Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan in New York City. Newstand Studios joined as usual with John. How you doing? Doing great thanks.
Yeah? Yeah. Really? Yeah. It's too freaking warm, dude.
Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah, 10 degrees colder. Crap on us. I'm ready ready for the fall weather, though.
I like how it's, you know, getting to be holiday season and it's I like the stuff here in New York. Okay. Yeah. Uh got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. What's up, my man?
How you doing, sirs? Doing all right. Dan Madams. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, speaking of, we got in uh Los Angeles uh Nastasia the Hambra Lopez. How you doing? Good. How are you? I'm all right.
I guess. You know. Uh traveling up the Pacific Coast Highway. We have uh in San Francisco, uh Jackie Molecules. Jack Insley, how you doing?
Ew, I'm good. What are you doing in San Francisco, by the way? Uh some some podcast interviews for the Line Hotel. They have a property here in Tenderloin, which not the most fun part of San Francisco. But like what do you mean, just because you don't like uh what, getting yelled at or whatever?
Isn't blue bottle is it near the mint? But uh I don't know, actually. I don't know San Francisco very well, to be honest. But Tenderloin's well. So you're just gonna lob some bombs at the city and then be like, I don't really know.
It's all right. I mean Tenderlin's kind of like, you know, I don't know. It's a bad cut of meat. It's a bad cut of meat. There you go.
Exactly. You know what I mean? I mean, it's not a bad cut of meat. It's just whenever you go to some place and they're like, oh, tenderloin. Oh, great.
Awesome. Thanks. Yeah. You know what I mean? Mids.
Overcook it, please. Please overcook it. You know what I mean? Worst. Uh I I I, although I I actually don't mind like, because fillet is tenderloin.
Yeah. And I I like filet. I'm gonna go ahead and say I like it, even though it's not the most flavorful cut of meat. Yeah, agreed. It like when done properly, i.e.
barely, you know, just like a nice crust, and then like this sitting there, that little like 1970s blob of meat there with some freaking potats next to it, some gravy, some freaking Matrid of Hotel Butter. Glazed carrots like that. Oh, yeah, dude. Glazed carrots are so money. They really are.
So, oh, by the way, before we go too much further, so like you f go up the coast even more and then take a seaplane or a boat over to Vancouver Island, and then you'll find you'll find Quinn over there on in Nanaimo. Nanaimo. Yeah. How's it? How you how you doing over there?
Great. All right, good. Back to carrots. So my favorite recent carrot I've had is remember Miley was on, Miley, Miley Carpenter, my sister-in-law. Her roast carrots, she says she hasn't do anything, but they're real good.
And in fact, when I saw uh once I saw the Food Network magazine and they had like perfectly peeled carrots with like the little stub on it, like perfectly like glazed, panned, the way she does it in like sheet panned. And I was like, Miley, did you did you like look at the original and you're like, no, you're gonna do it my way? Because Miley's carrots are like a carrot above. Like they're a carrot above. And I don't even think she's sourcing like hyper fancy carrots.
If I got her Pete's Greens carrots from Maine, sorry, from Vermont, not me. Came over. If I got her Vermont Pete's, because apparently a cold weather carrot put in the ground and kept as long as it can be kept underground without freezing, it just gets sweeter and sweeter and sweeter. You know how I do my carrots? I cheat and I add sugar to them, like most of us.
Yeah. Yeah. Don't be afraid to add sugar to your kids. No, don't. Yeah.
But uh I'm too lazy to do it, uh, to to pan it. So I always do it. Um, I I cheat though. Like, you know how like in cooking school, I don't know if anyone knows this, but in cooking school, the way they used to teach you to do this, right? Is you'd put a little bit of water, you'd put in the carrots or whatever in the pan, sugar salt, and then you'd make a parachute-shaped uh like they called it on glaze, right?
A l'anglaze, right? That's the way that, yeah. And you make a parachute-shaped like parchment with a hole in the middle, and you drop that sucker on top, and then you hit it, right? What wouldn't they what do they call it? Is it not on glaze?
What is it called? I don't know. I'm thinking about the name of the parchment circle. Uh-huh. You mean the cartouche?
Cartouche, there we go. Yeah, I should remember cartouche because rhymes with douche. You know what I mean? It's like, and so you put that thing on top and then you you hit it, and then, and now that's the way. And then it evaporates, and when it evaporates, you know, I always put oil in too.
It doesn't spatter too much, and then it self-glazes, right? So it's a lot easier than like parsed. To me, it's a lot easier than like parboiling, throw, because then it's taking flavor out of it, right? Then putting it in and doing a post-glaze on it or adding the sugar later. Like, so this is the way I always do it, but then like some purists are like, well, you have to guarantee that you add the exact amount of water or the carrots.
We like, listen, just add a little bit too less water, idiot. And then if it needs a little more cooking, throw a couple more spoons of water in. That's the way the rest of the world does it, people. You don't have to, not everything has to be complicated. Anyway, that's the way I cook most veg.
Yeah. But I I don't make the I don't make the carduche anymore. I just I put a lid over it and let it go. I mean, like, let's be honest. Who needs that?
I think that comes from a day when you didn't have lids around. Because you know how, like, in a in a like a lot of times in commercial situations, like you're like, oh, lid, no. And then you take your your fry pan and you throw it on top of your pot. How many times do you use just your fry pan as your lid? Almost never.
Um, I have my lids. I use only Mauvial cookware, and I have all of the lids for them, and I never lose them. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, but cartouche's gotta be older than that. It's got lots of like Escoffier stuff.
Maybe even older. Yeah. Do you know there's they definitely had lids for all their pants? He definitely. Well, I thought the advantage.
I thought the advantage of the cartouche is that there's like a little evaporation. So is there with a lid? True. You ever you ever think you can't like you can't put a lid on a pot, turn it above the boiling point of water and walk away and not have that thing evaporate to dry pretty damn quick. Sure, but uh is the cartouche more to like help avoid a skin forming on the top too.
Skin on top of your freaking carrots? Well, okay, maybe not the carrots, but I'm thinking other things. Okay. Well, that's not so usually if you don't want a skin on top, you put in quote unquote a knob of butter. Throw a knob of butter on top.
I will not. I'll put a piece of butter on top. Not gonna put a knob of butter on top. You know what I mean? What about ginger?
Do you ever cook with a knob of ginger? No. There's some mint on it. What do you mean? You you use recipe.
Wait, you use recipes where you throw in the ginger and then remove the ginger in one piece? Because otherwise you would slice the ginger. Otherwise you would slice the hell out of it. In fact, I take pains. So the way that I do the ginger is it's uh it's like almost halfway to a uh how do they call the onions?
It's sizzle. Sisole, right? Like where they where they could check, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, chak, check. I'm making like, so like imagine you take the ginger and you hold it and then you cut it rip up into like vertical slices so you can see the root. Then you rotate it 90 degrees and then you go shoop, shump, shump, shump, shump.
So there's no fiber longer than a tiny little bit because I hate those fibers. Hate. Hate. Anyway, but the only way oh, I see what you're saying, as a measurement, a knob of ginger. No, it's a horrible measurement.
Yeah. It's a freaking terrible measurement. Dude, I go to look at ginger, and sometimes the ginger, what you would call a quote unquote knob, is like the size of my of like five times my thumb, and sometimes it's like the size of my pinky, depending on like what style of ginger they got, like whether it's quote unquote organic. You know what I mean? No, no knobs.
Is there anything that can be successfully measured by knob? Doors. Even doorknobs, different sizes. Even doorknobs. Well, like if you have to, if you have to measure a number of doors, how many knobs are there?
Probably a good number of doors. All right. I mean, I kind of have to give it to you on a technicality, but that's not what it means. Anyway, uh, yeah, I don't know. I've I haven't made a cartouche since, I don't know, in probably like 20 years.
I just don't do it. What about like, well, we don't know, we'll we'll get back to it. But like uh, do you ever used to do the um all of those old moisture management tricks I think are interesting, and I'd like to research how they happened. You know what I mean? Like how someone decided that it would be easier to do that and to stick that thing all the way down.
Because there's a famous, like, you know, there's a famous Chinese cooking braising techniques where you stick a pot, a lid inside the pot that floats right on the water, right on the brazing surface, and then will go down as it cooks. So the lid is actually inside of the pot. And I don't really know why, unless that's to keep things submerged, or I really don't understand it, to be honest. You know, give you a visual indication of when it's done. I don't really get it.
Um I don't. By the way, I do like a glass lid. Do you like a glass lid? I like a glass lid. Yeah.
I love a glass lid. I have all my all my pens have standard kind of steel lids, and I have a couple glass lids, and I always use the glass lid if I can, so I can see what's going on. You know what I mean? Oh, this is nice, yeah. Technically, technically, like if you were using it uh, you're gonna get less heat loss out of metal, but I don't really think it's that big of a deal because it's never going that much above uh the boiling point of water.
So the radiation difference you're gonna get off of a glass lid is like so not that much more than you'll get off of a off of a stainless lid. You know what I mean? It's just not a big deal. Just not a big deal. Uh all right.
What about uh now's the time when uh we talk about uh what's happened in the past week? Anything? Especially because uh Patreon folks, you are light on questions this week. So we don't have that many, we don't have that many questions to go through. But I will say that uh next week we have uh uh as our guest, uh Robert Simonson, who uh I don't know, this is like his 95th cocktail book, something like this.
Something like that, yeah. Something like this. He I think he's trying to write more books than like I think once he reaches the number of books as years he's been alive, then he'll only do one a year or something like this. But he writes, you know, infinity cocktail books. So if you have any questions about writing for the New York Times, uh, because he's still their cocktail correspondent, right?
They're their cocktail writer. I don't know. I think he still writes for the Times. And um anyway, he's a well-known cocktail writer about town. Uh he'll be on next week pushing his new book.
And then uh on November 21, we have uh Matt Sartwell from Kitchen Arts and Letters coming forward at Classics in the Field. Classics in the field. Yeah. So listen, I really want you guys to ask some questions beforehand so you can look it up on Classics in the Field so we can really get get going. Um then uh you want to talk about the benefits of Patreon if there are any, so such as they are?
Yeah. Um again, uh patrons today, as of this Tuesday, we'll get a promo code for uh Robert's latest book, because we try to get promo codes from Kitchen Arts and Letters for all of the guest books. So that always tends to happen. And uh early access to the podcast, access to the podcast video stream if you get a certain tier, and then sometimes we do uh special live streams, right, Dave? Uh yeah, yeah.
Spe well, when we miss a show, usually I try to do some sort of live stream to make up for it. And then, you know, the real problem with that though is they're trying to figure out how to get the most people who can like uh watch it as possible because that I don't think that they stay around, right? Like we did one with McGee that was a lot of fun. But no, the the you the YouTube one where you were different claims. Oh yeah.
All right, great. Um You know what I want to do? I want to get people more discounts on like the equipment that we use. Like equipment that we like. I want to get I want to get the patrons more discounts on that.
That was fun. And like people like Edwards Age Meat, meat that we like. Yeah. We get meat that we like. Yeah.
That'd be right. You know what I mean? Yeah. We're gonna do that. I'm gonna we're gonna Quinn.
You hear me? That's what we gotta do. All right. Uh well. Also, listeners should go to Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh all right, listen. What do you guys got for me this week?
What do you got? What do you got going? Who's got some cooking? Who's got some cooking issues this week? Nobody's got anything you have to carry the show.
Oh man, you guys are the worst. The worst. I was waiting for everyone else. Um John, you got nothing? No, I mean I got stuff.
I've been working on uh um my new menu. Um so trying to do something more Belgian, or not something more Belgian, something Belgian. Um which is exciting. It's fun to think about this cuisine that really no one really knows too much of. Name a cuisine that is more underrated than the Belgian cuisine.
I mean, I'm sure there are plenty, plenty, plenty, but it's in Belgium. In Western Europe. Yeah, okay, fair. Yeah, no, but few. Yeah.
Um Croatia. Western Europe. Yeah. Um well but you know, we I mean, it's mussels and waffles and french fries and chocolate and beers, you know, but there's really a lot more to it. But other countries think they can do those things.
That's the problem. Yeah, but there also is like a But they can't. They can't. No, but there also is like a lot of like, you know, obviously regional variations, but you know, Belgium's a pretty small country. The difference in cuisine between Southern Belgium and Northern France, not super different.
You know, a lot of shared ingredients, shared things like that. Um, even and out through our friends at Kitchen Arts and Letters, I got these really uh great French cookbooks that the government had put together back in the 1970s of all the different regions in France, and I got the two books of the regions that uh border Belgium and it's just so much of the same stuff, which was really interesting. I need to see things that I thought were uniquely Belgium were being shared down there. Like what? Like Carbonade?
Carbonade, um, more in the Ardenne region, a lot of game kind of stuff. A lot of the hams and the saucisols and things like that were shared. Um the uh Jambon d'Arden is that's French, right? No, that's Belgian. That's Belgian?
Yeah, yeah. It's delicious. Yeah, it is really. It's it it's like a smoked country ham in a sense, but I don't know, I haven't had it in decades. No, that's not true.
I had it a couple years ago. It's delicious. It's a really, really good product. And I'm trying to get Murray's to bring it here. But because the French push their their Bayonne, which is the other side of the country, yeah.
Their country. But like, have you had the the Ardenne raw? Like like like crude style, like like Pujuto style. Yeah, and it's delicious. Oh, so really good.
Now you now you got me some FOMO. I know. Well, yeah. Who's the best produ like like who's the like is there commodity bull crap and then great stuff like there is here with country? I think so, yeah.
Uh there's one big butcher or you know, big butcher in Belgium. He's got like three locations, I think. Direndonk. Um, and I think he makes a really good product, but then also just as you go through that southern part of Belgium, they're you know, just like random butcher shops that make their own product and it's pretty consistently delicious. Yeah, yeah.
And you're also like weird cross-cultural because like your your family is Flemish, but you speak French, right? Yeah. Well, I only speak French the rest of my yeah. You know, my dad spoke Flemish and his whole side of the family smoked Flemish. Yeah, so self-hate.
You're self-hating. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it. So, but that would mean that you're more what?
Your like family is more western. Yes. Yeah, my dad is from Ghent, so I guess that's more Western part of Belgium. Yeah, yeah. But like, you know, so the next time I go, which I gotta go back.
That's like as soon as you go to Belgium and start eating stuff, you're like, I gotta go back to this place. Right. I'm gonna go. I I need to go east and check out Liege. Yeah.
I need that freaking syrup. Yes. That le that syrup of Liege. Oh my god. You get it you're getting that for the restaurant.
I haven't thought of it, but actually, yeah, maybe. It's so good. It's so good. It's the the boulet boulet liégeo, the meatballs with the that fruit sauce on top of French fries, is so good. Alright, now talking about waffles.
Are you a Liege or are you Brussels or some th or you you are you one of those little stroophy weasels? Well, all three are delicious, but definitely more liege. Really? Yeah. More of a liege man, huh?
That's just what I remember having as a kid. And I don't know, it's just always delicious, and I love the like little pearls of sugar in there. I mean, listen, a Brussels waffle definitely has its place. Oh yes, it does. Um in my mouth.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I'm sorry, Dave.
I can't allow that. But uh is there a Western waffle? What do you mean? Well, Brussels is kind of in the middle. Yeah.
So is there like a Western, like a more coastal waffle? No, not really. No. Yeah. That's really the two.
Well, what is the foundation for this magic syrup you guys are talking about? It's basically like a fruit butter thing. But it's but it's it's lighter. And not lighter. It's uh it's it's it's not fully jellied, right?
It's depectinized or something, isn't it? Like something, yeah. It's very yeah. Spreadable and it's yeah, and it's like it's I think it's it's theoretically, I thought made from all like the uh whatever you would call like the fruit of the forest, right? I think so, yeah, but I think fui de bois or whatever, like yeah, like a big part of it now is dates.
I think it's cheating, yeah. Cheater. Yeah, but it is high in sugar. It is, yeah, yeah. Dates are delicious.
Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. But I don't know, it's fun to be thinking about this menu, you know, especially because I never actually lived in Belgium, did spend a lot of time there, but it's fun to you know, connect with this sense of family history and kind of figure things out and find ways to put my spins on it that make it a little more interesting for the people eating here. So like one dish that I'm really looking forward to to trying that sounds really good in my mind. Just need to get my combi oven fixed.
Um there's this dish called uh lapin a crick, so rabbit stewed in the cherry lambique beer. Uh yeah. Um served over French fries and all those good things, of course. But I think it would be really interesting to do that similar kind of sauce, but with duck, um, some nice duck stock, layer it with the cherry beer, maybe some cherry preserves to thicken it up. So not rabbit, not rabbits.
Yeah, because you know what Americans don't really eat? Exactly. Rabbit. Yeah. Yeah, like a rabbit is delicious, but if you put rabbit on the menu, people are like, what?
Exactly. And then you you even if you were like lepin, they'd be like, What's that? You're like rabbit. They're like, nah. No, exactly.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, not to mention you would do a good job. But like a lot of people who even like theoretically would eat rabbit would be like, mm, it's gonna be dry and bony. And you're like, you know what I mean?
Yeah. And I don't think it's physically possible in a restaurant from a cost standpoint, unless you had infinity time and money to serve some sort of boneless rabbit prep. Yeah. Like it'd be oh, like you can't so time consuming. Yeah, it's not possible.
Infinity money. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be good. It'd be good, yeah.
And then make a stock from the bones. Be delicious. Imagine if you could do that. Your yield would be zero. Yeah.
What if you if you like, if you somehow could like bone it out, right? And then like glue it back into a like, you know, like, and then like, that'd be good. It would be good. Ridiculous. Very time consuming.
Ridiculous. Do you know what I used to do when I was so so young and stupid? And I tried to do it once at the French culinary, but it's just such a pain in the butt. I used to do the, you know how you inside out bone quail? Yeah.
Yeah. So you would inside out bone the quail. And then I would I would I would uh you know uh low temp them and then put the put the uh uh like a 62 egg inside and then bread and fry them. And then you could they're almost like a quail scotch egg. That sounds good.
It was really really good. But it was like, what a pain in the ass. Yeah. I mean, but but what a pain in the butt. Like just do that at home.
Yeah. Do that at home. Do that for you and your four best friends. Don't do that for people who are coming in and paying for it. Because that's the worst.
There's certain things you can't do for money. Yeah. You know what I mean? Agreed. Things you do for love.
Uh all right, what else? What else? Uh what else you got? Uh went to a superiority burger last night. Oh, yeah.
Which was really good. Was is Brooks uh how was was Brooks there? Yeah, he was there, yeah. Was he wearing his French fry hat? Yeah, of course.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Brooks Brooks Hedley, famous for his French fry hat, right, Stas. Yeah, remember uh like Brooks Hadley loved wearing his like fry guy hat, but did not like you mentioning the fried guy hat. So I mean, Stas, what about that?
Like, what how is it that you can wear a hat that is so easy to comment on, but also not enjoy when people comment on it? Like, how does that work? I have no idea. I mean, but you know what I'm saying, right? Like if he if you I don't remember getting mad about the French Fry hat.
We should get him on the show. We could get Brooks. I mean, like, I don't know, not after I said that. It's over. Yeah, true enough.
Yeah. I would love to get Brooks. So I haven't I haven't spoken to uh Brooks in years. We're great, I have to say. Yeah, really is.
Yeah, I went recently as well. And his worth all the hype. The motto at Superiority Burger is like be humble, right? Or stay humble or something like that, or is that just in my head that that's one of the mottos he had, or some poster he had on the wall back then? I think it was some poster he had back on the wall in the day, but yeah, we should get him on.
Yeah, yeah. Um, maybe may Stas, is he mad at us because we used to troll him all the time? Like privately troll him. I think he's mad at you. Why is he mad at me?
You're the one that you're the one that trolled him. Why would he be mad at me? I'll tell him that. I'll say, be mad at me. But like, oh, so he blames all those things that we did, he blames me and not you.
I know we're he and I are good. I don't know if I thought I assume we're good. Who's texting you during the pandemic? Yeah, yeah. I think we're good.
Yeah. Yeah, we're good. We should have him on. Yeah. Yeah, good man.
Good. Good cook. Good uh good. I haven't been in a long time. It's really good.
Yeah. It's really good. What kind of buns is he using now? I didn't ask. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, one of the sandwiches is the brace collar greens is on their fracaccio, which their fracaccia's really, really excellent. Frickach is so good. So good. What do they put in the braised collar greens to stay in place for the uh the meat that you would normally put into your brace collar green? I'm not sure.
I wish I could have asked more questions. They were pretty busy. Yeah. Which was great. You know what we should do?
If we have them on, then you could ask these questions. Exactly. That'd be great. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right, Quinn, what do you got? Yeah.
Tell your rarin to go. What do you got? Okay, we didn't do too too much. Uh I I mentioned last week, my dad's birthday, we did the whole hog. So we had a lot of leftover whole hog.
Yeah. And uh my brother got a uh ravioli stamp for my dad. So my dad made sort of a farce of the leftover cooked whole hog with uh scallion and garlic. We shmeared that between two layers of put fresh pasta dough, stamped it out into the sort of low profile, but pretty, you know, big revioli. I eat fried off you use the word farce and schmear in one situation.
Before you go on, I just want to be clear here. You did not put the filling into discrete units. You basically made a sandwich and then just smashed through the filling to join the pasta layers. All right. Yeah.
Then, yeah, okay, sorry. I was just trying to make sure I was clear on what you're doing. Oh yeah, yeah. And then fried off a little more of the farce. Sort of mix it with like a streamed roasted cherry tomato for like a quick little Hugo Ragu type situation.
And then just, you know, boil off the ravioli and serve it with the sauce it was really, really, really good. I wish there was a way you could scare the skins off of a cherry tomato. Just like walk up to a cherry tomato and be like, boo, and then have the skins like fly off. You know what I mean? Because cherry like a lot of cherry tomatoes and grape tomatoes, they're delicious, but like um the skins are bad.
You know what I mean? Like the sky stuff to blanch them and peel them at a place I worked for sucks. Sucks. You know? Sucks.
Yeah. Like that's why I think Kamparis are the sweet spot if you have to peel them because they're big enough that you're getting a decent yield out of them. But yeah, but if you need them to be like whole like cherries for like the look on a plate and you have to peel them all, God help me. That's not anything I would ever want to have to do. That's why I never do it.
Yeah. Does anyone sell them? No. No. No.
There's not there's not a pearl we need equivalent. That would be impossible. Nothing's impossible where there's money. Where there's money there's hope. Um all right so now uh you use the non standard uh technique here how much bleed well did you not get that much bleed out on the uh ravioli because they were so thin or did they did you have any delamination issues?
Yeah no we didn't have any delamination issues. How do we actually get an even layer you know between the filling okay let's just like spread a stripe across the whole, you know, big uh sheet. And well yeah, what was the what would the what was the media? See, here's the issue, right? So like if you took a uh i i like it when you say farce and when I'm hearing farce, I'm thinking almost like like mouslin, in which case it would work because you could literally just canel moussoline into water and they won't spray everywhere.
So it might be like self-sealing, whereas like I don't think this would work on like uh cheese filling or a non-bound filling, right? You see what I'm saying? Yeah, maybe. Yeah. So in other words, like I don't know that this would be it was all cooked, but it was pretty smooth.
So I don't know. No, you don't have to pre-cook. Oh, you're saying it was pre-cooked? Oh, but it was smooth. Yeah, like the mixture.
Yeah. No, the mixture was pretty smooth. Yeah. Did you bind it with eggs or any crap? Uh I don't think so.
My dad made it ahead, so I think it was just like the chummed up whole hog and then a little extra like flavorings. You know, chummed up is my favorite, one of my favorite things to say. But I don't say it on air enough, but like in real life, chummed up is like we don't like chum that up. You know what I mean? Like I use a lot, because chum, I don't know, it's a good word.
You know what I mean? I feel like it's one of those words needs to get used more. All right. And so uh what about what about you, uh Stas? Any food stuff going on in Los Angeles or no?
Anything? Anything? No, Jack and I were thinking and we didn't do anything He didn't do anything. Well, I saw I saw that you guys were at Flappy Doodles again, so I'm assuming you had the flappy nachos. I'm assuming you were seeing Pauly Shore again.
Is that accurate? Uh no. So what were you doing at Flappy's? Oh, you got Jeff Garland, who was great. Uh he yeah, he's uh he's hilarious.
I've never seen him other than on uh uh whatever that show with uh Larry David. But he was good. Yeah, he was fantastic. Did he get more than more than 15 people at the show? He did.
Yeah. Yeah. And how are the flappy notches? No, I did not touch the flappy nachos, no way. That's just such a gross name.
No. Flappy notches. Exactly. So, John, what do you think of this? Uh as an alternative service.
So like there's shows going on, right? And they have a light, and if you turn the light, wait, what is it? If you turn the light off, they come, or if you turn the light on, they come. I think if you turn it off, which doesn't make any sense. Doesn't make any sense at all.
Did the light break, or do you need some food? Um both. You know what I mean? It's like doesn't make any sense. It's real dumb.
Yeah. Yeah. But they're they they have to and they have to explain it to you 35 times. When you show up at a restaurant or a bar, a club, whatever, and you have some system that you think's a good idea, but you have to explain it 35 times. Not exactly.
It's a bad idea. Yeah. You know what I mean? Bad idea. Yeah.
It's like when you go to an airport and they have to hire someone to scream at you about what line to be in, right? No, no. This is a design problem, my friends. This is a design problem. You know?
Yeah. That's right. Why are you screaming at me? I don't come to this airport all the time. Here's my favorite.
When they're like, no, you like you go to one place, no, you need to take the laptops out of the bags. And then you're flying home and they're like, keep the laptops in the bags. It's like, what the hell, man? It's like, it's like, just put a giant freaking signed. Some airports do this.
Put a giant sign. I know it's different everywhere, so we're not mad at you, but in this airport, the laptops stay in the bag. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean Whole Foods checkout kind of nails it.
Yeah. Big sign colors. Bing. Noise. There's colors.
Yeah. Like, you know, like, yeah. An arrow pointing at you, and yet people still mess it up. Then I get bent. I'm like, uh, that's my register, fool.
Yeah. You know what uh Whole Foods blows at though? Whole Foods, I think peak was like I mean, I hate everyone knows I hate Amazon even though I shop with them constantly. But when they took over, I mean, obviously whole Whole Foods, like you know what I mean. But uh when I go there, now that I'm you're supposed to like sign in with your Amazon account, but it's not easy.
Doesn't it know who I am? I have my phone, I'm paying with it. Stupid. Have you been to the colour? Every time it makes no sense.
Makes no sense. I'm a prime member. I use my same credit card, same phone number, and every time they're like, we couldn't find your account. Yeah. Like owls are possible.
Yeah, you should walk up in the line. It should say, Jack Insley, go to the register because they know who you are. You know what I mean? That's right. Yeah.
You walk up. You know, it should be like, yo, you're able to tell me when my packages are arriving of everything else that I've ordered. Right. It should be, yo, Jack. Uh I noticed you were talking about being out of milk when you were at home, but you forgot.
Are you gonna get it at a different supermarket? Because we're watching. Right. And yet instead you're like, you're like trying to get to your QR code on the phone. Ridiculous.
That's why I don't even go anymore. Hell with it. Hell with it. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. And so and you're gonna sit there and lie and tell me that you didn't have the flappy nachos because you sent me a picture of the menu item. I did, just because it's just a ridiculous name. No, I I haven't had anything good out in LA lately. Um though I've been trying to cook more at home.
I I made a uh a Japanese curry recently. Um and I had a moment of like uh short circuiting my brain where the it calls for uh deep caramel roux, and I couldn't decide in my brain what that meant, like what it looked, what what the color of deep caramel was. Wow. Like what were the choices in your head other than deep caramel? Deep caramel brown is what the recipe said.
Yeah. Which was like, hmm, but caramel is kind of its own color, it's not brown. So should it be deep brown or yeah, anyway. I mean, I think what that means is don't burn it. I think what that means is make it dark, but don't burn it.
I'm gonna translate that for you for the next time. Make make it dark, don't burn it. You an oven roux, you an oven roux. No. No, no, I'm you can do that.
Yeah, I'm I'm I'm big, I'm big oven roux for dark roos, obviously. Yeah. Speak more. Well, you just choose you choose a medium uh like a medium temperature so it's not gonna be too fast, like 300, three not three fifty. Put it in the pan, all the water evaporates pretty quickly, right?
And then you just sit there and you wait for it to cook to the color you want. Huh. Yeah. Really? Yeah.
How about that? Yeah. Well, that seems a lot easier than standing over stirring. Yeah. I'm also big and big on make ahead roux.
I've got like I I uh just a white roux. I've got like eight blocks of just a white roux in my freezer. Okay. Okay, so a couple of things on the roux. One, uh another good way to do it is to have the money to have a uh control free conduction burner.
That's another good way to do it. Oh, me, me, me, me. I didn't pay for it. You know what I mean? But me, me, me, me, me, they are quite handy.
Believe them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, look, the two biggest like reheat, the three biggest reheat things are the rice cooker, the induction burner, the control free conduction burner, and the and the uh APO, the uh uh precision oven, which is a reheat those these these three things are reheating monsters, you know what I mean? Or like keeping at a particular thing. Although I just really up uh with my rice cooker.
First of all, my rice cooker periodically, it's like 20 years old, it'll die. And then I'll unplug it, I'll say some words over it, you know what I mean, and I'll let it sit there for a week to kind of stop being angry at me, and then I'll plug it back in. And every time I've done this, it's come back to life. So it recently did it, but it had been out of commission for a little while. And I rested my arm on it.
So for those of you don't know how, like, like a Zoji Rushi rice cooker is sealed with a gasket all the way around. And all the steam from the rice comes out of three little tiny uh slots right in the top of the thing. And it still happens that it's right next to my induction burner. So I'm sitting there noom ni moon new on the induction burner. I put my I put my like my arm, rest it on the on the Zoji Rushi, not remembering that I had plugged it back in and was currently cooking rice, and it goes pho boy.
Look at that. Oh, yeah, it's a good little burn. Yeah, but it's like so that's if you want to know the exact shape of a Zoji Rushi like steam vent, just look at the look at the wrist. As soon as it happened, I was like, oh man. And then everyone's like, you gotta put ice on them.
Like, maybe I'll just cook dinner instead, right? Who the heck stops cooking their dinner so they can go put the ice on it? You know what I mean? That doesn't even really help. Yeah.
Now, you know what? So Wiley Dufresne, brother in law on the show, stretch pizza owner, blah, blah, blah. He swears by the old cook's technique of putting an egg white on it. But I hate the way it feels so much that I won't do it. Anyone here do the egg white trick?
I do the honey. Honey. Honey's great. I would also, I hate being sticky, but it will, I guess, stop the air. It just k it kills the pain.
Really? And it leaves a really uh I don't know what what the bacteria or whatever is inside honey. And it really does help the skin uh uh not form blisters. All right. But since you're talking about pizza, yeah.
And you are Wiley. What's the reheat technique on pizza? That's a good question. Uh so when I threw it all. Yeah, Sears all for the crust.
Like the best is like the best is like 300 at the in the APO, it's like 300 uh degrees, 50% uh 50% steam just to bring it back up to temperature and then flip it over and Sears all the bottom crust to make it like it crisp. In fact, before I even had the Searsol, I used to uh stand further back and blowtorch uh the bottom. So Lombardi's used to uh Lombardi's pizza is one of the famous pizza places in New York, and it goes kind of up and down in quality, right? But they used to, they're famous, they used to have a famous clam pie. And it used to be that they would add bacon to the clam pie.
And then they stopped doing they stopped basically doing anything that I wanted them to do. But like when that thing came, when you got it delivered, it was always it had trashed itself in the box. It had steamed the bottom of the crust in the box. So a flip and a toast on that was always like the super money. That was whenever we didn't have a kitchen.
That was what our that was what we were our go-to. Hey, I s I snuck more crushed red pepper into stretch pizza. Because I have to have crushed red pepper. And they don't have they don't serve crushed red pepper on the table there. And I just don't enjoy pizza without crushed red pepper.
I just don't enjoy it. You can't even ask for some. You probably would, but then you know, uh, it's I'm deemed by certain members of my family to be an egg-hole if I ask for things like that that aren't out. But if I want to enjoy it, so like I always wear something with pockets, and I pull the crushed red pepper out of the pocket and shh put it all on. Hey Dave, have you ever put like um like Thai chili pepper or Korean chili pepper on pizza?
Like other kinds of crushed peppers. No, but you know, now I should, because you know, I can buy giant bags of that stuff. You know what I mean? I should try other ones. What I like about the crushed red pepper is no matter how much you add, it's only gonna add a certain amount of heat.
You know what I mean? But the crushed red pepper that I buy, you know, which is not fancy at all. It's not like the calibre, it's like regular crushed red pepper. It's so dry that if you add like if you it when you cook with it, you're like, oh, this is the amount that I sprinkle on stuff, so it's fine. But you put it in a sauce and it does get hot.
If you put it in a sauce and cook it, it gets hot as it rehydrates, but it doesn't have time to rehydrate on top of your pizza. Whereas I'm wondering whether some of these other quote unquote higher grade peppers, or even if I bought like nice dried Calabrian chilies or something like that, whether they would like just level me if I did that. The amount that I put, I'd have to actually moderate, and everybody who knows me knows I detest moderation. You know what I mean? But I'll try it.
What pepper would you go for? I use Thai sometimes. Yeah? Like crushed Thai chili, yeah. Yeah, all right.
Do you know uh so going wet for dry and dry for wet, you know uh the thing that I like, but it's very hard to buy in new in in Manhattan for some reason, is the um, I've mentioned this before, the Hungarian pepper paste. The the the Hungarian, like the paprika, but like pepper paste, it's like 20% salt, 20 and and the rest fresh pepper and like nothing else, and they they like chum it up, and then it becomes a paste, and oh my god, and they have three spice levels. The ridiculous, which is you know, not ridiculous for pepper freaks, but it's quite hot. And then the medium one, which is the one that you can use as much as you can to tie and tolerate the salt, right? Because it's 20% salt.
That stuff's good. Can't buy it. Not in Manhattan. All right. Quinn, you were gonna say something about peppers?
Gonna make fun of my pepper love. If you're if you're sneaking in pepper flakes, uh-huh. Don't they still notice when you like pull it out and sprinkle it on your pizza and go like, hey, what are you doing? I may not seem it, but I'm pretty slick. You know what I mean?
I pull that stuff out. But uh get you a pair of cargo pants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, like, you know, I don't I have actually flat packed stuff like that.
Like I put it like in zippies so that you can't see the bulge. You know what I mean? And like one time, one time I literally filled my inside jacket pocket with crushed red pepper and then just went into my jacket pocket and was like, Yeah, dude. Crushed red. Give you some balloons and somewhere else.
Yeah. Well, because I am a clown, that's for sure. Uh uh wait, but wait, well, wait. Oh, so Nastasi and I, every, you know, the longtime listeners know that we used to like we wouldn't even sneak it in. We would show up and then put a container of arugula on on our account on our table and just start just start using it.
You know what I mean? Cause why, Stas? Because they wouldn't give us the freaking stuff. Yeah. But did they have the stuff?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Were we willing to pay for it? Yeah.
Yeah. We were even willing to pay. So the the other network was paying for our for our pizza. And we realized that maybe they were like, well, I'm not going to give those guys the arugula. Nastasi and like, we'll pay with our own money.
We'll pay you cash. Give me the freaking leaves. Give me the leaves. Like the French arugula or the baby arugula. Uh they were, I think they had the baby stuff, right, Stas?
The smaller stuff or the or the wild. Anyway, but I'll I just want like greens on my freaking pizza. I like greens on my pizza. And Nastasia also appreciates greens on her pizza. Makes you feel like.
Oh, speaking of like health, right? Health pizza. But I don't like it. I actually like the texture of it. I prefer pizza.
When I'm eating pizza at home, it's 100% of the time with greens on it. Not like 50% or like 20%. Really? 100% of the time. Wow.
I just go shump blap. I throw the greens on top of the thing, some extra oil, some salt. I'll even do it if it's dressed. As long as the dressing doesn't conflict with the pizza. I don't want a dressing to conflict with the pizza.
Like, don't give me like uh don't give me some sweet dressing. You know what I mean? Anyway. What what would be your strategy for sneaking green into stretch? I would never do that.
I would get my I would get my butt kicked so far. I would never, I would never do that. You show up with a rifle and a knife. Yeah. Yeah.
You can't bring outside food into a restaurant. It's just not okay. But like Except for this time we used to do it at Roberta's. We did it Roberta's. And all the pepper flakes.
The pepper flakes doesn't count. That doesn't count. It's a dry goods. Listen, but like it you can't do it, but Nastasi and I tried, and I feel like we were within our rights. What about freeze-dried arugula?
Would that be safe? What the hell, dude? That would be garbage. Yeah, that'd be terrible. Like fucking file that under safe but garbage.
You know what I mean? Freeze-dried arugal. By the way, Rin had no rules. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Stas and I bringing like like uh freegan arugula in was like the least the the the least not okay thing that was happening in terms of because like God bless them.
At that time especially. It was great place early days of Roberta's anarchy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean in in in in a good way.
I mean it was very successful. You know what I mean? Like, but uh yeah, but like, you know, it's legendary. It was like a you know, a place where rules didn't exist, except for Nastasia and Dave can't have a rule. The only rule that was followed at Roberta's was Nastasi and Dave, no arugula for them.
That's funny. They're too they're too busy making their their their their freeze-dried pizzas del you know for the because you know Whole Foods sells Roberta's pizza. Yeah, no, it's it's terrible. Oh, I mean, listen, I'm not gonna fighting words. I've never I've never tried it, and I'm never gonna say anything negative about anyone's food products.
I haven't tried it. I don't know. I don't know. But you know, you have to do a lot of changes to whatever your recipe is to get it into a Whole Foods. Because Whole Foods has a lot of like really um silly requirements.
Yeah. So like really just things that I think are like, you know, I've said it on the air like a million times, like the like the quote unquote no nitrates, like all of their like label buffoonery saying that things are uncured or like the ingredients that are okay that are not good versus ingredients that they say aren't okay that are fine. It's just the whole thing's the whole just like like fiction of uh of like what is a good label or not and how that translates, it's like it it bothers me. We should do a we should do a show on it. That's not true.
I'm not trying, I'm not trying to clean up uh protecting Whole Foods at all. I've just it's one of those things like, oh, see it in the freezer session. That sounds lovely. I wish it, I hope it would be good. It's just yeah.
Go to the restaurant, eat it. Uh yeah, to go to the restaurant and eat it. But also, you know, people gotta make money, not just in a restaurant, you know, people gotta make money. Uh all right. Uh oh, by the way, last week, last week, we before that, I did a uh what's it called?
A uh talk at the uh Kampari Academy, and you'll never guess who was there. Ready? Okay. Josh Sieberg from Norfolk, Virginia, right? Who uh I think his current thing that he's repping is the model citizen cocktail, like a pop up that he does uh, you know, repeatedly.
Uh came with his crew, right? Uh to Kampari. He's the guy with the spinzall tattoo. Nice. So I got a picture of me with the all I do is spin, spin, spin no matter what.
I gotta post that. I gotta post that on the social media. But I was pretty damn excited. Yeah. Speaking of social media, when did you stop tasting the geosman, Dave?
So what Quinn is referring to is uh so a while ago I bought so geosmin is everybody knows nostasia and I love the flavor of dirty, dirty beets, right, Staz? Yeah. Yeah. Love it. If you replace love with hate, that'll be that'll be accurate.
I actually like beets in limited quantity. And it's my wife loves beets, so I cook beets. I like beets fine. What do you the chiogas aren't as dirty tasting, right? The what?
The chioga. How do you pronounce it? Chioga? I don't know. The the the yellow with the little lines in it.
How do you pronounce those beets? The badger flames. I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, nothing.
There's regular golden beets. That's what I call them. But they don't they're not as dirty, right? No, yeah. Not as dirty.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so like the aroma of that dirt is uh is a chemical called geosmin, right? And it's uh it's little so what happens is in soil there's bacteria, it rains, the bacteria make the geosmin, and that's what smells like that, like just wet.
Or if you were like when you're doing like potting plants, if you ever potted a plant and you put the water on the dirt and then you bring the dirt up to your nose, that flavor, that aroma, that's geosmin. Now, uh Ariel was laughing. Uh Ariel Johnson was uh, you know, friend of the show, uh flavor chemist, uh, you know, or yeah, organic PhD, uh organic chemistry PhD. Um she she was telling me what the flavor, what the taste threshold of Josmin is. So I have I bought one percent, one percent Jasmin from a perfumery warehouse.
And she did the calculations, and according to her calculations, 10 drops from an eyedropper, which is a half of a milliliter, right? 10 drops uh from uh that bottle would be enough to give a faint but distinct dirt smell to an Olympic sized swimming pool. That's crazy. Right. So I I've I've I probably should have consulted her before before I made the drink.
So I had this idea because uh whatever, like there's so much talk about martinis and dirty martinis, and like, you know, people dirty, dirty martini, dirty martini this, dirty martini that, dirty martini flavored freaking spaghetti. Have you seen this dirty martini flavored spaghetti? Ew, no. What? Yeah, so people are like, oh, now so like like cocktails have become food and now food has become cocktails.
Yes, yes, it's a thing. Okay, but what are they doing to the pasta? What do you say about TikTok? Yeah, it's TikTok's fault. I said, is it TikTok's fault?
Yeah. Yeah, it's TikTok's fault. Yeah, everything. Yeah. Whereas, whereas you could just say, uh, I'm gonna put some olives in my pasta, and you'd be like, fine.
And maybe I'll the vodka, whatever. Or, you know, but like wait, wait, what are they doing with the pasta? I don't know. They're calling it a dirty martini pasta. It's just it's just it's it's it's it's just another one of these things where someone came up with a good title.
Someone's like, I like dirty martinis, right? And then they're like, I don't know. I like dirty martini pasta now. And it's just one of these things that happened. Anyways, so the other thing happens the other way.
So I I'm so sick of hearing about the dirty martini. And by the way, right, we need to find something to do with all of our olives, right? So, like you can't like maybe someone has a source where they can just buy brine. I I never had a source where I could buy brine. So we would like have like jars and jars of olives left over from the dirty martini land, and we don't have Tabanata on the menu.
So, what are we gonna do? You know what I mean? Anyhow. So you girlish the drink? You need more brine than exists.
Like the like the people who want dirty martini, they never even say dirty. They're like filthy. Make it filthy. And they just want basically, they want like a pickleback, but with olive brine. You know what I mean?
And you're like, yeah I can't just buy the brine. Maybe you can. Okay, maybe you can just buy the brine. Anyway. So I was so sick of hearing about the dirty martinis that I was like, yo, dirt martini.
I'm gonna make a dirt martini. And like um, so one of the very famous early, you know, uh modern dishes in the early 2000s was the Rocas, El Calar Ken Roco, when they hooked up their rotary evaporator. They threw dirt from outside, you know, from the forest, not from the parking lot, but from the forest into the thing, and they they rode ovappt and it had characteristic kind of Jasmine notes in it, and they put that on oysters. And so I was like, eh, the hell with that. So I I I finally made it.
I talked about this a little bit last week, but I I finally made it. I put in eight drops. Eight drops. So like basically Olympic swimming pool size, eight drops into a single drink. Boop, boop, boop.
And as I was doing it, I was just counting. I was like, boop, boop, boop. The smell was like like like everything smells like dirt now. Right. So my brother in law Travis, because we were working on the on the book, right?
So I did it like I was like, hey, you have a couple minutes of filming stuff. So like uh he he was sitting there and in his face when I was doing it, he was like, oh, because he could smell it hit. I'm stirring it, and then that sip, I tasted it for hours. Hours, hours. It wasn't as bad as the time that I got straight um uh methylanthrenolate on my lips.
So that's the that's fake Concord grape. So uh I would I was working on the flavor machine at the at the Museum of Food and Drink, which by the way, we're we're doing the flavor exhibition again. It's gonna come up in I'm I think I think it's been pushed to January, I think, beginning of January at the Empire Stores, which is the timeout market in uh in Brooklyn in Dumbo on the second floor. We're gonna bring back the smell synth. We're gonna bring back, I'm building little flavor pumps for it uh so that you can mean me.
It's got a peristaltic pump, and that's the noise it makes me, and you like can taste the the things. So like it's gonna be a lot of fun. But uh, I don't know where I was going with this. Oh, yeah. So like the smell synth was blocked up, right?
And what and the the the tube that was blocked was methylanthrenylate. So, like, you know, whatever. I old school siphon master, you know. Like, I've never stolen gasoline from someone's car via siphon that you know of. So like I sit there and I put my mouth on the tube, right?
And straight methyl anthrenylate in my mouth, and I could not taste Concord grape flavor. I mean, not like I couldn't taste it because uh I mean, like I literally could not sense it anymore. I'd blown out my ability to sense methylanthrenylate for like nine months. It's back now because I just made Concord grapes. Stas, you'd be jealous.
I did the I did the Concord Grape Crush. You know, I know you like that. That's one of the things you actually love it, yeah. Yeah. That's one of the things we have on the East Coast.
Is there anything else on the East Coast that you like other than Concord Grapes? No, I think that's the one thing I really yeah, that's the one thing I've missed in. Yeah. I was at the farmer's market, and it's late season. You know how you you know how you guys know how you can tell if the Concord grapes are good?
Bees. Ding ding ding. Bees. Covered in bees. Covered in bees.
So, you know, I was like, I made the guy put them in a bag and then just sit there and tap the bag till most of the bees left. Another trick you can do is when you get home, like tie the bag off and like put it in the fridge and get the bee really cold before you like try to get the bees out. But man, yeah, bees. But like if if the if there's not bees in covering the grapes, then they're not right. They're not yeah, you know, just not right.
They don't have the right aroma. You know what I mean? Like Concord Grape is like an aroma that is just So good. So good. So good.
So the technique I do with the Concorde Grape, uh, you know, that Nastasa and I used to do bec like we used to use the uh wet grinder, remember Stas, what a pain in the behind that was yeah, that was so bad. Yeah. So the what we would set so the wet grinder is, you know, like uh for Idley and whatnot, or for chocolate, is like two stones that rotate on another stone, but we would set the stone high enough that it wouldn't crush the seeds. The problem with Concord grapes is they're one of the like, first of all, you know you can't buy a grapes with seeds in the supermarket anymore. Did you know that?
I didn't, but yeah. You can't check out you can't do it. Like even they have these things like tomcords, which are stuff bull crap, right? They're not a concord. Oh god, I hate those so much.
Yeah. Yeah. It's like it's like, why pretend? You know what I mean? It's like people don't like seeds.
Yeah, I know, but like it like if a if a Concorde is a Ferrari, a Tom cord is like that little fiberglass toy that kids play with that has like a like a like a sewing machine engine in it that goes around. You know what I mean? It's like not the same product. You know? Uh and why would you cross it with like I like first of all, I enjoy eating Thompson's like white seedless green grapes.
They're fine, but they're not exactly special. You know what I mean? So why would you call it Tomcord? Why would you reference like a known bland grape as, you know, anyway, whatever. So the problem with concords is the seeds get real bitter.
So uh we would smash them, but we would raise the stone so that the seeds wouldn't get crushed. So I'm I keep on trying to work on good ways to get the flavor out of the concords. This time, so usually what I do with the Concords is we'll hand smash them, like to mimic like stomping them almost with feet. We'll let it sit on the skins a while, then we'll press it. Then I'll re-wet the skins with whatever liquor I'm using to get the rest of the kind of like skin notes and like all of that kind of aroma out of the concords, and then what's left over has almost no flavor left.
And we would press it. We you'd either squeeze it in a nut milk bag, like a like a 120 micron or bag, squeeze it real hard if you didn't have a press, or we would put it in a press. This time I just pressed them straight without doing a pre-crush, and the juice that came out was remarkably clear. Then I did the the remoyage with the with the liquor, and it was amazing. Stas, you would have loved it.
You would have loved it. I did it with the Blanche Armagnac this time. You would loved it. And then uh, but then I tried also juicing some in my auger juicer, which I love for everything else, and it crushed the seeds on the second go around. So I put I had to put it want to put it through twice to get the I wanted to, I juiced it once, then put the juice back on the skins to soak up that kind of skin contact action, then put it through again, and I got seed note.
I was like, nope. Crushing. It's the one thing left, that and when you do like uh bread infusions where crushing is still the best way. I haven't everything else I found ways around that I like as well or better than the press, but those two things, press is the way to go. Yeah.
Um someone asked last week, I believe it was uh Steven, uh, about uh my ginger clarification technique and whether I'd ever done my turmeric gallongal uh, you know, whatever with it. And yeah, so I finally decided to put turmeric in my juicer, and it stained the crap out of it. Luckily, my juicer is kind of charcoal colored. So like it's like a now it's like a yellow charcoal color instead of like, but oh my god, was it delicious? I did I did um one part ginger, 0.75 parts turmeric, and 0.5 parts galongal.
Here's a son of a gun. So it used to be you could, it was relatively easy in Manhattan to get fresh uh both turmeric and galongal. Like uh, you know, I think even Whole Foods had the turmeric, although a lot of the Whole Foods turmeric, a lot of the turmeric you find, if your turmeric looks yellow and not red, don't buy it. It doesn't have like it's not it's not as good. You know what I mean?
Uh so but no one now has fresh galangle anymore. Like they they they wasn't selling, so it was rotting. So do all specialty still has some down in on six uh sixth and first, right? But uh everyone now is pushing frozen's calustine's pushing frozen and even frozen turmeric. They weren't carrying the fresh turmeric.
They were like, here, buy frozen them. And do you know what frozen turmeric and galangol? They feel wrong. They uh they feel wrong. They tasted fine, because that's what I had to juice for this test.
So I juiced them all. But if you're gonna do something like that, I recommend get this. So I juiced the turmeric, I juice the galangle, and then I juice the ginger afterwards, put it in. And I juiced two apples through it, and they were turmeric. They had enough turmeric in them to be delicious.
But yes, uh, I didn't do the magnesium carbonate on it, uh, Steven. I need to come up with a new thing. The magnesium carbonate, it's too basic, it's a pain in the butt. I've been trying titanium dioxide, I've been trying k uh kaolin, I've been trying anything other than the magnesium carbonate, but uh more on more on that, I guess, next week. Uh Jonathan wants to know I have a food safety question, I'm struggling to find accurate advice on.
I'm starting the process of preparing a hot sauce to sell commercially in the UK, but I'm trying to ensure that the sauce is shelf stable. I'll be preparing the sauce at home and kitchen for local sale at farmers markets, and do not have much space or professional equipment. However, I'm not opposed to purchasing uh if necessary. Now, uh you correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume that traditional pH meter is not going to work accurately in the sauce because there's a lot of oil, given that it's roughly one-third oil-based. So the technique that you you use is you char the vegetables in a cast iron pan until they're black and soft.
You then blend all that stuff and slowly emulsify it into the vet uh in uh into the vegetable oil to create an emulsion. Then you add the salt and vinegar and blend briefly to combine. So what I would say is this um oil and garlic you're worried about, obviously, because of uh botulism. But what I would do is I would just take your water basis stuff. So the 120 grams of jalapenos, the 120 grams of white onion, and 20 grams of garlic is 250 grams of stuff that you need to worry about.
You then have 130 grams of sunflower oil, which aren't causing their own problem, other than they exclude air, right? You're then adding two tablespoons of white vinegar. You should give me that in milliliters, right? And the and the the uh what's it called, the acidity of it, and 1.5 teaspoons of salt. You should really say how much that weighs, like nine grams.
Let's assume it's nine grams, right? So that's about 3.6% salt. That's a lot of salt. That's good. That works in your favor, 3% on the liquid uh basis.
So what I would do is I would make your whole recipe without the oil and test a pH. You're gonna want in order to hot pack it, you know, to to pack it and not have to worry about botulism, you're gonna need to hit about a pH of 4.6. So test that that liquid, make sure that it's pH 4.6. Then you know that it's gonna be pH 4.6 when you when you do your emulsion. I would also add the vinegar and the salt before you do the emulsion, just so that I don't know why you wouldn't do it that way, but I would definitely do it that way.
If you wanted to actually be shelf stable, I would get your pH down to about 3.5, right? But I am not an expert in this. Uh, you're gonna take it to a local authority and have them test it for bacteriological safety, make your okay, but uh, it should be okay. I want recommendations for uh Ilya uh Livviak, who's coming into New York City uh for 3.5 days pretty soon. We gotta give them some good recommendations for what to do in our fine city, cooking issues, and
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