Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, the Rockefeller Center at News Stance Studios, joined as usual with uh John behind me. How you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah?
Yeah. Doing well? Doing well. This uh weird, we can't decide what kind of spring it is today. Yeah, it's really strange.
But whatever. As long as it's not dripping sweat heat again, I'm I'm good. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
Got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How you doing, Joe? I'm doing great, man. How are you? I think good, I think.
Yeah. You look good. Thanks. Well, it's been a weird uh I was taking uh my you know my younger son Dax around to look at the colleges that he has to choose between, which is you know, everyone, you know, it's nice to be able to choose, but then he has to choose. And so I feel like it's a Monday, even though it's a Tuesday.
Ever happened to you? No? Never I have Sunday Mondays are my Sundays, so today always feels like a Monday. Everyone's work week is so messed up these days, John. That like I always when I'm when I'm seeing someone, I try to gauge the look on their face.
Like when I'm at a store, I was like, is today your Friday? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway.
Uh got uh I hear uh Jackie Molecules over there, I'm assuming in Los Angeles. Yes, I am in LA still. Get this, Jack. So we're at this college place yesterday, right? And you know, parents every parent parents have to ask goofy questions.
That's kind of like what you do, and there's always a couple parents who are like, me, me, me, me. And so this one person was like, I'm from LA. How are how are my kids gonna be able to handle the weather out here? We're all like every like literally, like my entire section was like, you don't go home. Go home.
Anyway, uh, because it was a northeast college. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Yeah.
Got uh Nestal uh Nastasia in uh, I'm assuming in uh coastal Connecticut. How you doing? Good. I'm good. It's windy here.
Yeah, it was windy down here, but it like uh so you know, Nastasia, for those of you that don't know, she's like in this like like weird little house, like literally right on the water on the sound, and used to like like wind, I guess, right? But now you hate wind. Yeah, I really hate it. I can't stand it. Yeah.
But it's like that's kind of problematic. Yeah, I know. Nastasia's house is so windy. I mean, like, okay, so like I guess it's not like the ocean ocean, because it's Long Island Sound, right? So it's like you do have like that, like, you know, little pile of rocks, Long Island, like kind of breaking the breeze coming off of the uh, but I guess the the wind for us goes the other way anyway, right?
It comes from behind your back. But it's so windy where Nastasia is that like it's kind of a regular thing where someone will call her and be like, hey, your windows are shattered, right? I mean, like just like a regular thing for you. No? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, winds travel in many directions, not one realize that wind comes from like lots of different directions. Where you are, you mean?
I mean, like generally where we live, they come from the west, like overall. Overall. Overall. What do you mean? That's prevailing westerlies.
I'm not making this up. Like that's a thing. But yes, I mean, obviously, it can come from any direction at any given time, right? That is that what you mean? Like at any given time, it can switch directly.
But where you are, it seems like you can get beaten from any direction. No, but the rest of the world has names for the winds for the different directional winds. We're the only like country that doesn't know our wind names. You mean like the prevailing westerlies? That's the only one you know.
What are the rest of them called? We don't have any here. We have like certain things like nor'easters that come in from different directions, but like, you know, we we don't, you know, that's that's what we got. We're kind of a boring joint. You know what I'm saying?
Like, why what do you what do you what do you have? What do you what what do you name them over there? Uh like over there, like a hundred, you know, 80 miles north of me or whatever, it's 30 miles north of me. Oh, no, no, no, never mind. It's complicated.
Never mind. I like a complicated story. We have the Santa Ana winds over here. I think they that's and down south we have El Nino. Yeah, we don't get that.
No, it's our topic. I mean, it affects us hugely, but we don't get it. You know what I mean? We're you know, hey, Connecticut, interesting, geologically very interesting state. Super geologically interesting.
Anyway, whatever. Uh got uh Quinn in uh Vancouver Island, how you doing? I am good. Yeah, really? You sounded non-committal.
Yeah, really? All right. You know, now is your chance to say no, actually. You know? Anyway.
Yeah? Okay. And uh, you know, in keeping with uh the past uh it's been a year since we've been doing it, so I don't even need to say it's like a new thing anymore, right, John? Because it's like how we do it now. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh like to welcome our guest, uh owner, founder of White Mustache Yogurt, author of Yogurt and Way, uh, Homa Dash Taki, how are you doing? I'm good, thank you. I met you recently uh at a talk you gave for MoFad, the Museum of Food and Drink, uh, at the Essex Street Market upstairs, which was uh nice. And I guess was that set up by uh by Nasli, our uh fearless uh yes it was at uh yeah at uh part of the part of the kind of uh Iranian food mafia, as she says.
Her her words, not mine. Yeah, follow her off a cliff, that woman. Yeah happily yeah nice. Uh all right, and then also though introduce your book because we share an editor yes we do yeah Melanie from uh from uh Norton that's right she she matchmade here today knowing that I had this ingredient and she finds very eccentric esoteric homes for me and this is a perfect one because I've always loved the cocktail world um yeah well this is gonna be a little weird because it's so funny okay so um people who know me know me as kind of uh uh inhuman monster right John yeah yeah like it's not that I'm not human it's that like um I don't know well how do you how do you put it Stas it's like what I don't I don't like uh like the feelings don't work or something like this what is it yeah yeah yeah uh and so uh in reading your book but we we're gonna get back to our normal shooting the breeze but in reading your book like your book is very much about having feelings yeah yeah and so like like a lot of this conversation for me is gonna be like working around like someone who clearly like has feelings about things and like the way that I think about things. So it should be fun should be good.
Uh it's not that I don't have feelings it's just uh whatever we'll we'll we'll we'll get into it. So like uh so now's the point of the a part of the show where we mentioned if we anything interesting happened in the past week in the food usually in the food realm, but not always. Like I already basically said I went around to, you know, where you know Dax was considering going to college, but you know, I did have good ice cream at UConn though. You know UConn has very good ice cream. What flavor?
I had so uh when you're at UConn, uh, I don't know if you have to be in the ag department, but you can take a class in ice cream, right? Which is amazing, right? So, like to me, like the the the ones that I know of, the great ice cream programs are um Penn State, UConn, and Cornell, right? As far as I know, I'm sure there are many others. These are the ones only that I know about.
I've I've never been to uh State Cate College, Pennsylvania. So I've never I've never had uh Penn State's ice cream, even though my grandpa was a nittney lion. Anyway, um, but Cornell's ice cream is good. But Yukon's ice cream, like they milk their own cows, they have their own cows, they milk them and they make it, and the seniors get to make a flavor. And so, like, whatever like the best one of the suggestions is, like it's called a senior scoop.
So I got senior scoop. It was it was good. It was like uh almond, it was like an like uh an omaretto kind of a flavor with uh chocolate uh chunks and uh some nut, I forget what nut, whether it was more almonds or something better, like pistachios. Not that almonds are b worse than pistachio, you know, but they just they'd starve. But you know what I'm saying?
Uh it was good, a little too uh a little too uh Omeretto for me. A little too little too of the too much of the extract, but the texture was good, it was good, and I like to support a senior flavor. Yeah. So that was my yeah. Okay, that's great.
So my weird food thing for the week? Sure. Yeah, actually, something super weird did happen to me. Um I boiled a gallon of milk and it didn't boil over. Huh.
It just sat in the pot and it gled. And the core of me was shook that this, you know, like the whole thing is to worry about that moment. Yeah. And now I am on a quest to buy a gallon of every possible type of milk. Spoil them side by side and try to replicate it and understand why.
Okay. And I'm not even a scientist. I'm I'm almost like repelled by science and food. Um which, you know, I know this is difficult to know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But uh I was I couldn't believe it. Like I was like, how is this milk not behaving in the way I'm accustomed to milk behaving? And so was it a different milk? It was a different milk than I normally use, but it was like of the caliber. Um, and I won't name names until I like do my until I until I can confidently name names.
Um but I was it was really upsetting. I was like, why isn't this doing what it's supposed to be? Let me ask you this. So it's boiling, right? It didn't it didn't foam up at all.
It it just kind of gur it started like it kind of cappuccino latte a little, but that was it. It didn't like come up, it didn't start rising. I don't even understand how that's possible. I don't exactly did you make yogurt from it? I I did.
And did it work? It did work. So it wasn't like these ultra pasteurized milks that don't work. It was it was just baffled. I'm just fully baffled.
Yeah, because that's not something and like you know, you didn't know this is like a spiritual crisis. You didn't have like a bunch of like silicone compounds rolling around, you weren't like boiling down like bicycle lubricant in that thing that's a minute before or something like this. No, and I even got access to like a fancy copper pot. So like everything felt very legit. And it didn't happen.
Was it in front of a bunch of people and were you embarrassed? Yes, it was and now I'm here talking about it to really double down on that. Look, this happens to me, uh it doesn't happen to me as much. I used to do a lot of like kind of on the road demos, like a lot of them, and I always love using like local ingredients or whatever, but like uh often, you know, something that you think is always gonna happen, someone hands you an ingredient and you're like, Oh, like, oh, you know what I mean? Yeah.
Like uh, I had a milk problem once, but with you know, UHT, like they brought me the UHT milk, and I was trying to break it with uh uh like uh alcohol and acid. I was trying to break it into curds, and it just wouldn't break from a huge group of people, and I was being translated because I I don't speak Spanish, and it was like it was a nightmare. You know what I mean? Yeah. Another time, also in front of a Spanish-speaking audience, also being translated, I got these awesome bananas that were like really sweet tasting, like super, like you know, not the Cavendish like we get.
And uh I was like, oh, these are really ripe. These are gonna work no problem because what I do is I blend them into liquor, rum, and then I put them in a centerfuge and I spit them out. And the, you know, a Cavendish banana when it's fully ripe has no starch in it. These bananas, even though they were delicious, still had starch. And so it wouldn't clear out.
And so, like, and you get a perfectly clear oh son of a man in front of everybody, you know what I mean? I hate it. But this, like, I mean, I hear you, and I will try to be forgiving, but I feel like this is milk. Like, milk needs to behave a certain way, otherwise I'm gonna be very mad at it. Yeah.
Um, so I need to I need to kind of understand what happened. Okay, so how far away was it? And without obviously you're not gonna name it, but like this was like can you source it again? It was windy Connecticut. Uh I'm gonna source it again.
It's the wind. I mean it is the wind. You know, maybe, you know, maybe maybe Nastasia has a stink eye zone around where she lives where she can throw the stink eye onto the milk and have it not boil over. I and Mercury's in retrograde, so we may we may need to take all these factors into consideration. Yeah, well, you gotta source that milk again.
Yeah, I will. And then, you know, somehow get word back, you know, to us what happened. I I will. Yeah. Because uh repeatable weirdnesses are super interesting.
Super interesting. I don't know. Delightful, actually. I had another non-repeatable thing. I okay, my my family is against microwaving uh things in plastic, which whatever.
I don't want to really wanna get into it, but like like cork containers are made of polypropylene, and you know, they can withstand like a good bit of temperature as opposed to polyethylene or these other things, right? So I was melting butter because that's what I do. I don't know. Get a pan dirty, what am I gonna get a pan dirty for that? Like find a mug?
I don't know. What do you do, John? I'd probably put it in a cork container and put in the microwave. Ding, yeah. And so like I put it in there, but you know, I'm also super lazy, so I'm a one-button microwave guy.
I just I hit the go button and then I walk away. And I must have hit the wrong go button because like three minutes later, I was like, why is the microwave still going? And it hadn't boiled over, which of course butter typically does, but it boiled up the sides and it had turned to brown butter. I had accidentally made brown clarified clarified brown butter in the microwave, and then I'm like, I'm never doing this again. I'm never gonna do this again.
But I was still like, you know, it was a nice uh it was a nice thing to brush on top of my biscuits, you know. Did it melt the plastic? Depends on who you ask. Right. I don't think it melted the plastic.
So I all I need now. Yeah, yeah. The biscuits were good though. I was using Sonora White, which is one of my favorite wheats. I've been now experimenting with a lot of Snora.
It's expensive though. It's expensive wheat. Uh what about you guys? Uh what are you with, Stas, you got anything? No, no.
No, just the wind? Just you and the wind. Yeah. Yeah. What do you like to eat on a like a windy night?
Pasta? Let me guess. Oh, I don't I really I don't know. I don't know. It all sucks because of the wind.
What about what about a rainy night? Do you still love a rainy night? Did I put that song in your head? Have I poisoned your mind with that song? It's fine.
Dave, right now we're not I'm we're not really eating. I'm not really eating we're we have other problems than like me thinking about and you our business, yeah, but not for not for this one hour a week. This one hour a week. We don't have those sort of business problems. Well, I really indulge uh myself on rainy nights and yeah, I go like full like cooking mode.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. Good to hear. Yeah. Good to hear.
Yeah. What about you, Jack? I I um my uh I impressed my girlfriend with the cerezal too. That's what just happened. Nice.
She's I'm always looking at it like, what? I don't get it. Like yeah, the sous vide, but why would I want one? And then we had sort of, you know, wood fire pizza at a restaurant and came home with some leftovers, and I was like, aha, the perfect moment to flex you why you need cereus all, and everybody does. I I love it.
Sheated the pizza and she was like, Oh my god, this is better than it was at the rest of the restaurant. I appreciate it. I appreciate you, Jack. Although for like one small moment, I thought you were gonna whip out of like you had some sort of like fanny pack or something with the whole torch rig in it, and at the restaurant, you're like, hold on a minute. And like doing it at the restaurant, that would be that'd be intense.
Get you kicked out, but it would be would it get be intense. Oh, for sure. A hundred percent. Even like Nastasi and I at the height of our like bad behavior at Roberta's Pizzeria never went that far, right, Stas? Oh, that would be that would have been great.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hold on, let me fix this for you. Because the thing with the wood-fired pizza, especially like it it's it's so time sensitive. If you don't eat that thing in the first like five minutes, it's being chewy.
I don't know. So to you to you is kind of needs the sears all table side. To you, is that an inherent flaw, or is that couple of minutes where it is the way it is before it ha that happens to it worth the worth it to you? For me, inherent flaw. I'm I'm like funny enough, like not a huge fan of Best Sal Pizza for that reason.
Huh. Okay. I think this is something you know that you know reasonable people can have disagreements about, I think. You know? Right answer, wrong answer.
Yeah. What about you, Quinn? You got anything for me? Uh I got two little things. Okay.
One, I actually did a little yogurt project yesterday, kind of. I had some homemade, like heavily, heavily streamed yogurt, and I actually used that as the curdling acid for a mini batch of ricotta, and it was really good. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Like a whole milk, like uh you get good milk up there? In the great north northwest west. I didn't get I didn't get the fanciest milk. I got like m mid tier milk. But it was good.
So I also made oh yeah go ahead. Well what's mid tier milk to you? Okay, it's like the big brand but it's the organic one. So wait. Okay, can I tell you something people gonna get really pissed off.
Booker bought with my credit card an organic milk and when I looked at it I said to him you just paid extra money for a label those people don't care about their product. And he was like what? I'm like you just threw money into a toilet I don't know but I think I'm not the right person because I get like I only I only will pay extra if I feel somebody cares about their product. But that's me. But you think these people cared about their is it we in other words for you mid tier is it mean that you bought organic or you think you bought something where they at least moderately cared?
Yeah both like again there is a like medium sized brand of um grass fed milk that's relatively local. I usually try to get that if I'm doing like a serious milk project but they didn't have it in stock at the time. Okay. Okay. Uh all right Daniel leave anyone out anyone's got anything?
John, did I leave you out? Yeah, I went out the other night. I don't know, this is more like a question, I guess. When does a martini stop being a martini? So specifically I went to this place and I had this whole martini menu.
Vodka, vanilla, clarified passion fruit, lime, sherry, and sparkling wine. Like that's not a martini, right? No. No. No.
It's no. No. No. Uh although listen, there's a couple of things. There's a few things that I hate more than semantic discussions of cocktail names.
Uh especially as it relates to what is what particular cocktail and what is not. Because then like, you know, at the end of the day, everything is either a martini. Yeah. Sometimes people split things into, well, there's there's a martini in a Manhattan, and then everything else is a daiquiri, basically. Uh, you know, or maybe some people split off a margarita because it's got a liquor modifier.
It's like thing or that's all. I'm like, no, you you're you're all dunces. It's it's like, you know, certain combinations of like sugar acid and alcohol, uh, you know, I don't know. But like to me, like a martini should be something that is a martini. Yeah.
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It's just it was uh like to me, an espresso martini not in a martini. Not a martini. Yeah.
Nothing to do with a martini. Agreed. Glass. I think for like like the thing is like people I think a lot of people think a martini is anything that's served in that glass, which I also hate that glass. Oh, I hate that glass.
Homie, you like those glasses, martini glasses? I'm uh I'm a big tradition like I like a show, so that glass is so showy. Uh yeah? Yeah. Yeah.
Uh it's uh it's a spill waiting to happen. Yeah. Yeah. But like a coffee cup is a spill waiting to happen for me too. I'm not to be trusted with that.
That's fair. You know what the one good thing I'll say about a martini glass is that uh it is relatively if you are mixing while you are intoxicated, it is relatively um insensitive to you messing up your measurements because you can add a little bit more or a little bit less to a martini glass and because it is such a cone right that last little bit of of glass can absorb a lot of extra stuff and so it's easier to get a passable looking wash line in um in a martini glass everything else I hate about them oh do you like them when they have goofy goofy stems like little zigzag goofy stems I find that tacky horrible yeah right that's that's a bridge too far for me oh good yeah I'm glad that there is a bridge I have a line I have a one line yeah yeah yeah okay uh yeah so I'm I'm with you did uh whoever you were with disagree with you John no no they were all kind of agreeing but it was just I don't know it was yeah I mean look I think that you can take something like a martini and if you like put a splash of sherry in it as opposed to like the vermouth depending on which share you use I mean whatever that's close you know what I mean like sparkling prosecco fruit no no no I thought you were gonna say when does a martini stop being a martini and it's like after about five minutes when it warms up yeah that's true yeah then it becomes filth you know what I mean which is why I feel that martini should be s short and and you know drunk in a snappy fashion you know about you Joe you got anything for us no slow slow food week all right all right I feel like you know sometimes you come in with like a with like a like a strong sometimes you come in with like a strong food something. You know what I mean? Not this week, no. Just you know, usually you're you know I've been making a lot of food for my son.
Oh, yeah? Like uh, do you know that Nastasi and I believe that there is a market for our centrifuge in baby food, but because I'm terrible at making claims for things, we haven't figured out what that market is. Would you say that's right, Nastasia? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It is, okay, check it. So, like, if you take. So you know how you strain yogurt, obviously, since you have a yogurt company. Yeah, yeah.
Go on. So you can do the same thing to fruit, where you blend the fruit up, and you I know you're anti-centrifuge. We'll get into it in terms of taking way out of yogurt. But you can you can blend the fruit, and then instead of juicing it, even like puree's you can spin it in a centrifuge and the juice comes off the top, and what's left over is like God's baby food. It's like yeah, but like the pectin's been wiped out, so it's like hyper smooth.
Makes makes makes Gerber look like fools. You know what I'm saying? But it's just like it would only be for the fanciest of babies. Of course, everyone wants to think their baby's fancy. Every every baby's fancy.
Yeah. But I find it kind of repugnant to try to make people feel guilty about one more thing when they're a parent. Sure. You know? That you're not giving them the fanciest.
Yeah, you're not giving it. You didn't centrifuge your baby pump. Yeah, so you're a bad mom. Yeah. You know, oh my god.
It's uh there's fewer fewer things worse than putting more guilt on it onto a mom. You know what I mean? Like and let's face it, it's gonna be the mom. Nine times out of ten. Nine times out of ten, you're making the mom feel guilty because it's well, it's sexist, but dad's not gonna give as much of a crap as the mom.
It's just historically true, I would guess. Yeah. Just by being here, my kids are eating crap right now. That's all right. All right.
Michael's doing his best. All right. Okay. So uh let's get to the book. Now, the book is called, well, first of all, let's let's how am I gonna get into this?
How am I gonna get into this stuff? So, first of all, talk about the company because a lot of people know or it you don't ship far, right? So you have to be kind of in this region to know uh white mustache. That's part of the the shtick. First of all, named after your dad's apparently your dad has a luxurious amazing mustache.
Yes, yeah. He has a big white handlebar mustache. He's had it my whole life, and I'm 44. And if you got rid of it, it would be heartbreaking. I wouldn't even recognize him.
Does it look similar to the one that's on the yogurt? Yeah, it's I it's identical. It was like, you know, totally molded after his his look. Does he does he have to does he have to apply wax? Oh yeah, you have a picture.
Yeah, does he have to apply wax or anything to it? He he uses a special silver shampoo now. We get it for him so he can just keep it up. You could kind of see it here in profile. I'll put up a picture.
Oh yeah. Um, that's like, yeah. But he always like regularly has turmeric or beet juice stains on it. It's he's he's not very he's not very on brand. So it could be a yellow mustache at time from time to time.
There he is. Does he ever oh that's so strong? That is a strong, yeah. Does he ever eat beet juice on one side of his face and turmeric on the other and do like a Harley Quinn kind of a situation? No, but my kids have recently watched the Lorax, and so now he's very committed to getting some color in there.
Oh yeah. I don't eat the the Lorax that how old are your kids? Three and four. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh yeah. Have them watch that the original Lorax or the BS new one with the songs. Uh I don't know. I don't know if it was new. It was good.
I thought it was good. Did it have a lot of songs and a lot of modern animation, or was it more like 22 minutes long and you know, I'm the Lorex Speak for the trees, and that's pretty much it. I don't remember. Yeah. I'm very I like the old Lorex, but I'm old.
You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's how it goes.
I only watched like it in the background. I was like, this is my one chance to do laundry. So I was, you know. Yeah, I get you. I get you.
Uh all right. So uh you have this yogurt company, and uh although it's like super fancy. I'm just gonna say that. I know that like when I was talking to our publisher, to our editor rather, uh, I was like, yo, she's like super fancy. And sh and and Melanie our our editor was like, no, no, no, no, you know.
She's real basic. She's not fancy at all. Well, you know, fancy in a bad way, I guess. You know what I mean? Like that.
I yeah, yeah. Um you know, it costs what it costs because of how you do it. Yeah. And it's in a nice glass jar. So it has the appearance of being it it has the hallmarks of being a very fancy prop.
Yeah. And I I appreciate that. And I I um I think I love the process so much and revere the process so much, that fed every decision on how to present it, because I also didn't know how to like bring it to your house in like a big tub, which is what I actually want to do. And so if I'm gonna put it on shelves and ask you to have this be a part of your DNA, I'm gonna make it really as special as the three-day process that it takes to make it is. And that was, you know, that was what informed it, and I could see how it comes off as being very special.
And the price is also like very luxurious. And um there have been times during my journey and making white mustache, I haven't been able to afford my own yogurt on the shelves. And I get that. Um I've learned a lot about how groceries are priced. Um, much of it is not in my control, especially when I can't um supply the amount that is on demand.
So uh just a lot, a lot of factors that go into it. But yeah, I am a little upset that the impression is that it's fancy when my whole life this was made as common and you know, um, teach you to make it as as a very special thing, but to make it regular, to make it normal. I mean, maybe that's just maybe that's just me, but because I'm as I've said earlier, well-known bad person. But like uh I think it's interesting to hear you like talk about it. This is also kind of reading the book, you get uh in the in the first section is an interesting kind of history of um one of the histories you bring, because there's several histories in the book, but one of the histories is the history of the company itself, right?
So uh, you know, quickly you're a lawyer in 2008, like you know, you get laid off and you are trying to figure out what to do. And mine tell me when I'm getting this wrong, and you're like, oh, um you reconnected with starting to make this yogurt. You're living in California at the time, right? Correct. Um, and uh, you gotta tell you gotta tell this next story.
So you you you basically have been out of, you know, a normal job other than working on an avocado farm or whatever you were doing. Yeah, you really worked on an avocado farm in the off-season. I did. I did. What work is there doing avocados in the off-season?
I just chain smoked and was really depressed for three months. It was terrible. But did they pay you to do that? No, they I mean, if there was work, they would have, but like I just kind of was like hanging, and like the owner was this like older couple, and they were lonely and they were like, cool, somebody wants to hang out on this little casita on the property. And it was just all very poorly informed, and I was just looking for something different.
So I wouldn't get sucked back into like a legal career um in New York City. Yeah, and you was like court, you were like a corporate level. I was a corporate, like a couple blocks away from here. Yeah. Um, I was doing securities and derivatives.
I was really bad at my job, actually, but I enjoyed it. Like I thought, like, like, you know, this was my hallmark of having made it and um, you know, got go work in a fancy office with a fancy salary and fancy clothing. Um, and I just once I got laid off, I was like, please don't go back there. Like, don't do it. Like, find something else.
Well, well, the avocado farm was just my portal into Right. That just seems such a random portal. Fun, interesting, but you think it's gonna be interesting, I guess, and it's not. No, it was it was it was it was very disappointing. Um well, so you you know, you said in the talk that I saw you give and in the book, the various reasons why you think you felt compelled to succeed in a very public visible way, uh, as a lawyer, right?
Um, I don't know how much you want to talk about that and how like because now you have obviously a very good success in what you're doing now. Uh like how you see that is kind of different. Like in terms of what you write in the book, it seems that your success in this is built around something that is important to you and to your core as a person and not as just an external sign of success, which is like you know, my impression of what you felt about what you were doing, somewhat self-imposed, somewhat societally imposed. Didn't seem to come from your parents in the book. No.
I I think, yeah, I wish it came from my parents. I could blame them for, and this would be real easy and fun for me. But I think I internalized an idea of what success meant and what making, and I just like I came here from Iran at the age of seven, and I immediately developed like almost like a chip on my shoulder that I had to prove that I belonged here, that I proved that I was worthy, um, that I had proved that I deserved a seat. And like that just led to overachieving at school, overachieve to get like the A plus, to get like, you know, into a good school. And I like latched onto this identity as an attorney, or this identity as like, you know, uh a lifestyle.
Um, and I achieved it. And it was it was like almost like blindly following that. And then once I got laid off, like I looked for any reason, like it was almost like a spiritual thing for me. Like the avocado farm was a desperate plea for help. And the yogurt is one, like it just weaves every part of my very complicated identity and background and skill set into something that is I feel like is so worth sharing with others and is so rewarding and is so difficult to do every day, but kind of like it just completely consumes me.
And I feel so grateful having it's like finding someone you've like fallen in love with, and you're like, holy crap, this is incredible. Um, and I've never gave myself that chance before because I just had this tight iron grip on some like weird notion that I imposed on myself. Um, I mean it's kind of sad, kind of happy, kind of whatever it is, what it is. Uh well, it's uh it's also interesting you write that when you were you know casting about for things to do in you know between 208 and 2011 that like you know you hadn't considered yogurt before because it was just like it was like always there. It was not for you, you know, like for you know, culturally in your family, it's just always there.
And so like it wasn't, but then it became kind of this amazing thing to you know, kind of reconnect these stories with your dad, like sitting around, like you know, him telling you about you know the sandwich shop that he, you know, uh I guess used to work in, or you know, and so like it became this way. And so part of what I think is interesting and what the book is really about is like here's you know, you starting this business reconnecting yourself to yourself and to your past. In fact, and we brought this up, and even though there's no cursing on the show, at least not if we can help it. Uh I like also that you have this uh amazing um on your these are end papers, right? Yes, yeah, this amazing, and you said you held up publication of the book so you could get rights for it.
It what yeah, and this is a very traditional like um tablecloth. I think I've seen this in every Iranian household, and it just like screams food to me, like put food on this table. Oh, really? So you see this and you're like, I'm getting ready to eat. Yeah, this like tablecloth to me.
Yeah. Um, and I think it's from the Victorian Albert uh museum. Love the VA. Yeah. It's just a beautiful end paper, and we waited, and um, yeah, Norton was incredible.
What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cursing my children. You help me. Most of the time when I forget my train of thought, people can't help me.
They don't remember what my train of thought was, but you do. Yeah, I'm I'm come back anytime. Uh all right. So this book, well, you want me to read it? Well, you say you just a dedication to the book.
It says this book is dedicated to all immigrants who are with humility, grace, and a relentless sense of humor, constantly explaining themselves to others and to my daughters, in whose strong and beautiful hands I place the responsibility, joy, and privilege of carrying on our traditions. Don't f it up. Yeah. And so, like, and that's you know, throughout the book, it's it's uh that mix of like tradition, self-deprecation, and also, but this I'm serious. You know what I mean?
Like, yeah. Um, and I think I struggled with the don't f it up because I was like, one day my kids are actually gonna read this, and what kind of relationship am I gonna have with them when they do? But I also think so. My family is Zoroastrian, and it's uh an Iranian Zoroastrian, and it's a group of uh it's a religious minority and also like an ethnic identity. Like there's a language, there's a food, there's music, there's songs, there's history that are very particular to this group of people.
And I have felt like the whatever the positive word for burden is of carrying these traditions on and knowing that they're going to be either diluted or disappear with me. Like I might, my kids are probably not gonna speak the dialect of daddy that I speak and know. And I've felt this pain my whole life and this like sadness around this my whole life. And I I don't know how I'm gonna teach or talk about it to my kids, but I want it to be light a little bit. And it's almost like I want to share my story and these stories more for you and for my peers and for people I've grown up with and other Americans to just like share these stories that you may never otherwise not have access to.
And how I bring my kids into it, and how I decide to hold on and teach and carry and preserve is like a journey that I'm still figuring out and will figure out. But like as I was, I was like, you know, I want to write this book as authentically, authentically, authentically as this like Iranian Zoroastrian experience is possible to honor my other peers who I think have have felt this way in the Iranian Zoroastrian community, but then also like give you kind of like a fly on the wall look into like this world. And you know, I have I have the tool of food and I have the tool of language, and that's kind of it. And you know, I hope parts of it are funny, I hope parts of it are you know, skeptical. I, you know, I just wanted to just uh the feelings thing you said earlier was like, I was like, yeah, exactly.
Like, I just want this to be sappy and cheesy and like really about about like the human experience that I can only like safely tell my story through the language of food. Right. I mean I know almost nothing about Zoroastrianism, like almost nothing. Why would you? I mean, like uh, and you know, what I didn't realize is that even though it hasn't been the state religion there, you know, in what is it, 1700 years, 1400, 1400 years, 1400 years about, it hasn't been the state religion that it's still a lot of the cultural under underpinnings of like the culture of Iran is still Zoroastrian-based.
You want to talk about that like a little bit? Because I I didn't know about that like at all. Yeah, yeah. So Zoroastrianism was one of the first monotheistic religions of uh the world. And it was the religion of the Persian Empire when it was like this vast empire.
And now the Persian Empire has dwindled into modern day Iran. And you know, this is why like Iranian culture, Persian culture is different than its bordering Arab cultures. Um it's very much rooted in its Zoroastrian heritage. So something like Noruz, which is the first day of spring, which marks our like the first day of our calendar, is based on the seasons. It's the spring equinox, and every Zoroastrian holiday is about the seasons.
There's six gambars which celebrate harvests. Every equinox and every uh solstice we have a big holiday on. And these were ways for people in the past to like mark time to just get through the darkest night of the winter to think about food and feeding each other to get ready for spring, um, you know, to slaughter their animals, to harvest their pomegranates, um, and to mark the time together as community. Right. But the, you know, that when you were talking before, you're saying there's like a lot of things that are just without taking on religious aspects, kind of good things to do, like uh a new year, the the you were talking about visiting.
Yeah. Yeah. So the Persian New Year, there's a tradition, and so the new year in Iran lasts like a whole month. Um, and there's a very lovely tradition called Didobazid, and it literally means like C and B scene. Um, so we invented that long time ago.
Um, but like you go first, you go to the homes of your elders and anybody who's lost a family member. So any home that's in mourning or in grieving, and you know, so you visit them first in your community, and then it's just like a free-for-all-all of visiting and being a host. So like both a guest and a host kind of like have equal weight, and it's an honor to be both of those kind of roles, and that lasts for a whole month. And like to me, it's just so obvious, like a uh an obvious behavior, like it's springtime, you've spent all winter, like, and you like just like the sprouts come up, you go out and you visit, and it's just like um, it's very in tune with nature, which I mean, even I myself have lost track of over there's also like a treat yourself aspect, right? Like get a pair of get some clothes, yeah.
You get your brand new clothes, treat yourself, um, treat yourself. Um, you get good food. Yeah, the the rice and the fish to mark the the first day of the new yeah. So you know if you get the book, you had this or the like the interesting of uh I think we used to do the same thing also, not to the same level. Like uh what's the name for the the culture of refusing and then being offered like a million times.
Oh tarof. Yeah. Yeah. My husband doesn't do like he refuses to do tarof and I'm like horrified by like he'll take the last piece of like a cake or or someone offers him something and he'll immediately take it and I'm like, oh God. Um but then I like I try to explain it to him.
I'm like, you know what? This is not gonna make any sense. But you have to say like you know like a little bit of a a dance. Um we used to do it it's like two or three times depending on like how formal things were going. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Yeah. You want some more you want some more? No no no I couldn't have some yeah yeah and then like you we eat like three plates of it and I offer you a fourth and you I'm like oh you don't like it. Yeah yeah you don't like it.
Oh you didn't lick that yogurt jar. Oh you don't like it. Do you take offense when people don't uh fully clean out the yogurt jar especially because you had to work so hard to make it well it's because I've seen people lick the yogurt jars. So now when I see them not do I was like wait what what? Like but I I'm crazy.
Yeah. Yeah. It's fine. Uh well so and so back to this like one one more time. Yeah um the other thing that kind of runs through it and you you were saying a kind of a uh you know, telling telling your kids they have to carry on the tradition, don't f it up, is this sense of sadness of the dwindling of the community.
There are only, you say, I'm gonna say off the top of my head, around 20,000 Zoroastrians left in uh in Iran, uh, more worldwide, but uh, and uh from what I can gather on the internet's uh not a proselytizing religion, so not growing uh really even in the diaspora. Yeah. So this like worry, as you say, that this kind of like old vibrant culture and whose food you you know highlight here so well, along with some new recipes because you need to use the way. We'll get into that in a minute, right? Yeah.
Um yeah, it's gotta feel like a big responsibility, no? Yeah, and like, you know, I I think I've I've embraced like my struggle with it with like the way and evolving and new recipes, and there is a large Parsi community, which is the Indian Zoroastrians, and I do think that the youth of the community is evolving, is adapting, is and and uh and I think that like that's all very wonderful, but there is this very small Iranian Zoroastrian community. Um I I I feel just the a little bit of like an artificialness and keeping up our traditions in the diaspora. Like it's I it's all so connected to the land, and it's all so connected to um behavior. Like we I'm not harvesting pomegranates every October, you know.
I'm not gonna do that. That would be a lot. Yeah, it would be a lot. And even like Norus, like so many years is like fallen in the middle of finals week or whatever it is. Um yeah, but you also give me the like there's a lot of FOMO stuff here, like freegan, you're like, if you if you take pomegranates, if you don't uh if you don't drink the juice right away, it sucks.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, but like, you know, how many of us can juice the pomegranate like right away? Because we're buying crappy pomegranates here anyway. Right. But you told me yourself that like after five minutes, that pizza's crap and that marg martinis trash.
Now I want the real. Now I want the real. Well, you were saying you used to save uh you'd save the pomegranates they could keep, and then the ones with splits, you would do the juice right away to make the uh the molasses. Correct. Yeah.
Correct. Um yeah, so you drink it and then you make the molasses because you're just doing piles and piles of it. And it's all done in like it just like obscene community bulk. Like that pot is huge, and it's on like this enormous like wood fire, and somebody's tending to it for like 24 hours because it has to reduce by like over 50%. And then everyone.
I'm sure you can scorch it if you're not careful. Yeah, you could scorch it if you're not careful as it gets thicker. Any brands that you recommend as being okay? Uh, for the pomegranate molasses. Yeah.
Um, yeah, middle, like Sadaf always does a really good job. Yeah. All right. So now let's get to the yogurt so I don't run out of time on the yogurt. So, you know, again, going back to what you were saying about, you know, uh, you realize that um, you know, the product is not cheap, right?
Be uh, not that you're charging just because you can, but you know, you're making it all by hand, you're putting in glass, you're distributing it locally. You also will not make more yogurt. And this is by the way, all right. I need to get to the yogurt. Let's do the yogurt first.
We'll do the yogurt. We'll do the yogurt. So you give instructions for making the yogurt the way that you actually do it. Yep. Smaller batch, but the way you actually do it.
You're like, don't attempt to make yogurt less than a gallon. You don't like uh machines that make yogurt, correct? Like the old salt in remember that? The little containers, yeah, yeah. Who's we're gonna we can do it this anyway?
Like a little cups, yeah. So you're you're anti that. You don't use temperature control. Correct. And in fact, so you're the you know, you're using a lot of retained heat, right?
So, you know, you're bat you're roughly speaking, your batch is a gallon, you boil it. We were talking earlier about you boiling milk, you boil it, and then you let it cool down. You do not give a temperature for the milk in the book. This gives me immense agita. And you say into it, which is true, that all of our, you know, pinkies are pretty well calibrated, and you do a pinky test.
I believe it's a three-second pinky test. I don't do a pinky test. Generations of humans have done, I'm just sharing what I've learned. This is not mine. Got it.
Okay. And it's I I forget the exact words you use, but it's like comfortably for three seconds and it's not a mastochistic test. That's the problem. I know. I don't understand what comfort is.
And so, like, I can't, it like, I'm like, uh, honestly, like, I do tests where it's like until it's so painful, you can't keep it in anymore. Like, that's how I work at test because to me, like, that's pretty much that's a more like comfortable. What does comfortable mean? I'm never comfortable. Right.
What does it mean? I invite you to be upstairs. All right, so tell me, tell me where this is. So, yeah, I say things like I have a cup of hot water. For those of you that can't see on the Patreon, I have a cup of hot water here.
He's gonna make me put my finger in. Yeah, hell yeah. Oh, sadist. No, too hot. Too hot.
Yeah. So a hundred. And also, I will point out this is a plastic cup. Okay. And so, like, my body feels that.
And so I know that like if I were to inoculate this with like bacteria, it's gonna be different. It's like the temperature dissipates differently. That's why I say glass bowl, ceramic bowl. And then we're gonna put like the blankets over. So it's like the pinky test is important.
But then like wrapping it up and letting it like retain its like natural. Yeah, you're gonna be. Yeah, no, no, for sure. No, I'm I'm disagree. You're getting a thermal mass in there, you're heating up the thermal mass with the milk so that it stays at that temperature, and you're wrapping it with a bunch of blankets.
Like, I'm with you. But talk about it like it's still milk. Talk about it like it's still like this maternal nutrition that some cow parted with. Like, I I will not, I will not G chat robot this process for us. I won't do it.
I just I just need so this is too hot on a second. Yeah. So that's not comfortable anymore. Would you put your baby in that? Oh, that's what comfort is?
Well, you know. They didn't let me bathe my kids. It's too hot. That's too hot. It's too hot.
All right. Wait, if you're talking like baby bath water comes. Baby bath water. Okay. Okay.
So like women. And also notice how like on this one in particular, the top, like I can be okay on the top. But if you go a little bit, like your baby's feet would be boiling. You'd be pissed. Baby.
Yeah. No, no amount of fancy pulp food is gonna make up for putting your baby in that. So, like, you know, once the kids could talk, they would just say, Yeah, that's too hot. Yeah. And I'm like, okay.
You know what I mean? Oh, see, like, I would have thought that that is I don't know. Yeah. We're still we're 134. Let's see where we are right at the end of the show.
You keep telling you tell me when you're close. I want to see where we are, just so that I don't. So I'm sure there's someone out there like me who just gets very anxious without like a number to pin their life. Tell me why. You don't want to get it wrong.
Uh you uh I just like your answer also. Okay. What what do you got, Quinn? Well, my issue is I'm not doing it. Oh.
I'm telling people what to do. Right, because Quinn Quinn is has to have other people like do the actual physical cooking for him. So he has to then explain to somebody else. And he might not have a personal reference for it. Ah, Quinn has a different need for a temperature than I do.
I can't do it. I can't do a picky test. Right. Yeah, it's true. I mean, but I guess in the theory of the book, you could have the person who's doing it do the pinky test, but then you're disconnected from it one point.
Right. How do you know if they're right? That's true. That's true, Quinn. We're gonna help you today, Quinn, because I have I have Chris Young's combustion engineering thermometer here, which is the most accurate one I could muster, and a cup of water.
I'm gonna get you a number, Quinn. She doesn't have to sign off on it, but we're gonna get you a number. Anyway, I see the validity of both sides. I get No no, it's fair. I, you know, and and to me, I yeah, I I think we lose something about intuitive intelligence when we like when we nail down a temperature in like if you nail down a temperature in this, it's gonna all roughly be the same.
So it really doesn't matter, actually. Um, but whether you do it in this bowl or a different bowl or another bowl, like I want, I really want you to know how to do this anywhere you go, um, in any bowl with any milk, which apparently might be suspect given my experience last week. Um, but like if you've taken a bath, if you've comfortably have a heartbeat that has your body temperature at a regular temp, like you can be at one with this milk. Um and I know I sound obnoxious to scientists, and I am I embrace your anxiety. Yeah, so what it is for me is is that like I'm okay doing it that way once I have a gauge.
You know, once once I once I once I understand once once we're talking the same language, I'm okay. Like I don't use a thermometer most of the time when I'm cooking, you know. Right. But the thermometer comes first. The the the benchmark comes.
It's not the like so like a lot of these recipes, that uh I need to talk get to the listener questions first, but like a lot of these recipes, you read them like, oh my god, I want to taste that. But also I know that if I make it, it's not it might be delicious, but I can't say I've had it because I haven't had the benchmark. Do you know what I'm saying? So like I can make something that's delicious, like like the the meatballs with the pomegranate molasses and the walnuts. I'm like, that sounds delicious.
Right. I can make that. Right. Is it gonna be is it gonna, would you like it? Probably not.
Yeah, you know what I mean. But I mean, I think this is what's difficult about cooking from a a book in general. Like, I feel like I can like we're doing this human to human, right? And we're gonna get to like some and I'm explaining it and I'm showing, and you're like watching my face and as I'm putting this like same thing with the meatball and the pomegranate. Like, if we were to make that side by side, you would learn so much of like my intuitive techniques of making even the stupid meatballs and the size and like how I stew it and when I stew it, you just learn so much more than I could ever impart, even like for my kids, you know.
So you are gonna F it up, but it's it's about almost imparting the stories and and the feelings. And then when, like say you you eat it, like even eating it is gonna inform you on how to make it. Um and what's that dish called again? That's your sister's favorite. Yeah.
Yeah. Uh all right, let's get let's get to the uh listener question so that I so that I don't uh but remind me we gotta talk about these ingredients that are mislabeled, like the Iranian shallot. Oh yes. It's just semantics, but yes. But yeah, but people say shallot, and you say it doesn't taste like a shallot isn't a shallot.
Don't call it a shallot. Why call it a shallot? It's familiarity and access. Wait, musir musir. Nine one, but that you can buy.
Yes. Sadaf online. Okay. All right. Uh from misplaced enthusiasm question.
Um my god, it blurred out. Oh my god. Uh Quinn, get the question from Miss Place Enthusiasm up. It blurred out on my printout. All right.
Uh again, there was a reference is a raining yogurt issue here. There's a reference to some Reddit post where someone threw out their partner's yogurt collection, and they were wondering if Iranian yogurt would be illegal to import like from Iran. Well, you want to talk about how you got shut down in freaking California? Well, I did get, but like that was California law in terms of bringing things over from Iran. I feel like that's a sanctions question out of my depths.
Um, I would say no. But are there other yogurts that are imported that aren't manufactured here on from Iran? No, from anywhere. Like are they are like the yogurts that are quote unquote French, are they actually French or are they from here? I think I actually think most I don't think yogurt gets imported.
I think it gets made here. Um I'm I'm I I'm not a hundred percent sure. The sanctions the on the Iranian products is is nuts. We used to get such good stuff for that couple of years in like the fascios. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh yeah, he he died last year, but uh, you know, Beirush Shafiri used to bring these amazing uh uh sharify, I always forget. Anyway, he used to bring these amazing products in, like these weird, like remember the mana he used to bring Stas. Yep, I do.
Beirush was an interesting cat. Biked around, biked everywhere. Um, from FUP Jack, what can I so what was it? So Quinn, was there an answer there? I just wanted to comment on is it possible to comment?
Yeah. So, you know, having been having had yogurt, you know, back there and here, if they're having your product, how close is it to the stuff that you would have over there? I think it's it it there's the way we eat it in Iran is so different because we eat it savory, and here I've presented it mostly with fruit on the bottom. And so our preserves are all Iranian, like sour cherry date, quince, um, and orange blossom honey. But when we have yogurt, we eat it uh savory or plain and like very saucy consistency.
So we have a Persian yogurt that's not strained, and we douse our food for it. So it's for lunch and dinner that we eat yogurt, rarely ever. Never for breakfast. Now I want this uh the moosir the shallot yogurt. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I want that. I will I will be more than happy to get it for you. Uh FUPJAC writes in, what can I do with leftover whey?
I know there's suggestions in yogurt and whey book, and I have it. They've ordered it, it'll be in their hands soon. I'm always looking for more ideas because there's always extra whey. Well, that's the whole book. That's the whole book.
But like brining anytime you use buttermilk, you're throwing in whey. Yeah. Why don't you put salt in with the whey when you're using it as brine? Why not salt and because my buttermilk brines have salt in it. Yeah, it's I want to keep the probiotics alive, and I don't want to salt them out.
And also, I don't think the salt is necessary at all. Because when I brine the turkey, like sometimes when I salt brine a turkey, those drippings are too salty for me to use. But if I just use a whey brine, those drippings are like very accessible and tangy and like already acidic. I feel like I could sit here and have an in-depth argument on the drippings problem for another two hours. So I will not even start.
Uh Jared Johnson, uh my yogurt, which I started from kefir was initially great, but after a while, subsequent batches have a smell a little bit like blue cheese. How do I discourage these organisms that make this flavor? And you talked about this in your in your talk about cultures reusing it too many times. Yeah, so kefir confuses me a little bit because my understanding of kefir and the difference between kefir and and yogurt is that yogurt is with a bacteria starter and kefir is with a fungal starter. Well, ki kefir is a little bit of everything, I think.
Yeah, and and uh sh yeah. Um she paused not because she was she was testing the water again for me. I made her test the water while she was talking. Sorry, yeah. Um it's just it's a plastic cup is really throwing me.
Yeah, stir for it. You had you had a number though on how how many times you'll reuse it. Oh, but for so for yogurt, I'm gonna leave the kefir part aside. Um but for yogurt using probiotic, bacteria probiotics, I really don't like using it more than 30 times from uh like previous batches. I find the yogurt gets very, very stretchy.
Um, but if it's turning into blue cheese, that's like uh that's a mold issue. Um and I'm actually not that familiar with kefir fungal grains. So you're saying no matter what, like there's an upper limit. There is enough. It's not like sourdough, or what I've heard of that sourdough.
Although uh you also like I say, in the book, uh back to Fubjack, basically in this book you're like biscuits uh instead of buttermilk, how about way? And uh pancakes, how about how about how about way? Faux sourdough instead of using spents. I use spent because I have a lot of spent sourdough stuff. How about way instead?
Right? Yeah, I I do, and it's like so wild because I'm such a traditionalist about the yogurt, but I'm like ceviche with whey, cocktails with way, like really go nuts with this way. Right, but you're using sushi grade because the acidity is not nearly as acidic. It's like magnitude. All right, we still got time, we're still gone.
Uh what's uh Chaz wants to know what's your favorite mesophilic yogurt culture strain? To buy, I guess. Like what should they buy when they're making their do you I forget, do you give recommendations on what to buy here? Buy plain yogurt and use that as your starter. One that you like, yep, and one that has as many strains.
Like my yogurt has seven strains of bacteria in it. So but only find a yogurt that has only milk and probiotics and use that as your starter. All right. Any general ideas where your yogurt can be purchased? Uh Manhattan and Brooklyn and at the Eatley in Los Angeles.
So when you well, well, all right. So when you come into town, uh, you know, look at it, look for it. Yeah. You know? Uh Mark Thomas wants to know how can I get whey without a centrifuge?
Now I know you hate centrifuges for whey, but our centrifuges that we use don't do it the way that those industrial ones do. They get a very clear whey on top because it literally just, it doesn't, you're not forcing the way through something, the whey is settling out on top. Does that make sense? Are you losing any of the yogurt on the metal whatever? No.
I've I'd like to see it. I've um we'll do once once we get another batch and we'll come, we'll we'll do one for you. Yeah. Uh we'll do one for you. I like using fabric.
I think it I think it's good for both the yogurt and the whey. Right. So you should check out the book and some things that we didn't get to talk about uh that I was excited to talk about is this crazy black garlic pickle that you have that's two decades old that you then have a faster way to make it. This is not the black garlic that you guys are thinking about that comes out of Asia where it's cooked for a long time. It's literally like in vinegar for two decades.
There's a faster way to do it with whey. Is that something I need to taste in my life? The uh the black vinegar, absolutely. What's it called again? Uh torchy sear?
Sear, yeah, it's just black black vinegar. I need I need that. Yeah. I need that in my life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The other two ones are the uh the yogurt uh that is cooked down, and then you make a sauce. What am I losing the name for? Yeah. Yeah. That you need in your life.
And every form of yogurt you need in your own life. And then when you make that, you use whey, then you super sour it, you mix it, you super sour it, you boil it, it breaks, you get another whey, and then you boil that down into like this like almost like black caramel. Um so you have the cash, which is the solids, and then you have the black brew, I don't know, which I hate, but I had to include it because my cousin loves it and he disowned me. Um but it's very tart and tangy and like and is but you can't make that with normal, but you do have whey caramel in the book. Yes.
Yeah for sweets. Right, and so I'll leave it on this. I know we don't have time to talk about it, but you literally have limited your yogurt production because you will not make yogurt that you can't find a use for the whey, right? Yeah, I want my whey sales to drive my yogurt. All right, and we're gonna taste as soon as we leave.
You brought some whey for us to taste. What's the difference? Uh plain and pineapple. Plain and pineapple whey, so you can buy the whey where you can buy the yogurt. And I've been making some good cocktails with the whey because it foams very nicely.
I've been making simple syrup with your whey, and it foams very, very nicely. Uh obviously we could talk more, maybe we'll do an event together sometime. That would be incredible. Thanks for trying it. Uh thanks for coming on, Homer.
Appreciate it. Yeah, I would do it. Uh cooking issue. Oh wait, now hundred Fahrenheit, people. Hundred Fahrenheit, we have now removed the soul from the yogurt.
Cooking ishies.
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