Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Nations coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, a Rockefeller Center at New Stan Studios, joined as usual in the studio with uh John Who. How are you doing? Doing great, thank you. Yeah.
Yeah. Got uh got Joe Hazen rocking the panels here. How you doing? I'm doing great, man. Great to see you.
Happy holidays, everybody. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And uh let's see, over here on uh Vancouver Island, we got uh Quinn. How you doing, Quinn?
Hey, I'm doing good. Yeah, and he's got some food news for later. He's got some food news. And uh Yeah, yeah. And we have uh Nastasia Lopez and Jack Molecules Insley in California in LA, right?
Yeah, hi. Hey. How's it going over there? Good. Great.
Yeah? Yeah. All right. So Nastasia. So first of all, uh, call in your questions too if you're listening, you know, on the Patreon.
And if you're not listening on the Patreon, well then poop-oopy doop. Right? Yep. Right? Call in your questions to 917-410-1507, 917-410-1507.
And if they want to join the Patreon, tell them why they want to do that, John, and how they do it. Awesome uh community. Well, that guy got real close to the window. Um so for those of you that know, we're in we're in an old newsstand. It's called Newsstand Studios because they used to sell like candies and magazines and sodas out of here, and it's still got like the racks where all the old newspapers and magazines were.
And it's a glass wall. So usually people come in, they look, they wave like kids and whatever. But this guy shows up, he's on the phone, he turns around and he makes that what face is this like this one that that like squinting like and then puts his hand against the side of his face and leans up against the window like he's gonna light a cigarette or something. Yeah, that's very distracting. Anyway.
Like right next to us. All right, right. Um yeah, join Patreon. We got an awesome community of members where you can talk to each other in the Discord, share cool restaurant things. I'm speaking with someone now who just met up with some one of the listeners from Texas, and the listener from Texas brought him some coffee beans up to Chicago, and it sounds really cool.
But also uh discounts to Kitchen Arts and Letters, access to our Discord, um early you know, uh listening abilities for this, and prioritized uh questions that Dave will always get to on every show. So try to, yes. What yes, we have a guest sometimes, they're not working. Yeah, yeah. Uh also, like uh, for instance, yesterday I put up a big 3D file for people to print in case they want to, but there's weird random things that go up.
When people ask me, I'm like, I have no venue to share a 3D file with the world, but I can share it on the Patreon, right, Quinn? Yeah. Yeah, and also occasionally promo codes to certain products. Yeah, guess right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh yeah, like, don't we have a deal with uh Edwards Age Meets? Or we don't? We should. Can we? We did last year.
I'm sure Edward might be game, but I don't know. We'll have to talk to him and see what uh what he wants to do. He does have great products. Yeah, yeah. So yeah.
All right, so Nastasia, don't go too far away, but you're gonna need to earmuff for a second because Quinn made a product that you believe should be left to the professionals. Okay? Are you ready? Okay, okay. All right, all right.
So, Quinn, what did you what did you okay? What did you make it uh over the past couple of days? Uh I've been making uh tune. So we made a double batch. Um, the first one was baked off Sunday, and then we baked the other one.
Joe's going aggressive on the jingle, though. I like it. It's an aggressive jingle though. Yeah. All right.
All right. Wait. So you baked the other one last night? Um. Yeah, so that one is still unopened, but the first one turned out pretty good.
I'm happy with it. Yeah. Yeah. And uh you did the whole hang upside down. Was it a sourdough or a yeast or a com what what what were you doing?
A little combo. A little combo. Yeah, because it's so funny. Like, uh, I guess it tis the season, right? Julia Moskin, for those of you that I don't know, want to do nothing else between now, if you celebrate Christmas, and you want to do nothing else between now and Christmas, you can start Julia Moskin's Panettone recipe that just came out yesterday.
But uh, yeah, so uh what were you any tips for people that things that you think went wrong, things that are hard? You know, we never had on. Remember when uh remember when Matt Sartwell said that everyone, if you're gonna get a panettone book, there was that crazy hardcore professional panettone book. Remember that? Oh right.
Um I never got it. And we never got Roy on. You like you're a Roy Panatone fan, right? Yeah, yeah. I had it for the first time the other day.
It was very delicious. Can I kind of say something though? Oh no, you uh you found something. I don't know. I was just I don't know, I haven't found something.
I was just gonna say I can't I'll have to look up the listener who sent it to us last year, but he made the best panettone I've ever had in from Toronto, I think. We'll have I don't know, I'll have to look him up. His stuff was delicious and give him a better shout out. All right, so you know, it used to be you, you know, when I was a kid, it was like fairly rare to find them, right? Now, literally Goya makes panettone is.
And you can get them in my like corner, which is fundamentally like it's it's it used to be like a key foods, and now it's like one level up. It's like it's like halfway from a key foods to a food emporium now, for those of you that remember that. Anyway, so like uh oh the book I'm being told is called Sourd Sourdough Panettone and Vienna. Listen, for those of you that have never been to Vienna, I would love to go back. Because I swear, if someone says like Vienna and pastry together, I'm like, that's probably pretty good then.
Because Vienna pastry. Other level. Oh, yeah. Like you're like, oh, my country's got good pastry. Nope.
And you go to Vienna and you're like, oh, uh, oh, uh, pastry. Yeah. Pastry. Yeah. Yeah.
So, like, you know, there was an Austrian dude moved into my mom's neighborhood up in Westchester. It was when I was too young to know any better. And actually, it's not true. I was in my 20s. And I was like, how good could you be?
Austria, come on. I go in there, I was like, oh, yeah. Nah yeah. And he was the guy that couldn't even hack it in Austria. He had to move to America.
I'm just kidding, I'm not like that. I'm not that much. I feel that about uh the horseradish they have in Austria. Oh, yeah? Slamming.
It comes in like toothpaste tubes. Oh. Delish. Uh on my corner on my in my block, they every year in the season, uh, you know, the Passover time, they're out on the corner grinding horseradish with a gas mask on and then putting it directly in mason jars and selling it right there. Wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whoa. I mean, some things in my neighborhood are still cool, and some things like I had you know what I we used to have during uh Sukkot every year is we'd have the outdoor, like, you know how like people on the streets sell things like weird things? We used to have the outdoor citron market. Uh the egg rog.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, like, you know, you'd have the super fancy ones where they had they were all completely intact and a little nubbin on the end and everything. They were they're really kind of ugly fruit. Yeah. Yeah.
But then after, you know, look, if you're if you're a double celebrator, right? After Succoat's over, candy that mother, and then use it in your panettone. Or you make some type of uh like a le a lemon um what's a lemon liqueur? Oh the lemoncello? Yeah again, triggering Nastasi again.
It was supposed to be a good time with her father, and it ended up being sickly sweet. Am I right, Nastasia? Yeah, that is true. Yeah, did you still like looking back, still have a good time with your father making it though? Yes.
That's all that matters, though. That's all that matters. You know what I mean? That's all that matters. Uh all right, so Quinn, any tips on it?
Uh other than obviously get long skewers and hang it upside down after it comes out, anything like that. Anything you would do differently? Any anything, anything, anything? Um actually, I am of course working on uh an original technique for getting the fat into the pantoni. What was the problem with the old technique?
I mean, it just seemed unnecessary and sort of takes time. You know, getting the little bits of butter and like brioche style, right? They don't put it in brioche style, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Yeah, yeah. I've done side by sides on brioche. But go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. I hold back a little bit of the flour, and then once the gluten is developed, take the eggs, the butter, and make a liquid emulsion. And then just like slap that in, add the rest of the flour, and it just sort of goes, sloop.
Sloop. And it's a multiply. Sloop. What's that song? What's that song?
Shoop. What's that song, Joe? Uh Sloop John B. No, no, no. The one that goes shoop.
I don't know. We'll figure it out. Uh, yeah, so I had never done that, but I have experimented quite a bit. Usually, I've done a lot with the with like the no-needs and the melted butter brioches, and they're fine, but I just don't have a problem with uh beating beating the butter in. I don't know why.
You know, my issue is that like uh melted butter, the dough is real slack until you chill it. You know what I'm saying? I don't know. I don't know. I love the look.
Okay, here's what it is. I love the look of dough that you've beaten soft butter into. I just like the way it looks. And when it's melted, it it comes out fine. It comes out great, but it always has that little grease sheen, it doesn't have that like silk look when it and the people who eat it, they don't care.
They don't care, right? Because they're not freaking eating it. We're getting fishbowled again. Hello. Hello.
Uh yeah. Different kind of folk though. Different kind of folk. Yes. All right.
Uh what about you guys? You guys doing anything uh interesting? Uh, you got anything going on, John? Anything for the holidays? Since this is no tangent.
This is not a tangent, by the way. This is cooking. We're talking holiday cooking. I did cookies this weekend. This is uh do you guys do anyone else here do Christmas cookies?
Used to, sugar cookies, sugar, huh? Yeah. You don't seem too excited about the sugar cookie. I don't know, they're good, but just cookies or spritz? Cut.
Cut okay. But I don't know, I haven't done those in a long time. I don't know, trying to figure out what to do for Christmas dinner. Yeah. So yeah.
I uh I made I so like we years ago we used to do spritz all the time. It like cut cookies and same batter for spritz cookies using the 1993 Cooks Illustrated, where you put cornstarch into the uh to the flour, a little bit of lemon zest and all that, and you let it chill and you roll it out, right? So it makes either good sugar cookies or it makes decent spritz cookies. Yeah. But um, I don't know.
We we we got we've we stopped using the the cookie gun for a while for whatever reason. We you know the aluminum, the the fat aluminum one with the twist doodle. Yeah, and then I was in a thrift store uh like at the beginning of the year, and they had like the Italian marcado Atlas cookie press with that works more like a caulk gun that you push down, and it's got 20 dyes and a picture of what each dye actually does with cookies and a really hardcore, like the Italian recipe, which is it's it's it's crazy. It's huge amounts of butter, huge amount, it's like flour, and I used integral. They though like you can make it into garlic.
I'm like, I will then. And so like I use the flour, uh like loads of butter, and then just four egg yolks, right? And I added zest. So the liquid is four egg yolks, and then just enough milk to get it to go into the press. And you could pick this dough up and roll it like kind of play-doh, and that gun is awesome.
And then I use them to make lemon sandwich cookies. So I made like a lemon cream. Nice. And my lemon cream was instead of using all shortening, which is kind of gross, right? Yeah.
Instead of using all butter, which is kind of like wet, right? Because it's gonna get all greasy unless you keep it real cool. I did 50-50 butter coconut. I used coconut oil, you know, coconut fat and butter, and I whip those together with uh the lemon zest, lemon, uh, lemon essence, uh, yeah, and vanilla. Yeah.
Nice. Yeah. It's good. Good. Yeah, it's I add a citric acid because you know me.
Obviously. Duh. Although a lot of people might not like the citric acid because it's like kerpao. It doesn't really melt in the fat stuff. Oh.
So it's more like um, it's more like uh, you know, like remember those. I used to love these kind of their gar not good cookies, but I love them. They're called lemon coolers. And it's yeah, lemon coolers, right? They're like, they look like a Nilla wafer, but they're and they're but they're covered in powdered sugar and there's these weird little crevices of yellow crystals that are like real lemony and they pop those suckers those were those were big money cash money when I was a kid like that was like that was I remember those I love those too yeah yeah yeah messy messy powdered sugar everywhere yeah powdered sugar yeah that's right I I hate powdered sugar really am I the only one I can't stand like I can't stand like a Zeppelin with full of powdered sugar I can't stand it let me ask you this Joe let me ask you this you get the cough and I hate that's what I thought I knew it I knew it you were eating it one day like Saramassou cough that's the worst you were trying to like have a conversation with someone you breathed in while the pastry was near your face and then you're suffocating like that you know what I mean yeah oh yeah and then like you know it's the other thing I used to hate is uh I remember the first time I went to New Orleans you have to go the first time you go to New Orleans you have to go to Cafe Dumont and they put an absurd crazy an absurd amount of powdered sugar on their beignets right I guess like the first pound of powdered sugar that goes on each one absorbs the extra oil and then the rest of it the rest of it is just like a cakey layer on top.
So like when I was a kid I used to wear blue dress pants everywhere. So I still remember like these blue dress pants just like poof because also like you know I was a m and still messy human boof powdered sugar everywhere. I was like this is a nightmare but I do like the effect of powdered sugar. I like a powdered sugar donut but I don't I but I like to eat it over the sink. I don't like to sit at a table and eat a powdered sugar product anyway.
You know what's not edible? Chicago hot dogs what they're too messy. Same thing. They drip everywhere. Yeah, but I don't know.
That sounds like a you problem. Also, like Toronto hot dogs. They drip everywhere. What's a Toronto hot dog? They drip everywhere.
Anywhere you go and a street hot dog has. Is it because too much relish? Too much everything. Anytime you put a like this is in New York City, we're like, you put mustard, you put sauerkraut, you hold it in your hands. It's not that big.
You shove it into your face at a trot, and it doesn't fall on you. So did you not like Super Duper Weenie? I did like super duperweenie, but I'm topping heavy. I know, but and you sit and eat it. Yes, it's true.
It's not a running dog. New York New York hot dogs, for as little as I enjoy caseless hot dogs, right? The one thing we've got going, other than the fact that if you go to like a Mike's or it used to be Gray Grays and Mike's, you used to be able to get two hot dogs for a dollar. Yeah. The fact that they can put out infinity hot dogs in zero seconds and that they're that cheap, but also New York's a running hot dog.
Yeah, that's true. You know? I used to buy a hot dog on a hundred and where was that place? It was 100 and like 9th or 10th Street. And I will go in, I'd be like, how much do I have in my pocket?
250, five dogs. You hand them the 250, they hand you or whatever it is. Yeah, five dogs. Hand you five dogs. Those five dogs, I would eat in the five minutes it took to walk the five blocks back to my studio.
And that's how New York lunch works. Yeah. Just like when you eat lamb over rice. You're a son of a son. Not cool, right?
We could know. Nastasi and I got running dinners. Nastasi and I got running dinners. We all made it to the same place at the same time. Uh oh, people.
John is making exactly making our point for us. We order like, you know, you know, heroes, right? Like something like some sort of lamb or chicken stuff in a bread that's wrapped. That you that's wrapped in aluminum foil, so you can just peel the aluminum foil back like a freaking banana, shove the sandwich in your face while you're running to Billy Joel. Nastasi, am I wrong about this?
No, you're right. And then John got a bowl with a fork. Yeah, with rice. Tiny grains. Yeah, I eat that like almost every night after work.
Not even back from Health Square to my apartment. Listen, everybody knows that if you need to hoover rice, if you need to hoover it, get a spoon at least. At least a spoon. God, he's like eating it with a pitchfork. You know how crappy those like plastic.
Oh my god. Joe, don't get me started. If he if he had gotten a pair of chopsticks, first of all, the halal cart guy would have been like, What are you? What are you? You know what I mean?
And then secondly, if he had had chopsticks, I think Nastasia would have punched him. Probably. I'm pretty sure. Pretty sure that's what would have happened. All right.
Uh you guys got any uh oh, one more one more cookie thing on my side. Uh I made so I always make the the ricciarelli, which are the almond cookies. They're like um like uh you just it's almond. Uh, you can I usually grind the almonds, but you can use almond flour. And if you grind the almonds, you grind it with with regular sugar so it doesn't turn into a paste, right?
But if you use almond flour, you just use powdered sugar. And there's no flour in it, so it's gluten-free. And then whipped egg whites and like vanilla and zest. You know what I mean? Like orange zest and and and almond extract.
If you if you really want to do it, you can get the apricot kernels and add your own stuff, but just get the extract. Anyways, so like you you make the you you make the batter, and then you let it rest for a long time. And then you make the cookie shape and you put the cookie shape in powdered sugar, and then you make them into like, you know, little like kind of lazen shapes, and you put them on the tray and you let it rest for like an hour after that so that this it dries out and when you cook it, it puffs a little bit and you get cracks in it, right? So I decided to do it with pecans this year, but again, like I'm the only person I'm gonna eat them all because they're so delicious. I skip the zest and I used brown sugar instead of regular sugar, and I ground the pecans in the thing.
But other and I didn't whip the egg whites is what I normally do. And they still were great. I think what happened is is that the old one where you whip the egg whites is to get a little air in it so that there's bubbles in it while it's resting. But the food processor whips enough air into it as it's grinding that I think it's fine. I I need to do now next next year I'll do two batches of almond as well as pecan, one with the food processor and one without.
Yeah. But anyway, it's on Instagram, you can go check it out. But uh Ricciurelli are good. They're good, good product. And the pecan ones are, you know, not rich releases because they're pecans.
Yeah. But they're still delicious. All right. Stas, what are you doing? You doing you doing anything for Christmas, Stas?
Anything? No, nothing. What about you, Jack? No. I like how you're gonna be able to do that.
My brother's. Where's your brother this? No. Um, yeah, I'm going to my brothers in Connecticut. Um, but in terms of cookies, my grandma used to make those.
Um, I don't know if you ever had them, these Sicilian like pinulatte. Oh, yeah, I love those. I love those things. Do you? Yeah.
That was my grandma's thing. So my mom does still do those. With the did she make it the way that uh the way that the so one who for the past, you know, I don't know, 15 years or so, we always make Christmas cookies with the same family. And for them, they make the impinulate with they use a wine-based, it's a wine-based pasta dough that they roll out, and then with the nuts and the and the and the raisins and all that, and they roll them into the shape and then cook them as and then they drizzle them. Is it the same in your family?
No, I think it was just like regular fried dough. Um, not any pinulators. Wait, so this is more like a one of the like a fried thing, more like a struvoli. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Um where's that one from?
Fried dough balls and they're Sicilian. Oh, yeah, these guys are Calabrian. Yeah, so it must be a different product. Anyway. I like it.
I like it. Yeah, no, I think I think in Sicilian they call them pinulata, but it's like strue would be what it would normally be called. Okay, let me ask you this. Have you ever had when you go out and you get like a struffle and it's like a hard brick and it has those weird little sprinkles on top? Aren't you always kind of like what the hell?
You know what I mean? You're like, so for those of you who don't know, imagine she made them with sprinkles too. Really? The rainbow sprinkles, right? Yeah.
Yeah. It looks like a miniaturized goopy crocombouche with sprinkles on top to me. That's the way I always because the balls are little. They're little balls, right? Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I never wrapped my head around it, but this is something that you look forward to.
I actually don't even like them. But it's uh, you know, it's a nice nostalgic kind of thing. I see. Yeah. It's gonna know.
I think that's the kind of reminds me of grandma, but I never liked her. Okay, okay, okay. So I want anyone who's listening to this who likes that to tell us why they like it. Why does it still exist as a product other than for nostalgia? Speaking of nostalgia, you know what I mean?
Hey, Stas, didn't you, when you were a kid say that you also used to do the popcorn and cranberry strings? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We used to do that.
I haven't done it with my kids, though. They don't even know what it is anymore. I think it's gone. I think it's gone. Is that like the decoration type of thing?
You do the popcorn and the Ellen Street? Interesting. We never never did that. You tie it to the mantle. Yeah.
Anyway. Yeah. But you know what I did do that I did in the 70s, it's holiday time. I did the orange with the clove, and then you dust it with cinnamon. That's nice.
I think I believe they're called palm enders. And Jen made one that was all fancy, that looked all fancy, looked like uh what's that character from uh Hellraiser? Pinhead. Hers kind of looked like pinhead. And then when they dry out, the cloves kind of stick out of the orange more.
So it looks like you magically stuck all the cloves exactly in at half height, but really just the orange shrank around it. It's pretty slick. But the cloves stop the orange from rotting as well as the cinnamon dust that you put on it. So they don't rot, they just dry out as long as you hang them. Anyway, all right.
Enough enough of our holiday garbage. Let's deal with uh some folks' holiday garbage. It's not garbage people. Listen, I call everything garbage. People shouldn't get offended.
Am I right, John? Yeah. No, shouldn't get offended, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. To each their own. Two each their own garbage. Right. Uh Jay Pelletier writes in hey, I'm gonna be cooking a beef wellington for eight for Christmas dinner this year.
I've made it once before, I don't remember the recipe. And ended up with middling results. After looking around online, I'm planning on largely using Kenji's recipe, but want to see if there are any additional recommendations as to technique, recipe, or strategy to make sure I do not let down the extended family on Christmas. Thanks in advance. Listen, Jay, you're gonna let down your family no matter what.
That's my been my experience. Is that no matter what I do, I've done something to let my family down, right? Yeah, you can't escape it. That's like part of Christmas. First thing you should do is watch somebody whose family has messed up Christmas even more.
Like watch uh Christmas Vacation. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, yeah. And then that's a person who's messed up Christmas even more. Yeah.
And then you're like, it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Uh but I looked at Kenji's recipe. Uh I kind of he so for those of you that don't know Beef Wellington, it's a tenderloin.
You sear the tenderloin off, and uh then you put uh you know a cut up mushrooms uh that have been sauteed in butter and usually pâté de foie gras, although I see a lot of recipes skip it now. And then uh excuse me. And then nowadays, I didn't do it when I, you know, in the 70s, they wrap a prosciutto around it to keep it into a package, wrap it in puff pastry, and then cook off the puff pastry. Um Kenji s uses like actual slices of foie gras. I think that's kind of sounds like a pain in the behind to me.
I like pate is easy to spread. Here's something that pâté is easy to buy, easy to spread, right? Uh I don't need to sear anything off. Uh so I mean I would stick with the the pate. The other thing that he does is uh he wraps uh a phyllo uh around the the beef log.
Beef log uh to um absorb some of the liquid so the puff pastry doesn't get uh soggy. That seems like an okay thing. My thing is this look, uh I looked at some of the people on the internet, and what they do is is they they buy the tenderloin and then they cut off the tip of the tenderloin so you have a pretty even cylinder, right? And the truth of the matter is that's not the way most of us buy it, right? We're buying the kind like usually when I buy a tenderloin, I buy the whole thing and I've got the tail on it, right?
And I don't know about you, I am cheap. So I am not gonna like cut that off and grind it to I I don't know what I don't know what I would do with it. I I'm not gonna cut it off. It's not gonna happen. So what's un not cool, I used to do back, you know, when I was a kid, when I when I could afford it, fold that tip over and try to make a tube and you roll it.
The better way to do it is to cut it and then get meat glue, get you know, go get moo glue on the uh, you know, on uh Amazon, like overnight delivery, which is transglutaminase, and glue it to glue the tail back onto the slanting part so that you have an actual perfect log. All right? With me? Uh now, uh specifically Kenji believes, right? Because we've had this argument, he believes that you can that there's a miracle whereby the the beef is going to be exactly perfect, you know, at the exact minute that the puff pastry is done and that everything's gonna be cop aesthetic and that the world is and that there's gonna be joy and laughter in the world.
And I have found that stuff goes wrong more often than not. Uh, if you if you pull something like that as soon as the puff pastry is done, by the way, here's something if you pull that thing when the puff pastry is done, when it comes out of a 450-degree oven, I'd slice it right quick. Here's why. Uh it's gonna keep cooking, right? And then you're hoozed, right?
So I think the protections he uses are anyone who's looking at it, if you look at it and they have a nice rosy center, the duck cells and all that is more of a protection against overcooking, right? Because it's just stuff that you have to cook through before you get to meat. The whole trick is to get the puff pastry cooked before the meat's overcooked. So I would make sure it has a good buffer all the way around it, right? Uh then he hates pre-cooking, doing this, but I'm a huge believer in insurance.
He salts his liberally before he sears it and uh and then rolls it. So if you're gonna do that, the issue is that the pre-cook has to be below safe temperature. All right. You're not gonna want to cook that tenderloin higher than about 52 Celsius, right? So you can cook a tenderloin up to about 45 minutes uh or so at 54 degrees Celsius and have it be good.
If you cook it for more than about an hour, it starts getting fibery. You know that fibery taste that I hate. Some people don't mind it. There is there is literally a hundred kids walking through the lobby. That's a lot of children.
They're kind of cute though. Hi, kids. The kids like, no. No, hello. Yeah.
Uh so, anyways, so uh if you salt it beforehand, right? You need to drop the temperature a couple of degrees because uh that's the effect. Salt adds the firmness of a couple of degrees of temperature, especially when you're going to chill it down, roll it, and like have it chill as a chilled log before you cook it. So, what I like to do is uh cook it low. But just remember it's not being safe.
So cook it at like 52, like sear the outside so that you kill the bacteria on the outside, put in at 42 uh 52 for like no more than an hour, let like less even get the shape nice, like meat glue it together, roll it into a log, 52, maybe 53, 52 for an hour, pull it, chill it, put your duck cells, roll it, you know, make your package, roll it, chill it, then wrap the puff pastry around, pull it out of the uh, pull it out of the fridge like an hour or so before you're gonna cook it. Let it warm up a little bit to give the the thing a uh a jump, and then throw it in the oven on rip, and then just as soon as the puff pastry is done, pull it and you should be okay. But now you don't have to worry. Did I get the the inside make it up to 120? Who cares?
That's what Sous vide for insurance is, people. It's insurance. And having ruined so many food items in my life, any time that I can be like, I don't care. I'm insured. I'm like, yeah, do that.
You know what I mean? And then just get that puff pastry cooked as quickly as possible. You with me, John? Yeah, I would also recommend looking up uh Calem Franklin. He was a chef in the UK who is very, very, very well known for his uh Beef Wellington.
Is he dead? No, he's alive. Oh, and he's got a cookbook out there, so I'm sure he's got some more recipes. Well, he's no longer at the pie room. He's moved on to somewhere else that I don't know.
Oh, well, if he's at the pie room, he knows pies. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's supposed to be great.
Yeah. So recommend that. Don't worry, Stas. I'm not getting on the pie train. I don't believe there's any pie questions.
Don't have to worry about it. Uh yeah. Okay. Uh Dave Kleiman writes in. So, uh, Jeremy Umanski, we had on the show when uh when uh he and Rich came out with the uh Koji book.
Not Koji, uh wait, not Koji Your Dog, Koji. Yep the book, Koji Alchemy. Yeah, yeah. Did you name your dog after the book came out? I don't know.
When did their book come out? I don't know. I got code like two years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Their book came out first.
Never because we had them on the show when we were still with uh Voldemort. Oh, that's right. Yeah. All right. Uh Jeremy O'manski from Larder, who uh John, John, you've been there.
You like that place. I stodged there for a week, yeah. I never I've never been there. Right, it's a super tasty place. If I go to Cleveland, I would always will always go.
Yeah, it's great. Dax is uh applying to a school in Cleveland. I haven't I haven't been to Cleveland since I was in my twenties. Yeah, I did a really it was a good city. I did an art install at the Progressive.
The Progressive owns a huge art collection. They have one of the largest private art collections anywhere, and it's all throughout all the progressive buildings. And every, I know they used to do it every year or so. They would hire a like, you know, a big current artist to do a large scale presentation, like one of their you know, large scale installation, one of their and I had to uh help my uh my art professor at the time. You know what I hate doing?
Sanding metal, man. I freaking hate it. Like just like even with masks, like you caught you you're coughing up black and silvery phlegm. And like even when I pass it on the street, the smell of grinding wheels, my wife's like, I don't mind it. I'm like, yeah, because you didn't have to work on a metal shop.
Like like ferrous oxide? Like what do you think? Well, it's like uh the so like you know how like when you scrub stainless, you smell it, there's that metal smell. Oh god, I can't stand the smell. Right.
So imagine that plus the abrasive grit and burning from the discs. You're just you're just putting all of these like yeah, aluminum oxide discs, you're grinding them down, and the black dust and uh and the stuff is just filling the air. It's also loud as hell. So it's like constant punishing loud plus like this, like like the it's it's a very distinct smell. Metal shop smell is a very distinct smell.
I don't mind the welding smell, actually. I like the arc smell, but like the grinding smell, nah, nah, no thanks. We have similar tastes. I used to work, my father was an auto mechanic, and I grew up my whole life working with him. So I do remember very particular spells of metal and like chemicals, but the smell of brake pads being um uh brake pads, not the calipers, the actual discs being uh recut is by far one of the terrible smells of the world.
Which is so funny because you love the break fluid. Love the break fluid. Love the break fluid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Joe's like, I'm a connici of the different break products aroma and uh the break fluid choice.
Good wrench, the best. All right. So back to Umansky, right? So we're talking about Umansky's uh latkas. Now, Umansky does a non-standard latka.
I've never done were you were you there during the season? Were you making latkas there? Yeah. Yeah. Was he using this new technique while you were there?
Uh what's the technique? So for whatever reason, whether it's historical or not, he's like, I don't want to use a lot of binders. I don't want to do a lot of, I want potato, you know, basically potato only. So he par bakes them, right? Yes, he did.
First of all, let me say this, people. Everyone says things about russets. Yes, it's the correct one to use, but the logic people use about what starch does is bent. It's a lot the everyone is right. Use russets.
And yes, they are higher in starch. What they are is actually lower in water, right? They have a higher specific gravity, right? Uh, that's the dill-dilly, right? Uh, and you there's a lot more water in the cells of a uh of a lower gravity potato.
So it's not that they're russets, right? It's that you need a high gravity potato. Low gravity potato, no matter how you squeeze it, is gonna have more water in it. It's gonna absorb more oil when it fries, right? So they but anyway, I neither here nor there.
But it's like every time I read an explanation of why do you rust the potatoes, I'm like, it's kind of right, but ugh. Why does it always have to be wrong? Yeah. Right. Starch doesn't make latkas go brown.
Sugar makes latkas go brown, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's like there are sugars in most of the potatoes that we have because of the way they're stored, which is one reason why if you're gonna make potato chips or if you're gonna make latkas and you're worried that they're gonna go too brown, you uh soak them, that gets rid of the sugar, then you squeeze some people don't soak, whatever, or with potato chips, and and then you squeeze the hell out of them to get the extra water out. The reason if you do soak, right?
Two things, keeping the enzymes from you know ruining the potatoes, turning them all garbagey, like you know, I think it also has a taste, that weird brown, purple, red grossness that potatoes get, you know. But uh, there's that, because it won't happen underwater, and there's also leaching out sugars, right? Starch on its own doesn't burn because if it did, then the potatoes, which are made of starch, would burn. It is sugar that burns. All right, anyway.
So uh, wait, we gotta call it. Should I finish the should I finish the Umansky thing or take the collar and then go back to Umansky? He parkooks the potatoes. Alright, so he parkooks the potatoes about 30 minutes, roast them, then grates them when they're parcooked, right? I'm gonna let that sink in why he does that.
And I'll give you a hint, it's because he's pre-gelatinizing some of the starch. So the starch has already soaked up some of the water that that's in it. It's it's equal, in other words, he doesn't use a binder because cooking the potato makes the potato into its own binder. Okay. So now uh let's uh take the collar.
Caller you're on the air. Hey, how's it going, guys? Doing all right, what's up? Good stuff. Um definitely have a little bit of a uh moisture management issue, certainly not holiday related.
Um in the process of actually trying to formulate a uh a pet chew. It's a blend of uh I've been using oat flour, egg white, pork fat, peanut butter powder, and beef froth. And um yeah, right now the only mold that I have to cook them in are a fairly thick silicone mold. Um my business partner is a silicone mold manufacturer. And the issue I'm having is that you know, I'm baking them at 350 for 15 minutes, rotating another 15 minutes, and they I just can't seem to get the moisture out utilizing the silicone mold in the nature of the cook that I have right now.
Um I I get better results when I go to a coarser oat uh particle size, like an oat bran versus an oat flour. Um and actually, I'm actually uh aligning with a manufacturer that's going to be able to bake these off in vacuum ovens, getting to an average of 12 inches mercury or 300 torr. So you're you're trying to get it as hard as kibble? A crunchy chew, yeah. You know, dogs enjoy a nice crunch.
Yeah. Um I mean, like how I mean the prof the the how do the big companies because I would only know how to do it once everything starts dry and then goes in almost to like uh like an extruder and then comes out of the extruder relatively dry, uh, and then just needs to be like like hacked up when it's like a dough, and then you know, it can basically go on a conveyor belt oven and be dehydrated rather than cooked, right? Um then you know, once it dehydrates to a certain level, you can cook it. Right. But I'm wondering like can your dough be piped?
It can. Yeah. I mean, I'm wondering whether or not like you might. I mean, I know your partner's a silicone mold manufacturer, right? But I don't know anyone that commercially would mold it, right?
I wonder whether or not uh I wonder whether or not the other reason why we do have to mold it. Like there is a you know a strategy behind the creation of the the shape is essentially a paw, and we have a a cavity in the palm of the paw that a gelatin filling actually goes in as a delivery mechanism for C V D. And it's a um it's a fairly you know dynamic product that we're you know working on, but essentially you know, we need to have this shape for that cavity almost to make like a lens or tart for for dogs in a in a sense. But you know, having this cavity shape is going to be you know crucial for the the design of this product and this for now at least, until we can get stamped metal mold, uh you know, kind of like muffin tin, so to speak, that we can cook and just conduct better. I need to figure out a solution with what we have right now.
And I was wondering if you could but this is more reasonable anyway, because it's not a direction it's not a food, it's a snack. So you're like a person's not buying a 20-pound sack, they're buying like a four ounce bag. So you don't need to worry about. I was thinking you're sitting there and like you're like, you know, have you know five sheet trays. Here's your breakfast, Poochie.
You know what I mean? So it's like you're not doing that, like you're doing more like cooking. All right. I mean, I don't know, I might try like like I was talking earlier in the show, like a cookie gun. Uh, but if you want to do a mold and you haven't had any luck just like uh letting it dry out for a while, right?
And then demolding it and finishing the cook. I've done a 15-minute cook, unmold pseudo successfully. Yeah, continue the cook for another like 30 minutes, and then that desiccates completely and gets to the crispiness that I'm looking for. Here's what I would do. Try this.
Try this, try this, try this. Try this. Mold them, strike off the molds, mold them, freeze them, pop them out frozen onto a dehydrate, and then just dehydrate them gently. Have you tried freezing them? That would I haven't.
It's just I don't know if I'm gonna have the capacity, freezer capacity at production to be doing that. Um have you ever cooked with vacuum ovens before? Uh I have tried to modify unsuccessfully an oven. I've also tried to do microwave vacuum dehydration, and you have to be real careful when you do that because uh uh you get intense plasma arcs, which like are awesome, but they ruin all the food that's inside of your uh inside of your oven. I mean, like like crazy, like, you know, like uh, you know, all bow to zad like electricity and freaking the emperor kind of like stuff, but it's like, yeah.
Uh I've never owned a vacuum oven, but um, they're probably good. You can lower the the temperature. I think look, you you want to lower the temperature and have it go in a reasonable amount of time. I'd say you gotta demold those suckers somehow. Like uh, you know, in production, I know it's more expensive, but you could do a par, quick, a quick par freeze with LN, we'll pop them out in uh in a silicone, won't get killed.
You could pop them out in like under a minute. You know what I mean? You could just like par freeze them, you could pop them out under a minute, and they also won't be frozen in the middle, so you won't have to wait all that time to get them to thaw before they start dehydrating. But I, you know, I think it's not gonna have a lot of luck inside of the molds cooking it because the the grease is gonna render out and it's not gonna stay where it is, and it's gonna you're gonna get weird floaties and like all this kind of my guess is that's what's gonna happen. And that uh, you know, there's always gonna be kind of issues, and this way you won't need as many molds, you just throw them on sheet trays, and they could probably just dehydrate, you know, in plain air for a while until until you have oven times, you know what I mean?
Um try some LN. Just get a little LN. I'm gonna be running. Yeah? Yeah, I'm gonna be running trials with the vacuum ovens here in the next couple weeks, so I'll keep guys talking about it.
Yeah, if you have a vacuum oven, I've never I've never really used one, but they are they are great for reducing the temperature at which liquid boils, so you know, like dehydrating apple chips and things that brown, it's great. So maybe you know, maybe you'll have some luck. Let us know. So shoot me a tweet at cooking issues, or you know, if you still Twitter or Instagram. Anyway, Twitter now is all people talking about how much they hate Twitter.
No one ever actually gives real information on Twitter anymore. You know what I mean? It's like I I don't care. Either quit or ask me a question about cooking. I don't, you know, I I don't need to know about the mechanism of how we're communicating at this point.
Anyway, maybe I do. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Goodness. All right.
All right. Well, good luck and let us know how it works out. All right. Back to latkas. So moisture management on lockers, right?
So the classic laka recipe, you grate the potatoes, you squeeze the hell out of the, you squeeze the hell out of the potatoes to get the liquid out of it, right? Because if that liquid, you need to get the liquid out quickly, right? But then conversely, you add liquid back in the form of batter, which just goes to show, right, that the question of liquid is liquid itself is not your enemy. Bound liquid inside of the potato that doesn't immediately leave is your enemy. Liquid in the binding is kind of okay because otherwise eggs wouldn't work, right?
Right? So uh that stuff though can bubble out and kind of uh leave quickly. So, what was the question that Dave had about this? My question is, uh, can we be a little more scientific about the recipe? What's happening?
Uh what's actually the ideal temperature to bring the potatoes to to properly denature whatever enzymes are causing them to oxidize or to maximize stickiness. I prefer to use an internal thermometer and bring the potatoes to a specific temperature so I don't have to worry so much about things like size, initial temperature, and so forth. That way I could even use a water bath to parcook them. I'd love to hear uh you elaborate on the subject. Um I wouldn't use a water bath.
Like the whole point of kind of baking them is you're flashing off some of the liquid, right? Also, the issue is is that kind of like and someone asked later, I don't know if we're gonna get to it, but they ask about a nyxtimalization question, and someone's gonna ask about a uh milkbread uh question. And you're not trying to cook the potato all the way through. If you cook the potato all the way through, right, then it's gonna be mush when you when you grate it. You're trying to to parcook it.
So you're trying to get um you know the starch granules to start to swell, to store start to uh, you know, uh paste, to start to gelatinize, but not to go all the way. So it's kind of very hard actually to who uh judge that based on a thermometer, because as soon as the center gets up to a particular temperature, based on you don't know what the outer stuff is up to. So it's actually kind of complicated to come up with a bulletproof number. It's easy. And when you're a professional, like Jeremy is, uh, you know, you're ordering a potato size that's relatively uniform, right?
You get you order a particular size of potato. If you're going into you know a supermarket, I typically buy sack potatoes, like five-pound sacks of potatoes. But even those are not uniform at all. And if you get what's called, don't get a baking potato. That's gonna be a nightmare.
They're too big. You know what I mean? Like quote unquote baking potato. So I have to say, I don't think there's going to be a way to easily scientify this. Basically, what he's doing with this technique, and it's kind of just because he wants to do it, right?
Because you know what binds latkas well? Matsumail. You know what I mean? Like mozzameal binds because you know why? Because it's pre-cooked, it's pre-gelatinized starch.
It's already absorbing liquid. Like as we speak, you stick it in liquid, it's absorbing liquid. Oh my, what the heck is this? Oh, they come by every time so far. The candy cane army, I guess.
This is that's aggressive. They're gonna hit me with this candy cane. I don't know, they are like seven feet tall candy canes, and everyone's wearing all white and candy cane themed spell candles. I just panned to the video so everyone saw that. I don't know how I don't know how I feel about that.
I mean, it they they they they I guess they're festive, but I feel like yeah, it's gotta be some like NBC promotional stuff. No, so Stas hates that now. Yeah, yeah. Hey Stas, couldn't afford an ice machine, but they can afford seven foot candy cakes later. Oh, yeah.
I know. I know. I know. Yeah. Uh so the you know, the point is is that is gelatinized starch already holds onto its water and it's there to help uh act as an aid when when you're binding.
Right? Right. Right, right. All right. Was that a good enough answer?
I don't know. I don't even know what I said anymore. I mean, lakas are just kind of the vehicle for whatever you're really kind of serving it with. Yeah. I mean, like I mean, my first of all, my family, well, we're Jews, so we we eat lakas all the time, even though it's not Hanukkah.
So it's all about the the applesauce you're making. Or the amazing caviar that we just had the other day with it. Or the fancy man. Yeah. My wife's my my wife's fancy.
Yeah. My wife is fancy salmon real caviar. Creme frage, you know. Ah, creme fresh. You know what?
I love creme fraîche as a topping. I don't like cooking with it because its texture goes from all the way to none of the way. Like you, you know what I mean? And then you have to let it reset. Piss me off.
You know what I mean? It tastes delicious though. Tastes delicious. Anyway. Uh what size laka do you like, Joe?
We like 'em about, I'm gonna guesstimate and say they're about four to five inch in diameter. So you don't like giant ones that are No, don't like giant ones. And we like ours with leek. Ooh. Ooh, ooh.
And uh how do you do you just like mince or you grate them like you would an onion? Grate them with like a same way you would do an onion. Yeah. So some people are like, don't some people, okay. On uh what's it on serious seeds, I forget who wrote who wrote the the thing on it, but they're like, You shouldn't grate the onion, you should leave it in pieces.
I disagree, man. It's a different flavor. Different flavor. And you by the way, hey, you can grate the onion and then you can get rid of some of the moisture in the onion at the same time. Exactly.
Hello. Hello, pay ball. Anyone there? Anyone I lost a uh I I've lost a few of uh fingernails during those times. Yeah?
Yeah. You gotta get you a salad master. Uh you know what? Honestly, though, like I no longer enjoy motorized grading. I really don't.
Because like in a restaurant, yeah. Like a Roboku, yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Or even like uh, but it's like, it's just like the amount of cleaning with a and then like the you know what I don't like?
I don't like looking at that disc that gets caught between the grating disc and the top of the food processor that keeps spinning and then the stuffed goop. I just don't like it. And you know what? The the hand graters like I don't box grape, because come on. Box grading sucks.
It does. I uh I do it sometimes. I do box grape butter for uh biscuits, yeah. That is the money. Yeah, box grading frozen butter for biscuits is a money.
That is like I was like, this is some bull crap, this is garbage, nobody needs to do this. And then I started doing it, I was like, and everyone's like, oh, these are the best biscuits you ever made. I'm like, damn it, you know what I mean? Oh, here's another thing. I learned a Romanian phrase.
I can't say the because the real one contains the the translation for sugar honey iced tea, right? So I'll say it in a family-friendly way. You can't make a whip with poop. So if someone's like, if someone's like, bring something and it's like not good enough for the task, can't make a whip with poop, but you're supposed to say the sugar honey ice tea word. I was like, that's a nice phrase.
It's a nice Romanian phrase. Yeah. Good for the holidays. Yeah, yeah. Uh apparently, Romanian has like some sick, like really good, like just vivid phrases.
I need to get more of them. I need to get more Romanian phrases. Uh my wife's partner's Romanian. Like from Romania. Gotcha.
Yeah. All right. So Patrick writes in, I'm making a linguini with clam sauce on the Christmas Eve. What are your thoughts on linguini and clam sauce, people? Pro.
Approved, yeah. Pro. Stas, linguini, like hate. As a shape. Would you ever go linguini?
Or is it it's too halfway for you? What are your thoughts on linguini? We'll never know. She's no speechless. All right.
Uh and want to make it taste like a fresh clam pie from Frank Peppy's. That's not gonna happen. Where do you live, Patrick? Can you get belly clams? Peppy's is belly clam, right?
Yeah. Sally's doesn't do belly clams, but Peppy's does belly clams. Yeah. And it's very sparse, right? Yeah.
And well, here comes the point, right? And I'm thinking uh I'm thinking I need to add bread crumbs. I always add bread crumbs to my to my uh to my seafood pastas. Like every Christmas Eve, we do the anchovies. Well, when I'm with my mom, we do the anchovy pasta with the breadcrumbs.
Love it. Uh I'll need to add breadcrumbs. Any thoughts on how to have that char-burnt New Haven pizza taste in the crumbs without overdoing it? Without overdoing it. Without overdoing it.
Without overdoing it. I mean, you could. Oh, yeah. I was saying you could overtoast the bread, then dehigh the bread, then make your own breadcrumbs. Right?
Uh yeah, I think their concern is taking already made breadcrumbs and then like overdoing it. But what I did is I one time just baked pizza dough until it was charred and then made breadcrumbs. Yeah? How was it? Uh TBD, it's in the freezer.
We're gonna do pizza crust meatballs. Don't you think it'll get lost inside of the meatball? No, I guess we find out. Yeah, all right. People still use meatballs and insult when they're talking about people.
No, I don't think so. Meatball. I don't think so. Meatball. Anyway.
It used to be a thing. So uh also, like, how about this? Instead of linguini, what about like fregola, which already baked? You know what I mean? Or you could go uh you could do uh uh Joel Gargano style and use the the the burnt grains, the grano arso.
Yeah, right? What kind of does he what what pasta does he make with that? He doesn't do like a what is what does he use for that anyway? What does he use that in? You know, John?
Pasta integrale, I think is what he calls it. Um but he uses the burnt stuff or it's just parched, it's not burnt, it doesn't taste like it's not yeah, no, it doesn't taste it's not like fregolo with that hard hard toast taste. No, yeah. The problem is fregal is not gonna hit the linguini spot because it's like little balls. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. I like fregolo though. I do too. Very good. Fregola.
Oh, also, uh, any guidance on my favorite salt cod to buy at Calluccio and Suns. All right, listen, it depends on how much salt cod you want, my man. Like, you gotta go look at it. Like, I'm not gonna say you can only get the one from the you know, gas bay. I'm saying go look at their salt cod selection, and what's gonna happen is you're gonna be like, I want to buy the whole half.
I want to buy the whole half of the fish. I want to buy it. I'm gonna get the whole fish. And then I've got in fact, I think it's not even half. I think I bought a whole fish.
It's like splitting opened up. Like, I'm gonna buy the whole thing. I don't care. Someone's like, we don't, we're not gonna eat that much baccala. We don't know, well, we don't have a big enough freezer.
I'm like, I don't care. I don't count buying it. And that's what I did. And so then, you know, you you take the big fat section and you make the bacala, the Christmas E-style bacala, and then just boatloads of brandat, which is like, you got your brandad guy, right? Yeah.
I mean, like, I could eat infinity of that. And then like also like baccalaitos, and then also like uh I love the the the four things I make, I very rarely, other than, you know, if I'm someone's asking me to cook on Christmas Eve, do I make like old school, like the baccala where you cut it, you know what I mean? Very rarely. Mainly I do uh like uh salt salt fish with like mashed uh either potatoes or or actual yams like name with like uh with like uh you know you saute onions and like a boatload of uh sweet peppers, and then you mash with in like eight tons of butter, and then you uh with some garlic, and then you um you uh take you know, yams, like name, white, you know, white actual yams, not sweet potatoes, yams, and then you starchy ones, and then you boil them, you mash them, you mix it in with butter and then hacked up uh like shredded, hacked up uh salt cod, or which is not cotton anymore, you know, only it's you know, whatever it is. And uh that is delicious.
That is delicious. And then I always, you know, I serve it with like, you know, I basically anytime I make stuff like that, I just serve whatever you would serve at a Tex Mex place. So it's like shred shredded lettuce, avocados, uh, you know, lime, uh, and it's good. The other thing I make, I like salcod fritters, and I love uh making uh uh like uh brandade style, like uh, but I don't add a lot of uh potato to that stuff. I'm mainly it's just whipped whipped salcad and and olive oil.
Yeah I don't I'm not a walnut olive oil. Yeah. And then uh yeah, good. On bread, some toasty bread. Yes.
Toasty bread and some brand, my man. Delicious, classic. Yeah. Can't go on that de mouri, yeah. Yeah.
Delicious. Delicious. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh did I answer that question?
I think so. Uh from BS. Oh my god, it's printed on two sides of the paper. I got more to go than I thought. What is everybody's holiday uh favorite holiday bed uh beverage and any tips or hacks that are unknown?
Uh temping um temping glassware. What do I mean, temping glassware? And getting it cold, maybe? I don't know. Have liquid nitrogen or have a lot of fridge space.
Uh I've made cold butter rum from liquid intelligence, delicious, but the cup the customer reception was miss mixed. I found that people don't like to think that they're drinking butter. If you don't tell them, they won't know. Uh but uh yeah, yeah. Uh I like um I don't I actually don't really like most of the Christmasy beverages.
You know? You guys. I can't really think of I don't know, beer, wine, no, champagne. Beer, wine. I drink.
Yeah. That's John's like John's like when I think of Christmas, I think of beer. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Jack, you you too, same. You know what I like? Um, I like uh I like a little bit of uh like hot spice wine, like mold wine, like glug, like sweetish style. Well, that's what I was exactly what I was thinking of mold wine. I mean it's always good.
It's fun to make. Yeah. Yeah. Smells great in the house. Yeah.
And you have a little bit of it, and then you move on to wine. Yeah. Yeah, but like no way of no no eggnog. No, no, not an eggnog. A lot of people love eggnog.
I know. My man, oh. Get your motor running, had it on the highway. Looking for adventure, whatever comes your way. Yeah, I don't have a fart sound for that one.
Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh but anyway, uh, although, you know, look, at this point it's too late for eggnog anyway, because you should have you should have made it like, you know, a couple weeks ago. Yep. You know, make it now.
If you like eggnog, make it now and then age it for a year the way that Nick Bennett does. He ages it for one year, two years, three years. He always saves a little bit, and then like he'll do all these tastings. Uh I'm just not an eggnog guy. So like the vintage is like is goes well with the lactose?
Uh well, it's just it doesn't go quote unquote bad, right? So if you can't have the lactose, then it aging it's not gonna help you any. You could No, of course. I'm just wondering. Right.
You could toss the enzyme in. You ever do that? No, I never have. Yeah. I you know, I did this thing with the beans for uh Sirius Eats.
Recently, it's out. You can look it up, where I tested uh putting the enzyme into the beans to knock out the toots. So I bet you you could do the same thing with the lactate. I bet you you could make your own lactose-free. Interesting.
I never thought about that. We didn't run the test next year. Next year, yeah, there we go. Next year, yeah. Uh Prashant writes in.
I've been trying to make a sourdough dinner roll for a while, and I've been following the recipe on the perfect loaf. Uh forward slash super soft sourdough rolls. I've tried this recipe at least four times, and each time the dinner rolls go hard after they cool down, but they get soft again after being warmed up. Do you have any suggestions for making them soft full stop? Uh I would like to use them to make uh pav bhaji, which I think is that is that's that like uh vegetable curry served with soft rolls, right?
Right? No, sure. I didn't get a chance to look at the YouTube. I think that's what it is. Uh so I looked at the I looked at the sourdough roll recipe uh that you have, and so it is a uh, you know, one of these uh milkbread things where you heat a certain amount of the uh of flour with the milk to prehydrate it, right?
And then add that to your dough. And the whole point of doing that uh using prehydrated uh, and it's been used you know in different cultures in different ways for centuries, right? So you have like you know, Portuguese broa, which uses prehydrated cornmeal, you have uh a lot of uh gluten-free breads or cassava things made with prehydrated. So the idea of prehydrating, pre-cooking some of the starch, is that now that starch can hold on to water while the dough is not yet cooked, right? And so that lets you have a higher hydration dough than you could otherwise have, and still have it hold its shape as it's being formed, as it's rising, as it's baking.
That's the theory of it. And then in the end, right, you're gonna have a higher hydration bread. So it's like it's going to stay soft longer. It's gonna be moister, physically moister, than it would be if it was a lower hydration bread. So that's the that's the why they do it, right?
I don't know why your particular one is going uh hard, right? Um, it's got um, let's see, you're using uh an all-purpose flour and a bread flour. I don't know why it needs uh bread flour. It has some sugar in it, it has a relatively small amount of butter and it uses water. I I would say if you want it to be more tender, change the water to milk and substitute some of that with egg.
Basically, what I'm saying is turn it into a brioche. Basically, what I'm telling you is turn this into a brioche. Uh, you can do all the same things that you did, but just make it like a brioche and it's not gonna go soft. You can even still do the milk thing. Is that a correct?
Is that a good answer? Yeah, it will go soft, it won't go hard. That's what I meant. Yeah. Uh okay.
KG wants to know, I have belated cookie question. We don't have any Alabama cookies, KG. Next time we get Matt Start Well on, or anyone who can hear me who's from Alabama, let me know what the good cookies are. Vince, uh, Vince writes in, what's the pepper mill that Dave uh recommends? It was fairly expensive, but I can't find what it was.
Uh, was it the coffee grinder turn pepper mill? Yeah, I get the Java press. It used to be a lot cheaper. And I 3D print the parts, but it's a killer pepper mill for like 30 bucks, and it grates the hell out of pepper. Uh, and it's not like aggro.
Some of the pepper grinders they have out there are like aggro marketing, which I don't understand. Nicholas Webster, uh, is there a foolproof fundue technique for larger quantities, aka two gill cannons, kilos of cheese. I'm still mortified from splitting a big one last winter for my family. Well, that sucks. Uh would the best insurance be to bag it at low temperature and low temperature everything together and then blitz it, or is the stove fine with enough citrate and cornstarch?
Yeah, stove's fine, citrus, cornstarch, white wine. Don't forget the white wine, a little bit of acidity to get it in the correct pH and you know, use the right cheeses. Uh, Christian Sacco, can I use crystallized honey to make mead without adding yeast? I have three kilograms bucket of solid honey, or is it better to melt the honey to a liquid state and just add appropriate yeast? Uh the honey will melt down at like 94 to 100, so below the temperature that's gonna kill the wild yeast.
So you can melt it, or you can just wait for the rest of your natural lifetime for it to dissolve in the water. I think either way you're gonna be okay. Uh Saul Martinez question I found the mega post from the archives on Nixamalization and it briefly mentions how to rescue overcooked nixtamol by cooling it, rubbing off the skin, rinsing it, and boiling it in uh in water or texquite to make pozole. Can you give details on how long to boil it? I'm not an expert, but I'm gonna have uh John or Quinn reach out to uh Jorge Gaviera to ask uh whether they have any good uh ideas.
And then uh see if I can get one more Xander. Along with my friends and family, I become obsessed with William Sonoma hot fudge sauce. Uh it's great on many things like pound cake, but most importantly, Haganda's vanilla ice cream. So you weren't able to find it, you found a recipe, but it wasn't good, and you want to know how to reverse engineer it, right? Uh I'll tell you what, Xander, hit me up on Twitter and I'll answer this for the for the Christmas time.
I don't have time, unfortunately, right now, to go into the exact way I would break this down, but hit me up on Twitter and I'll try to get it to you. Uh happy, happy Hanukkah, happy holidays, happy new year, uh, Merry Christmas if you celebrate, and cooking issues.
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