowly but surely getting our way back to uh spinzall land. The uh they now have figured out finally a way to pre-test all the balance on the rotors and have all the rotors be balanced the way that we want them on shipping, so we don't have to ship anyone a new rotor to fix it and all that. And it's as we said for many years, not that complicated. You know what I mean?
But yeah, it's great. That's gonna help us so many problems with the lid and bearings and look that the genesis of all the problems were the rotor, right? Not being balanced exactly the way we wanted. And the second genesis of all the problems was the interlock, which was just too complicated. And we've solved both problems now, both problems solved.
I'm all about that. I'm all about that mechanical interlock. Yeah, and everything's like easily replaced, you know, for the user if something breaks, and you might have to get a split ring plier, which is super fun. But yeah, other than that, it's great. Listen, if you're gonna buy a split ring plier, buy the good one.
Yes. Buy the buy the good one. A bad split ring plier. I'm trying to think of something that's as frustrating as a bad split ring plier. Like what's something in the kitchen that is as frustrating?
Like what's something that's terrible in a kitchen? Like Stas, what do you have in a kitchen you hate? Or anyone? Like, what do you guys have that you hate in the kitchen? Like just hate, and yet you tolerate day after day after day.
Um I don't know. A lot of things though. Yeah. Like all my pots and pans and knives and forks and everything. Wow.
So let me ask you this, Daz. My sink. I don't like my sink. Oh, yeah. But that's a big one.
Why? It splashes when you turn on the water, it's too, it's not deep enough. It makes it too loud. What is it you don't like? It's not deep enough.
Yeah, weak. Yeah, it's just not deep enough. There's an old faucet that doesn't have any everything about it I hate. Stas on the forks, is it that they're too lightweight? They're just IKEA forks.
And they're they're like, there's nothing special about any of my stuff. Oh, you know what? So in my in my family, like people give us like um, we we have like our normal, you know, stainless normal wear, but then people will give us like unmatching silver, which I kind of like the unmatching silver look for when you want something special. Yeah. You know, like a piece or two at a time.
So every one is a little bit different. You know where it came from. It's nice. Yeah. Yeah.
You know, we're not one of those people where when we get married, we get the full set of silver in China. You know what I mean? This is not that's not that's not how the life went. Okay. Uh yeah, so I can't think of so your pans, so I'll I'll I'll say it like this.
You know how you bought that nonstick, not you, not one, but one, bought that nonstick pan like six years ago, and the nonstick coating came off of it, but you still have it, and you still sometimes reach for it, even though you know it's not nonstick anymore, and the because the nonstick coating has come off of it. That's what a bad split ring plier is like. That's what it's like. It's not nonstick, it wasn't high quality other than its nonstickness. It doesn't do anything it's supposed to do, and yet for some reason you still reach for it.
That's a bad split ring plier. Anyway. I can't even I can't even honestly though, like until we until we get this uh Quinn, right? Until we get this uh freaking Sears All Pro thing fully complete, we can't even be thinking about the centerfuge until we get the Sears All Pro fully complete, which is getting closer, right, Quinn? We have the the back screen.
I might I might have an update for the indie go uh tomorrow ish. Ish okay, sounds good. All right. So Tyson uh had this uh 3,200 G unit, which is roughly the same to all bench top, and then uh earlier this year they scored a much nicer centrifuge that goes up to 41,000 Gs. That's quite a lot, actually.
41,000 G's, that's that's a good centrifuge. 41,000 or 4100? 41,000. Okay, that's uh what we would say that's a uh a super speed fuse. It's not ultra, it's not ultra, but it's super speed.
Yeah, okay. So the very first centrifuge is so the super speed that we had at the French culinary that we got from Unilever. Oh my god, I remember picking that thing up, Stas. You were with me when we picked that up, right? Anyway, yeah.
Yeah. Oh big. Like a freaking washing machine, but even heavier. That was back when I still had it in me to just anger things around. Oh my god.
Do you remember, Stas, when we were in the uh in the what's it called? The amphitheater, and we had that big old vacuum machine. That big old vacuum, not the one from Del Posta, but the big old one, and I'm like, No, I know. Yeah, we had a class. We had a class.
And I'm like, can someone can someone help? Can someone help? Can someone help? Yeah! And then just pick it up and move it.
You know what I mean? Because it's like, can't anyone just help? You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I know. I remember. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I'm glad that at least I've been some source of amusement to you over the years. Cause, you know, anyway. Uh so the early one we had could have maybe gone up that high, but we never allowed our centrifuge to go up that high because it was so old. You have to derate. And by the way, Tyson, pay attention to this.
When you get a very old centrifuge, you have to derate the aluminum rotors. They can't go the same speed that they used to go after they've spun for a certain number of hours. So just beware. I haven't had one of those kind of centrifuges in a long time. But there used to be very, I used to know very strict guidelines.
Oh my God. Did I ever run the danger fuse in your presence, Stas? Yeah, you did with the interns there too. Oh my God. Remember what we said.
Was literally a uh, you know how like uh like those old GE motors that you would see like in a blower, like they're big. They're like, they're like um, I don't know, how what would you describe? They're like a coffee can motor, right? The size of a coffee can. Okay.
AC motor, right? Like you'd see in a big old fan. And then uh legs came off the motor, and then just a rotor in free space, an aluminum rotor in free space. Free space. And uh, so what we would do, we ran it only once or twice to see what would happen.
What we would do is is we would put it on the countertop, we would plug it in, it would go, and then everyone would hit the deck because in if it exploded, right? The idea was it would take out all the windows and anything that was at like crotch level or above would just be instantly shrapneled. You know what I mean? And we would just hit the deck and wait for it to be done. Good times, right, Stas?
Yeah, I guess so. That was dangerous. Well, they didn't call it the danger fuse for nothing. I can't believe that they sold that to real people to use in a laboratory. You know what I'm saying?
That's what's most shocking. That's what America was like in the 50s and 60s, I guess, when that thing was built. All right. So Tyson scored a 41,000 G unit with 8X times 50 milliliter bottles. The primary rotor that they use in that sucker is 4X 250 milliliter bottles.
So that would be for those of you that don't like math, one liter. Uh, and runs at 28,000 G's. Uh and is a game changer since we can clarify limes by brute force. Lime and grapefruit juice chilled to just above freezing and carbonated to 100 psi is a delight. Uh well, I don't think you need to go that high.
100 PSI is very, you might probably get the same results just going to 48 PSI. Give it a shot. Try 48 versus 100 because you'll get less bubbling, but whatever. That's up to you. It's up to you.
My question is am I missing out on another world by finding an even better fuge? Is there a difference between 27K and 40,000, uh, 47K, 40K when spinning foods? And is there a big difference between 40, 50 or 100K? All right, Tyson. I've only tested 20K versus 40K.
And 40K on lime juice tastes better than 20K does. Okay. I have only tested citrus juices at 20,000 G's versus 40,000 G's. And 40,000 G's is vastly superior. 20,000 G's, I find is not as good as lower force with enzymes and treatments.
So if you're gonna do direct clarification, I think 20,000 G's is not nearly as good as 40,000 G's from a taste standpoint. And you could taste it with your other rotor with your 40,000 G rotor. Do it 20, do it at 40. Now, what I want you to test for me and let me know, I didn't test 27. Maybe 20.
I don't know, I don't know where between 20,000 and 40,000 G's that flavor knee is where it suddenly goes tastes cleaner and better. So there's somewhere between 20 and 40. Maybe it's 27. Let me know. Run it at 20, run it at 27, run it at 40 in your smaller capacity rotor, and let me know what happens.
As for higher RPMs than that, I've never tested it. There are, I'm sure, things that, you know, those higher G forces can do. And I will say that it is a complete joy to be able to just spin something without doing any pre-preparation. It's awesome. It really is.
I mean, just like squeezing lime juice into a bottle and being like, but you know, for those of us that can't afford the space or the money, you know, we're left with more reasonable centrifuge. And remember, Tyson, to derate your rotors based on how many hours they've been spawned. Unless you have, I think some of the graphite rotors uh don't need to be derated, but all the old aluminum ones. The problem with aluminum is aluminum can develop cracks uh and fatigue stress over time. And they make them out of aluminum because they're if they're relatively strong for their weight, but that's why they have a lifetime on them.
And why the danger fuge was even more dangerous than, you know. We would when you look at an old rotor, you should look at the bottom, and because what happens is if people crack something that is either acidic or basic in um in the tubes, and then that would because your tubes are gonna crack eventually every once in a while. And then you look at the bottom, if they've let that stuff sit in the rotor too long, you can get um, and that's where the rotor like is gonna break, is down there near where the where the uh where you know where the tubes at the bottom. If you look down there, make sure there's not a lot of discoloration, crazing, cracking, or uh pitting or problems with the aluminum down there. Right?
That makes sense? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh Robin, Robin has hobbies.
I like that. Robin has hobbies. Nastasia used to have hobbies, and then she gave them up for uh pandemic because you just didn't want to be that lady, right, Stas? I wish you kept your apple head hobby uh up, because uh, you know, that was my favorite thing that you did was uh that you were the apple headed doll queen, you know? And he's you know, I haven't seen you make an apple head doll in so long.
It's depressing. I don't know. Whatever. Even listening to you? I don't know, no, I don't think so.
What is well you're gonna say something, Stuzz? Okay. Robin has hobbies. Uh what is the spinzall calamata olive recipe? I see mentions of it, but uh never have any details.
Actually, you know what I can remember. I've did I ever did I ever personally I used to do olives a lot in the big uh fuge. Um there's two different things you can do with olives. Now we gotta have our uh oleogenist friend Nick on back when Nastasia is back in New York because he has some new uh his new uh box uh oil is out. But uh everyone likes some uh Nick Coleman and his uh and his and his his greasy endeavors.
No, he's gonna be at the pig roast on uh Sunday with his olive oil. Okay. That doesn't help uh our listeners sell very much. Yeah. Uh but we can talk about it if you come, like you said you were going to.
Which which Sunday is this? The Sunday. You put it in your calendar. I don't know. I don't know what's gonna happen.
All right, I'll look into it. I'll look into it. I'll see what's going on. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know.
It's not about my family. Listen, listen, listen. Listen. I'm basically my grandma's parrot gunther. Oh, I don't want to.
That's my that's like when I when I don't know what's going on, I just go into Gunther mode. Like that. And that's basically all he used to say. I told you, I think I said on the air that I used to try constantly to get that bird to curse. And the bird did not like me enough, and it would never learn curse words from me.
Which is a constant source of irritation. But if you guys are uh what's his name? Uh oh my God, Jim Carrey fans. He did a show called Kidding a couple of years ago. Tara Lipinski was in it, and one of the main plot points was her talking parrot who cursed up a storm.
Great plot point. Um were you an ice skating fan? Uh anyone? Anyone ice skating fan growing up? No?
No? No ice skating fans? All right. So with Kalamata olives, going back to uh Nick, so what we used to do was we would blend them with uh with pectenex, right? Uh just blend them like real hard in a vita prep real hard and keep them until they warm up to like body temp.
Don't go too hot. You don't want to denature the enzyme with the pectanex. Then you put that into we used to do it in the big fuse, we did it in bags. So since you can't do a bag, what you're gonna have to do is put them in, you want to put them almost a maximum amount into your into your spinzall, which is about 400 and um like 430. I wouldn't go more than that because it's gonna have problems settling out.
You might need to add a little brine to it just to get it to be liquid enough to settle. If it's not liquid enough, then it won't self uh balance, right? Then you spin it up, spin it for a while, right? And then what's gonna happen is you're gonna get this amazing top and nod around the rim of your dense, amazing top and nod around the you know, without anything else, just olive paste, really, uh around the rim of your rotor. And then the problem with it, this as opposed to like in a in a bucket fuse, is you're gonna get two liquid phases, an oil phase and a uh and a and a brine phase.
And then you have to pour that off and then let that separate over time, right? And so uh, but every person who loves olive oil, for instance, Nick, or for instance, Harold McGee, is like, this olive oil is fusty and therefore evil. And I'm like, but to untrain people from like me, it tastes good like olives. I like the flavor of olives. He's like, olive oil is not supposed to taste like olives, you Philistine.
You know what I mean? Remember that, Stas? Yeah. Anyway, uh, so that's what you do. But uh other people, like uh back at 69 Colebrook Row back in the day, what they would do is they would take whole olives, put whole olives in the center fuge.
Now you can't do this without like adding a little bit of brine in a spinzall, right? Because it won't self-balance otherwise. You can just add a little bit of brine. And then they would just spin that for a long time, and then we get a very, very clean, very, very olivey juice out of it. And the olives would be semi-crushed, so they would look almost more like oil-cured olives when they came out.
They used to do no cholaras over there, which is a delicious olive. And then uh that would be the base they use for their dirty martinis. So that's another option. But I've never tested it in a spinzall. I remember when they when uh he sent over the he's like, uh, I want you to get a bucket of whole olives with pits.
I'm like, got it. You want us to process these now? He's like, no, I want you to drain them, put the whole olives in the centrifuge, and then spin them. I'm like, but I'm only gonna get like 30 mils of freaking. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm like, what am I gonna do with all these pounds of olives? He's like, topanod. And I was like, are you selling like eight buttloads of topanod for every freaking 30 martini? It's like, does not matter. And that's what it's like doing business in the UK, I guess.
You know, God bless. From Zev. Question uh for John. Oh. All right.
Are you listening now? I'm listening. All right. Yeah, no. How's about a cooking issues menu tasting meetup at Temperance?
I'd bet you get a good showing for a pre-fee menu uh for you to use as uh use us as guinea pigs, especially if Nastasi and Dave show up. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I'd have to talk it over with with the boss, but yeah, potentially. Yeah. What do you think, Stas?
You wanted to show up? Yeah. All right. Josh S. writes in, here's a question.
I'm at the beach house with 11 people for the week. Well, it must be nice. Uh uh. That's all it is. Just wants us to know.
At the beach house with 11 people. Well, have fun. Uh I'll have to say though, like, I we're I'm I'm going uh like at the very end of the summer, I'm not going to a beach, thankfully, but I'm going to Acadia, which is on the water, but it's not beachy water. And like to me, that's like the like a like a like a rock-based beach. I hate sand.
Oh my god, I hate sand too. It's a sensory thing. The worst. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. If I could have a uh a house on the beach where I could just be on the deck and have my margaritas on a deck and watch the water, I love the ocean. It's sand that's the enemy. Agreed.
And I don't mind sand when I'm in the water. Yep. So like if if like if I'm getting clams or mussels or you know, whatever. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally.
Yeah. Getting attacked by a great white shark. If you're in the Cape now, that's like the new thing. The new thing every kid's trying to do is get attacked by a great white shark. So Gerard, my stepfather, is one of the one of, you know, now that he's he's almost 70 now, so he's he's now one of the, he's like the old fisherman on the on the on the beach.
And so like every day that he's at the Cape, they have a place in Truro out the Cape Cod. Uh every day that they're there, and they're there as often as they can be, he gets up at like four, like three or four, goes out, and is just walks the beaches. He figures out where he wants to go. There's like Boston, Newcomb Hollow, like all these places that he goes, goes down the dune, is alone and just surf casts. You're like Gerard, don't you ever want to fish on a boat?
No. Okay. You know what I mean? Don't you want to go out once and just fish on a boat? No.
He's surf casts, mainly for for stripers, but also sometimes for blues. So he was out there at the beginning of the season, and you know, the sun had already come up, so there's some other people on the beach. And he, as he's casting out, he sees a seal, because there's there's been a lot of seal. As the fish have come back, there's been a lot of seals. And with the seals and the increase in fish, there's been an increase in sharks.
So he sees a shark just obliterate, like right in front of him, just obliterate the seal like like a slick, like a like a blood slick on the top of the water, like jaw style, like you know, like Roy Scheiter jaws, like boom. And he's like, Oh, oh snap. And then so he this was at the beginning of the summer. So he goes over, he's like, uh, he finds someone, he's like, Well, you might want to put up signs for people swimming that like you know, great whites are coming to within the seal was caught like within casting range, right? You know, was was killed within casting range.
And they were like, Well, it was the beginning of the summer. It was a holiday weekend, so the signs are locked up and we can't really go get them. And they were gonna, they were being kind of a dick to him until they realized that he has a house there, he's not just a tourist, and they're like, Oh, yeah. Well, in that case, I'm sorry, but the signs are locked up. And so then Gerard had to walk up and down the beach telling people, uh Great White just killed a seal right offshore over there.
So maybe, maybe don't hang out here. Maybe don't hang out in the water. You know what I mean? Maybe don't. But he actually feels a little bit bad because back in the day, it used to be that seals, you're not allowed to do anything to a seal, right?
Obviously. So seals would come up and like take the fish off your lines while you're while you're reeling them in, and and the fish basically flipping you the flipper, you know what I'm saying? And so, like, he for years has been like, if I could only kill every seal I meet, but now he feels bad for him. Now that he's actually seen a seal, a seal get taken down right in front of him, and then like then, yeah, whatever. Whatever.
What are you gonna do? Yeah. Hey, by the way, here's a quote that uh I kind of feel that uh Nastasia's best quote of all time, and I won't tell the whole story, but true or false, and I want to see who here is like this. Nastasia believes, I believe correctly, that if you have never had if you have never had to push start your car, you haven't lived. And and not just once.
I mean, like, oh, my car needs push darting and I can't fix it for whatever reason right now. If you haven't had to push start your car, if you're not like, oh, I need to drive, can someone come with me? I need to push start this thing, right? If that hasn't been your life at what at one point, you haven't truly been around the block. I'm okay with that.
That is true. My dad had to push start his car every morning. Yeah. And the neighbor, there would be a neighbor down the block who would run out of the house every morning because he always like it always um stalls at the same point. Yeah.
Yeah. You're like, hey, look, listen, what am I gonna do? Fix it? I don't I can't fix it now. All right.
Uh all right. So Josh is at the beach house on the menu. It's steak night. I currently have a 12.5 uh New York strip, 12.5 pound New York strip. I have my circulator and a Searsol, kudos, as well as access to a propane grill.
What's the best practice to make it nice and make it nice? I'm trying to decide whether to cut it into stakes before or after circulating uh it partially. That's all I get. I uh I would cut it into stakes beforehand, circulate it. Um I would make sure that you don't circulate it uh too high too long, because uh strip can get a little bit tough.
So I would do it at like 54 for no longer if you're cutting them into like one and a half inch steaks, no longer than 45, 50 and then dropping it, letting it come down, I would let it come all the way down, and then I would do uh combination like very high grill and Sears all to like crisp it up. If you don't want to do a circulator, just want to do it, I would go off on, off on, off on, off on on the grill three times, uh, make sure that you don't overcook it. And uh Joe Davis, question about metabolizing alcohol. My girlfriend gets red, stuffy, and swollen after drinking alcohol. It's noticeable after just one Pacifico and gets incrementally worse after each successive drink.
Uh any insights into why maybe things uh thing to look for and avoid certain drinks. Uh and I love a show, shout out to Quinn for helping with my spinz all trouble. Listen, uh, your girlfriend has alcohol flush reaction. She doesn't have enough alcohol dehydrogen H2 in her system. It's a genetic thing.
There's nothing she can do about it. She needs to stay away from uh alcohol until they figure out a way to increase uh because it's really unpleasant. If anyone out there really wants to experience what it's like to have that issue without uh uh, you know, not permanently, is you can get a drug called um disulfiram that is uh meant to uh stop people from drinking alcohol who you know who have alcohol consumption problems, and it gives you the effect of alcohol flush, makes you flush because what it means is your body gets loaded up with acetaldehyde and you can't break it down because you can't properly metabolize the alcohol. But yeah, there's no alcohol that's gonna fix that for us. Sorry about that.
Um not yet, anyway. Maybe Paul Adams has something with his drink pills. Um, Samuel uh Matnik, uh do this real quick. Long time arm uh listener. I remember Dave had a detailed elaborate backpack setup used for hauling delicate tomatoes back from the farmer's market on his bike.
I'm talking about Stokes Aunt Ruby's here right now, Stokes Farms Aunt Ruby's. God's tomato people, and they're in there in the farmer's market right now. But for the life of me, I can't find that episode. I'm in desperate need of Dave's expert advice to soothe my bruised Aunt Ruby's soul. Thanks, Sam.
Here's what you do. I have a uh Peak Designs uh camera backpack, and what it has is individual compartments that are Velcroed, so it's like three individual compartments. Inside of those compartments, I make individualized uh cardboard boxes that I then nestle with um uh dish towels, right? So I can do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine tomatoes in it without them touching each other, all individually nestled. Make sure you put them stem side down, stem side down, but they have to be on something that is both absorbent and giving because if not, the stems can be too hard and push up into the thing, but must be stem side down because that's the hardest side of the tomato.
Let me know how it goes. Cooking issues.
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