Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan in New York City, Rockefeller Center, New Stance Studios, joined as usual with Joe Hazen rocking the panels. How you doing, Joe? I'm doing well, man. Good to see you.
Good to see you. Yeah, back to back. This is the first time ever Doubleheader Cooking Issues episode. We're excited. Gonna bring uh two very different episodes.
But uh hopefully Patreon people are still uh with us. And if you're listening live on Patreon, you can call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917-410-1507. And uh Quinn, we have Quinn in the upper left corner. How are you doing, Quinn?
Why don't you tell him how to join Patreon if they don't know how? I'm good. Yeah, you go to Patreon.com slash cooking issues. As Dave mentioned, that gives people the option to listen either live or get the recorded podcast early alongside uh benefits like uh discounts on cookbooks or occasionally other products related to our gifts and uh questions. Yeah, yeah.
We've had we've given we've given some food discounts, right? Meets from Edwards Age meets and whatnot. Uh didn't we do it? We did something for uh Aura King, I think, when they uh were a sponsor. So yeah.
Also Nick Globen. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Mr. Greasy, the olive oil man himself. Yeah, who's now uh touring the touring the world, playing a bass.
Do you know he has a new olive uh he he he got olive wood and had it put into a base? That was the latest thing I saw from him. Brand new funky bass. Anyway, four strengths, thank God. Four is all you need, Quinn.
Did you know that? Four strength is all you need. If you can't say it with four, why say it? You know what I mean? Anyway.
Uh over in LA, we have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez. How you doing? I'm still good. Are they? Well, remember, some people are just hearing this.
You gotta always put your mind in other people's shoes, Nastasia. Not everybody listens to them both in a row. I know, but you still have to. If I'm only listening to the second half, this is like customer service. 101.
You know what I mean? You're good? Are you still? Yeah. Are they still uh working on the pipes?
Are you still you still have to do this remotely from a coffee shop? I'm in a coffee shop. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the joys, the joys of living near other people.
So that so that Joe doesn't get upset. Oh, so now Joe's the big bad wolf. Yeah. All right. Thanks.
All right. No, I just don't want the background sound. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh Jackie Molecules, how you doing? Good.
Not in a coffee shop. All right. And uh in the our second special guest of the day in studio, it would have been kind of cool to have everyone. If the studio was like twice as big, we could have had everyone in at the same time, but we can't. Is uh Kevin Jung is here, who is the you're telling me the title is research chef at NOMA at NOMA and NOMA projects?
At NOMA, NOMA Projects, and uh primarily the fermentation lab. Okay, okay. But I mean, like when I visited you there, like it's not like you're in the same thing. You're doing the stuff. It's not like you're like in a separate, it's not like when Nastasia and I.
So you're FCI grad, French Culinary Institute grad. Yeah. And we're there in the days when Nastasia and I were in a trash closet across the way from the Italian kitchen. And you're not in a trash closet. You're like you're like part of the whole McGill.
Like you're producing the products that are actually on the menu as well as are being sold, correct? Yeah, and I mean, it's the the first ver iteration of the fermentation lab, but the old NOMA was uh these old shipping containers outside. And that's where Dave Zilber, who you've, you know, guest of the show, uh where he started the program with uh Lars Williams of uh Empirical and Ariel Johnson, another uh friend of the show. And uh the irony is they've they've let us into the building in NOMA 2.0 and then the test kitchen, which was in the building in NOMA 1.0 is now in a greenhouse outside. Um and though Danish summer is quite short, it is sunny and it is a working greenhouse.
A lot of times they're spraying each other with ice water to keep seeing out there. It's hot a bit hot as hell. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although it's a nice greenhouse. It is a nice greenhouse.
So if if anyone should be lucky enough to go to the restaurant. So we went right after you did your Kyoto thing uh last year, right? Yeah, and you came in the the vegetable season, the vegetarian season. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I was surprised by because you know, I I seem to know you as uh as someone who who enjoys his uh his meats.
I do enjoy my meats, but I enjoy any but like I I have to say, well, I said it before because I talked about it when I got back from it. Uh I went being like, how goo to be. It was really good. It's really, really good. But like the crazy thing about it is uh it's like you have like 80 people on staff for 80 covers.
Like it's loony, but amazing. Like everybody like I felt a little bit like uh like a robber baron. Like like no one should be able to live this well, kind of. Yeah, I mean it's a whole experience. Uh the the whole time you were in the building, you cared for by you know more people than are in the in the dining room at any any given point in time.
It's funny during COVID, they they institute the whole like um capacity restriction, and they're like base it on square footage, and you know, you've been to NOMA, you know how big it is, and you know, we only serve 80, 80 something guests every night, and they're like, Well, you have to cap your your covers at like a hundred and fifty, a hundred and eighty people, and we're gonna be a good thing. Like, no problem. It's so funny. Uh but when you go, you start out in a greenhouse and they pour you like uh some libation some starting libations. Yeah, you you get uh like a a welcome cocktail, whether it's uh sometimes it's champagne, sometimes it's a cocktail we make in house, sometimes it's some tea if you're if you're having the the non-alcoholic bearing for the the evening, and it's just uh a nice way to start off, especially in the summertime.
Why is the test kitchen there? Uh I it was I don't know exactly why they chose to go outside. I don't know. It was might have been part of the the design, but the idea is that the test kitchen is its own thing. So they have their own dishwasher, their own fridges, their own sections, their own cutting boards and pans and pots and and circulators and things like that.
So there's none of this like running inside being like who's using the circulator right now. We need it in the test kitchen, and then likewise they don't run in there from service being like I need a frying pan right now. Everyone has their own things. So so there's uh there's no back and forth and it's uh less disruptive. Uh now I I have to say I don't really, and then um from if you're not allowed to say or whatever, I don't know what's going on because you know, they say, okay, we're shutting down, but they're not shutting down, but they are, but they're not.
What the heck is actually going on with NOMA? What's the deal? Yeah, the hot topic of uh of NOMA right now is everyone wants to know like what's NOMA 3.0 gonna be. And and uh I mean the the most I can tell you right now is uh for for 20 years, NOMA's been this restaurant that's uh been open however many days of the week, and and the the ability of of us to to enrich and change the lives of of people is limited to those 80 or something people who come into the dining room every day, right? If you've never eaten a NOMA, there's you don't really know that experience.
You don't know what it's like to to come in and have the the vegetable season menu that you did, or to go to Kyoto or Mexico for one of the pop-ups. So um uh one of the great endeavors we have is is by not being a restaurant in the traditional sense of the word anymore where we have to be ready for service every single day. We can work on larger scope projects uh such as NOMA projects or or working on uh reducing food waste or partnering with uh different uh collaborators to to try to widen the scope and and become something more than just a restaurant, but something that can enhance and and engage people beyond just the hungry people who come to a restaurant every day. Right. But I mean, like you're still hiring like Francisco Magoya just showed up, right?
So you're not hiring him on for pastry if you're not going to continue to make things like pastries. But you you have to like or breads or whatever. Yeah, so Francisco, he was uh the pastry chef of the French laundry back in the day, but most recently he was working for Nathan Mervold at uh at the modernist cuisine uh cuisine lab. And like that's not a restaurant either, right? But but they're working on things to to spread knowledge and to to learn as much as they can uh about any given topic.
I think the pizza book was the the most recent one to come out. So he was on that one. Yeah. Yeah. He came here for that, I think.
Yeah. He was here on the show, and I think it was for the pizza book. Yeah, I I listened. So I have I have a lot of friends who have been on the show, and I consulted with all of them just to just if there's there's any tips like like don't mention these things to Dave or he'll get angry and mute your mic or something like that. No, I mean like no, that's never happened, but uh Francisco was not pleased because he knew he was gonna get backlash on how hard they were on New Haven pizza.
And they deserve to get backlash. There's no reason to be so harsh to the New Haven pizza people. I mean, it's not at the level that most modern pizza people are, but it's still it's what it is. I've never had it before, so I've You've never been to New Haven? No.
No, no, no. It's uh I mean I've spent I was here for the FCI for seven months, it was a six-month program, right? Um, but I'm from Toronto, Canada, and then I've spent a lot of time in Europe. I've never been to New Haven. Uh I've never I've been in Chicago, but I never had a deep dish pizza either.
I mean, no offense. But you're not missing. I'm gonna go ahead and say that it's fine, you know. But I mean, I've ranted about this before on the air, but like, you know, you go there and they're like, just so you know, it's gonna be like 45 minutes before you get your pizza. I'm like, why?
Or don't you make these for a living? What the hell? You know what I mean? Like, anyway, uh it's fine. But I went to uh so the first night we got into town, because he's also in New York right now, um, uh helping with this NOMA projects and NOMA tour that we're we're going uh going on right now.
The the first night we were in town, we went to uh stretch Wiley's. Oh nice. And uh I gotta say it was like it was nice to see Wiley. Uh it was my first tasting menu experience way back in 2008 at WD50. Old school.
Yeah. Um but it was kind of like like being brought to the Vatican by the Pope himself because like Wiley just started sending out pies and everything, and and Francisco's got all you know, he's got all the inside track on so much of this pizza stuff. So it's it was like a learning experience, but delicious at the season. So what's it like going to Wiley's pizza place with Francisco Magoya? Like in the real life, it's like he's like he's like picking up the cause the thing is that like you know, uh at that point you can't enjoy anything in the real life.
You gotta be looking at the bottom, you gotta be looking at all these little things. It's like I I thankfully have gotten kind of think past that point in my life where I can actually enjoy meals again, but you know what I mean? Like Yeah, I mean it's it wasn't what you think where he's you know poking at it with a pro uh uh a knife or something like that, but um he did have some opinions about about certain styles of pizza. Uh he did mention New Haven pizza. I I have to be honest, uh in that he did mention that.
But I think the the best reaction we had uh simultaneously was uh we got the um the Sicilian style slice that Wiley does. Oh yeah, I like that. Yeah, and we got it go to Lifton, you know, very airy. Exactly. Like it was so light.
It's like a pillow. And crispy pillow. We lifted it with a knife and fork because we were afraid the top is gonna go to uh fall off. Sorry, I just hit the mic. That's fine.
Um and we almost put the pizza right into the ceiling. It was so light he's not used to it being like that. And I mean Francisco was like dumbfounded, and you know, why Wiley gives us a tour at the end, he's just talking about this dough. Like, how do you do this? And how come it's so light?
It was it was he spent a long time on that dough, and it's got yeah, very crisp bottom, not dry, crisp bottom, super light. I think it's a good it's a good slice. It's like uh I don't know how much he pushes that, but uh this is one of the ones that he sent out. Uh so what we did was we were like, well, you know, maybe we'll just order and then that way Wiley's like if we say, you know, Wiley send out whatever you want, we're gonna get you know smashed with with so much food. So we we ordered uh a pizza each and then still got smashed with a lot of food.
Yeah. Um it's kind of an sometimes it's a nightmare, right? You just want to like have some small amount of food and leave. But you know, that's that sounds terrible to say when when you know this the whoever is is feeding you is giving you L's. It's a great privilege.
Yeah, it's a great privilege, but sometimes you get very full. A lot of times you get very, very full. And there's there have been instances where I've had friends set me up with a meal and and uh the chef will send a lot of stuff out, and you're just trying to keep keep a brave face on and be polite, but in the end you're like rolling out of there. Like that's the rest of your day. It's just you're going home, you're going to sleep.
And yeah, I mean the the lucky thing is you can't you shouldn't really do it at a bar because you'll really F people up. You know what I mean? You have to really ask them what they want, or you know, let them know for sure that they're not obligated to finish this crap. Because that's the thing. I feel obligated to finish almost anything I'm handed.
Unless it's really over the top. You know what I mean? Like um anyway. Um what the thing interesting about Wiley on the Sicilian is that he like his focus is the like this like modern take on old school New York slices. So I feel like you like growing up, Sicilian was something that we would always get, but it was never like great.
It was never better than like the floppy, slicey fold in half. Right, right. And so, like, you know, in his mind, he's shooting for that that ure like what would it be if it was what I wanted it to be. So I think people gotta wrap their mind around that before they even taste it to see kind of like how weird it is. You know what I mean?
Anyway, I mean the toppings are great too. The the what's the one based on the grilled cheese at the bar down the street with the the pumpernickel and the monster cheese? Oh, yeah, I've only had that like once. I like pumper nickel a lot. I think every I think there should be a pumpernickel version of everything.
See, in in in Denmark, uh a lot of the bread is has that flavor because it's a lot of dark rye bread, it's got that uh that that sourness to it, which is uh super nice. All right, listen, there's the bread in Denmark. Yeah, and I'm trying to so it was uh so you someone at Noma, because we were gonna eat the next day, lunch was our last meal, and they sent us or no dinner, dinner. They sent us to a place that's normally a lunch place, and we told them we'd already gone to how you're pronounced told in schnapps, and they sent us to another place that's like that, and they bake made this bread that I'm trying to figure out how they made that was baked in a ramekin, real crispy, like with cornmeal on the outside. Do you know the restaurant I'm talking about?
Based off the bread course. I mean, it was it a dark bread? Relatively dark, but like kind of soft on the inside, and you would cut it. Bread was great, and they wouldn't tell me anything about it. It was old school Danish, did you have someone speaking English to you?
Uh no. Okay. I mean, it's old school Danish, but like I forget. It was one of the places you got to recommended. And speaking of old school Danish, I've said on the air many times how much I love the Danish pork skin game.
And you have oop, you have brought me the Danish pork skin. Where's the camera for those that can see it? Oh yeah, look at this. So this looks like a much more vicious, if shorter fingered version of those weird things that people use if they don't know how to pull pork without them. You know what I mean?
Those like garden tongs. But this, you want to describe this for me? It feels great. It feels great because it's ergonomic Danish design, right? It's like a solid block of like what feels like polypropylene.
I can't see, but it like it feels like I could really mess up some some pork screen with that. It's got the the blades are kind of calibrated so that they're they're short so they don't puncture the flesh of the I mean we get really nice pork in in Denmark. Uh so it's supposed to go through the skin into a little bit of the fat, and that's what gives you that that that crunchy headside. Um whether it's a belly or or loin, or if I in my opinion, the best cut is the the neck, the pork neck. If you get a uh boned out pork neck with the skin still on, when we do uh Christmas lunch at the restaurant, it's the last day of uh before Christmas before everyone goes on holiday, and um all the the sous chefs and the managers we cook for the rest of the team.
Normally it's chefs parties and interns rotating in. Um and it's always the pork neck because it's like is it actually the is it actually the neck? Yep. And how much how much of a uh meat cap is there? Or is it basically skin and then you stuff it with something else?
Oh no, there's there's lean in there as well. Like the bear in mind these are these are massive pigs as well. Um they're uh I don't know how old they get, but they're they're heavy. Like it's it's a thick hide as well. Like this this tool will uh you need it to get through the skin on this.
So then what what like so are you like salting it down for like a long time or like Yeah, you you you start the uh the day before and you you'll salt the meat um and then usually what happens is uh you you put it in a um it's a hotel pan here. It's a gastro in Europe, it is a hotel pan here. Gastro north. And uh you put it on a rack. Usually there's a little bit of uh of stock or water in the bottom underneath the rack, and you you kind of steam bake it uh till it's basically where you want it, and then you take it out of the oven, you rest it for a little bit, and in the meantime you're cranking that oven and you just blast it and the skin kind of bubbles and gets all crisp.
And if you've scored it with this, that's how it separates and you can slice right through the. And do you protect do you protect the bottom when you're doing the flash off? Or or you just let it let it go. It's cool enough, it doesn't over it doesn't dry out in it. Also, also because it's neck, right?
There's uh you you have a a bigger window of success there. If it a lot of times if it's loin, it can get dry. Yeah. Um loin being kind of like the uh you know, the the turkey of of Christmas, where you uh sometimes it's quite dry, even though you have a crispy skin. Uh with the neck, there's so much fat and um and gelatin in there that it's it's super juicy afterwards.
So compare it to like belly, you know how belly has one or two muscles that dry out in it, you know, like you when you're looking at the belly like like a lot of it's good and then a couple of them are dry, neck doesn't have any of that. It's all it's all the goodness. Yeah, and like the cross section of the neck, um, because we'll we'll tie it so it's like kind of like round. Um but when you slice into it, it looks almost like if you take a cross section of um uh a pork leg, right? So there's like small muscle groups in there um with connected tissue between.
Wait, so you tie it around like a mini porchetta? Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, because you want you want to keep it as as tight as possible, and then uh and then you you bake it off so that it's uh the the skin faces up and gets super crispy under the broiler. Wait, but but you cook it flat in the liquid, then you roll it in the middle. No, no, no, that's you roll it first.
You know the liquid, the the pork itself isn't in the liquid, it's just used as a uh source of steam. Like a moderator, okay, exactly. But it's so you do it that way, you don't just do it one year combis? We do it in the combi as well. This is just uh double?
Yeah, just to make sure. I mean and is that liquid aromatic? I forget whether you said it is a liquid aromatic or not. Yeah. So uh I mean a cheeky thing we do is sometimes we'll throw a couple of the garms in there just for uh because you cause because you're made of money?
Yeah, well, I mean, we're not made of money, but we're made of uh a lot of a lot of meat scraps and things like that from service. So we we never have a shortage of uh of fun little experiments that we have going around that never made the menu, but but tastes good regardless, and sometimes they'll find their way into staff meal. Uh-huh. So Quinn, this sounds like it's up your alley. You gonna try this sometime?
I mean, yeah, I don't have uh I don't have any germs on hand at the moment. It's actually been like a really long time since I made a batch of I'm really getting the itch. Right, but Quinn, that's the last step. I'm saying you're gonna get the pork neck. That's the that's the thing you gotta get is the pork neck.
I've never even seen pork neck in my my normal stores around here. Yeah, I've never seen it uh in North America in like the cut like it is, but like you can get it in you know the the Danish equivalent of a of a Whole Foods. It's it's a very common cut. Huh. I wonder if there's a Danish butcher.
Maybe it's like uh I wish like I wish I knew where there was a Colombian butcher so I could get that pig head with the cape. You know what I mean? Like I've I've heard you describe it on air before and I've seen photos. I've yet to see it in in in in first person. Well, because every butcher has their own right.
You need a way to use whatever like however you cut it, you need a way to use it all, right? So like every culture has their own way of hacking up the pig, you know. Speaking of going back from pig to beef, have you ever had this red Devon cattle? I've been reading about it, and now I really want it. Red Devon from England.
Yeah. But but they they have it everywhere, and it's apparently it's one of the it's one of the better grass-fed like it's one of the better tasting beef on grass, beef on grass. Like like naturally feeding on grass or okay. In other words, like if you're not like if you're gonna have grass-fed, there's no point apparently in doing it. It marbles well on grass.
So and has good flavor on grass. So it's kind of optimized for grass. But now I want to taste it. But you know, they've I found places in the United States where I could buy a whole cow. What am I gonna do, Kevin, with a whole cow?
Yeah, not much. No idea. I don't have a big enough freezer like you could buy half a beef. A big enough freezer, a big enough family. Because I mean, if you're a big enough family, you don't want to put it in the freezer, you just roast the whole whole thing off.
Yeah. Have you ever had a I've never had a whole roast cow, but I imagine it would be disappointing. Yeah, I've seen photos of uh like on the I don't know what the name of the massive spit is where it's it's splayed out like a kite and it's it's slow roasted for hours. I can't imagine out the door, right? Yeah, exactly.
And I I I can't imagine there's not no part of that animal that's horrendously overcooked. Yeah, well, I'm sure there's some parts of it that don't mind being overcooked. You know what I mean? But I'm sure the vast majority of it, it's this is like this is why you need so much sauces and stuff. You know what I mean?
Like so much goopy sauce to make up for the fact that you viciously overcooked the meat. So so you said you were doing a tour here for Noma Projects. Why you describe Noma projects? It's not like people can join the club because it's sold out, but maybe they could join the wait list. Well, so Noma Projects, the club you're you're referring to is uh called the Taste Buds, and this is kind of like uh a subscription-based annual service we have where um you know, for example, we we have a very large audience of of people who are interested in tasting our uh our products and interested in purchasing them.
Um, and that kind of puts a cap on what we can produce, because I mean I'm sure you can imagine if you're you're picking like the little little bit of lemon time off uh off a branch to make a ferment, you can't make however many hundreds of thousands of kilos of it to feed the the wide supply, but for a lar a smaller uh subscription base, you can do a lot of those things that maybe are too labor intensive or too expensive um to produce in a in a grander scale. So so that uh that kind of group is called the Taste Buds. We s we sell the the memberships annually um and we do have a wait list every year. Um But you you if you if you make it on, are you automatically allowed to sign up? Is it like wine where once you're on the list you you have a spot next to you as long as you accept it?
Yeah, you get a renewal notice uh at the end of the year. And that's how you know this is the second year we're doing taste buds right now. So quite a few people from the first batch uh when offered the renewal, they they signed on because they they kind of understand that every year we try and do it to improve. And you know, Noma is 20 years a restaurant, and we're very good at being a restaurant, but as a as a retail, um like all these products and selling them to to the general consumer, we're still a startup, right? Like we're still we have the expertise on flavor, but some of the the added value things like like I like I mentioned, we have a Discord for the taste buds and and promotional things like this tour in New York City.
Um that's those are things that we are uh challenging ourselves to to improve and think about in the future. Right, but it's in a it's a different model. So when most people most people try to make like uh sauces or whatnot or liquors or whatever, they're they're looking to take their recipes, find a co-packer, uh, and then kind of produce it and sell it on a wider market, and you're going in the opposite direction. Well, we do have a line of uh of products like like the corn corn you use a hot sauce. That's that's something available to anyone who wants to go on the website and purchase a bottle.
Like what the idea is. But are you still making it or is it co-packed? Uh we make it. We have a so we have restaurant Noma, which you saw, and you saw the the fermentation lab that I work in, and there's no way we're making that amount of hot sauce in in that size of a lab. We have uh another facility that's larger that has all the the big equipment that like the large steam cookers and and a bottling machine and things like that.
And that's where all these products are produced and stored. Uh if we're talking talking liters, it's like I don't even know. Like it could fit several of me, and I'm not a small person. Yeah, when uh when the Concord Hotel, Concord, yeah, Concord Hotel closed down in the Catskills, I went to the auction, and so they would serve thousands of people a day, thousands and thousands. And their steam kettles, I I couldn't I've never I I I couldn't believe it.
I could I I was like I I was like I was speechless. It was like Florida Florida huge ceiling, like I'm talking like multi-cow. You could just take whole cows and throw them into these steamers, supplement like breakfast cereal. Yeah. I was crazy.
I've never seen anything in my life, I've never seen anything like it. Can you believe that a place that was that big ever shut down? It's like I can't believe it was ever built, much less shut down. It's crazy. Like when we started the uh whole idea of producing our ferments on a larger scale, we we had to look at equipment.
We had to look at spaces and and you know, part of that is is visiting companies and and factories that do this on the regular in large amounts, just to kind of you know get an idea of of what we were were in for if we're going in this direction. And the equipment I saw was like, I didn't even know machines like this existed. Like they're just massive, huge capacity, things were automated that I I thought you wouldn't be able to automate. It was it's a whole different world. And so how different is the product?
Like how much work? So if you so it's very unusual for one person to, unless this is their job, to do something on a restaurant scale and then be the same person to move it up to production scale on a larger piece of equipment. So it's gotta be a huge learning curve. Like what's like what's been more most surprising about that kind of move? Uh I mean, it's a lot of it is you when you extrapolate a restaurant recipe, um, and I give the example of, you know, this, there's we have a Dropbox file with where the all the chefs have access to the recipes every season.
Um, and they'll they'll get like recipes for spice mixes. But the test kitchen, they work in quantities of like eight covers or 12 covers. They're very small, and then you have to extrapolate that to 80-something people per service. So all these recipes, they're then you know, multiplied by two, four, six, whatever. And then you take those original test kitchen recipes, and then you're extrapolating it not to 80, but maybe 80,000.
And suddenly it's like, I don't think I need 5,000 cloves in this recipe because the original recipe was like one clove, and that was just the unit size, right? So uh a lot of that is is uh really interesting when we have a production manager at Noma Projects and she'll come and she'll like look at a recipe and be like, so I put this into the uh the algorithm, like the extrapolate the formula, and I think this is a very odd number to get of of like salt or or of some foraged ingredients, and you know, there's like the wild rose vinegar, the amount of rose petals you need, and it's it's by weight and like rose petals weigh nothing. And she's like, Where am I gonna get all these roses from? You know? And so was it just was it correct though?
Did you actually need that many roses, or was it just a scaling error because the original recipe had so few? Most of the time you can you can shave the the the like if it's the rose vinegar, you can shave the amount of roses down, but then surprisingly in some of them, it's like you need that ratio to stay the same. Otherwise the flavor is a little bit different. I wonder whether it's uh, you know, a volume versus surface area problem with volatiles, where when you're using something that's intensely volatile and you have a much larger volume for surface area that it is much less loss, I wonder. There's definitely uh like I would say the most um uh surprising thing was uh so for example we have like the dashi reduction um on the table here.
Um when when we made miso for the first time at Noma, obviously when you're making miso, the um the ceramic weights you have on top of the miso, they force the tamari to separate, and that's this kind of syrupy, very rich in umami and sweet liquid. And um that was Renee's favorite part of the uh of the miso, but we couldn't just make miso for that little bit of liquid on top. So what we developed was uh a technique where we we blend that miso with water, and then we'll either spin it in the centrifuge or we'll we'll ice clarify it and collect the liquid and then put it in a in a low dehydrator and reduce it all the way down. And then we get maybe not 100% true uh true to form tamari, but we get about like 95, 98% there. That's pretty close.
Yeah. So you have to side by side to tell the difference. Yeah. Huh. Yeah.
And I I think the most it's like this like syrupiness that the true tamari has that that our reductions. Are you vacuum reducing it? Uh well, we we were doing it in dehydrators in in like little like regular dehydrates, yeah, wide containers. And then when they started to do that in larger quantities at Noma projects, uh a lot of times it was bitter because it's such a high qual quantity that uh the proportion of surface area to dehydration meant that it spent so long you were essentially like you know you're making black garlic. It's the same to uh same technique, like a slow my yard of of all the sugars and proteins in this reduction as it got close to finishing.
So how'd you end up did you have to end up putting a vacuum on it or did you just use uh shallower sheets or do it in smaller batches or what? Shallower sheets, smaller batches. The uh the recipe was uh was uh updated a little bit just to kind of minimize the risk of of a whole batch going because you know once it goes bitter, there's no there's no way back from that. There's like yeah, yeah, hard to debitter things. Yeah, it's a de-bitter or deburn.
That's why you gotta production. That's why you gotta sell the bitter. You'll be like, you know what? This is supposed to taste slightly burnt, supposed to taste bitter. Yeah, maybe New Haven's got a market for uh for our stockpile of burnt tamaris.
Maybe like how much do you have? Uh I mean, I don't I don't know exactly how much. Although I think we we were we caught it pretty early on that this was a thing, and then just uh the research development work that went went into it. It's uh yeah, I don't think it's I don't I don't think it's enough to support all the the New Haven uh communities who enjoy their their burnt burnt flavors. Yeah, yeah.
You know what though? That's unfair. It's unfair. You need to go to New Haven. Well, I'm kind of scared too now after this, but because this is live too on Patreon.
Yeah, but like you gotta go to New Haven, check out some there's some interesting stuff in New Haven. Uh you know, New Haven as uh Nastasia has always said, I'm the I'm the new haven of bosses, right? Right, Stas? I've never said that. I've never said that you said that.
Uh anyway, so uh you brought a bunch of stuff to taste. Yeah you want it's open it, it's open it, uh let's open it up. All right. See what's going on here. I have some stuff for for you to taste.
Yeah, yeah. By the way, I'll tell I'll say the one that uh that I have. So uh listener, uh Mathman, uh Jonathan Anderson sent us a bunch of syrups from his backyard. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Mathman.
And uh, you know what's interesting, I think, here is like you know how when maple syrup is made, like uh it changes over the course of the season, right? It starts out being uh lighter, having less uh solids in it, and then it gets uh progressively darker as it progress in the season. So we have from the same trees, yeah. Three grades, same trees. I thought that'd be a good taste.
Are you are you a light, light uh syrup person or darker? No, I like it dark, but not um, you know, like once it's beyond B. I I like it until it gets metallic. Okay. So like at a certain point it gets metallic and that's unpleasant.
So I I once bought a whole bunch of it thinking that I was gonna like the even darker grade than B for the bar, and I was like, I don't like this. And then uh he also sent us some birch syrup to taste. And uh the thing about birch syrup I'm interested in is that every time I've had birch syrup, it's been extremely uh high acid, like much higher acid than maple. But let's let's see here. Let's here.
Because a cool thing that we do here, just give me a drop right here. Uh a cool thing we do at the restaurant is we'll take birch water, which uh I mean we're getting buckets of birch water now from our friends. Not acidic. No, that's nice. A little rainy.
A little bit at the end. Yeah. A little bit, a little bit of a little bit of acidity at the end. Yeah. But this reminds me of the stuff, the stuff that we'll we'll make in Copenhagen.
And uh, you know, we'll reduce it to syrup, but what's really cool is if you reduce it and you stop short of a syrup and you match the bricks that you need for a kombucha, you can drop a scoby in there, and then you get like it's kind of like uh like a root beer kombucha, and it's delicious. And we've served it before, but it's like I said, one of those things where that's like the yield is so low on something like that. We did the math and it was like uh like a four percent yield, and we're just boiling pots of water all day. Yeah, yeah, it sounds like a nightmare. And when you said uh drop some scoby in it, it reminded me of that song, uh throw some D's on it.
Drop some SCOBY's on it. Just got a birch of a the next great notes the same that's birch. I just wanted to taste it again. Yeah you want to start well here's blonde. All right.
Well one well let me what I have so much to taste I don't even know what to do. I wasn't expecting for you to taste it all right explode your palate here but what are we gonna start with? All right let's um let's do this one. What kind of birch do you use in uh in Denmark? What do they have?
I only know American birches and I don't know uh which birch uh Jonathan has I'm sh maybe it has sugar birch that would be classic right but you can also use like um I'm not sure what kind of birch we we get but I mean the when they deliver the birch water to us it's in a plastic bucket um someone else is tapping the trees at this time of year and then we uh we just get the the final the final water which is also delicious like birch water ice cold is yeah is really nice. And but like what's the what's the sugar percentage on it? Low, right? Like it's low. Yeah you gotta one or two?
Yeah you boil it down quite a bit to get uh any any real bricks reading. But okay so but like but just plain from the tree it still tastes good? Yes. Yeah. Like what do you do you actually use it in the restaurant?
What is it whoa what is that one? Uh that's so that's the the forager's vinaigrette. Uh oh so you just you just uh re- remulsified it yeah I mean you you just give it a shake and so this uh this is our rose vinegar which wait so what's in that what's the what's the florally herbal thing and what's going on in here. Yeah it's it's the rose vinegar which uh we sell separately and then it's uh black currant wood oil and uh you say black currant current wood oil. Oil.
Yeah. So I mean, obviously we know the black currant fruit. Um, but the the shoots of the plant as it's growing, you know, that we have a lot of farmers who they're growing it for berries, and you have to trim the plant, and then we take the uh all the the twigs and the shoots, and while they're still kind of green on the inside, if you ever split one open, it smells delicious. It's this is like our our answer to olive oil in in Scandinavia. And um we we put the uh we take this the twigs and we we mash them up with uh like a mortar and pestle or uh in larger larger amounts.
We'll we'll use some of the machines at Noma Projects to to basically model them. And then they get steamed um in a steam oven overnight. And we we double bag it in uh in plastic sous vide bags because um when I was an intern at Noma in 2004, we were just developing this ingredient, and I learned the hard way why you need to double bag this oil when you put it in the steamer because this was hours of using the smallest mortar and pestle known to man uh to pound this uh black currant wood and put it in bags, and then the next morning you came in and there's oil everywhere. It smelled great. But wait, it just leeches through the bag?
Well, it's just the seals failed on the bag. Oh, yeah. Oh, what because they're puffing up a lot? I guess so. I think it's it's puffing up a lot because the uh the water in the it's steamed at uh um relatively high temperature, like nothing over a hundred, but um maybe the the moisture in the branches was causing expansion in the bag and making the seals uh there's also a lot of air in wood, right?
Because of all of those vessels. So you're gonna get that stuff's gonna expand. I wonder so you you put it in two bags, but they probably still puff. I wonder like if you could but it I don't know, it's a tough problem. Yeah.
Um but this is like something we use every day at the restaurant. This is wait, so so how much so the oil's literally from the wood, it's not an oil flavor. Sorry, you you flavor um grapeseed oil with it. Yeah, yeah. It's uh I mean, God, if we had to press the oil at all.
That's the craziest thing. So, like, how many like what kind of ratio are you talking about? What other things have you tried it with? Because there's a lot of very aromatic woods. Like, what other woods have you tried?
Uh we've done um what have we done? We've done birch oils before, but those weren't like this is a this is the the one, the wood oil that we use, but we've also done like uh black cherry. Yeah, that's the thing. We don't really get too many cherries in we're we're too far north for like peaches and nectarines and and a lot of cherries. Cherry wood has that smell, or like certain butch birches have a like do you do the winter greeny birches, the ones that have that kind of winter green note?
Or like what about like um I like the smell of it's not a Danish, but like uh tulip wood, liriadendon tulip fera, like yellow poplar. Has like kind of like a lemony some people don't like the smell of it, but like the young green leaves, uh I mean the I love I love it. Or like have you ever done just like sassafras, like old school things that people like? Is it good? Yeah, I mean it's it's you definitely get all that all that flavor out of uh out of your out of the wood.
And I think we've done like birch wood and you get a lot of bitterness in the oil, so that you can only use so much of it. This is the only one that's been successful in terms of So you chum it up, yeah. The greens the green shoots the this year's twigs. You chum it up, and then like how much oil? One to one ratio.
Sometimes sometimes uh two to one. It depends also that we have to like look at the wood and be like, okay, if this is super strong, then we can afford to get it to a two to one. If we need all the flavor we can get it to one to one. If you push it down hard, can you do it in a mason jar or no? There's there's something about the steaming under under a vacuumed bag.
I think the vacuum probably pushes the oil into the wood and gives good contact. So you need the vacuuming. Okay. Because we well, we we we we had to do this for NOMA projects, right? So it was a larger amount, and we were trying, like, you know, that's a lot of plastic and and that's a lot of time.
Yeah, someone's gotta stick it because oil too, so it'll overflow the bags. You can't walk away from the machines. There's just a lot of time of like closing lid, waiting there, hitting the stop button when it's about to overflow. So we we thought maybe if we put it in the steam kettle at the the temperature of of the oven when we're steaming it and you know, just have it weighed down in the oil, maybe that'll work and it wasn't the same. It was like night and day.
So I think it's something about the vacuum that you're pulling. So the vacuum, but also like is the steam kettle totally sealed? Is it one of the ones that totally seals? No, it's not it's open top. It's just that's steam jacketed.
Uh so you're blowing a lot of stuff off of it, probably too. So how long then do you have to steam it? Uh you steam it overnight. So like many hours. Yeah.
Huh. And do you think the birch would be less bitter if you went shorter or just not enough flavor transfer then? I mean, I think it's I think it's just one of the first things that comes out of the birch is like you you get some pleasant flavor and then it goes like I want to try hickory bark because I do hickory bark in syrup, but I never thought of doing it in it with an oil. Yeah, I mean, you'll have to give it a try and let me know. I guess there's not a lot of hickory in uh in in Copenhagen, that's for sure.
Yeah, there's gotta be something we have here. Uh but uh I feel like this is it's something that uh some of our listeners are gonna go try to do for sure. For sure. Uh what do you think, Quinn? Are you uh what do you think?
You think this is something that some of our listeners are gonna try to do? I mean, I'm I'm probably gonna try and do it. I just got in touch with the company that does local foraging here. I've got some of their some of their products, but it's really small amount. So I'll try and figure out what uh what makes sense to try as an oil.
Yeah, I mean the the I wish I still had my place in Connect because like sassafras there is a weed. You know what I mean? Like all that stuff is a weed. So, like, you know, anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a good technique, it's just a matter of finding the right ingredients to to apply where it's worth the the trouble of of going through the whole process, and then the product is just so good, there's no there's no downside to to like there's no off flavors or anything like that.
You know what I mean? Should we go over the next one? Yeah. All right. So uh I'm opening the So how do you make the rose vinegar?
But that we I tasted it in the vinaigrette. How is that made? This is um we use Danish uh, I believe it's Danish apple apple balsamic vinegar, and we'll infuse it with forged roses that we so it's a lot of roses and it's all foraged, like it's all wild roses. This is the same, not the roses that you put on the menu, those ones you grow, right? No, no, no.
Those are also foraged roses. So the first year we made um uh the rose vinegar, we kind of self-cannialized ourselves where projects needed some for the rose vinegar. We needed some for the the summer season, and then we ended up not having enough roses for for either of them. So, like this is the second run of the the rose vinegar with wild roses because the first run was smaller than we wanted because no one went no one thought to go and look for different spots. It was like, oh, we know where the roses are.
Right, but not enough for that. Yeah, exactly. So these the roses, you're doing it after the fermentation, after it's been made vegan. Okay, okay. Yeah, it's an it's an infused vinegar just because uh the the roses over the course of fermentation.
If you were to start with fresh roses, the the flavor would be a little bit uh a little bit muddled, I think. All right, so this is called Nord Nordic Shoyu. But for those of you that don't like can't see it, like it looks to be slightly darker, but in the ballpark color of like an American sweet apple cider, unfiltered apple cider. Would you say that's accurate? Yeah, like it's much lighter than uh than a traditional shoyu.
Um and it's I mean, m most shoyus are aged for one year plus. This is six months, and it's uh it's a lower salt content, too. You you'll notice like you you just took a sip. And if you would if you were serving this in a Japanese restaurant with sushi, it it would be kind of weird because uh the reduced salt level and because of all these other flavors that we have, there's some fruitiness, there's some a little bit of acidity perhaps, and and it's also unfiltered. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and it's cloudy. And that's uh kind of how we we work with our ferments at at NOMAs, we'll drop the salt level as as far low as we we can while still maintaining food safety, um, so that you can use more of it without over seasoning your food because salt is kind of in a a cap, right? You if you if you use too much soy sauce, it'll be too salty, even if you like the other flavors, the caramel flavors and dark flavors of soy sauce. Um so this one is but it doesn't have it it definitely has some of that, but it doesn't have any of the kind of the overcooked burny flavors. And it's fava, huh?
Yeah, it's fava beans and toasted rice. Is it easier to prep them for this or these are these are dried favas? Okay. Yeah, so we get dried uh dried shelled favas in and we'll uh we'll grow our koji on a mixture of the dried favas and toasted rice and like deeply toasted rice. Um and then it gets mixed with salt and water, and then it'll go for six months.
And that's that's how you're tasting it in the bottle. And the cool thing is is after you you press it, you have the uh the maromi or like the solids as well. And we're working currently, um I mean hopefully I don't get in trouble for for saying this on air, but um we're working on something to use the solids as well, like whether it's a seasoning salt or spice mix, because it is it's really delicious. The like as much as I like the shoyu, I find the solids are even more delicious when you when you dry them out and grind them up into a powder. Have you ever done uh rye?
So the maromi, the company in up in Mystic, uh, you know, Bob's been on, he does a rye that's just crazy good. A rye shoyu? Mm-hmm. Okay. As an adjunct in, you know what I mean?
Uh that it's just so good. Have you guys done that? That seems very Danish. Yeah, we tried. So when I was just starting at NOMA in 2019, um, I arrived midway through this whole trial where they wanted to come up with new shoyus, and the, you know, it's a six-month process, right?
So it's not like we start one different type and then we wait six months and say, hmm, I don't like it, let's start another one and wait another six months. So they'd done like like 15 different variations using Emmer and different wheats and barleys and all these grains, and I think rye was one of them. Um actually out of that came the the fava bean shoyu that you're you're tasting right now. That was the best one we had. Um but I think most recently we've uh started using lupins as well.
Lupins being um like a pulse from Scandinavia. We get them from Sweden. Very high in uh aren't they very similar to favas though? Like the shape? Yeah, almost like broad bean shape, like exactly, yeah.
But uh very like higher in in protein um closer to uh a soybean, but we uh we can't use soybeans in in a soy sauce that we make because I mean it's not that we can't, we just choose not to because you know, shoyu is at least the shoyu that we learned to make was Japanese, and and if we were to just replicate a a Japanese product in Copenhagen, like that's not your shtick. Yeah, what's the point of having this massive restaurant with a fermentation lab if I'm just gonna replicate someone else's recipes? Because other people are very good at that. Yeah. Yeah.
Um you ever have any problems with the like uh the people who can't have favas? Like anyone ever, I've never actually got fava allergy? Well, yeah, favism, it's like this is why like the theory was back in the day that like you know, certain people like Plato would be like, watch out for the fava beans, because there's a genetic, and I think it's like weird because it's like i I think it's mostly occurs in areas where favas are endemic, where genetically you can't have it. Like you can't digest uh fava beans. I don't know exactly what happens to you.
If you're you don't know if it's like when they eat it immediately it happens or like I think it's similar to like uh if you know if you see celiacs with with with gluten, it's like something F's you up inside like like hardcore. You know what I mean? But uh I don't know. I mean we like we we get uh guest reports on all of our guests at the restaurant, and we we do get like all the all the usual allergies like gluten-free, no dairy, vegan, vegetarian, so on and so forth. But then occasionally you'll get like a no fava bean or they say that you say yeah.
Hey, you want to try this one? Have you had this one? Is this the colatura dialichi? No, but no, no, no. That's the thing.
That's the problem. These guys don't know how to market. So this is the people mitica, the Spanish people are trying to do an actual fish sauce. So not just like pressings from anchovies, but like this is this is the closest Western product I've had to um smell good. Yeah, right, to like Ishiri and to the Garam replications I've had, the Roman ones, like the gut, the gut-based ones.
Good, huh? Mm-hmm. So it's it's expensive. It's called Florida Garum. Mitica makes it, but it's like to me, that's that meaty.
So my my two favorite fish sauces are the you know, commercially available ones, are but they can't even get them anymore, are the um the the Ishikawa one, the ishiri, the squid one, and the ayu fish sauce. Have you had the IU? No, but I've had Iyu fish. Yeah, is it is the sauce kind of bitter from the organs or anything like that? No, no.
I don't know. They it's a new, it's new, right? I mean 20 years. In other words, it's not like it's not like a heritage product, you know what I mean? But this ayu fish sauce is crazy, but now you can't get any more.
This is good, right? Yeah, it's delicious. I have had the the Yashiri in uh in Ishikawa. I have because so we were in Kyoto the past year. Um and I had a research trip.
I went out to Noto Peninsula where um sadly they had it the the earthquake in Japan recently was kind of situated in in Noto. But uh I was visiting a uh a gentleman over there who he's Australian, his name is Ben Flat, and he married into like Japanese fermentation royalty. Like his wife's family makes is are like the the key keepers of of these Japanese fermentation styles. So I visited him, and uh, you know, I guess people are really are asking him a lot for for tours and stuff, so he like he doesn't respond to most of them. You kind of have to ask several times and and eventually he's like, okay, they're actually interested.
But even then I went and visited and it was just uh like a tasting of the the Ashiri that he makes there. It was so good. So good. He gave me a bottle at the end. I was like, oh my god, thank you so much.
So good that stuff. Um, but I didn't see the actual fermentation chamber or how he made it or anything like that. It was just uh just a conversation, and and that's because they're so protective of this product. Um apparently people would visit and then they would try to make something similar back where they come from, and they would call it Shiri, and then that kind of dilutes the the actual special product that's made in that particular part of the world. Um but I can see why people want to do it because you just can't freaking buy this stuff.
Yeah, yeah. I mean it's I mean, you arguably you can't even make this kind of stuff without uh years and generations of uh of expertise. Uh but uh I'm going back this autumn because we're doing another pop-up in Kyoto, and um he's already agreed to to let me come in and for then spend a couple weeks and just see see everything he does over there. Which is so reasonable. Okay, so so what am I taking what am I tasting now?
I'm gonna give you the the beef garm because uh the last time because after you ate at Noma, I gave you some stuff to bring back, and one of them was the beef garment solids. And um Yeah, but I didn't try I don't think I tried the actual liquid, right? You didn't try the liquid. I gave you the solids because you had just had uh um uh the gentleman from ham hamburger America, uh George George Moss. Yeah you do he has a restaurant up now.
Yeah, yeah. I've I've uh been meaning to try it on this this very busy week. I hear that uh he so he just put on the uh what's it called the uh limited menu uh the butter burger. Butter burger that's uh Milwaukee, Wisconsin? Is that where's that from?
I can't remember. Yeah. Because uh he does what the classic hamburger and then the smash burger, and then there's like the slot for the well most of his classics are smash, but it's with or without onions, right? Yeah, yeah. So he does the uh yeah, so he's got the he's got the butter burger on.
But uh you know, it's one with just like a pro I forget where it's from, but just a preposterous amount of butter. Yeah, like an absurd amount of butter. Which, you know, I'm kind of for. Mm, this is good. So why don't you talk about the talk about this?
What's the process on this guy? Yeah, so um, and then um Quinn's mentioned this uh on the air, I think during the episode where you tasted the solids. Uh so when we say garum, it's it's slightly different from the traditional version of the ferments where uh it's fish and you're using the the enzymes in the fish stomachs to uh to break down the uh the proteins in the fish flesh. So when we make koji at the restaurant, you get those similar similar enzymes to the fish stomachs, except Koji is a much more gentle flavor, right? Like it's not as um funky.
Are you using one of the kojies that has a little bit of an acid cake? Because I noticed a little acidity in the back of this, or is that just me? Um I it might be it might be you, but we do get um it's not like a luchuensis strain where it tastes like lemon, the carry or anything like that. That is that just might be the uh the fermentation results from from it's beef, it's koji, it's water and salt, and that's it. Three months uh in a hot room at 60 degrees Celsius, which I'm not sure.
I I didn't come prepared, I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit. 60, 140. No, sorry. Yeah, 140. I mean, I I have to believe you at this point.
I I think that's a good thing. That's one of the that's one of the magic numbers because that's one of the US that's one of the like that's one of the safe hold numbers. Uh yeah. 6140. Yeah, the That's why I didn't even think about it.
That's why I had to that's why I I said it first and then had to think about it afterwards because it's what 60140. You know what I mean? Uh it's like, you know, uh minus four, mini you know, minus four minus twenty. You know what I mean? Like you just got you just got uh like a reflex reaction to those kinds of numbers.
Yeah, yeah. Like they're just in your head uh for forever. Ta taste this, you know, taste I'm trying to figure out what it is it that makes me feel like it's got like a little bit of that makes your mouth water like like acids do. Not saying it tastes acidic, but you mean it's got like a little The Make Your Mouth Water that that would just that could just be the salt in the umami released from the the beef as it first. A little bit of the umams.
The end. Only now, at the end. Yeah, I think that's some of that is just part of the the myard. Like it's it's th uh three months at at a very warm temperature, so you get some of the browning uh happening over the course of that time. So Simon says or asks, uh question.
Do you have any advice for safely fermenting honey with garlic and or ginger? Thinking here in terms of ensuring no botulism toxin is present either in the honey or in the pieces of garlic and or ginger. Um I would and raw raw garlic and raw ginger. That's that's that's tough because uh generally anything anaerobic you are concerned about about botulism. Um we've we had uh we had this topic on on hand last summer because we were trying to preserve artichokes without uh cooking them all the way through.
Like you get those tin d chokes that are like mush. Um and I was working with RL Johnson on this technique where it was uh like a a low temp pasteurization with just the bare minimum amount of acid. I mean, if if your honey is by chance has uh a pH low enough, you might be able to doctor it a little bit with um some vinegar or or or like uh an acid uh to bring the pH down because acidity does does uh prevent uh botulism to toxins from developing. This is uh this is uh mathman's w uh walnut syrup, but it's interesting because it doesn't taste like a bark syrup. What is it?
What the hell is it? That's good, but yeah, it doesn't taste like it came from a tree. Doesn't taste like a bark. Yeah. Is it from the nut?
So like I've always wanted to do the the thing where you make like uh smash up like hickory nuts and then just like make a milk from it and then strain out all the salads, but I wonder is this from walnut the nut? Is this from walnuts? Maybe the shells of the nut or or something like that. Yeah, I mean, I've never tasted walnut bark. I wonder what kind of walnut it is.
Weird. Maybe maybe he'll he'll get back to us in in the comments on this episode and let us know. Yeah, but anyways, I am curious. So I want to do a uh a sweet in between in between our salties here. So what would happen if you tried to if you opened up and just tried to salt cure an artichoke like a caper?
What would happen? I think the uh is it called uh tur turger turger pressure? Uh the what would keep the artichoke kind of upright and and and stiff. I think you'd lose a lot of that and it would uh I mean for sure it'd be extremely salty and you'd have to to like water leach it afterwards. Yeah.
Um I wonder whether it would be any good or whether it would suck. I mean, that's that's all uh speculative at this point. Like it, you know, if it's if I've had a lot of things that cultures say are are really delicious, and and I've like that's that's that's not so nice. But sometimes like what do they make channel out of? Because it doesn't taste like artichokes.
Do they like I know it's artichoke, but like what is it? Is it like not the actual artichoke? Is it something else? Because it doesn't taste like artichokes. Tastes delicious.
It doesn't taste like artichokes. I feel like this is your realm of expertise, Dave. I am. It's odd that Dave Arnold is asking me uh. Well, I mean, I just don't know like a cocktail.
Because there's so many things that like, for instance, like rhubarb, obviously, most of the rebarbaros aren't made with the part that we eat. Doesn't taste like that either. You know what I mean? So I don't know with artichokes how they do it. Those are made with with the roots or I'm not sure.
Well, we'll dry it and stuff's fantastic. As an infusion, rhubarb root, dried rhubarb root, mwah, beautiful. Love it. We just got uh I mean I showed you the the new uh rotovap we got from Buki that that brought us into the the modern age because the old one was like on its last legs. The kids nowadays, man.
I visited people and like everyone now has the vacuum system that like auto-goes on temperature with the temperature thing. So they're gonna be a little bit more than a foam sensor, so it never goes into the Oh my god. Back in the day, you had to sit there and watch the ferment, uh the uh watch the distillation line and keep lowering the vacuum by hand. You had to watch boilovers. I mean, it's a whole new world, better world.
Like why should you you shouldn't have to do all that stuff. But then you start relying on it, and then next thing you know, the it's like the foam sensor uh fails. You're gonna want a spoon for this one. The foam sensor doesn't do its job, and then you know, we're back having that conversation with Nastasia about whether it's okay to have an intern lick the inside of the uh the condensation tube to see if it's still spicy from your uh habanero distillate. Yeah, Nastasia says no, but only because it's in public normally, right, Stas?
I mean, I don't know. Nope. Yeah. Okay. Uh wait.
So this is an XO sauce. Uh it has the look of the of the can't mention chili crunch, but it's not. Oh yeah, that's a thing. Yeah. I couldn't believe that that was happening.
Um, so yeah, this is this is uh our vegan exo. So there's no traditionally, obviously XO will have uh scallop and jinhua ham and and shrimps in it. Um but the reason we called this an XO is I mean it has none of those ingredients in it, but the texture we thought was very similar, where um you're you're chewing it, uh it's uh it's oily, but there's chunks in it, and then over time it'll develop in your mouth as well. So this is using um uh a dried tomato, some uh Madagascar pepper, and um one of the one of these ingredients that we had made for us in Japan, actually, it's called uh pumpkin bushi. And it was uh a katsubuchi producer in Japan who uh he had to secretly uh start trying to smoke and dry these these pumpkins in the exact same fashion as a katsubushi.
And then we've started using them at Noma uh for the past couple of years. And it's this it comes like this this stiff hard rod of uh pumpkin. Stiff hard rod of pumpkin. And uh and we we grade it, we put it in this sauce, but we also use it in spice mixes and uh and uh to grate it on top of a lot of our dishes. Since we're running low on time, let's go straight from super light to super dark on the maple.
Have you done the blonde yet? You have blonde. I have blonde, where's blonde? Blonde is here. This one.
Yeah. Okay. So what else? They're gonna they're gonna rip us off the air in four minutes. So I've got to figure out everything we're gonna talk about.
All right. Let's uh and then I'll I guess we'll end with the uh let's do hot sauce after this because that's that's something I feel like is uh there's a common thread and there's uh there's some context for that as well. But that is light. It is light. I like the darker one more.
Have you tried the dark one yet? Yeah, yeah, I I tried that one. Um yeah, I mean I'm always pro dark. I mean, the thing is is that um this is why like a lot of people like going back to Kyoto, right? Like the chefs they're very pro subtlety.
Like if I'm gonna have maple, I don't really want it to be subtle. I wanted to kick my. Yeah, one in my face. But and you know, it's kind of like I'm such an American. You know what I mean?
I want stuff in my face all the time. You know what I mean? Does that make me bad? Yeah, well then hopefully likes maybe hopefully you like the hot sauce then because I feel like that's probably the most intense of the uh the things that we sell right now. So where you're where so while you're pouring this, are you from Toronto the city or from the outskirts?
No, I'm from Toronto proper. Okay. I mean, shout out to some of our our colleagues at Restaurant Noma who tell the guests that they're from Toronto, that they're not actually from Toronto. Um yeah, I I grew up in in North York. Um had I been a few years older or a few years uh or Dave Zilbert a few years younger, we would have actually gone to the same high school at the same time.
These are good corn yuzu hot sauce. How do you what do you think of the texture? Because this is kind of uh a point of contention with us. Do you like the uh that it's kind of pulpy and uh has chunks in it, or were we you're more of like a Frank's red hot, like straight out of the bottle. It's it's runny and and uh and more liquid.
I am across I I can do many textures of hot sauce, right? So like what I use at home mostly, mostly at home, I don't use sauce at this point. I use um either this uh I don't think they're actually from Taiwan, but they're based on this kind of Taiwanese like salted fermented chili in massive quantities, so that's chunky. And then Lao Gun Ma, which of course is oily and that's my those are my current two. I move around, you know what I mean?
So like I like any texture. Why not why do people want it to be liquid? Uh just some people use hot sauce different ways, right? You think of like Tabasco, it's it's pretty pretty watery, and they're kind of showering it over their food, and and this is kind of like in between a liquid and uh a puree. And I I personally like the fact that as you chew it, you because there's a little bits of corn in there, there's a development in flavor, and this the spice is a slow build as well.
We do two versions. One is the extra spicy, which is what you're having now, and then we did a milder version um for people who just can't take as much heat. But I think we should definitely try to do uh an even spicier version because I think you can use it. Like a like a like a kill you version? Yeah, like sneak a sneak a habanero into the assembly line at some point when no one's looking.
I wonder was what what peppers you're using? Uh these are grilled jalapeno uh sorry, grilled habaneras. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so like uh that time for I didn't tell us on air or not, but like I was doing a cocktail and my cousin came over and he used the wrong thing as the as like adding a half ounce, and it was the decanted. Speaking of liquids, so you know, uh Pucker Butt, the South Carolina people who do the Reaper, the that so like their one of their sauces they didn't Xanthan it, so it's separated into solids and liquids, and I decanted the stuff off the top of the liquids to use as like a mega spice by drops.
And he just dumped it into the batch and I was like, well, let me try it, see what happens. I was like, ah! Yeah, I've I've eaten one of those boot jeluchia chilies too much. It's it's too much. Too much.
Yeah, it put me out of out of uh commission for 24 hours. Well, listen, uh, Kevin, this is an embarrassment of uh Rich as you've had me taste. I appreciate coming on. Uh, all love to uh you and the Noma crew. Check out uh Noma projects, where should they look that up?
Well, if since they're we're live on Patreon right now, if anyone's listening, we'll be at Superiority Burger in about three hours. Ooh. Working with Brooks on some delicious things. You know what? Brooks, his French fries, his new French fries, very good.
Looking forward to tasting. Yeah, very good. Cooking issues.
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