Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Aron, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City, and New Stance Studios. Not joined with uh John. John's not here today, feeling a little under the weather. Uh as is uh Quinn.
Quinn's still uh, you know, still getting better. So, you know, we'll look for them next week. But meanwhile, here rocking the panels, we got Joe Hazen. How you doing? I'm doing great, man.
Yeah. This is the first time I might be on camera. Yeah. Flipping over, kind of watching myself. Yeah, how you doing?
Doing okay. Yeah, I think so. Getting ready uh right after the show. I'm taking uh Dax up to college. That's it.
Then we, you know, we're not really an empty Nestro because Booker still lives with us, but you know what I mean. That's what they call us, right? Yeah, once you do that, it's like you know, you've already rolled the dice and now you just gotta see where they land, you know. I'll be there soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Sooner sooner than you think, my man. Sooner than you think. Uh in the great state, small state, best state, Connecticut, we have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing?
I'm okay. Yeah. Hey, uh, like you're a little garbly, but uh in like a month or something, we're gonna do some uh bull crap in LA, right? Yeah. So yes, you can do it.
What? You will do it. Okay. Anyway, so like like the odds are, I mean, assuming we're gonna, you know, we're gonna get the tickets and everything uh soon, we'll announce it ahead of time. But if you are gonna be in the Los Angeles area in the latter part of September, right around the last time that you have uh, you know, to order uh pre-order a uh Spinsall uh generation two hashtag you are cool for what is it?
What is it? You you are cool. What is it? URCool.com forward slash spinzall or something like what is it? Anyway, I don't know.
Uh but if you put I don't know I don't know but I know this you better pre-order that sucker if you want one because we are not gonna be able to build any extra ones so it's gonna be another wait if you don't do the pre-order but anyway right before that Nastasi and I are gonna go to Los Angeles we're hoping that Jack's not doing one of his Mexico slash freaking uh uh DC trips at that time oh by the way we also have Jackie Molecules in in free in Los Angeles right now how you doing no I'm I'm in DC oh jeez Louise well we're not in Los Angeles now we know I remember when you used to work for the Voldemort network when we first started this show and uh you you're like I'm gonna move to DC and I'm like you know why man why and then like you know you keep going back you love the DC you love it I mean you know I'm on contract with them so it's work. All right okay but I I have love for DC. I'll put it that way I have a lot of love for DC. All right all right uh anyway so yeah Nastasi and I are gonna go out there and we're gonna do an event and you know this is now take this like you take the weather but what do you say there is you say there's like a 50% chance of McGee Stas? No I think like 90%.
90% chance of McGee yeah so like you know if you're gonna wear your McGee raincoat 90% chance of McGee at this event. So we're just putting it out there and it will be right around your last opportunity to uh get your order in for this Benzall. Generation two. Uh anything else I got a push about that, Stas? No.
I don't think so. Yeah, since uh since John's not here, uh I got up it says right on this piece of paper. I the way this works, folks, is that you send in questions. By the way, if you're listening live on the uh on the Patreon, call your questions to 917 410 1507. That's 917 410 1507.
But I have a uh at the top of the piece of paper that I have every week, it says in purple, I don't know why, but purple, always purple. Promote the Patreon membership. So that's what I'm doing. Go to patreon.com forward slash cooking issues. I also just got a message from uh Yeah.
Quickly, I just got a message from Quinn with the URL for spinzall. Oh, what is it? And it is UR, like the letter U, the letter R dot cool slash spinzall. You're dot cool slash spinzall. Yeah, you're not cool, your dots cool.
You're dot cool. Yeah. Do you know what I was told? Like my email address has a period in it, and I was told that actually all the computers ignore the period, and that if you just type my email address without the period that it'll work, but yet I still give the period because I don't trust it, even though I tested it and it works. How dumb am I?
We should send Well Wishes out to Quinn. Yeah. For uh, you know, for not being up speed today. Yeah, so he he is he is listening. He is I I know John is probably not listening.
He's on the Discord. What's up, Quinn? Queenie Quinn. It's on the Discord. John's probably not John not listening.
Anyway, uh so uh before we were on the air, we were talking uh reverb, and Joe Hazen was telling me that there are rooms that you can like rent, right? Explain it. So you have like Yeah, so there's the reverb they're called reverb chambers. Um I mean there's there's here there's some here in New York. There's obviously out in California in the Capitol Records building in the basement where the reverb chambers are, where the actual in the studios use the reverb changers that are in the basement to call reverb when the musician wants a particular reverb, but it's also available to any person in the United States.
It has an ISD in line, it's which are you know quite expensive. Um the basically they're like latency-free phone lines, um, but they're very expensive services to have, and mostly studios have them. And if you want to use the reverb chambers over in Capitol World Records, you you know, you dial in or you whatever you pay for the service and you get that reverb called back on your console. It's pretty amazing. But there are here in New York, I believe it's upstate in the old mushroom uh caves.
What did the what are the mushroom caves? What are the mushrooms? Is it Del Monte or I don't know? Well well, most of the mushrooms are grown in in uh Pennsylvania, like West Kenneth. And what's a what's what's the big mushroom farm name?
Oh, I don't know. I don't know the big player. Again, most of the big mushroom players nowadays are in Pennsylvania. 75% of our mushrooms come from Pennsylvania. Well, these are the old caves where the mushrooms used to grow.
And um you they turned them into reverb caverns. I like that. Yeah. Yeah, pretty cool. Uh what's the best reverb you have on the panel?
Uh I mean, I've never used it. I've always wanted to use it. On on my panel? Yeah, right here. What do you got?
What's your best reverb? I have terrible reverb. It's a digital reverb. Um, let's see, go let's see what we got. Oh, we're select, yeah.
Ambiance, unmute. Let's do a send. Oh, I forgot you have to put it in and send it back and then. We have to send it to the man. All the mix.
All right. Ready? Hello? Yeah. And that sounds pretty dry still, man.
It's still very dry. Oh, where's the max hold on everything? It's not, it's not a oh, there you go. Sunday. Sunday, Sunday.
It feels like I wish, you know, I wish that like I could have gotten a job for Yonker's Raceway back in the day. I feel like I could have gotten geared up for it or like a monster truck rally. I feel like, you know, I know John uh Thunderlungs Lundberg, uh, you know, who used to do the drag racing stuff who was sampled by uh um ministry back in the day. But I feel like I could have done that job. What do you think?
Because I can I can get like all jazzed for her like ridiculous things if I need to. Wait, wait, what was that? Was that Jesus was a race car driver? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh well he wasn't he was an architect previous to his career as a prophet. Yeah.
Carpenter. Yeah. Uh anyway. Um. So what do you guys got?
You got any guys got anything in the food world? Anyone? Anyone anything? Any food you guys have eaten recently? Joe Jack, Nastasia.
Anyone? Just had a delicious meal at uh Reveler's Hour here in DC. Any of the DC area listeners, if you haven't enjoyed Reveler's Hour, the sister restaurant's tail up goat, which is one of the Michelin starred spots here in DC. Tail up goat. Great.
Very good. Tail up goat. Tail up goat and reveler's hour. Now correct me. Correct me if I'm wrong.
But a goat puts its tail up when it's pooping. Yes. I couldn't tell you. I mean, like, right? I mean, if I see a tail go up on an animal, I mean, not maybe not a dog.
A dog could be wagging his tail, but I'm assuming like a goat or a sheep. They put that tail up. I'm assuming like poop poop poop. No? Am I wrong?
Oh. So it just means it just means not a healthy goat, a happy goat, a uh a healthy goat. Think so. And which hour is the reveler's hour, and is it harder to get a reservation during that hour? That's a great question, and I'm not sure.
Or is it any hour that you're there is the reveler's hour, and they really want you to get out so that they can burn and turn that table, turn and burn that table. And then maybe that's it. I mean, are you limited to an hour when you're there? No, right? Probably not.
No. No. No. No. No.
No. No, because how long were you there? You were there longer than an hour, or you wouldn't have said you had a great meal. Nastasia doesn't enjoy meals that are uh shorter than I don't know. I don't know.
What's the minimum length of time you can enjoy a meal? We know it's not 22 minutes. We know that that pisses you off, Stas. What's the minimum length of time for a meal that's gonna cost you four hundred dollars? Uh minimum, I don't know.
Um an hour. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh and we were what, 22 minutes? Hour's quick, it feels like for like a proper meal.
That's that's a quick that's a quick one. What'd we do at Jiro? Twenty two minutes? You're saying minimum though, right, Dave? Yeah, minimum.
What's the maximum? At what point are you bent and you're like, get me out, get me the check, and get me the hell out of here. What's your max? Four hours is a lot. That's a lot, but you're really just sitting.
Four? I mean, you can do four. I mean, I I you know, I just have to. How many courses is that? It's not just the courses, it's the wine and the yakity schmackity and uh all that.
A lot of shell, a lot of yellow. Oh, too much, too much time in a chair. That's too much. Yeah, yeah. Too much time in a chair.
Are you one of those people that when you take uh an airplane that are you one of those people who will sit all day, all day, every day, and then as soon as you're on an airplane, you feel the need to stretch immediately? Are you one of those people? No. No, I'm fine. I'm fine with that.
You're not one of these people. You're sitting all day sitting at a desk, sitting in a seat on a plane. It's different than sitting at a chair at a restaurant, in my opinion. I don't know why. I don't really know what why, but uh they feel different to me.
Does anyone figure out why flying on an airplane messes your insides up so much in terms of like keeping your motor running? I don't it always messes. Red stats, you don't enjoy that crap. Nobody enjoys that crap. I can't say what do you say?
I don't get messed up with that way. You stay you stay regular? Yeah. Okay. I know.
Yeah. All right, we won't even talk about it. Uh all right. I got some questions in. Uh someone, I don't know what.
What's the best way to make the candy come out of the cake? I have to make a cake that when you cut into it, the stuff falls out from the middle. Yeah. What kind of candy is it? Why do you have to do that?
Look, this is the problem. The problem is the problem, Jack. We don't get to choose what the problem is. It's for a birthday. Okay, okay.
What I'm trying to figure out is like what size of candy, like what are we talking about here? Like it's gonna be different. What? MMs. Okay, okay, okay.
Yeah. Okay. So you just need it to be rigid. So okay. I would not obviously the way to do it is you do your layers and then you cut uh like a center out of like the center several layers, and then you just, you know you ice around it and you plop it down, then you fill with candy, right?
So you first layer, your you know, middle lamella of icing, stick your uh your next layer on top, make sure it's nice and flat, make sure it's cold. I would freeze it. What I was gonna cook the cake in a bowl. A bowl? What?
It's gotta have a Barbie popping out of it too. A bowl? Yeah. A bowl. That's it's got it's gotta have a Barbie popping out of it too, like a dress.
Oh, it is a dress. Yes, but when you cut into it, the candy comes out. Okay. They make a thing for this. You're going to have to hollow out a portion of it in order to have it have candy in it.
You know this, this is obvious. If you do not wish to have a lower layer bel, you can either hollow out a portion uh of the top and then ice over it, but typically there's a layer of cake surrounding all of the candy stuff. You can either put a lower layer below the bowl-shaped thing, or if you're really gonna be bootleg, you can scoop out the bowl, ice around the thing and slap the cardboard on it and turn it upside down and pray. But that's real bootleg. Uh you know, but those are like yeah, those are your your your options, but like which Barbie are you gonna choose?
Are you gonna buy weirdo Barbie? No, I bought one that looks like my friend. Hmm. Okay. All right.
Have you seen the Barbie? Of course you didn't see the Barbie movie. You hate movie theaters. I saw it. Oh, you did see it, and what do you think?
I had a lot of problems. Yeah. I hated it. Really? So y you guys are the only two people I know that hate absolutely hated the Barbie movie.
I we didn't say I say hate it. Jack said he ha Jack said he hated it. All right. So one person hated it and one person thought it was had problems. All right.
Yeah. Okay. Wait, Jack, what did you hate about it? Everything. I don't know.
It was fine. I I I I I maybe hate was a strong word. I think it just uh did not live up to the expectations that it had. And I don't understand why everybody else loves it so much. I thought it was just fine at best.
Just fine. I know, I know. Maybe I was maybe I was overreacting. Oppenheimer was fantastic. I did not see it because I was told if I wasn't gonna see it in 70 millimeter IMAX, don't see it at all.
Although I don't know why. Is is Well I saw it in I saw it in 70 millimeter IMAX. Well worth it. No, really? Okay, I gotta go do that.
Yeah, he's like only sh I love IMAX. Listen, you know, it's like uh Do you know that there I uh heard on NPR there was one there were three people I think that were uh attested that this happened. Three people were at both bombings at Hiroshima survived both bombings, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is like the worst luck ever. Can you imagine?
Like yeah, worst. Oh I didn't see the movie Scientist? Uh no, like uh one guy um was late because he forgot something and so wasn't at the Mitsubishi plant in Hiroshima when uh it got bombed and it was completely leveled and you know and he was very badly hurt and then gets on a train to go where his family's from, his family's from Nagasaki and then is in that bombing and ends up surviving. I mean you know that's wow that's yeah crazy. Yeah that's uh not the best um anyway uh but how did we get on this?
What were you talking about? Oh cake cake cake Barbie Barbie cake. So is this all so is this gonna be movie-based nostalgia it's gonna be all pink is this gonna be pinkity pink and the pink pink pinks no I bought a Barbie that uh a non-binary Barbie and it is a cake for my non-binary friend and I'm going to Fire Island so yeah but pretty pretty much everything in Barbie Land no matter what you were was pretty pink right wasn't that the their whole shtick or it's not about Barbie the movie it's different. Yes, it's different. It's not pink.
What what color is the is the outfit? Uh like purple and silver and um club kitty. Silver uh have you seen the um cartoon Metalocalypse? No. So Metalocalypse it's a cartoon uh about like a uh a death metal band uh called uh what's it called Deathclock and uh they have a chef and the chef gets chummed up and they they sew him together wrong.
He gets thrown through helicopter blades and chummed up and they sew him back together wrong and he makes a birthday cake and they want the birthday cake to be metal. You said silver was reminding this. And so his way of making it metal is he mixes mercury in to the frosting and then it's like, don't sample this, don't sample the frosting. It is mercury. He will die.
And then, like, you know, I forget whether it's like Prime Minister of Finland somehow eats it and gets completely like liquefied. So you're gonna use mercury as your frosting or not? No. Yeah. Well, the reason you're not is because you've well, you haven't seen metallock.
So how would you know not to use mercury? I guess it's hard to get. It would be a heavy cake, too. It'd be so heavy. You ever play with mercury?
I have. That probably explains a lot, doesn't it? Mercury is so heavy. Like if you've ever had like a vial of mercury in your hand, like a big, like a jar of mercury in your hand, it is so heavy. No, I only got as close as a thermometer.
Yeah, when I was a kid, my mom was uh working in the ER when she was uh an intern or a resident or something, and uh one of the old like sphinatomometer blood pressure suckers, one of the big old emergency room ones, got hit, shattered, mercury everywhere all over the floor of the ER. And I as a little kid, like, you know, like maybe nine, eight, nine, was running around. I ripped uh I ripped the back off of uh, you know how like um legal pads have the cardboard on the back? I ripped one of those off and went around scooping up all of the mercury and throwing it into like urine sample tubes so that I could take it home. And I had it for years in like a urine sample tube, like with all like taped up, and I would just like sit there and play with it every once in a while because it was awesome.
Mercury is awesome. I mean silver surfer. Oh my god, mercury is so cool. It's like uh in the way that like liquid nitrogen is really like an amazing material like to work with. Liquid nitrogen is like so mesmerizing.
Mercury also super mesmerizing, but you know, obviously you can't let kids play with mercury anymore. This was the 70s, you could do whatever you wanted. You know what I mean? Yeah. There's no warnings on that.
No, no, I don't know. Right, right, right. I mean, I don't even think that those things still have murky. First of all, they're all digital now. Like the idea, no one probably even has one of those.
But back in the day when they were taking your blood pressure, on the wall, there would be a like a large glass tube full of mercury, and they would put the the thing around you. You could see the mercury go up. When was the last time anyone had one of those in a in a hospital? Probably when my mom broke that, or it wasn't my mom. Someone else broke it anyway.
Corn. Can we talk about corn? Have any of you guys had any good corn yet this season? No. No.
I had some corn last weekend. It was delicious. It was like it was so anemic. It was so anemic. It looked like just like bad dent dental teeth.
Wow. Yeah, but it was phenomenal. When you say that, you mean it was like the the uh kernels were not fully expanded? There were yeah, they were they're like baby teeth, but they're pale white. And I was like, this is not gonna be good corn.
And our friend was like, Oh, you just wait. Oh man, where was it from? Farmers market and over in Prospect Park. Huh? All right.
Uh I had some from uh a farmer's market up in uh Connecticut when I had to uh rush up there. But uh does LA do corn well, Jack, or no? Um the answer to that. Yeah. I I yeah, I haven't noticed one way or another.
Well, then you wouldn't know. I mean, like growing up here, you're like Jersey corn, Jersey, Jersey corn, jersey, jerse, Jersey corn. You know what I mean? Like we know, like we're like, you know, your sweet corn, it comes from Jersey, or it's like Jersey corn. All the markets from Jersey corn, right?
You know what I mean? What you stash, you you said no, you're you're not into corn, you just hasn't hasn't come up yet. I haven't bought any yet. But growing up in LA, we grew corn and it was good. You know what?
Uh we grew uh well, that was no, that was up in uh in uh Menlo Park. Yeah, we had corn. Oh wait, we have a caller? Caller, you are on the air. Hello.
Speaking of corn, I'm calling from Iowa. Wow and uh I'll d I'll double down on that. And the town that I grew up in has a sweet corn festival that happens the second week of August, and I think they go through about seven tons of corn because it is the the whole festival shtick is all you can eat corn for free. So all you can eat corn for free. I can eat a lot of corn, especially if it's free.
As can I. In fact, I tested myself one year, and I think I managed to get down like 12 years of corn in my early 20s. Uh now are they growing the same kind of sweet corn there that we have out here on the East Coast, like Silver Queen and all that, or like uh bread butter and like high super sweet hybrids, or what are they growing over there? Like what's the standard sweet corn in Iowa? I think the one that most people are familiar with is called Peaches and Cream.
Ooh. I like that. And it is, I mean, you don't even got to cook it. It's just super, super sweet. You can eat it raw.
Super delicious. I think that's the only sort of brand name one that I'm aware of. Um, but mm there's a couple producers, especially around where I live, that are just kind of the good ones. There's Grimes, Grimes Sweet Corn, and then Deerdorf are kind of the two big ones. But uh I think the the sort of brand name was is peaches and cream, and it's it's pretty solid.
Um yeah. Huh. So like uh and the thing about sweet corn is really like I mean the super sweets, I know that they maintain their sweetness because they've knocked out whatever enzyme it is that like uh digests the sugar, but you really want to live near where it's grown and eat it right away. I mean, that's why that's why I think in New York the Jersey corn center, because it literally just trucks in, they cut it that day, that morning trucks in, you buy it, you eat it. You know what I mean?
So I'm sure that like whatever you get there that are growing is better than whatever is shipped to us, you know. Yeah. Well, I mean, we've we we've got pickup trucks with canopies over 'em parked on pretty much every corner in Des Moines. And uh yeah, you can stop by and grab a baker's dozen for like eight bucks or something like that, and it's I I'm I'm definitely intrigued in trying corn from other parts of the country, but uh I feel like I'm gonna have a pretty biased opinion because I grew up around here and I'm used to the super super sweet stuff that we have. All right, one more Iraq question before I got so uh how do you eat the what what's the name of this giant freaking ridiculous pork sandwich, this like giant pork cutlet sandwich?
What is that? What's up with that? Oh, the tenderloin, the pork tenderloin. Yeah. Uh I don't know what to tell you.
People like to eat uh breaded. I mean, I think the traditional, the old school way was they would take an entire pork tenderloin and pound it out. Yeah. And then uh like pound it flat, like pretty thin. Like this thing is this thing is gonna be probably 10 to 12 inches in diameter by the time it's all said and done.
Like it's as big as your head. Right. Uh and and then it gets breaded and fried, and they put it on a bun that's about a quarter of the size of the meat. Yeah. And depending on the p depending on the place, you'll get pickles or like mustard.
Um there's some places, there's a uh a place here called Ted's Coney Island that does like a buffalo version that's got like hot sauce and blue cheese on it that's super good. Oh my god, what a past wait. So it's it's got a c got a cutlet on a hamburger bun called a coney with buffalo sauce on it. Like you like it's all over the map, dude. Let's like, you know, like that's what that's I that's Iowa for you, dude.
And and how the hell are you supposed to eat this thing? Like, like, because like to me, I don't know whether this we'll take take a poll here. You should be able to pick a sandwich up. Right. You should be able to lift a sandwich into the air.
Yeah. I can't even unless you're a basketball player, how are you even gonna pick up the bun with with the meat like that? Well, you don't you don't you don't pick it up like a bun. You pick it up by the by the patty itself and you eat it. It's kind of like eating chicken fingers until you get to the um until you get to the bun part and then it turns into a sandwich, but you kind of have to like eat around it before you get to the bun part.
Or cut it in half is another good way to do it. And then you kinda it's an awkward grip. Um, but there's a way that you can like pinch the bun together if you um cut it in half and then split it with somebody or something like that is another option as well. Awkward grip, that was Jack's EDM band, I think. Uh so wait, so does this pickle stuff go all the way to the edge of the meat and the bun just doesn't cover it, or are you eating a bunch of dry stuff?
Absolutely not. You'll get like two little you'll get two little uh I call them pickle burgers, you know, the kind of like nasty commodity ones that like McDonald's uses. Yeah, you'll get like two or two or three of those on the whole thing is all that it is. So you're eating a whole bunch of dry cutlet in l or are you supposed to dip it? Like, are you supposed to like put stuff on it?
Or are you supposed to just suck it up and eat the dry cutlet? Maybe it's not dry, maybe it's juicy and delicious, but in general, uh, you know, there's no sauce, is what I'm saying. Yeah, it depends on the depends on the place. I definitely think that there's room for people to add seasoning, but I I come from 15 years of working in like fine dining restaurants, and so I'm like, you know, season everything, make sure it all tastes good. Right.
Um and that's not necessarily the case. It's a lot of kind of mom and pop shops that do these kinds of things and would balk at the amount of salt that uh someone like me would use. So uh you can find there's definitely some like legendary ones that have like ones that are really nice and juicy and tender. Um but for the most part you're pretty much just eating a the giant like fried pork fritter kind of thing. And uh have they shifted towards Panko Land?
Are they still using regular bread crumbs like Schnitzel style? Is it like a soft like schnitzly thing, or is it kind of harder and crunchier? I think it's more more of the Panko style. But uh again, you'll you'll find some of those old school holdout places that are doing like the traditional bread crumbs or whatever. Um you might even find some people that are doing them in like saltine crackers or ritz crackers or something like that.
Those are pretty good as well. Gilding the lily with Ritz crackers though, am I right? I mean delicious, but yeah. Yeah. Uh well, did you have a question?
Are we just talking corn? Uh yeah, well, yeah, well, I have a I have a corn comment by the way. Uh kudos to you guys for the Sear Sears All Pro. Um I kicks kickstarted it, finally got around to using it. I mostly use my Sears all to char corn, uh, because I live in a patio and I don't have a grill.
Oh nice. And uh last week my Sears All original Sears all, the propane tank rain ran out in the middle of me charring some corn, so I whipped out the Sears All Pro and it is noticeably faster, noticeably hotter. Yeah, man. Than uh the the map gas is compared to the propane. So kudos to you guys.
You're making my life easier in the uh charred corn category of my life. Well, we we appreciate it. We hopefully we're gonna have more of those to sell at some point. I think they're on the water now, Stas. I don't know.
Are they on the water yet? But we only I think so. It's only a small number. We only have like a thousand left. We're trying to figure out a a company to um make more with because uh I'd rather make those than the originals for sure.
I mean, I think they're better. Right. Yeah. Right, right. All right.
Alright, so I've got a question. Actually I've actually got a big a big question and then maybe an easier question. Uh we'll start with the big one. Uh so I do uh pop-up events. I'm like a a chef professional cook and somebody suggested the idea of doing a whole roasted steamship round.
Mm-hmm. I mean that's the classic thing that people used to do the then that's why they call them steamship rounds because they used to roast them for yeah. Do them do them on the do them on the steamships. I've only ever heard of doing this. There was a country club around here that used to do them a lot uh for like banquets and such um but I have never even seen one.
Um I've done a little bit of research online and pretty much everything says three hundred degrees cook it to one forty. Um I wonder if you had any insight uh on doing my thoughts are I think that like a china box would probably be the easiest and most cost effective way because I'm gonna have to buy whatever the cooking device is uh it would either be a china box or rotisserie. Right. So I'm curious if you have any insights on that on on which the pros and cons of any of them. Also if you have a recommendation for rotisserie because I know you talk a lot about how the the um the gear mechanisms suck and they have that like the part where they slide or whatever and it's kind of um inefficient or um inconsistent.
Yeah how much do they weigh but was um less than a hundred pounds. I think that they are 70 to 90 pounds kind of depending on where you get it from. Yeah yeah I mean like the nice thing about um the problem with I mean look they make the high end rotisseries but they're very obviously pricey right I've never used a cheap one that is worse fit. Right. Another thing that is uh important to consider is that I need it to be relatively mobile.
Right. 'Cause it's gonna be at a brewery, and I'm presumably that's why I think the trinum box is gonna be the best bet because I can take that and then do like a half a pig or a lamb or whatever I want in that, in addition to any other like large cuts of roast. And it's also something that's uh doesn't have a lot of uh moving parts, and so it's relatively reliable, but it's also something that I can pack up and take with me if I need to take it somewhere on the road, you know. Yeah, I've never actually had a cajina, but like, and I know people that love it, you know, uh like stu Steingarden used to say how much he loved like a cajina, and like a lot of people really like it. I just don't have a lot of experience with it.
Is this something you're gonna do again and again or once? First of all, 140 is real high. I well again, that's and that's kind of what I've that's what I would assume. Um the thing that I'm most curious about is how you get it to cook evenly because the thing is really thick, like you're not you're not gonna have a sous vide style tip to tip temperature, whatever it is your end result is. And so I feel like it's gonna be like well done on the outside and then like pretty medium rare, rare in the middle, yeah closer to the bone or whatever.
And I wonder whether I w I wonder whether like a vertical situation like a Schwarma setup would be because those are relatively poor. That wasn't that was another one that I thought of that would be super handy. Did they make propane versions of those that you can like use outside? Yeah, they do, and they're uh because a lot of people uh are interested in the like you need a a problem that a lot of people are interested in. So a lot of people are interested in kind of like uh Schwarma slash donor slash al pastor.
And so there are relatively inexpensive propane fired rigs that are made, you know, stainless and somewhat portable that aren't that much money. Can you can you use those for anything other than a giant tube of gyro meat or donor meat? Well, that's what I'm rivaled up on. Well, I'm wondering if you could do it with it with this. You know, uh I've never done I mean, the only vertical stuff I've done is very fast, like Tandor.
I've never done any long term verticals. So, I mean, obviously I don't everyone like likes in a rotisserie the theoretical self basting aspect of it, but I don't really know how big a deal that is because I've never done any long term vertical um I just do vertical grilling, not vertical like spit roasting or anything like this. Um that's that's the that's the other difference with this is that that you're taking a raw product instead of a euro that's like I do they aren't though euro tubes like already cooked and they're just like reheating them basically. I mean or is it like raw? Originally they weren't, right?
So like uh you know, like originally I mean, I actually I don't really know with uh I'm assuming that the that the donor slash swarma thing were done similarly to the way the Alpes door is where you like you're pounding them out and then like layering them in layers and they like, you know, they eventually bond together. But they could have of originally also been a big minced thing as well. So I don't know. But I think a lot of people have questions of how those things are cooked safely and I think nobody knows. You know what I mean?
Like uh uh at least I don't know. That was something that was a giant red flag and a in a thing that happened a couple years ago. Another uh a restaurant tour wanted to who we had no experience cooking a whole cow. Yeah, but he he like bought this cow and then like had this whole setup where he was basically like open flame in the parking lot over some grill grates and I came in a couple days later and found the thing was like still pretty rare. And uh I was like, Well, my immediate thought goes to this thing sitting out uh outside it within the temperature danger zone for like twelve hours.
It's like you're gonna kill somebody if you feed that to them, you know what I mean? Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, that was kinda my that was kind of the other thought that I the other worry that I had about doing the rotisserie style one is that uh it's probably gonna take a long time to cook. I mean, all of the again, all the internet stuff that I found said that they take five to six hours at 300 degrees to get up to 140. So Yeah, 140 is 60 degrees.
Like who cooks bees in the center up to 60 unless you hate beef. You know what I mean? Like, there's there's also woefully woefully little information on doing these things. I found a couple of video clips, but um, there's just not a lot of material about it. And so that's what I was hoping uh you or somebody else listening would have some insight to offer with that kind of a thing, because it sounds like a super fun event, right?
You just like bake some awesome dinner rolls and you have this giant slab of like roasted beef and you're just carving off slices, putting some sauce on it, like bada bing, bada boom. Well, there you go. Then then you get to win, right? So if as long as you put a nice crust on it, like what do they use at beef on wheck in in Buffalo, I wonder. Like we need like a beef on whack expert, right?
Because they just put the the the the you know, they have the cool roll with the the salt and the caraway and some jus on it, and then you're good. As long as it's got the jus and stuff, I mean nobody really cares and horseradish. I mean got horseradish, you know what I mean? I mean, God love horseradish, right? Um the other option the other option now that I'm thinking about it would be that this this place that we're planning on doing this at has a kitchen.
And so maybe we just cook it in the oven in their kitchen and then bring it out for presentation purposes and put it on the rotisserie and spin it around and slice it off or something like that. Oh, like a like a like a fake tissery, like just like a a for show. Yeah. If you're gonna if you're gonna do it for show, if you're gonna do it for show, I recommend getting a like a large uh hamster wheel and putting a dog in it and having the dog run like the old spit dogs like they used to do back in the middle ages. Right.
And just have it needs to be like a little terrier like thing like running in the wheel and that's like turning the meat. And then you know when people ask you like he's been doing this for twelve hours. He's been running straight for twelve hours. You know and if he does it beat you have to get a uh a sled dog to to manage that but the place has a dog park so that could very well do that could very well be an element that we work in to the extent there you go. Yeah just you know research spit dogs and like you know you know figure that out and uh you know that's a show right there nobody cares how it was actually cooked.
You know what I'm saying? As long as there's a dog and a a a giant hamster wheel and a dog I think you're good. Right. Yeah. All right awesome let us know how it goes and uh hopefully anyone who's hearing this can chime in on the Discord or whatnot with some steamship round ideas.
But that's always I don't even think I've ever had it. That's just something you hear they're like oh the It's old school. Right. The alternative minimum internal temperatures were built for things like that for like large roasts and steamship rounds because they have to be in the danger zone longer than any number would allow it. So they literally wrote codes for it because they were like well everybody knows you gotta cook a giant piece of meat when you're doing catering it like a boat.
What about a steamship round yeah yeah what about exactly exactly and so they had to write the rules for it. And that's the way rules are written rules are written because somebody has something they want to do so they figure it out for that. You know they as I've said many times the rules aren't designed to allow you to do everything that's safe. The rules are designed to guarantee that everything you do is safe, if that makes sense the difference. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. Yep. I got one more quick question too. What's up?
Uh I make a lot of doubled eggs. Oh, yeah, good. You know, true method. You know why? Because they're delicious.
That's correct. That is crazy. And I make mine a little bit spicy because that's what deviled means, right? It's got to have a little bit of kick to it. I don't know.
Devil meat, right? The underwood is that that's not spicy. That's just cooked to hell, right? I like that stuff too. I like candy.
Uh I've never encountered that in my life, so I wouldn't have an opinion on it. Yeah. I'm gonna go ahead and do that. I would hope that I would hope that anything with uh deviled as a as a uh uh adjective would be spicy because you know, heaven hell. Yeah, you know uh brimstone, all that's he's not here if I'm gonna make fun of him uh our man John with his uh Fra Diablo pasta.
When I saw it, I was like, oh man, I'm back in the eighties. I love Fradial's good. Yeah, yeah. Oh man, I yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. With you on that.
Okay, so I've got a tried and true recipe, tried and true method. Um I made them last week and the filling broke. Like it was not emulsified, it wasn't unservable, but it was definitely broken. Um and I think that the one difference with this particular batch is usually when I'm peeling them and scooping out the insides, um, a couple of the the whites will break. And when I'm when I make this, I make it in a food processor, like the filling goes in a food processor.
Um I trim them so that they stand up nice and straight. And all of the egg white trim and the broken egg white goes into the filling as well. It all just gets blended in there. Right. Um this time I didn't have any broken eggs, so there was less of that egg white in there.
But I'm still trying to like scratch in my head, figuring out how this could stuff could have broken because it's a freaking lecithin bomb between you know, the egg yolks, uh, the mayonnaise, Dijon, a little bit of sriracha. Um, and I do a just a little bit of extra virgin olive oil in there as well, but I'm just trying to figure out how the heck I broke this stuff. I don't I don't know because all of those things like each one of those things is like I will not break. Like each one of those things, mustard's like, I'm good. Mayonnaise is like, I'm good.
Unless did you use your own mayonnaise or did you use like are you going Hellman's and you're bringing out the best? Or wait, no, w are you east of the Hellman's line? I mean west of the Hellman's line? Uh uh it's called uh Yeah, what's it called out there? It has a different name.
We have Hellman. Okay, then you're on there on the Hellman. You're on I s you're on our side of that line. It's like I guess it's like West of the Rockies, Hellman's is called something else. Anyway.
Really? Uh yeah, but are you making your own mayonnaise? Because that could be the culprit. No, not in this case. I usually for s there would be an instance where I would make a homemade mayonnaise, but for something like doubled eggs, you know, I'm just I've got the the nice three-pound uh container from Costco sitting in my fridge perpetually and then a backup done in my garage all the time.
So that is not going to break. Like literally, like that is the bulletproof mayonnaise. And then you take egg yolks, mayonnaise, and mustard, and fundamentally in any ratio should not break. You know what I mean? Like that's that's like the negrony of not breaking.
Like that's like, you know what I mean? It's I don't understand. Is there any is there is there is there any way to bring it back? Like if I added a couple drops of water to it or something like that, wouldn't that help? I mean, more air.
Or maybe I just needed it, maybe I just maybe maybe blend it longer. I'm not sure. I don't know what would have happened. I mean, let unless, like, unless like you like blanked out, like, unless like some sort of like marvel blip was happening while you were adding the oil and you just sat there going gliggity gliggity gliggity gliggity gliggity gliggity and then like we're like there for like an hour. You know what I mean?
No, no, no, no, no. No, I've got it. So I I you'll appreciate this. So I the I do everything in metric, and everything is scaled to whatever the quantity of egg yolks is. So the first thing I do is I measure out the egg yolks and then I crunch the numbers from my master recipe to make it work, and I actually do all of the um filling ingredients into the bowl before I put it in the food processor, and then I just like process it till it's smooth.
Yeah. I don't know. I understand what's going on here. Yeah. I've never had this happen, so I don't know.
And when you say broke, like full broke, like chunks of like liquid and like then like oil in between. No, it no, not quite. It was it was just um there was like um it was kind of greasy around the edges, like you could see where some of the oil hasn't hadn't been fully emulsified into it. Beat a couple more egg yolks into that, you know, you know, egg beat some more egg yolks and salt into that, see if it gets pipeable. See if some are you a chive or paprika or chai van paprika, neither.
What are you? Uh the standard recipe I have that is very easy to add stuff to. I almost always will put some like fresh herbs or pizza candied bacon or something on top of it or pickle. Yeah. Um, but the base recipe is uh mustard, uh Dijon, mayo, onion powder, garlic powder, sriracha, olive oil, and then a little bit of salt, and then like a little bit of cayenne pepper too in there to make it give it that kick.
Yeah, yeah. Well, also the cayenne, you know, that's in the 70s, that's what we used from everything. Like in the 70s, like everyone had like they had paprika for the color on top, because we always dusted the crap with paprika when you were done. But we all like when you like everyone would specify cayenne pepper. You know what I mean?
Like that was this and so I feel like deviled Eggs is like even pre-70s, but I mean, it was going hardcore in the 70s. Like deviled egg was like, I kind of miss them. I wish that they would happen more often. You know what I mean? Oh yeah.
I did them uh well, the reason that it sort of started was that I do I do private chef work sometimes. So I did I did like an in-home five course wine pair dinner appetizer hour, the whole shebang, and uh all of this super seasonal, thoughtfully curated, thoughtfully and lovingly prepared and presented, you know, and every all that anybody could talk about were the doubled eggs at the appetizer. You know, it's like I should probably write this recipe down. And so now that I have the recipe standardized, I'd serve them a lot more. Yeah, figure out what broke, and then you can, you know, go telling people not to not to do that or whatever, because I'm curious.
Yeah, all right. Well, good luck with bringing it back into uh fine feather. Let us know what happened. All right, appreciate the insight. Thank you.
Thanks. Uh all right, so back to corn for a minute, if I may. Separate side of corn. So someone asked on the internet, uh, and I don't remember which whether it was Twitter or Instagram or whatever, like uh any kind of good way to get the silk off of corn. Are you guys silk haters when the silk doesn't come off the corn?
No. No, yeah, I'm not a hater. I don't care that much. If like a little a little silk is left over, like I'm not like whatever, you know what I mean? But like uh like one of the best ways I do hate shucking corn though and getting silk all over the god danged counter and everything, and then you have to have the big paper.
Remember, you're like, I don't know, if you're like I mean Nastasia, I guess if you were growing it, it's different, but we would be like, go outside onto the deck with this trash bag and shuck the corn and then don't get the little hairs everywhere. Remember? I don't know. Has anyone else had this experience but me? Anyway, yeah, I've had those experiences.
I usually just do it at the grocery store. What? You're that guy? I do, man. I if it's if it's by pound, if you're gonna weigh it and like I want to get as much corn as possible.
And it doesn't weigh much. I saw a lady shucking corn at the supermarket at a Trader Joe's, and I asked the Trader Joe's guy later, I was like, what the hell? And he's like, Yeah, some people do that. I didn't know you were that guy, Joe. Yeah, I'm revealed.
Jeez Louise. Anyway, uh, so one of the tricks that people use to uh get all this people do like various things, like they scrub it with uh with a toothbrush, or they use like uh, you know, um rubber gloves to like you know, massage it off or uh towels or all this other stuff. And one of the techniques is you nuke the corn in the husk, and that kind of like cooks and breaks the silk uh where it attaches, and then you cut off the very like the butt end of the corn when you pop it out, and all the silk stays with the husk, and the husk is now in a tube and it's easier to throw away because it's not opened up like a flower. And I was like, this seems like a good idea, except for the fact that I hate using first of all, my microwave is too small to do anything reasonable in it. And secondly, microwaves don't scale very well, right?
So you a recipe that works for like two pieces of corn is gonna be like won't work for four pieces of corn, and it's gonna be too much for one piece of corn. And it's very hard to figure out like kind of what's going on and get everything equal equal. Uh so I just tested last night, in fact, with the corn I bought, uh, steaming it, which I've never done before, steam it with the husk on, which is actually super easy. So you just you cut off like most of the you know the bottom so that they're shorter than they normally would be, but like don't cut through to the butt end of the corn uh and steam it for a little bit longer than you uh than you normally would. So I steamed it for like I don't know, nine minutes or something like this.
Uh, you know, uh nine, ten minutes, and then pull it out and then um you know, get uh gloves, get like uh, you know, uh grill gloves or something, right? Because I have those anyway. So I pick up the grill uh corn with the grill gloves, and then I you cut off just like the first row on the butt end and pop out the pop out the corn, and you could do as many as you want, as many as you can fit in your pot because the you know, steam doesn't care. Steam's not a microwave, steam doesn't care how much uh your load is. So I did uh I did a bunch of that way.
I did uh seven years yesterday in you know, nine minutes, and it would they were super easy and they came out super clean, and uh it was actually l easier, I think, than shucking it beforehand. Anyway, corn. Um Josh S. writes in, we were just given an air fryer, obviously not a fryer, you know, yes, obviously. I I wish I could find the so that whoever like came up with the term air fryer, I'm sure they're I'm sure they don't make any money at all.
I'm sure they came up with it for a company and the company made all the money and they didn't. It's genius and evil at the same time. You know what I mean? I mean, the only thing that's correct about it is air. It does use air.
Um obviously not a fryer, but what are some good novel ways to unlock its potential? Uh look, these uh these things are great for um I use I use this super convection setting on I don't have an air like a dedicated air fryer, but I use the super convection all the time in my brevel uh for things like bacon or anything that you want to get like a little extra brown on the outside uh right away. So I mean like just think of it as uh an impingement oven and not as an air fryer, and I think uh, you know, I think it's gonna be good. I don't have anything special special. It's just if I'm like want the outside crispy, right?
And as though I was using a like a massive convection oven, I use an air fryer. The problem with uh uh air fryers is um you can't overload them because you only have about 15 to 1700 watts of power coming out of the wall socket, and so there's a limit to what they can actually crispify because uh there's just a limit because you're evaporating moisture off the surface and that takes a lot of energy. So you can't overload an air fryer and hope to get that crispy outside, but it's you know, as long as you keep the amount that you're putting in low, or if you have a large family, own like five air fryers and have them plugged into five different outlets all over your house, then you can make a lot of stuff. Anyway. Uh Alexi writes in any experience making key lime pie with um uh acid adjusted other juices, not lime.
Alexi, no, but that is a fantastic idea. I love this idea, and I am going to try it. I mean, like I could imagine, you know, a key grapefruit pie. I could imagine, you know, key orange you could do, but I feel that that's a little more less interesting. I think key, yeah, a key pineapple pie, a key.
I mean, like I'm gonna keep I like Alexi, this is a fantastic idea. I'm gonna do this for sure. I do you guys like a key lime pie? Oh man. Yeah?
Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Uh Kiit Satsuma. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
That sounds good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stas, what about you?
Are you okay with the key lime pie or no? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love it.
And it's no bake. It's so summery. You know what I mean? I also I don't make it that often, but gosh, graham cracker crust. So good.
The best. Yeah. Yeah. So easy. So good.
Like whoever came up with that first should, I hope I mean they're way dead. They're super dead, but they should totally just pat themselves on the back wherever they are. Just be like, you know what? Good job. Like if you only ever came up if like the only thing you ever did in life was like, I did the graham cracker crust.
I'd be like, you won. You know what I mean? Anyway. Um kind of like doing the Ritz cracker for uh uh instead of a uh a a bread crumb. Yeah, I gotta try that.
But it's interesting because it's uh well I wonder what that's gonna be like because I mean because most breadings have like some fat in them, but not a lot of fat. I mean the Ritz is a buttery cracker. I love the Ritz, but very buttery. But it's good. What's the other what's the fake Ritz?
The one that's like a Ritz but not a Ritz. Is it socials, sociables? I I I honestly don't know. No, me either. Uh now this person chooses to remain anonymous.
It just says from because they have a licking question. Uh I have a stainless steel water bottle that fails the lick test. And for those of you that don't know, we're not gonna get into it. But the question is, is d is there a better implement than your tongue to figure out whether something has residual flavors on it? And are you allowed to ask people to use that instrument to determine whether something is clean or not?
I'm not gonna get into it. Uh I have a but that's what the lick test is. Uh well, actually I can taste it. Uh I can taste I could taste the water that I could taste the bottle in the water that sits in it. I don't know what causes flavor, but it has a residual cleaner kind of taste, even after going through the dishwasher a few times.
What are things other than soap to try cleaning it with to remove that taste? Well, to me, this is a well-known taste because if you've ever worked in like a commercial kitchen with a bunch of stainless, right? What is that? Lark? I don't know.
Is that a good one? Lark is an infrared um self-cleaning water bottle. And you like it? Love it. Yeah?
Love it. Lark no you. Q no you. L-A-R-Q. Like Iraq, but Lark, exactly.
All right. Uh so if you hand, and I've done this so many times, hand a bunch of the big bowls are on a problem, but like uh Bane Marie's that are taller, so kind of like your jar, and they go through dish, they come out smelling awful, like metal. Uh and I used to make all of the interns smell the containers to make sure they weren't putting stuff in so that they could, you know, have that metal metal smell. The same way that like, you know, back at um Booker and Dacks, uh, the sambar folks would fill all of the core containers with uh chopped up scallions uh, you know, and or shallots or whatever. And if you didn't smell the cork container before you put stuff in, you had grapefruit juice that smelled like onions.
Remember that styles? Oh, it's so gross. Remember that? Ugh. Uh what I would do, and I think it's a like I don't know what happens in a commercial dishwasher that makes it, but when it's hand dishwashed, it to me it smells like a scrubby.
It smells, it's only with stainless and it smells like a scrubby. And sometimes even smells a little vaguely eggy. I I I hate it. Um, no soap after it's dry and done, a rinse with super hot tap water, rinse and dump, rinse and dump. That's typically what I do, and it goes away.
I wouldn't scrub it anymore, in other words, or do any of that. It's already gone through its thing. Rinse, dump, hot water should be fine. We also used to make everyone rinse everything with hot water because if they rinsed everything with cold water, um, sometimes it would smell like chlorine, and then that would come through, and I hated that. Like, and you look things like water bottles and vein marries tend to concentrate these smells because they're almost like a wine glass, right?
They're they're tall, and when you put your nose in it, you can really smell any flaws uh on the outside. So yeah, sure. The focus is up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I feel I feel you, anonymous.
Uh Jacob P. Right saying, Can I pasteurize something like lemon juice using an immersion circulator without it drastically changing the flavor? No. That's all. Uh look, some people do look.
Here's the thing. If you heat if you can come up with a temperature for lemon juice to cook it to quote unquote pasteurize it, right? Not a not a crap ton of stuff gonna grow in it because it's so acidic. It's like pH, I forget what it is, so very acidic. Um if you heat it, uh, I know people that heat it and it does stabilize it, right?
So if you boil it, which you're not gonna do, right? If you boil it with sugar, that's cordial. And now the flavor is stable for for I wouldn't say forever, but for a long time, like years stable, right? So that is a flavor that I like when it's cordial, right? Now, in terms of low, I do I do know some people who do lower temperature, as you call it, pasteurization to stabilize the flavor of it, but it doesn't stabilize the same as fresh.
So, what you what you do is is if you come up with uh a procedure, a heating procedure that you can do in a bag or whatever, and you follow that procedure every time, and you end up like writing your recipes for that ingredient, it will be consistent from day to day, right? So that you can win on, but it's not gonna taste the same as fresh. So if you get your recipe so that you like it that way, then God bless, right? Because uh that's the way that works. Um Jeff writes in, would like to hear uh more about the density based method uh I use uh I mentioned on the live stream a few weeks back about I did a live stream for the Patreon folks.
I gotta do that again. That was uh pretty fun. Uh about finding out the sugar percentage of liqueurs. So I have something called the first of all, in 10 years' time, like anyone, any like one with an iPhone, uh, you know, and a and like a $500 or $400 piece of equipment is gonna be able to measure everything. Like they're gonna have it, you know what they're gonna do?
They're gonna use uh they're gonna use uh these uh infrared techniques along with machine learning, and then like when you you're gonna be able to like put a small sample of food onto like a little piece of glass, and it'll tell you roughly what's in it. 10 years, 10 years tops under a grand. You know what I mean? Maybe 15. Anyway, but calories too?
Uh well, it'll be able to theory, it'll be able to figure all that out, but it's mainly gonna be like, oh, does this have any you're you're gonna say, oh, I don't like benzoits, and it's gonna be able to say there are no benzoits or there are benzoids, or you're like, you're gonna be able to ask it if there's any some sort of preservative or whatnot, and it'll figure it out, or you'll ask it how much sugar is in it, and it'll tell you. Like it's gonna go that way. It the tech there needs to be a little work on hardware and a lot of work on the machine learning, but it's it's gonna happen because I think a lot of people would want to buy that, so that there's a market for it. However, uh right now, Anton Parr, and I have my issues with the Anton Parr Corporation, P A A R, make something called the Easy Dens. Uh and it's a small portable density meter.
Uh, and so what you do is is you just put 10 milliliters of sample through the easy dense, really more like six, but you put that through it and it gives you the density of whatever you put through it, right? So any liquid you can put through it, it gives you the density. Uh then I use a portable, uh like a small refractometer that's accurate to about two digits after the decimal. Well, it's accurate to one and a half digits after the decimal point. And then I get uh the refractometer reading, and the combination of those two uh readings I put into a third program called Alco Alcodens LQ that is not free, but you can download a trial of, and given those two numbers, it will tell you uh what the sugar and alcohol level is, or if you trust the alcohol number, all you need is the density without the refractometer meeting and reading, and it will tell you how much sugar is in it.
So that's what I do. I've also been doing this is what I've been doing for the past week or so. I have like a hundred samples of different liqueurs, and I've tested them all, and I'm in the process of testing the ones that have acid for acid. Uh it's not fun. Can I just say it's not fun?
Like running a whole bunch of titrations is not fun. It's an unfun thing to do. Um, hey, uh Nastasi and Dave, please help me figure out my mystery cocktail allergy. I love fun drinks, but I've been avoiding most cocktails because I have broken out in highs. Uh, have we answered this?
I've broken out in hives several times when I've had sweet drinks recently. The last and worst time, I had an Arnold Palmer with vodka uh at a beach bar in Florida. I think maybe you're allergic to Florida. Do you think that's what it is, S? I think it's Florida.
No. I asked, uh, and they used Minute May Lemon via a soda gun. Oh my god. You're in Florida and they're using like like lemonade out of a gun. I don't know.
Uh I broke out in full body batteries. Yeah. Previously it's happened to a lesser extent, some redness and wheezing on occasions when I had a genetonic a pina collat and other fruity tiki drinks. You know, I don't know, uh, I don't know, but there is like contact allergies with lime and sun, right? So that could like that's something, but this is eating it.
I don't really know what this could be. Could be a dirty line from the soda gun. Yeah, but what would cause an allergy in it? Like uh I'm fine drinking uh wine, beer, martinis, vodka, tikangia's uh uh sodas, or skinny Tommy margaritas from time to time. I have no other food allergies, and when I get an allergy test, my only other allergy was to cockroaches.
Well, and Florida is the land of those giant flying cockroaches. Maybe maybe they're living in that gun. Palmettoes. Palmetto bugs, man. I hate a palmetto bugs.
Is it just a sh I've never heard of an alcohol plus sugar allergy, or is there a specific ingredient I may be able to avoid? I don't know. Although I found a recent uh allergy uh thing, some some things contain hidden allergens. It's not like listed. So like one of my favorite products is Capcourse.
I love Capcourse, which is uh it's like uh mistel fortified with uh and with uh um neutral spirit and uh quinine, and it's like you know, from Corsica, it's French. It's delicious, but the red has uh nut uh nut husk infusion in it, and it's not listed on the label, so my stepfather had an allergic reaction. So there could be something you had to think. I would look into this, maybe it's a lime situation, and then you got lime on yourself at the same time, and then you know, uh, and then got in the sun. I don't know.
I I'm gonna anyone else that has anything else, uh, ask me. Uh Lee writes in, uh hey, uh I'm a junior wok chef at a one-star Chinese in London. I've been listening to cooking issues every morning while opening for the past eight months, and uh many thanks for the hours of entertainment. Uh I'm a mere 20 odd episodes away from finishing the shows you've recorded and listening with bittersweet anticipation as I approach the end. In case you're still fielding questions, I recall in one episode that you mentioned industrial flavorists had isolated the flavor of woke, and was wondering if there was a particular uh sources you recommend on that.
I'm always interested by different people's explanations and definition. Kenji seems uh so far to be the most convincing, but my exec chef provided perhaps the most amusing wake is a scam. All right. It was uh David Michael, uh, and uh the person I knew was uh Julie Snarski. She's since retired.
Uh they never sold it commercially. She made the wakay for uh Jean Georges's chef, Greg Brainen, who I think is still, you know, one of the heads of the ship over there at the JG Empire. But the woke hay, the way they did it was they analyzed uh a bunch of uh things that were cooked at high temperatures in walks, and I believe it was uh uh overfired oil and metal. Like so the two things they were doing were like the scraping from the wok, so like some sort of metal y flavor and just like really high fired uh like you know, scorched burnt oil, where like the things they were adding to add woke. Uh so that's uh that's what it is.
Anyway, uh cooking issues.
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