Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan Rockefeller Center in New York City, New State Studios, joined as usual with John behind me. How are you doing, John? Doing great, thanks. Yeah?
Yeah, got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. What's up? Hey, how's everyone doing? Full house. Good, good, good.
Over in California, we got some Jackie Molecules and some Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How are you guys doing? Good. Yeah? Yeah.
Upper left, we got Quinn. Quinn, what's up? Hey, I'm good. And then right today we have on her publication day, one of our very favorite friends of the show, Arielle Johnson is here. Now, how do you want me to announce your book?
You want it in Broadway form, or do you want it in um or do you want it in uh monster truck form? Uh I think Monster Truck. Monster Truck Form? Flavorama. Flavor, flavor, flavor, flavorama.
Get it today at any bookstore near you, but especially Kitchen Arts and Letters, where Patreon members can get a discount. Why don't you tell them how to do that, John? Go to patreon.com slash cooking issues and sign up for one of the three awesome levels or you know, three awesome membership levels that we've got. Uh you got perks at all different levels, and at all of them you will get a discount to our friends at Kitchen Arts and Letters for discounts on great books like Ariel's. Yeah, so congratulations.
Thank you so much. I'm uh glad to be sharing this moment with you. And now I have the hard copy, not just the uh, you know. Ratty little PDF and uh you know, she drew all the you drew all the pictures in here, right? I did.
Yeah. So uh, you know, it's better at the hard copies better. Get the hard copy. Listen, is that just because I'm old or is it just because hard copy is better? I mean, for me, if I'm looking for like a specific piece of information, I prefer like digital.
Yeah, search fine. But if I'm flipping through something, always prefer a hard copy. So I don't know, maybe I'm old too. Yeah. Well, yeah, I won't ask you, right?
But you know, 33-year-olds right now, peak peak millennial. My sister's a peak millennial. Is she 33? Yeah. Oh, I didn't realize she was like, Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think she was born in 1990. Yeah, that no, that is peak millennial. Yeah. Yeah.
So she's peaking. So is my sister, actually. Yeah, yeah. And so uh, yeah. And like a peak millennial, she, whenever she's pregnant, she eats raw kale and gets food poisoned.
Wow. Don't eat raw kale. Yeah, that sounds like uh bad plan. I don't think you should eat raw kale ever. Hmm.
I think you should cook it. I prefer it cooked, definitely. You know why? Because it tastes better. Too much cellulose.
Like I know, yeah. Just the people like, but if you slice it really, really thin. Yeah. Why though? Do you know what's better sliced that way?
Cabbage. Definitely. Yeah. Cabbage is delicious. Slice that way.
Cabbage, delicious. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kale tolerable.
Yeah. Well, and then like you cook cabbage, it gets like very soft, whereas like kale does hold up better. Yeah, you know why? Because that was bred for millennia. Yeah, to be tough as hell.
To be yeah, to be cooked. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Cabbage. You know, you can boil it, you could eat it, you could crowd it. You know. Ferment it. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Which we're gonna talk about. By the way, uh, you know, for those of you that were on the fence, like I I have to say, Flavorama. Uh James Beard Weasels, take note.
You gotta this book, you you gotta go get this book, is the thing about it, because I'm guessing. We're gonna go back and talk about our normal stuff, but I'm guessing. So the very last chapter of this is a whole kind of mini book on fermentation, and I think you're just kind of pissed that you didn't get wider publication on your very first fermentation book. And so you're just like slipping an extra just in at the end. Well, and it's it's nice, it's nice to, you know, present fermentation recipes that are exactly what I want and not for somebody else.
Somebody else, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, you know, which I'm also fine doing. But uh, yeah, these are my my uh the things that I like.
Yeah, all right. All right. So uh before we do that, let's talk about uh anything that uh anyone has done in the uh in the intervening. Actually, it's been two weeks. Last week we had to uh cancel and uh we'll we'll get uh we're rescheduling with solo, right?
We're getting your back. It's already booked. Okay, when when for so people know. Uh April 16th. Okay.
Um, yeah. Yeah, so look great. Yeah. But my husband is actually the editor on that part. Oh, come on, for real?
Yeah, for real. That's so funny. That book is large. It is, yeah. Yeah.
I've I have a bone to pick with her on pressure cooking, however. Okay. She's anti-pressure cooking. Interesting. Yeah.
She's and insults me, not insults me personally, obviously, but like insults, she's like, uh, she's like, I'm not against you if you're uh living that pressure cooker life. I forget whether she uses a Y with it or not. But uh pressure cookers are good. I think the mistake people make with pressure cookers, you know, is they try to put a standard recipe into a pressure cooker and then it sucks. Yeah.
And they're like, why does it suck? She's like, it's great for broth. I'm like, I will have this argument with her. Why am I having this argument with you? And I wait till April.
I was all ready to have this argument. Not an argument, discussion. Yeah. Discussion. Anyway.
Yeah, it's great book, though. Yeah. Uh you guys are gonna be duking it out. How many different categories are there? Is there one for flavor?
Oh, at uh I have no idea. I mean, you know, like At the beard a thon? Not to not to like project a sense of false humility, but like for me to be able to do anything, I have to like tell myself it will go nowhere and I'll still do it and do a great job and won't care if nothing happens, because otherwise my like insane perfectionism will like completely paralyze me. So I haven't even thought about that, actually. Yeah, that's wise.
That's wise. Just gotta yeah, gotta like learn how to trick yourself. The other thing is that like anything else, like you're like it's you know, you have to get pushed by the right people who like who like your editor has to push that crap out of it. I suppose so, yeah. Yeah, to like it's such a trash can.
Everything is a trash can. Like uh all awards ceremonies are are filth. Extremely political. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I've never been involved with this.
But you know, I mean it's like, you know, well, you mean you've been at restaurants who play that 50 best game. Yeah, sure. It's trash. Sure. I mean, not trash.
Hey, hey, no offense, 50 best people. I'm just saying it's like it's like uh it's not uh let's say completely uh whatever. You know what I mean? It's like no, there's you know, there's a sense of like wanting to it's not bought and paid for that's cool, right? Yeah, yeah, but it's going too far.
But I mean, you know, but any country or city can pay to host the world's 50 best awards, and then uh all the world's 50 best voters are in your city eating in your city's restaurants. Right. So yeah, yeah. Or, you know, and you can know who those people are and you can reach out to them. Right, right.
Or like, you know, with uh IECP or James Beard, it's like what's what you know, you have to get kind of submitted, so you have to get pushed by your editor or by yourself or have it on you know on yourself, and like you know, it's better to be well known, and it's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, uh obviously I'm not gonna say like, oh, I don't care about awards because everyone loves people praising them, but like uh I care about them, I don't trust them. Yeah, I don't I don't know.
I mean, like, I think mo most of the good decisions in my life have come from choosing like interesting over prestigious. So like just gonna kind of keep it. Those are all the bad choices in my life. I'm just kidding, I'm just messing with me. Uh all right, so uh, you know, well, so this week you came out with a with a book.
I did. That's nice. Uh anyone else uh do anything interesting this week. Did you have any cooking things this week? Were you able to cook it all this week?
Uh I no, I did very little cooking. Yeah, makes sense. I wouldn't if I were you either. My dad was in town this weekend, so we were like out a lot. Out and about.
Yeah. You go any place good? Uh well, we went to Superiority Burger. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Well, did I miss that? That's the event. Oh, yeah, it's happening tomorrow. Was I supposed to make drinks? You don't have to, but uh Empirical's bringing.
So, but you should come. All right, all right. Be at the party. I mean, you can make drinks if you want. But I don't need to work.
No, no, you don't need to work. All right. I was like, I was like, I think. No, no, no, sorry. I like I was biking over here.
I'm like, am I working? I didn't follow up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, fine. But uh, I guess I guess this is airing after it happens.
It's well, it's airing now if you're a Patreon. Okay, so if you're a Patreon and in New York and in town tomorrow, we're having a uh release party at Superiority Burger. Hey, another Patreon perk. You can only hear about this if you're on the Patreon. So eat it, non Patreon people.
And uh pay we have a caller? No, I'm not. But Patreon people can also call in, and I think someone is gonna call in because they said they were going to. Two 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507.
All right, Quinn. I know you got some stuff specifically that's also related to the book. What do you got? Yeah, well, I got a lot of stuff. I'll save some of it for another week back.
Uh well, I don't have a lot of time. Um I made a pressure cooker toasted cream. Nice and then centrifuged it into butter. Oh. And what centrifuge did you use, Quinn?
Oh, of course the spindle 2.0. We should be arriving in North America in about a week. Nice. Yeah, actually, it's like landing the 16th and then clearing a couple days after that, right? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. And I think the ones in Asia are already in the mail, I think. So the interesting thing, sorry to get back to the butter. Um back to the butter. Forget the business back to the butter.
All right, go for it. The brown butter flavor in the butter itself is you know, on the milder side, because obviously the flavor is mostly from the proteins, but then you get a really intense, like toasted buttermilk. Which is interesting. Anytime someone says buttermilk on its own like that, uh, I have the wham songs in my head with the word buttermilk instead of jitterbug. The buttermilk.
The buttermilk like that. And then the whole song's playing in my head, and we'll be for the rest of it. And now it is for all of us too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although, I mean, but back to back to the the the different flavors in the buttermilk and butter.
I I would posit that uh you know, you're creating all of these new aroma molecules in the Myard reaction, and some of them are more nonpolar, more like greasy than others. So you're getting like we prefer greasy. Greasy, greasy, uh oleophilic. Yeah. Um, so yeah, so uh d any of the ones that are like a bit more cool with water are gonna like dissolve in higher concentrations in the buttermilk, and then the ones that only like fat will be like in the butter, so you'll get this like different flavor expression in both.
It's the same when you're distilling rose essential oil, uh, you'll like distill it with steam and it'll collect like water and the essential oil will float on top. Then the water is like that's rose water. So uh every bit of the rose smell that's like more water soluble will like dissolve into that. So then you should throw that away because it's trash. Well, it smells it's a different flavor than rose essential oil.
Yeah. So uh yeah, partitioning is what we would call that. What's the worst? Uh what's the worst flour water? I mean, I only know rose and orange, really.
Which one do you? I mean, I don't I prefer orange, but yeah, yeah. All right. Uh uh, Quinn, did you add any uh base to that? Any baking soda up in that?
Yeah, yeah, actually, the actual cream toasting procedure is based off of ideas and food uh blog. Aki and Alex Talbot, yeah, I do uh 0.5% uh baking soda and the in the cream. Um previously I've just toasted the cream and then cultured it, which is also really delicious. But this one I dwent straight from pressure cooker, just chill overnight, and then I did culture the buttermilk afterward, and I made biscuits, which were also really good. Cultured it after I have a you know, like I don't know, calling it toasted just bothers me.
You know what I'm saying? Just but let me ask you. Brown? Call it browned, yeah. Yeah, brown, yeah.
Uh did you neutralize it afterwards or no? No, because I had a little bit of like cultured separately cultured buttermilk um already. So I just mixed them before you're before you centrifuged it. No after. Okay.
So Dr. Johnson. Uh one of the things I'm curious about is the effect. And Quinn, did was your yield lower than normal? Because uh the cooking the cooking the cream is messing with um I guess it's not a protein phenomenon, though, it's a fat phenomenon in butter.
So it shouldn't really matter what you do to the it's not like whip, it's not like whipped cream where you need both to work, right? Yeah. Well, when you I so I know when you melt butter, it's hard, it's like and then chill it, it doesn't retain the like texture of butter because it's like a water in the water. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Um, but I I I think I mean, presumably, if if it worked for Quinn, then that's the uh empirical empiricism, Trump's theory. Yeah, I mean, because I know that like the you know, there's always like for a long time when I was younger, people were like, you can't you can't heat cream up and then whip it again. You can. Done it so many times. Uh-huh.
You know what I mean? But you just have to let it sit for a long time in the fridge, and then you can you can whip it. I don't I have never done a yield test. I mean, I think the important part is that the fats are cold because they need to be like crystallized to hold the whipped cream structure. Actually, that's been a lot of my problem with cultured butter is not adequately chilling it after the culture step before the churning to and then I have issues when I'm doing the stuff I'm doing.
The other thing I've said on the air a bunch of times is that I really like this centrifuge in scare quotes butter. I don't believe it's actually butter. I think it's this like triple cream. Oh, okay. So you're like taking out a lot of the water, but not enough for it to count as well.
Yeah, I don't I don't believe it's inverting. I I believe that it is still an oil and water emulsion. I've never I've never looked at it under a microscope. Or whether in other words, like it's a solid, right? But I wonder whether it's more like a gel, so that there's a continuous water phase.
Like an oleo gel. Yeah, yeah. Like a continuous water phase thing. Sitch, right? Because I it just doesn't look like an inverted.
And is it like spreadable? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Do you ever do you ever go to England and get like they have like they have many more kinds of cream there than we have.
So I mean, like, you know, they have clotted cream, and you can buy like that one little kind of clotted cream here in the jar. They have like a lot of kinds of clotted cream. And but also like pouring cream, which is like cream that is the texture of like a thick, thick sauce. Yeah. So yeah, so maybe you're approaching that.
The kind of no man's land between like 40% fat and like 80%. So uh we have a caller, I'm gonna put them on the air, but then I'm gonna finish this. Uh so uh I had an issue with that. First of all, uh you know, as an a chauvinist, like I am loath to say that the British are better than us at things, but their cream game is so crazy that when I was in London last, I asked for cream to make a cream syrup. And American heavy cream, you can make a 50 uh like a 50-50 syrup with it, and it comes out, it's like 66 bricks water based based on the fat.
There it just turns to sludge because the fat content is so much higher, I had to milk it up. I was like, oh, you you and your good cream, you jerks. Caller, you're on the air. Oh, this perfect time. I was gonna call and talk about butter.
This is Jonathan from Minneapolis, Math Man, otherwise you call Mass Math. Ah, all right. On the from the from the Patreon group. And I wanted to say thanks uh for answering my question the other week about kitchen at the laboratory recommendations. And Ariel, I had no idea that you wrote that section on the stretchy ice cream.
That was really cool to read. Thank you. Yeah, that was like my first uh research uh paper thing. So glad you liked it. Yeah.
Yeah. And I to go straight into the butter too. So I've been trying to make cultured butter, and I've been ending up with more cheesy flavors than buttery flavors lately. Like I I want more of the diacetyl, nicer flavor, and end up with stuff that tastes like cheese at the end of it. And I know Dave talked about using at one point creme fraîche instead of buttermilk to culture it, because that's I've been using buttermilk.
And I wanted to know is there is there anything that you would recommend? Should I culture at different temperatures? Got any advice? My my I would I would probably suggest culturing it for like less time and or a cooler temperature. If you're getting cheesy notes, that's probably from like lapolysis.
So like butyric acid is getting freed from the milk fats. Um and that's what smells cheesy. So like a certain amount of that is like i inherent in any kind of cultured dairy, but I think if you run it colder, you should get less of that. We also used to do it only 18 hours. We would do it like 18 hours on the on the counter.
In your written question, um you mentioned you add salt. I think you might want to skip that. Oh, okay. So add salt. I've been adding salt at the beginning because it's easy to dissolve it in the water phase rather than trying to knead salt into my butter afterwards.
Yeah, but you but you add it after the culture. Yeah, add it after fermentation, but after the culture churning. Yeah, that definitely is smarter. Although I don't know, but if you add it before you turn it, ruins the buttermilk. Does it get concentrated in the buttermilk and not in the butter?
Well, in other words, to have a concentration to have the concentration that you want in the butter. You have to oversalt the buttons. You have to oversalt the butter and milk. Yeah. Right.
Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Partitioning, but other directions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right, right. Different fractioning than I want. Okay. Well, you, you know, so I don't know how much you need it afterwards. I mean, I'll say this one thing though.
When you make your own butter, when you're making butter commercially professionally, right? You have to need the heck out of it because the buttermilk is one of the prime vectors for spoilage in the butter. Right? Yeah. Uh and people want a high fat content in their butter when they're paying for it.
So typical American butter is like like 82% fat, I think, roughly around, right? And say Plugre with a f with a French accent. Plug gras. Yeah. That's how your boy Eric Repair, he used to recommend he's like, I'm in no way affiliated with them, but like they are like a higher butter fat butter that you can get here.
Right. When you're making your own butter to put on bread and not to cook with, don't need it that much. Yeah. Keep the buttermilk in, because what is buttermilk? What is buttermilk?
Delicious. Delicious. Sour and uh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
At uh uh we at Noma, we used to have with the bread service, we'd get this butter from this guy named the butter Viking. Oh my god. In uh Patrick Johansson. Um yeah, and he'd like hardly rinse it at all. So it had like tons and tons of buttermilk left in it.
So it didn't last very long, but it was like incredibly delicious. Yeah, like the stuff that we used to make, it wasn't even nearly as good as the next day. Yeah. But like, but that day, first of all, I don't want like the buttervike. Did I ever tell you the story?
When I one of the first food service jobs I ever had was a place called the White Horse Tavern. And when I was a kid, I think I heard about this too. Yeah, when I was a kid, I used to go there, and I could never eat there until I worked there because the chef pretended when I was a small, like in a small child, but like you know, junior high, that he made the hamburger patties in his armpit. And so I had the image of him actually down in the basement, like putting a ball of meat in his armpit and going to make the patty. And I didn't want to eat a burger there anymore from that moment forward, because my imagination is too much.
So when you say butter Viking, I'm imagining a very sweaty, hairy man putting a butter thing into his armpit and going to like form the the butter things and then making it. So now I don't want butter Viking stuff. He doesn't do it that way. Although we did do an experiment once at the restaurant with him where like uh we would like dip our the back of our hand into like raw cream and then see what cultured. So he had like all the girls do it, all the boys do it.
The girl the girls' butter was really much tastier. Uh wait, so an N of what? Oh, just was like a one-off. Ah, okay. All right.
A non-repeatable, not a feeling. All right. Well, so uh so math man, should we do your we'll do your cinnamon roll off the air? Or do you want do you have any real? All right.
All right. No, I figured well too. So I'm working on a trying to work towards a great cinnamon roll recipe. And I use a blend of Saigon cinnamon and Vietnamese cinnamons. And I was wondering, in order to get like a really good flavor coming out, uh, is there a good should I bloom the cinnamon in the butter?
Instead of just sprinkling it on top with the cinnamon sugar mixture and rolling it up. Yeah, so I would say like the longer you can keep the cinnamon in contact with the butter, the more delicious it will be. So yeah, if you like beat the cinnamon into the butter and then let it like sit in the room. Yeah, pretty much all of that. Like all aroma compounds, yeah, or pretty much.
Oh, okay. So maybe even just like do it the day before. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay.
And then a separate question too, not really flavor-related, but the Teng Dong technique to get higher hydration in the dough, is that like would that be a benefit for cinnamon rolls as well? Do you want higher hydration? If so, then I mean, typically with cinnamon rolls, I put an unconscionable amount of butter into them. And so I don't know. I don't feel like the soft texture comes more from the fat than from the hydration.
I mean, like the the the that technique is a great technique. You know, it's it's just increasing the water holding capacity of the dough, right? So that it it hold right, you're increasing the viscosity of the starch by cooking it such that it can hold larger bubbles at a higher hydration during the rising portion of its life. Right. Right.
Uh do you know what my favorite one that I used to make? I haven't made, but I was thinking about this when I read this question. I'm gonna go home, I'm gonna make it today. Broa, you ever do broa? I don't think I know what that is.
Bria is a Portuguese bread that's made with hey, you like that? Joe, you like broa? You like the broa? Yeah, it's like you take cornmeal and you put hit boiling water in it so that it becomes like a dough, and you mix in rye flour, and you can use either commercial yeast or not, and some some, you know, you can add some AP as well, but then you're using the cooked uh corn the corn flour cooked, and then that provides the structure for the dough to hold together even though it doesn't contain that much wheat. Wheat.
Nice. It's great, and it's got this crazy cracked, it's dense, but it's got this crazy cracked crust. But I remember we used to have a Portuguese bakery, and I used to get broa all the time. This was like 20 something, you know, 25 years ago. And uh yeah, it was one of the first breads that I tackled.
I like that. But because it's all about you know, holding more. But I don't I've never had a cinnamon roll where I was like, the problem with this is it's not actually it's not true. I mean, I've had a dry cinnamon roll. Dry cinnamon rolls suck.
Like the main problem with a cinnamon roll. But do you think it's because they don't add enough butter? Well, that's it. Good question. I mean, it's the same as like like, you know, the it's like you can go anywhere from hamburger roll up to brioche in terms of how much stuff you put into it, right?
Aside from the goop. Isn't it fundamentally similar? Or is it more similar? It's like a sweet, sweeter version, right? So is it like I mean like if I get a cinnamon roll that's the same texture as a brioche, that's still too dry for the case.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's a lot there's more sugar also that makes it more hygroscopic, and it's got goop all in it, right? So I think the goop, the butter goop is pretty key. Oh, sorry, keep it. Yeah, moistness.
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Look, try it, let us know. Yeah, I'm kind of interested to see what'll happen.
Try. Let us know. I'll give it a try. All right. And I look forward to your book from Kitchen Arts and Letters, Ariel.
Oh, thank you. Well, I'm glad you purchased it from uh from uh our favorite bookstore. Yeah, exactly. Yes, and there are other great independent. Oh, yeah, but Kitchen Arts and Letters is Kitchen Arts and Letters.
Yeah. Love those folks. Right. There are others, but they're the best. Yeah, yeah.
Uh or it's like run DMC used to say, we're the best, or at least we're the ones you like. Um now, uh by the way, uh anyone from LA have any interesting food stuff uh going on? What do you guys got? What do you got, uh Jack or Stas? So my girlfriend's been going through some health stuff, and we're testing out a non-gluten diet to see if it makes her feel better.
Let's hope it doesn't. I mean, I hope she feels better, but I hope it's not the gluten. Yeah, same, trust me. Um so I'm doing it in solidarity, and so that's my food thing. It has not been fun.
But I have found that the best so far, the best gluten free pasta has been from Taste Republic. Taste Republic? Not like Taste Empire, Taste Republic. No, the Republic, yeah. Republic of Taste.
Taste oligarchy. Let me ask you a question. Exclusion diets are like here's my issue with exclusion diets is that like A, they suck. B, right? Uh like your mind can play tricks on you because it's not double blind.
You know what's going on, right? How about just getting the blood test? Has she had the blood test? Yeah, but sometimes blood tests. Sometimes.
Yeah. I mean, sorry, I can speak, I can speak for this directly. That's uh I have a weird reaction to shellfish that does not show up on a blood test or a skin test. But if you feed me an oyster, I will vomit more than you've ever seen anyone vomit in your life. I wonder what the cause of that.
So but can they normally test for that? A shellfish allergy? Yeah. Yeah, because I like like with cherries, I wasn't able to I didn't have a blood test because it's a cross, it's a cross reaction to proteins. Allergy.
So like that was not testable via blood, but I don't know what the status is on gluten. They don't do like a skin prick. They did. Okay. But they not to cherries.
Basically, what they do is they skin, they do a skin prick to all of their standard battery. Like 90. Yeah, my whole arm, my whole arm. And it turns out when you're soup, you know, you and I both like super pale skin, like it turns out everything irritates our skin. You sure that's not cyanide?
Yeah. Well, no, I wish it was cyanide. But like you go outside, the sun hits me, and I'm like, you know what I mean? Like, so it's like, you know, my skin is not designed for life. And so, you know, but but has she can you do a blood test for gl- I'm sure you can do a blood test for gluten, no?
Or is it not? I I'm sure you can. Um so far the doctor just recommended doing this. So it's just like you can't double blind it. So it makes it hard to you know what I mean.
But I guess like you could double blind it if you weren't cooking for yourself. That's like you you, the partner, could b double blind it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you'd what you'd have to do is do a zero gluten diet and then just do the the gel caps.
Right. Yeah, yeah. You know, you one you know, a one week your gel caps with and one week your gel caps, you know, with uh, you know, just dope the del gel caps with flour. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Like cook flour or something. Satan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the so the point is is that like I think like that's why those things are so are so difficult in in my experience, is that because you it's hard to know whether you feel better because you're taking an active step to do something, or whether you or unless you don't feel better at all, in which case at least then you know. I mean, that's the only time it's really dispositive.
I want her to feel good, but I I kind of don't want her to feel better because of this. Yeah. Well, you want her to feel better, but not for this reason. That's right. Yeah, exactly.
So we're uh 12 days in so far. I've survived. Um well, does she feel better? What how long do you have to eliminate this? Like six weeks.
Jesus. Wow. Because like, you know, people I know who are like celiac, it's like they know the minute they not the minute, but they know the day that they have gluten that something bad has happened. You know what I'm saying? That's because like the inside of their intestines are getting sloughed off.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think there's like wheat sensitivities and allergies that aren't like celiac.
That are six weeks before you know. I don't know. I don't know about that, but I don't know. I mean how long I last. I mean, I'm just a solidarity one, so I I may have to bail it somewhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you like do you do you like go over to Stasi's house and pound a bunch of pasta? You know Anastasia's all stocked up with pasta all the time. You know? Yeah, nothing but fresh, nothing but fresh pasta, right, Stas.
Oh no, you know she knows she doesn't play that fresh pasta game. She's uh she's uh she's got she's she's I think somewhere she has like a tractor trailer freezer full of IQF pasta still somewhere. You think that stuff would still be good if anyone had your old IQF stuff, Stas? No. We don't have any more left, unfortunately.
That was so good. It was so good. Nastasia's IQF pasta was money in the bank. Not literally, unfortunately, but uh in terms of its flavor. It was very good.
Texture, I mean it was excellent. Yeah, yeah. Someday. Someday. Uh what about you, Stas?
You do any uh you do any cooking? Are you gonna you gonna uh we did a bunch well I didn't cook, but I had a cocktail waitress all weekend for the for Oscar parties. Legitimately, like for money? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Nastasia for she the last time I saw her do this, she pinch hit at existing conditions for us. Did a great job. I know. Yeah. I know.
Yeah. I have no doubt. Yeah. Yeah. Uh wait, Ariel, is this true that the picture, your author picture, was taken by uh our favorite oleologist?
It was indeed. That is a uh Nicholas Coleman original. Now, to get this look on your face, it was he playing Bansouri or was he not playing Bansuri as he was taking the picture? I mean, that's what my face looks like when I'm smiling and not laughing at something. He cropped me.
What so okay? The original photo is a photo of me and Nastasia in uh in in actually the Harvard Square graveyard. Oh, I love that place. Yeah, yeah, and it's uh great for taking photos, but uh who's your who's your favorite person buried there? Oh, advancer in the background.
I don't even know. Gamage with a G. Damage, maximum gamge. Love that place. Nice.
Do you know that there's a whole crap ton of turkeys in there? I can believe that. There's turkeys all over uh the Boston area. Yeah, yeah. I mean the actual bird.
Yeah, no, they're scary. Yeah. They're big. So I'm trying to imagine which side is Nastasi on. Is she the side you're leaning away from or leaning?
No, she's on my well, I guess my left. The right, the right of the photo. All right, so you were doing like a shoulders together. I mean, I think I just have funky posture, but don't we all? Uh all right.
Um so uh what it's uh so wait, did you take tips or or did they did they cut you into the tip pool? Or were you just completely ad hoc? Me? Yeah. Uh it was a lot of money and a lot of tips, yeah.
Oh, they gave you tips. Like whenever I work at things, even if I'm not officially the person there, I feel weird taking the you shouldn't feel no one should feel weird taking the tiss, but like I feel I don't know if you're doing service. Yeah, if you're doing service, you're doing service. But you can't whatever. It's whatever.
I mean, if it's I mean, if you're you know, if you have like another job and you don't need it, then did we take tips when we worked at Harvard and Stone Stars? I don't think we got anything. Yeah, I think we put the tips to the Harvard and Stone staff, right? I don't remember. Also, I hate taking money.
Like I I I hate the process of like the I don't actually mind it. Like when someone's like, Can I have a check? I'll drop the stuff like that. But like I like working the POS and like making sure it's all yeah. I haven't talked about it.
It's a lot easier now with credit cards, but like when you used to have to like how much back do you want? You know what I mean? Yes, I did that in many jobs. Yeah, back when I used to deliver pizzas, nightmare. Oh god, yeah.
Nightmare. I told you this. Uh a uh a regular pizza at Domino's was uh 693. And I used to get a lot of seven dollar keep the change. Thanks, bud.
Wow. Thanks. Gerks. Anyway. Oh, by the way, is it vanilin or vanilla?
Uh I'm not actually sure. And I mean, like, sorry, this is like a thing for me. Because like, okay, so like molecules have names. Yes. You know, like we give them, we give that there's like very systematic names we can give them, but a lot of them have common names.
So like vanillin, vanilla has some super long name that describes its exact structure, but also vanillin. Do you happen to know like like one nine three, whatever crazy old crap it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um so like in some ways there is a I mean, like chemistry has its own language in that way, but there is like no native speaker of chemistry. So like I've had people criticize the way that I say other molecule names before.
You know what they should do? But like they should do, but like, oh what drop dead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But so why would they criticize you? Who who the hell are they? Uh I guess other chemists. So like I think I say diacetyl and what isn't that what everyone says?
They think uh some other people think it's diacetyl. Can it be either? Uh well, I guess like, well, technically, the uh the middle part of that word comes from like acetate. Right. Or so acetole rather than acetyl would be in theory, you know, the sound derived from that.
I don't know. I'm I'm not trying to explain why they have an issue with it, but it's like, but you know what I meant. So clearly, clearly my pronunciation works fine. But the one that pisses everyone off is Cation. Everyone gets pissed off by Cation, right?
It's cation. Right? Everyone. Yeah, that's cation. It's cation.
But if you don't know chemistry at all and you read it, it looks like Cation. And they're like, it's it's anion, you idiot. So it's also cation. And you're like, what? Who cares?
Die. You know what I mean? It's like uh unionized. If you're if you're not thinking chemistry, it looks like unionized. Oh.
Yeah. It is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, yeah. All right. Yeah. Chemistry weasels. Hey, uh, before I talk about this, let's talk about you have a whole so you drew all the pictures.
I did. I love like uh so if listen, if you're even if you're not a chemistry person, you're gonna like your chemistry uh diagrams. You want to do the you want to do the lignin song and dance? Lignan vanilla. Oh yeah.
Well, so um the reason uh old books smell nice and sweet, and uh nice sweet barbecue smoke smells nice and sweet, is that there's a structural molecule in wood called lignin that has this like it's not a carbohydrate, it's not like uh l protein or anything like that. It has this like totally crazy uh methoxy anosole structure, is what we would call it. Yeah. Um but when you break little bits of that off with you know heat or chemical reactions, uh, vanillin is one of the uh subunits that you get. And that was one of the first ways they used to make artificial vanilla was from wood pulp.
Hydrolyzing uh wood pulp. Yeah, like grind up pine trees and make vanilla. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So cu uh vanilin, sorry. Vanillin, right?
Or vanilla. Vanilla has many other so many others. And by the way, John, if they want to know about that, where should they go? Mofad. Yeah.
Oh yeah. Yeah. Go to Empire Stores, uh, which is uh right in Dumbo. You go on the water side on the second floor, go to your Mofab flavor exhibition, and uh are we having those fools on or no? Yes.
I will text Catherine right now. Yeah. Uh yeah. So we have a whole section about how to, you know, how to sex up uh a vanilla orchid and uh you know the how uh you know vanilin was was uh derived. I forget whether it was first from tar and then from lignin.
I forget. I don't know. Now they mostly convert clove oil into vanilin. Because eugenol is all well, eugenol is one of the other molecules you get when you make smoke, but it's structurally easy to make into vanilin. Yeah, did you mention already lignin's interesting in that it is completely neutral in flavor?
Oh yeah, it's completely I mean it's like way too big to interact with any receptors. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's the reason that that okra that you bought and didn't feel beforehand is never gonna get soft. Indeed, yeah.
We don't uh there's not really a way to soften lignin. Actually, w after trees, you know, plants, trees evolved the ability to make lignin, there was a period of like probably I don't know, up to a hundred million years where like there was nothing that dec could decompose lignin, so there were just like piles of dead trees everywhere until fungi developed like a lignin dissolving enzyme. Is that the whole petrified forest Megillo? Well, that's like dry rot. No, like oh the petrified for yeah, quite quite possibly.
Yeah, yeah. Ah, it's good info. Uh by the way, do you think the average person who didn't grow up eating okra knows about the whole lignin okra situation? Probably not. When you buy okra people, you gotta squeeze that thing.
It's if the ribs are hard, it's never gonna get soft. I think a lot of people are very intimidated by okra. It's huge in our family. Yeah, probably. But you know, when you when you go to the supermarket, if you don't touch it before you buy it, and you get and you get the hard one.
My Lona used to do it. So I mean I had no idea. I wasn't, I wasn't cooking it at all. We just ate it. My favorite gateway okra is just like deep fried, whole deep fried.
Oh my god. Nice. Love it. Not us. We would stew it in tomatoes.
Ooh, you like the like the mucus, your mucus man. Yeah, it's called uh bam ya bamia. Bamya? We would call it bam, yeah. What's the what's the word starts with a B?
That's the Spanish word for the goop that comes out of Nopalis. Good question. You know what I'm talking about? I I mean I know the goop that you're talking about. I'm not sure I've ever heard the word before though.
Yeah. I wonder whether it's the same mucilage kind of based compounds in that similar to the one in okra, I wonder. Yeah, I don't know if it's like a carbohydrate-based mucilage or like uh some other weird molecule. We used to do a cactus paddle. Um we used to do a cactus paddle.
What is it? Baba. Baba? Oh, okay. Hmm.
At least with the internet, so thank you. Thank you, Internet. Uh, we used to do uh a cactus paddle uh liquor at Booker and Dax, and it turns out if you blend it directly into high proof ethanol, it never forms the mucilage. Huh. And then spin it out.
Stuff was good. So the mucilage never forms or the mucilage will separate out. Don't know. Oh, okay. Because if you add a lot of ethanol to something with a lot of pectin in it, the pectin will like precipitate.
Yeah. So it's not pectin. Yeah, I used to, yeah, I used to do that, the auto Houstino. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. I just messed up a batch of orange bitters. I mean, not recently, but yeah. Yeah. Uh so okay, so here's something I did this week.
Uh oh, by the way, two weeks ago I was gonna talk about it. The French Culinary Institute, as you all know, went out of business, right? And they uh were bought by ICE, the Institute for Culinary Education, formerly Peter Cump. And so they had a party to kind of, you know, uh, celebrate my and they invited a lot of the FCI folks back. So I went there and Jacques Papin.
This is a power move. I uh when I get here, this is a power move. Jacques Papin shows up uh at the thing, and he's giving a talk, and he's like, by the way, don't bother coming up and talking to me. I didn't bring my hearing aid. I can't hear anything any of you were saying.
And I was like, boom! Amazing. Boom. That's so strong. Yeah.
If there's a way to say keep away without being overly rude, I can't think of a better way than that. No hearing aid, sorry. And then he hasn't talked like that, obviously. And then uh he uh he said this. So I don't know if anyone knows this anymore, but Bobby Flay was the first in the first graduating class of the French Culinary Institute, the very first one in class number one.
And uh it was paid it his tuition was paid for by his chef at the time. The tuition wasn't that high because it was you know 80s or whatever. And uh, so Jacques Papin goes, Yes, and all of our great graduates like Bobby Flay and the rest. Uh yeah. Anyway, so uh I thought that was funny.
Uh so then, but then uh so she where'd she go? I think she went to CIA, AJ Shawler, who's formerly a cuisine solutions, and I think at Danielle before that, but I can't remember where she first started working with. Anyway, so she's at a company now called Mush. Right? Oh, the like overnight oats?
No, no, no, no, no. Although, what happens to why do you need to cook an oat? See, to me, overnight oats is just it's more convenient because you wake up and you have oats. By the way, my rice cooker came back to life. For those of you following the saga of my saga of my rice cooker, like it's died now three times.
I don't know how many lives this rice cooker has, but the last time it died, uh, I thought I thought it was dead, dead, dead. I unplugged it, put it in a different spot, knelt to it a couple times a day, got up, and then plugged it back in like a week later, and it came back to life. Amazing. Zoji Rushi. Oh, yeah.
Congratulations. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. I don't want to spend like two, what do they cost now? Like 250 bucks?
It's so expensive, a good rice cooker. And why buy a garbage one when I used to have a good one? I just want it to live forever. You know? Yeah.
You know, at least as long as I live. I just want it to live as long as me. That's fair. Yeah. But so what were we talking about before the oh much?
Oatmeal. Oh, much. Oh yeah, oatmeal. So you could put it in the in the rice cooker and do it, but why do I want it cooked overnight? Uh well, okay, so most greens and cereals, I mean, all of them have starch in them.
So when you like cook a wheat berry or flour or oatmeal over, you know, high heat, you're gelatinizing the starch and getting like a soft gooey texture that way. With overnight oats, I don't think you're gelatinizing any starch, but oats have a polysaccharide in them called beta glucan, um, which is both how they are good for high cholesterol and how they can get a little like snotty if you try to make oat milk. So I think you're just hydrating the beta glucan and using that as you don't cook it? Binder. Overnight oats, no.
They're not cooked. They're not cooked. Also, it's a diet thing because you can't digest the uncooked starch. I guess so. I mean, it's also like I mean, don't you usually use like rolled oats or quick cooking oats?
Yeah, but even then already. They like keep uh they keep a texture. They're pre-gelatin. Yeah. They're just squish-bred.
I mean, so it's like texturally different also than oatmeal. Yeah, people can tell themselves that. I mean. Yeah. Uh okay.
Alright, so it's not actually oatmeal. Define oatmeal. It's just wet. Oatmeal is when you cook oats and you make oatmeal. This is overnight.
The definition of oatmeal where it's cooked, it is not oatmeal. This is just like this is muesli that's sat around for a long time. Right? Yeah. Yeah, it's basically measli.
Yeah, it's measli. All right. I can get with musley. Marinated muesley. Meuseination.
Yeah. All right. All right. What were you gonna say, Quinn? I was gonna say maybe it's not orange, but it is still oatmeal.
Interesting. I don't know. Well, because meal apply it implies just the, you know, starting material. Yeah. You know what you should uh one reason you should uh get the book is so you can see uh Ariel's uh spice mix chart.
Yeah. Yeah. She rates the like, you know, the different, like it's like a bar. Is that a stacked bar graph? I believe it's a stacked bar graph.
Stacked bar graph of uh of like, you know, different spice mixes and then where they like the percentage of it that are in the what are the you is it four or five groups that you have? Uh three three groups. Earthy, uh dry and earthy spices, uh fragrant spices and sweet spices. By the way, do you if you're gonna cook for a long time and or at high heat, what are your feelings on pre pre-blooming and or like toast frying the the the spices beforehand and the necessity of doing so? Um I'm uh I'm a big fan of it, pre-blooming, in terms of like extracting or mixing mixing the aromatic ingredients with fats so that the uh the flavors permeate the fats before you mix in the water ingredients.
So in the fat, so then but then dry toasting you think is relatively less useful. Uh well I mean dry toasting would be more for like adding toasted flavor to it. Right. But so what percentage of spices, because a lot of people do it with everything. What percentage of spices do you think are actually benefiting from toasting?
Oh, that's a good question. I would have to, I would have to experiment a bit with that because I'm uh Yeah, when we used to do like uh caraway, we would like toast half of it. Yeah. And then like it because a lot you lose some of the things. Well, because you will be, yeah, you're you're anytime you heat up spices or you know, anything aromatic, you will be evaporating away.
Yeah, if you can smell it, it's gone. Yeah, yeah, right. That's how I that's how I know my distillation rigs suck. When I can smell it, I'm like, oh mistake. Every every molecule that reaches your nose is a molecule that doesn't go into the food.
That's right. Ding ding. Uh all right, so back to mush. So her company mush is not about overnight oats, right? So sorry, by the way.
Yeah, it doesn't matter. So uh you'd actually appreciate the cereal. So uh they're an Israeli company and but they are now here, right? And so they're in upstate New York right now doing work in the US. And they're growing mycelium of a bunch of different uh aschymites, ascomites, ascomites.
No, acidiomyces, Pasidomyces. Fruiting body mushrooms, not underground mushrooms. Pasidiomyces, right? Anyway, they're growing a bunch of stuff like that. Yeah.
Uh, but they're only growing the mycelium, they're not growing the fruiting bodies. Yeah. So it grows, they're growing them right now in hotel pans and they grow straight up like a dreadlock. Like boom, straight up out of the thing. And then they go sheboygan and they chop like the stuff that comes out of it off.
Yeah. And then what they're doing commercially is hacking it up, making it duck cells, and then selling it to people to like fold into meat and whatnot. But they but the substrate they grow it in has a bunch of stuff in it already. So they're saying that they, you know, they have like a and it tastes like the actual mushroom, which is weird because that's what I asked. Yeah, I've grown like shiitake mycelium for that.
Yeah, so they've grown a bunch. They grow, they they grow a bunch of different ones, including like they can, I think they can do magic mushrooms and they can do cordyceps, but they said it didn't taste very good, so they're not. I don't think they're pursuing it. I don't think there's a lot of cordyceps that you grow for flavor, anyway. Yeah, but anyway, so uh so I was like, I said to AJ, because she's their you know, the their culinary chef person, I was like, I just want the I just want the mycelium.
I don't want it hacked up into duck cells. I would just want to play with it, right? So she brought me two giant, not king oyster mushrooms, just giant oyster mushrooms, the size of a hotel pan and about two inches thick. Cool. And I was wondering are they gonna be tough?
They are kind of vertically oriented. I cooked one of them, it shrank down an unbelievable amount. But like it gets like a chicken-y texture when it's cooked, because the fibers are kind of running in one direction, but unlike unlike um, let's say, you know how like when you get the fibers running in one direction in a in a regular mushroom, it's in the stem, and stems, the because of the way that fruiting bodies grow up, the chitin, it gets they get um dehydrated and tougher. So the stems are a lot tougher. So they never have as good a texture as the fruiting body.
So imagine if you could have strands that are oriented that way in one direction, but there's still the texture of the soft kind of fruiting body and not of the stem, because they haven't been dehydrated, right? Right by the by the way that you know the water transport that happens in a stem in a in a fruiting body. So I thought it was super interesting. I ruined one because I didn't cut off uh the part that was touching the substrate. Okay and I cooked it whole.
I I marinated it with wine and and butter and cooked it whole. And the substrate flavor kind of where the wood chips and stuff kind of permeated the whole mushroom and made it a little bit bitter. There you go. The second one I trimmed off a little more before I did it, and like something the size of a hotel pan shrinks down until it can fit like into like an eight inch or ten inch skillet. And then uh I just cut it into cubes.
Delicious. Nice, delicious, very cool. Mush. Yeah. Mush.
So to check it to keep an eye out for them. I think we're gonna eventually have uh have her on the show or something to talk about. So that was my culinary adventure of the made some bur was it, burlati beans. I want to see uh pictures if you have some afternoon. I have a picture of the mushroom.
Okay. I don't I once I started cooking, like I got busy and I didn't cook anymore. You know, this is why I suck at this kind of stuff. Like like I really just prefer to cook and make things rather than document things. Well, I hate like getting out of the flow.
Yeah. You know, so yeah, they need someone to take pictures or I don't know, some kind of static camera setup. Yeah. Oh, my kitchen now is so bad for shooting. Oh, uh, by the way, you have a thing on uh microns, uh chart of microns, which I also enjoy.
Your picture of micron. My uh my my powers of ten yeah. Uh a flavor. Yeah, can I tell you something real real quick? So Powers of ten is a fantastic video.
It is. That's what I I mean, that's what I like based base the drawing on. Yeah, but it doesn't go to outer space. Well, because it's outer space doesn't matter for this. We're going to be able to do that.
Who here has seen Powers of Ten? No. Oh my God, John. Before you before you go on shift today, you gotta watch Powers of Ten. So I believe it was IBM hired the Eameses, uh Charles and Ray Eames, to do a whole series of uh videos.
Aren't we videos, they were films. And kind of the most famous one, and the best probably, is uh powers of ten. And uh what w it it it's a overhead picture, I think of a family or maybe it's just a couple. It's like a picnic. Yeah, having a picnic, right?
And then it goes like powers of ten of zoom, like yeah up and down. Sick. Sick. So they're one meter away, then they're ten meters away. Yeah, scale of the universe, and then they go in, right?
Yeah, it's been a long time since I've watched it. Yeah, they go in. It's just sick. It's just good. Yeah.
Well, so this one just goes inward. Yeah, and it's only like like like eight minutes or something. Sure, right? I think so. I we had the we had like a book of it when I was a kid, so I'm actually more familiar with the book.
You know, a lot of work has been done on the Eameses, and you know, thankfully I think Ray is getting more play. You know, back in the day, like I think Charles took a lot of the light. I think Ray is getting her due nowadays more on today. Is uh Finally Today is uh Women's Equal Pay Day, I think. Is it?
Yeah. Okay. I believe it is. Yeah. And pub date.
Um so about Eames. Oh, you know, they also did Mathematica, which is one of my favorite museum exhibits, and that got a revamped recently at the Museum of Science. Oh, okay. Yeah. I haven't been in a minute, but my uh niece and nephew live in Boston now.
So great museum. Take them there. Have you been to their lightning show? Oh yeah. The lightning show is ridiculous.
I was I was uh very afraid of it as a kid. Oh yeah? That and the uh T Rex sculpture. Oh. I didn't want to go near either of them.
But now I like it. Now you can do the electricity show. And I can do the T-Rex, yeah. Here's the thing about the electricity show. I don't know if we've discussed this on air, but their Vandagraph generator was made by someone you might have heard of, Vandagraph.
Like you know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah. They're like, this is a Vandagraf Vandagraph generator. You're like, okay, okay. And they have a whole bunch more uh musical Tesla coils now.
So they can they can do polyphony, which is amazing. Nice. Since you are a scientist, and you go, maybe you can request Thunderstruck, which is the best of all the tunes they play. Yeah. Oh Thunderstruck with the with the Tesla coils?
Oh my god, so good. Uh so on the micron chart is what made me think of it. Uh you know what is. Well, and for for anyone who's not looking at it right now, yeah, yeah. We start with a like zoom in on a banana slice and then zoom in progressively until we get to the size of a banana aroma molecule.
Yeah. Cavendish banana, I'm assuming. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Um Gro Michelle, because they have actually more.
So isoamyl acetude. So nine, it's nine orders of magnitude. Yes. Yeah. So going from a centimeter to one angstrom.
Yeah. Angstrom small. It is very small. Small, tiny. It's like the length of a carbon carbon bond is like 1.4 angstroms, I think.
Yeah. Yeah. Angstrom is a good unit. It's a good. Uh but do you use angstrom and not nanometer?
Well, it depends on It's definitely not nanometer, by the way. Yeah, if you're if you're talking about like uh molecules of roughly the size of like volatiles or sugars and things like that. So things with like, I don't know, let's say 20 carbons or less than angstrom is much more helpful. But if you're talking about like proteins or gels or stuff like that, generally that's that's going up to like nanometer scale. Uh so uh I was doing nut milks, and by the way, you do a bunch of nut milk stuff, so I'm gonna talk to you about that later too, if I have time, which I it looks like I will not.
Um the you know what's a big lie? Uh mesh sizes on uh filter bags. So I was making nut milk and I was trying to see whether are you know I believe what people say about choosing a nut milk bag size, right? And some people are like 250 micron, blah blah blah. So I put them all under a microscope and and wildly inaccurate.
Wildly crazy inaccurate. And I'll say this if you're gonna buy one, get nylon and get the square weave, not the ones that look like terry cloth that are in all different directions. Those are random whole sizes, and those they're woven uh in a way and they and they come apart, and so you can extrude a lot through them. Oh, okay. Whereas like when you get the nylon ones, it turns out it doesn't make that much of a difference, like 150, it doesn't make that much of a difference.
80, like it's not as big a deal as you'd think. But like uh you could squeeze the ever-loving snot out of them. Is the rating rated to like the pore size or like the size of particle that it lets through? Believe it's poor size. I I looked at them, but even those aren't accurate.
And I saw something that was sold to me as an 80 mesh. No, sorry, 80 micron, and it was in fact 150 microns. That's a big difference. It's not small. So I took all these pictures of this, I was like, what the hell?
You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh but the nice thing about these is that unless they fail on the seams, which is where they fail, the nylon ones, you can squeeze them so hard that you can force it through almost like you're using a press. Oh, yeah. No, I've done that.
Uh, but I was also testing uh, so you use a 280 nut to 1420 milliliter water uh ratio in the recipe that I wrote down out of your book. And uh I've been experimenting with like much higher nut ratios, and I think in shaking cocktails it makes a difference in terms of the texture of the I would imagine so. Yeah, like much higher nut ratios. And also I've been experimenting, you know how much liquid a nut soaks up when you let it soak up? Like so much, like so much, like 50% of its weight.
Yeah, easily. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, like, you know, I was soaking for 12 hours. I was looking at the kinetics of like the nut pickup, nut pickup, and doing it with different things, and my wife was like, just finish the book.
And I'm like, I got my fridge is like full with all different nuts soaking. Yeah, just for like one little paragraph where I talk about she's like, she's like, just finish the book. But I should maybe put up some of the pictures of the uh of the meshes. Clearly, you have the same problem that I do, which is like, well, to answer to answer this question, we need to do absolutely every piece of research necessary. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Uh Ashmer writes in, hey uh Ariel, uh, congratulations on your book. And uh congratulations to me on Barcontra hasn't happened yet. But uh, I'm getting my flavorama copy delivered tomorrow. Hopefully, does the alcohol and vodka sauce for pasta meaningfully carry slash solubilized more flavor, thus making the dish as a whole more flavorful?
What happens when you cook out the alcohol? Do the flavor compounds precipitate out? I'm not concerned about the native vodka flavor, just uh the flavor it can or cannot carry in a cooked sauce situation. What is your feeling of this? Because this is something people talk about a lot.
Right. It is I have not done a side-by-side of vodka or no vodka. I have read about people doing a side-by-side of vodka and no vodka, and there is a significant difference. People that you trust? Uh I believe so.
Okay. I think like Cooks Illustrated or something like that. But um MoFad, the museum wants to know your favorite uh flavor. I know that's a tough question. Gosh.
Um impossible to choose, but uh cardamom is a big one. Cardamom delicious. Yeah. Green, I'm assuming. Yeah, I mean, I I I like a decent black cardamom, but the sort of like cleanness of green cardamom is a good thing.
You know what I hate very nice. What do you hate doing? I hate getting the husk off of a freaking cardamom pod. It's awful. Hate it.
That's why like it's so annoying. Do you are you against paying for people to just get you the cardamom seeds and not have to deal with that pod? Oh no, I absolutely buy decorticated cardamom. Oh, decorticated is my new favorite word. Decorticated.
Decorticated. Love it. Uh are there things in uh in common about flavors that can be identified with and without visual textural clues and uh those that need one or both to taste like the thing that they're supposed to? That's a complicated question thrown at the end. Uh yeah, I'm having trouble parsing that question.
Like, do flavor differences exist? No, I think it's like uh is that some flavors are hard to actually put your finger on what you're tasting unless you can see them. Oh yeah, but that's just a feature of like being in or out of practice. But do you think so you don't think it's like you don't think it's compound specific? Some compounds are easier to just go ding just by smelling them.
I mean, there might be a few. I think maybe it's personal too, right? Right. Yeah, I mean, like most of this has to do with your own experience and memory. So, like anytime you smell a thing, you're more likely to be able to pick it up later.
Alright, and on the way out, uh Positive MD wants to know about good dessert to pair with a duck-themed dinner. Most people want something orange-related. Yeah, I was gonna say like a grand marnier souffle. What do you think it's not orange? You have a whole citrus chart.
Go Buddha's hand. Go Buddha's hand. Yeah, but Grand Marnier has orange in it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, Buddha's hand upside down cake. Mmm. Could be good. You know, I have a I haven't published it yet, but I have a big uh big old Buddha's hand recipe. Anyway, listen, uh, we can talk forever.
Yeah, we'll have you back on the show. Okay. Uh everyone do yourself a favor and go out and buy a flavorama. Cooking issues.
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