Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Marlon, host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan, New York City, Rockefeller Center, New Stan Studios. Uh joined today, not with John. John's not in the studio today, unfortunately. Couldn't be here, but uh our good man uh Joe Hazen's rocking the panels.
How you doing? I'm doing very, very well. Great to see you after a couple weeks, hiatus. I know it, I know it. And uh Nastasia the Hammer Lopez also unfortunately under the weather, but I'm glad that we have in Los Angeles, I assume, Jackie Molecules.
How you doing? Everything good? I'm great. It's been a while, yeah. Yeah, and then of course, in the upper left, our man Quinn.
How you doing? I'm good. Too bad, we don't have anything to talk about, eh? Yeah. All right, so in the couple of weeks that uh I've been gone.
By the way, if you're listening on uh Patreon, you can call in your questions to 917-4101507. That's 917-410-1507. Uh and uh Quinn, you want to tell them a little something about Patreon before we get going? Sure, yeah. Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
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They can order their glass fan off there. Glass van. Yeah, and uh and we promise not to light you on fire on purpose. Right? You know.
Uh if you're not a member of the Patreon, no promises. Yeah, no promises. Yeah. You know? Uh yeah.
So listen, uh, I've had a boat ton of stuff in the past couple of weeks. For instance, uh, since I was last on air with you guys, uh, I opened a bar. I went to Tales of the Uh, I went to uh Tales of the Cocktail. Uh I went to Alaska and Seattle, but where else did I go, Quinn? Up upper left.
Upper left. I took my first ever trip to the upper upper left in Vancouver Island. So let's we'll start with that. And then we'll we'll talk uh then we'll talk with uh the molecules over what he's done, and then I'll go for the rest of the garbage until I uh and then we'll we'll hit some questions. So uh why don't you talk about the upper the upper upper left, Quinn?
Well, yeah, so basically uh you were heading to Alaska to see Dax. Yeah. And uh you had what, 48 hours like uh of a layover in Seattle, basically. Yeah, well, so uh my son Dax is working in Juneau, uh Alaska. So Juneau, for those of you that don't know, is not part of the main chunk of Alaska.
It's in the panhandle, but like, you know, it it kind of droops down. So it's not a panhandle like Oklahoma, Oklahoma. It droops down next to Canada, right? And uh there are no roads in and out of Juneau. It's only has like, I think like 40 miles of highway or something very very small like that.
I drove to the end of it, by the way. You know what's at the end of the highway in Juneau? Uh a burnt-out car full of bullet holes. Swear to God. Uh, you know, I feel I feel like every highway should have at the end of it a burnt out car full of bullet holes.
By the way, every abandoned vehicle that I saw in Alaska was full of bullet holes, just for record. I saw more than two. So it's like, I'm just saying, if you leave your vehicle unattended in Alaska too long, bullet holes. Anyway, uh, so the thing about it is that this town, which is only 30,000 people strong, Juno small, even though it's the capital, has going into it every day five cruise ships, seven days a week, five giant cruise ships with thousands of people on them, who are all there for only one day. So Dax, he has a job there over the summer selling to those cruise ships, the crew members, not the tourists, the crew members.
And so I think you know, we were the tourists, I think, who spent the most time ever in Juneau. So it's weird. That's why we were going. I'll talk more about that later, but I will say this. Because uh the like a large portion of the crew of these ships is like Filipino, not Filipino American, like from the Philippines, right?
Uh, they have a decent like amount of Filipino food uh in in Juneau. And uh so Dax searches out and finds like the old favorite that we used to joke about you know, mang's all purpose sauce, which I've talked about on the show before, which is the sauce for a lichone, the roasted pig. And so Dax and I always make a joke of what's it good for? It's all purpose, it's good for everything. So he asked me for a shrimp marinade recipe like two days ago, and I gave him my my typical one.
So normally when I make uh like a shrimp marinade, I use uh like an alternate version of a like a uh uh a tandor, like a tandoor mix, you know, that I would use for chicken, which is like yogurt, lemon, garlic, sugar, salt, uh parsley, uh you know, oil, uh, you know, like you know, olive or whatever, and then you know, herbs of your choice, like cumin or whatever. And so I told him, you know, if you're gonna he was gonna do it a pants I was like omit the yogurt he's like oh dad instead I got a bottle of mang's all purpose sauce and I use that for the for the shrimp marinade and I was like how was it and he said he this is literally what he texts back to me no other answer he goes is marinating shrimp a purpose I was like I was like yeah good point fair fair and uh he said actually like you know kidding aside he said it was delicious so anyway so in between going to Tales of the Cocktail I had to go to Juneau and the only way to get to Juneau reasonably from New Orleans is to make a stop in Seattle and for those of you that don't know Seattle is only like a two hour drive from Vancouver which is the which is the point of embarkation to go to the upper upper left Vancouver Island. So I get in a car I get my take my cousin's car when I land in Seattle immediately drive to the Canadian border at which point they say what are you doing? Let me tell you this if you are going to visit someone in Vanc on Vancouver Island for one day make up a lie. Don't tell them the truth don't tell them it I'm like uh they're like where are you going?
I'm like I'm driving to uh to go to the ferry for Vancouver Island. How long are you there? One day overnight and they're like where are you from New York City? They're like you went from New York City to Vancouver Island for one day I'm like well I I'm I'm visiting you know I'm visiting a friend of mine co-work I work with him he's like you work with him you've met him well not personally I haven't met him in person I'm going to visit him in person and meanwhile like they're like this is a completely unbelievable story. So I get the full, I get the full-on pull over to the side of the road, car disassembled.
Like uh I missed the ferry the the whole thing. So just lie. Be like, hey, I I I'm in Seattle. I was in Seattle for a weeks visiting my cousin. I'm going up to Vancouver to get a sushi dinner and I'm going, I'm going home.
Any lie. Do not tell them that you made a stopover specifically to visit someone on Vancouver Island for for an overnight. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So I finally made it. And then what? You you you take Franklin. Well, yeah, you got there by what, around 9 p.m.
You know the last ferries. It's a nice ferry, by the way. It's a nice ferry. Yeah. It's a good ferry, right?
Two hours long. They have snacks. You can get she lacked on that thing if you wanted to. Like you get on that thing and all of a sudden it becomes a booze cruise. I mean, people are pounding on that thing on the way over on Vancouver Island.
Anyway, go ahead. Uh it actually probably worked out because we had a bunch of food prepped, and we were working on it pretty much until you ended up showing up. So, you know, the late time was uh a blessing in disguise. Yes, yeah. So then uh, you know, well, Quinn posted it, like, you know, what uh what they made over there, like the Dungeoness Crab and all the other things, but then he didn't ask, he didn't invite me to uh to what's it called?
To uh to to you know be with him on the post. So I I didn't get to post on it. Like idiot. Well, I thought you were away, so I was gonna do another post. All right, I only I only um I you know I kept behind a few things.
Yeah. So there's still other stuff to post. All right. All right. So anything anything you want to uh shout out from from that?
Oh, I finally got to taste Quinn's uh gelato. He gave me uh let's see, a Rainier Cherry, which by the way, Joe has some Rainier cherries. Uh and then uh and then one of your chocolates, but like a very dark, dark uh chocolate. You want to tell the story on those or no? I don't know.
Yeah, so yeah, we so the next morning we did tea and gelato and some fruit and stuff. So yeah, we did uh I had a rain or cherry surbe. I thought that turned out pretty good. Yeah, delicious. And then my standard water uh I mean chocolate gelato based on the calculator, water as the base liquid, and then a mixture of a hundred percent uh Peru origin dark chocolate and a maple sugar sort of medium dark chocolate.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Delicious. Yeah. Um, and then uh but before I go on to the other crap, what about Jack, you got anything? Or Quinn, what what else what else do you want to say about the it was fun?
I was super happy to finally go and visit you in person. Uh we did a little we did a little steers all uh sorry, uh spinzall promo, which by the way, we really, you know, you should pre-order the next unit that's gonna come out. It's gonna be when's it gonna hit uh they're gonna ship it when? Like in like a like a couple of weeks. Shipping and yeah, shipping pretty soon in the next few weeks.
And then it's a month on the water. Again, yeah, a month or so, and then yeah, they're shipping and freight transport. But they are again available for pre-order uh at Marners Pantry. Or if you go right to spinzall.com, it will redirect you to the pre-order page. Right.
But if you want to be on like the first batch and get it in a reasonable amount of time, I highly suggest uh pre ordering it rather than waiting for it to like get in, make it in stock and and all of all of that other stuff. Especially, I don't know how many people are listening from uh like Asia or China, but if you pre-order it, you'll get it much faster because we won't hold any in in China unless we get pre-orders. So if we get a pre-orders from China, they will ship directly from China and you'll get them very quickly, but only if you pre-order. Uh would you say that's accurate, Quinn? Uh yep.
Yeah. Uh Jack, what do you got? Been been like a million years since we spoke. What do you got? It's been a million years.
I mean, nothing like that. I'm jealous that you got to go up there. But uh I did go south instead of up north to Ensenada for my girlfriend's birthday. We drove which it still blows my mind that you can be in Tijuana having street tacos in, you know, two hours from Los Angeles if you go by car. Yeah, but then you have you have to go through San Diego though.
I'm just kidding, I'm just messing around. Hardly, to be honest. It's uh yeah, hardly. But uh yeah, no, we we went to Ensenada and Valle Guadalupe. Um and let me tell you, man, the reputation for those fish tacos is uh is pretty real and and pretty but th they're they they lived up to the hype to that.
The place called Tacos El Phoenix Puesto, which um was an eater tip and it was very, very good. Little street side joint if you ever find yourself there. And then generally the the muscles I had in Ensenada were maybe some of the best I've ever had. Yeah. 'Cause up north, maybe we were discouraged from eating anything like that because of paralytic shellfish uh toxin.
So I guess it hasn't made it. Maybe that's only up north. Freed me. I didn't have any uh any muscles up there, but is that really a thing? I didn't do my research because I wasn't having it.
Oh yeah, reserved deer oysters that does go to. Oh, it's they were delicious, and I did not get paralytic shellfish poisoning, so there you have it. But I I don't know where I don't know where it is. Like I saw a bunch of warnings in in Juneau. Anyway, I don't know.
I don't I don't know anything about it. I didn't research it. I shouldn't have mentioned it. Uh how are the uh I hear I haven't been to Tijuana ever, right? Uh like I but I hear the food scene there is like blown up.
How was it? It's fine. I mean, we passed through Tawana pretty quick on this trip. Uh I have yet to find like the incredible, incredible food in Tawana outside of some some good street tacos. Some of them this is prime.
Someone used to write in to our Discord and tell us where where the magic is. Yeah, I haven't found like the real magic, I guess, in Tijuana. Um some incredible food in Valle. I mean, uh in Guadalupe, you know, but they've got like Michelin Star places. It's all a wine tourism there, which is not my favorite vibe, but uh we did have a really good sit down meal.
So what is your lack of what is your anti-vibe on a wine tour? Is it the people? Is it like that you hate seeing vineyard? Oh, okay, okay. So it's not that you hate seeing vineyards.
The people, and then like you go to the vineyard and and uh you don't want to be that guy that's like don't talk to me like I don't know anything about wine. You kind of just go through with the tour that they do, but it's always geared to somebody that you know I don't know. So you feel like you have to go through this whole mishigash that you've heard before just to get a sip of wine. We really you just want a sip of wine, you want a GTFO. Correct.
Yes. I walked in and I said, Do you have a venue? And they're like, Well, no, we do this, you know, a little tiny tour and tasting. And then of course they taste you on stuff that's like, you know, here's our most accessible thing ever that's not, you know, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Right. And you can't be like, here's an extra five, or just give me the stuff. Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Hey, Jack, uh, I'm I'm correct if I'm wrong. When you you ate whale. Yeah. You didn't know what it is. I'm eating whale.
You had well, because I I was thinking like, well, I mean, uh Dave, did you have whale in Alaska? No, no, no, no. Well, first of all, uh so well off. We'll get whale off. We'll get a we'll get into it, but like I think it's like uh one of the super interesting things, like when I talk about it is like um, you know, uh in the area where I was, uh I we spent a day in Anchorage because there was a problem with the airplane, so we ended up going to Anchorage instead of going home.
But um in the Juneau area and in Gustavus, which is where Glacier Bay National U Park is, the vast majority of uh, you know, the the influence there is Klingit, right? Uh that's the you know the group of people. And uh, you know, they have like an amazing like group of foods that uh you know that they've made for forever, you know, but they're not available in stores, so you can't you can't get it, right? So like I can't, and then you know, rightfully so. Like like I can't go get uh a seagull egg omelet.
I spoke to a clingit. Gotta be invited. I guess. Right. I didn't know, but I spoke to a clingit guy in Glacier Bay National Park.
Uh, and you know, I was like, How are the seagull eggs? He's like, Oh, they're delicious. He's like, They're delicious. He he made brownies with them. He made brownies and he made like this fluffy omelet.
So, you know, it's like these like you know, original ingredients, like, you know, you can't go get seal grease at at a market. You know what I mean? You can't um you can't get any of that stuff. And so there's no way, there's no, like that, the cuisine is not intended like to showcase to outsiders. So there's no restaurants, there's no, you know, none of that, none of that culture is meant to be showcased to outsiders.
You know what I mean? So, you know, it's kind of um, you know, fumble, but rightfully so. Right. I mean, it's not for me. It's not for me to have.
You know what I mean? But uh, I still want a seagull egg. You know what I mean? Plus, like they're they're ri they're rancid creatures. The more seal seagull eggs you take, the better, in my opinion, right?
I mean, like, I don't hate a seagull, but like, you know, what do you think's better? An albatross or a seagull egg? Uh come on, albatross. You can't go be killing albatross. I wouldn't say killing them, but you take their eggs, what do you think?
I mean, it could be right, you're right. Yeah, you can't take an albatross egg. You know what else I saw? They have puffins over there, different from the puffins that we have over here, equally dumb looking. Puffins are a dumb looking bird.
You are you've eaten puffin? How is that? I heard puffin was good. Did you like it? I kind of liked it.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they are dumb. When a puffin is flying, they look stupid. Don't make it like why?
Like, why does this bird here? And then like we all love the puffin. People they take trips or they're looking for puffins. Puffins have to nest way high up because they can't take off normally. They fall off the side of a cliff and finally get going before they hit the ground.
Dumb. Dumb. Oh, I'm I it's right. It's too close to my heart. They are very cute.
My son watches the program on Netflix, something about some puffins, and it's hilarious. It's very cute. It's cute. They got two different things. They look uh there's multiple.
Yeah, of course. Yeah. Well, they uh well in Alaska, they have two different kinds of puffin, right? Whereas in the Atlantic, I think we only have the one. I don't know.
I've only seen the one in the Atlantic. They are cute. I'm not saying death to puffins, the way I'm saying like death to geese. You know what I mean? Geese can go hang.
You know what I mean? By their long, long necks, as far as I'm concerned. They're rancid. Hate them. You know what I mean?
They're mean. I know that's not a popular opinion with many, but they're mean. Um, how do we get on that? Oh, I don't know. I don't know.
Anyway. Um, yeah, Dorvast of a whale. Oh, yeah. Just trying to bring it back on Jack, like uh slam him again for the whale. Yeah.
Had whale tacos down down south. But uh I stand behind my whale eating. By the way, there are in like there are a zillion whales. So like it like, you know, I've only looked at whales uh in the east, like uh the humpback whales you know, off of Cape Cod. But we took a whale thing, we did a whale thing in Juneau, and then I took a boat ride up in Glacier Bay, and it's just whale of Palooza up there.
Compare it, like we would see like seven, eight at a time. You know what I mean? In like from the boat. Uh and you know where you know where those guys hang out? You know where all of those whales are uh are are mating?
Hawaii. So like they're just doing round trip between two beautiful places like Alaska in the summer and freaking Hawaii in the uh in in the winter. Um, but if you want to go see him breach and do all that, you're better off going to see him in Hawaii. Well, there was a huge whale that did the ginormous jump during the Olympics in the surfing competition in Tahiti. Oh, yeah?
Oh my god, it was j was it was just the best thing. I think it was a woman just being barreled in Tahiti and this huge whale in the distance jumping. It was awesome. And it was uh and the whale was like, I win. I win.
I got the bigger wave. Yeah, you're you're a loser, I win. Uh hey, here's an interesting fact. When a whale breaches, when a humpback whale breaches, and I'm sure all whales, uh, when they breach uh and they hit the water again, skin cells slough off. And one one it's no one knows exactly why they breach other than just for show, but some people say it's to get rid of you know stuff on their skin.
But skin skill cells slough off. So the uh the whale scientists who work out of Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, they uh drive the boat over to where the whale is just breached, and they take a net and they scoop the net through the through the water and they do DNA testing on it, and so they can do relational DNA tests between different whales because they they've been tracking the whale population in um Glacier Bay National Park for 40 years. And the scientists who I saw give a talk there, she's been doing it for like 37. And the person other was like like 20, 28 years they've been tracking it. So they know the family histories, because all whales, the fluke patterns on their whales on the fins, uh on the tail fins are unique, like fingerprints.
And they now have an AI database. So if you snap a picture of a whale, you can go on happy whale.com and it'll tell you what the whale is, like who the whale is, where it's been spotted, uh, like how many children they know it has, if it's a female, it's crazy. It's crazy what they you know. Uh anyway, um and the whale population is rebounding. It rebounded a lot, obviously, after they stopped whaling, but there was a Pacific heat wave um a number of years ago that you know completely nuked the uh whale population, but it's coming back.
Anyway, I did not eat any of those whales, thankfully. Uh but I'll tell you what, you know what, you know what? The time is in Alaska right now, and I didn't eat a lot of this, but the salmon runs come in, and I I've heard of salmon runs, right? Have you have any of you guys ever seen a real salmon run? No.
Holy person. Holy God. Oh, by the way, I don't forget the URL, but there is a there's a bear cam in Alaska, one of the famous waterfalls uh like south of uh Anchorage and one of the national parks south of Anchorage. The NPS has a uh a 24-7 camera on one of the famous falls that salmon go up and jump out of where the bears are sitting, you know, the same, there's a 24-7 webcam. You can just go watch it any time of day.
You're like, you know what? Let me see a bear like take down a salmon. You can go and look at it during the season. But all the different species of salmon, uh, you know, how many? You got your Chinooks, your aka King, your Kohos, your chum, um, and you know, a couple others, I'm not remembering.
They all have their own seasons when they go up and they have to go up this, they go go from salt water in, and they go upstream, spawn, and then they die. And uh apparently they taste delicious up until they hit fresh water, in which case they turn to garbage. I saw a couple of sock eyes, but the beach I went to called Eagle Beach outside of Juno. So you have to get in a car, no tourists there. When I was there, there was one other person there besides Jen and myself.
And uh we go out on the beach. I'm like, Eagle Beach, how many eagles? We have eagles, how many eagles can it be? Dozens of eagles chilling side by side with ravens, and they are so full from salmon that they they're not even eating them anymore. Like every once in a while, a raven just walks over and just picks the eye out of a dead salmon because it's like, hey, I'm a little hungry, I'm a little peckish, get a snack.
But like the beach littered, first of all, the beach littered, littered with uh dead salmon, littered, like like like like litter, big, big, big fish. And then when you go it in, what happens is it's low tide, there's a huge tide there, huge, like tw like in that location where I was something like 20 feet. And it can get it's the second highest, they have the second highest tides in this area of any place in the in the uh in the US, like you know, Bay of Fundy is a little higher. So in low tide, when tide is coming down, fish get kind of trapped. They can't go back out and they can't go upstream, and like so like zillions of them die every day doing this.
So, you know, I have videos that are blow your mind. Like it's just the water when you look at it is moving and it's just full of salmon, like trying to get some air and like flopping around, never seen anything like in my life. And those were still good to eat. I didn't have a permit, and I also wasn't gonna light a fire, but you could have just boom pulled one out and gone to town. Crazy, crazy stuff.
And like done like eagle, eagle, eagle, raven, raven, raven, nuts. But what I did eat, and I had some of it. I have like, you know, that they even kind of do fish sticks with salmon over there. I've never had fried, I've never had breaded fried salmon before. I'm not gonna say it's my favorite fish to bread and fry.
But they also have halibut. So the clingit, so halibut's a rather large flat fish, and the clingit uh developed over the centuries of really super ingenious halibut hook. And they still, you know, use it to this day. You know, a number and you know, a number of people still fish traditionally. And what's cool about this halibut hook, the original one is made with two different kinds of wood of two different densities that are uh whipped together with spruce roots that they soak in a special way such that they shrink and form an amazing bond uh to these two pieces of wood, so they're never gonna come apart again.
But that bond doesn't loosen when it goes back into salt water. So it's just like special technique that's been, you know, like handed down that w uses spruce roots to make this incredible, uh, incredible thing. And then the hook, which comes down and they float the whole thing off the ground. But the ingenious thing about this halibut hook is that it's designed, they put bait on it. So they slip a fish over the top.
They slip a smaller bait fish over the top of the hook. So it looks like a fish with a barb coming out of it that's floating like it's swimming in the ocean, right? And it's imagine like a Y shape almost. And the halibut, when it comes up to it, if the halibut is small, too small to take, the halibut can't get around the big hook. So it's not caught.
If the halibut is giant, which means that it's probably a female that you know can lay a bunch of eggs, right? It can spit the hook out. It takes the whole thing in its mouth, but what won't get the barb in its mouth. Only the halibuts that are the right size to catch without hosing the population, get hooked on the f on the hook. So everyone should go check out Klingit Halibut hooks because it's it's really cool.
It's cool. You know what I mean? It's a cool technology. Um anyway. Uh the other thing is I've never been in a coastal rainforest before.
And coastal rainforests, like, you know, Pacific Northwest coastal rainforest, I like it a lot. Picture Dagobah. Like, like it's these like like conifers with like giant amounts of moss hanging down. And you know, Quinn, you you live basically in in one of these, like, you know, right around. Yeah, yeah.
I'm I'm in the forest, right? I love, I mean, like, I don't know, it's high up there. Like, in terms of like stuff that's cool, it's high up there. It rains constantly. I like rain because you know what I hate the sun.
I hate the sun. So I I liked it. But uh, one of the things I did, if you go in the right time of year, which is right now, it is a berry paradise in the Alaskan uh temperate rainforest down by Juneau and even somewhat up in up in Anchorage. So they have like over 50 different kinds of berries there. And so I didn't get to taste, uh I didn't find on my on my hikes uh, you know, lingonberry, which they have growing there uh wild, uh bear berry, which uh I don't think it's out there now, uh, you know, bunch berries, cloud berries.
I had some cranberries, they weren't ripe yet. I didn't try. Apparently they have a very good current game. And I know uh Quinn's got a good current game. Uh, and they, you know, gooseberries.
They have something called a watermelon berry, I wish I had tried. But I'm gonna give you the power ranking of the berries that I did try. So uh I had the best berry of my life while I was there. Uh, and it's not commercially available at all. It's uh now that a number of different species are called thimbleberry, but the thimbleberry up there is rubis parvifloris.
And what's interesting about it is that it goes from being completely tasteless and like hard as a rock within a couple of days, because I hiked on this trail once, and then a week later I hiked on again. And the first day I hiked on it, they were useless, useless. And the next day, I the next time I hiked on it several days later, some of them had turned red. You want to wait for them to be fully ripe. When you pull them off, the reason they're called thimbleberries is like the hull stays on and the hull is huge.
So it looks like almost like a shower cap or mini shower cap or a thimble that you could put over your finger. But it's incredibly delicate. So like your hands get stained, you couldn't possibly sell them in a market. But the taste of this berry, it's not the best textured berry, but the best, the taste of this berry is like both fresh and cooked berry at the same time, like a cooked berry pie, super rich flavor with a lot of acid, but also that fresh berry hit. So that's that that one took it all because I'd never had a berry quite like that.
Then uh in Gustavus, where I went, I could tell if I have time, I'll talk a little more about Gustavus because it's a town of 650 people, which and I've never been hang out hung out in a town of 650 people that had no car access to it at all. You have to take a boat or a plane there as well. Um, but uh they it used to be called Strawberry Point, this area I was at, and the wild strawberries there, first of all, wild strawberries on our coast, especially like near beaches, like they taste fine, but they're like leathery and they are microscopic. They are tiny, a pain in the butt, and they're fine, right? Yule Gibbons waxed poetic about them.
But the wild strawberries uh in that area are ridiculous. First of all, they are they're not commercial strawberry size by any means, but they are much larger than the wild strawberries that we get, like much larger. Like their size is the size of the smallest ones that you get in a commercial pack here, right? And the taste will destroy you. So I've had the best strawberries I had previously had in my life were the um Mara Dubois uh strawberries from Harry's Berries in Los Angeles, which you can order and they're fantastically expensive and delicious because they have they just have this like flavor that you you can't describe it.
They're floral and delicious, and they have a high acidity and sugar. These have that flavor, and they're growing wild. You can just pick them, it's nuts. And even when they're not fully ripe, when they still have some white on them, they're uh still delicious. So next down in the berry power ranking that I had, the trailing raspberry, which also a lot of people call it the same thing, but this is uh Rubus uh Pedatus.
And what's weird about them is is that instead of looking like a regular raspberry, sometimes it has one, two, three, four. The max I saw was five little druplets. So they look like a raspberry that like all the other parts of it fell off of. But man, a good high-acid, sweet, uh delicious berry. Below that is a lot of people's favorite, the Nagoon berry, which is like a raspberry, also uh hull as and delicious, but you know, everyone, everyone's like, it's my favorite berry.
It's probably the favorite berry of these that you could actually harvest and make a jelly out of, because the rest of them you couldn't possibly uh do that to. Below that, the local blueberries, the vaccinium uh delicious, then uh salmon berry, which were also good, which are nice because they have some yellows. It's nice to get a yellow berry with actually some flavor and reds, but you gotta wait for them to get real dark. The ones that are going to turn dark, wait for them to get real dark for it and be delicious. And last but certainly not least, the black huckleberry.
So, like it was a berry extravaganza. I highly recommend you could go just for the berries to this area, just for the berries. Love berries. Uh, all right. Um, am I missing anything, Quinn?
I didn't talk about the fact that I opened a bar yet, huh? Uh, you know what's really stupid to open a bar when you're not there. Everyone's like, why aren't you here? What are you doing in Alaska? I'm like, hey, we would have lost our whole staff.
If we had waited for me to get back, right, after the construction was finally done, because it took forever to get the construction done, we did friends and family, and the day after friends and family, I got an airplane and got out. And then they opened uh while I was gone, which there was tails also. Yeah, but I mean I had been scheduled to go for tails for a whole year, right? So, like, you know, we knew it. So we were supposed to open the bar way before that, but we couldn't because of construction problems, right?
And then when we, you know, but we couldn't postpone it until I got back from these planned trips because if we postponed it, the staff had already given notice where they were before. And, you know, if you can't have people not have jobs for a long time, you know, it's not how that works. So we, you know, basically had to open. Uh so the bar is going, uh, I think well, we got 24 uh drinks. And if people look up the drinks we have, they can ask questions on it later, but you know, obviously too much to go into now.
At Tales of the Cocktail, I'll report that the uh State of the Cocktail Union is strong. Did a uh presentation uh with uh uh about frozen frozen drinks. Let me uh let me ask you a question on blender drinks. Let's just do a little test here, right? So blender drinks, as you know, I'm sure you're aware, uh, are vastly faster at chilling uh blenders or fastly faster at chilling a drink down with ice than shaking uh and much, much faster than stirring, more efficient.
So they reach what's you know called fundamentally equilibrium temperature, right? So if you you blend, it very quickly reaches the temperature it's going to be. And then if you keep the blender going, all you're doing is adding energy from the blades and melting more and heating it up. But you're not, and the temperature goes way below zero, much, much further uh, you know, much colder than with shaking, which also goes below zero. Stirring can go below zero, but very rarely does.
So here's my here's my question for you. So if you add, right? If you add more the same mix goes into a blender and you add more ice, you have one where you add, you know, let's say twice the amount of uh, you know, 1.4 to two point to two times the amount of ice as mix in one blender. And then right next to it, the same amount of mix with three times the ice as yeah as mix. Okay, you'll probably get this one right.
Which one's gonna be, which one's going to be more diluted? And what I mean diluted is is that a portion of the ice will melt, and that portion that's melted dilutes down the cocktail, right? And so then you have a mixture of diluted cocktail and ice. So which one do you think is going to be more diluted? In theory, I mean it depends on how what's what's the ratio of mix to ice.
I tell you, two, like let's say 1.4 to 2, and then the other one's three. 1.4 to 2 and 3. Yeah, which one's going to be which one's gonna be more diluted. More ice gets cold faster, it's gonna be less diluted, in theory. No, the one that is the one with more ice is more diluted.
But here's another thing. Which one is going to be colder? Is it a sense of being colder or l or staying colder longer? Well, there's there's that. We could talk about that later, but no, like literally the temperature it reaches in the blender before you pour it.
Which one's colder? More ice, no? More ice. More no. Oh.
Less ice, less ice. So here's what's weird about it. Uh, and it there's my explanation. There's a couple of things that, but I think the main key point here is that because the pieces of ice are so small, they equilibrate their temperature very, very quickly, very quickly. Uh and so what happens is is that as the ice goes below zero, any amount that you chill below zero also requires you to chill the mass of ice down, right?
So you're chilling not just your cocktail, you're also chilling the ice. And to chill the ice below zero, you need to melt more ice. So it's more diluted. That's why it's more diluted, right? But also, that's why it's not as cold, because it takes more uh and then because it's more diluted as it chills down, it can't chill any lower because it reaches its equilibrium temperature.
Its equilibrium temperature is um higher, right? Let you know, less cold than the one that's uh uh you know, the with less ice. So it's an interesting, interesting phenomena. So there is an optimal amount of ice to add to the blender, and if you add too much, your drink will not only be more diluted, uh as it's poured. I'm not talking about when it melts, I'm saying as poured, but will also not be as cold and therefore not last as long.
Anyway, uh weird facts. Weird facts. Um, all right. From I miss anything for you guys, are we good? Covered and smothered.
I think we're good. Oh, yeah, baby. Covered and smothered. Uh from Thomas Matthews. Is it possible to uh hydrate hydrocolloids such as gel and or agar in uh by the way, do you guys say agar or agar agar?
I think once is fine. Anything once is fine? Yeah. Yeah. Like if you if you say agar once, is anyone going to not understand what you said?
Besides Thomas Matthews. Yeah. I don't get that reference. Well, that's the person who asked the question. Yeah, but like the um like uh I don't know, like there's something kind of cool about two words together that don't need to be said twice.
Like period. Agar agar, peripiri, uh, pom pom. Peri period. I forgot about that one. Yeah, yeah.
So uh, but I I get you, I get you. Cause uh agar agar is like it sounds like uh like pizza pizza, you know what I mean? Like uh like little Caesar's pizza. You know? Um your email grammar would be like what?
Yeah, repeating two words? Yeah. It's not as it's not smart enough yet to like know hydrocolloids, right? It's kind of like uh the New York Times uh word puzzles where like they don't accept things like hydrocol, they don't accept the hydrocolloids. I'm like it's a real word, dingus.
Anyway, um so is it possible to hydrate hydrocolloids such as gel an or agar agar in a vacuum where the traditional hydration temperature would be lowered, or is this not possible because the heat transfer limitations in a vacuum? Um I want to hydrate hydrocolloids without destroying volatile aromatic compounds by using a powerful vacuum chamber or rotovap uh just fuzzy on the sides. I don't think changing the pressure is actually gonna change the solubility. Uh I don't I've never read anything or known uh a vacuum to change the solubility of a hydrocolloid. So I don't not sure what you're discussing.
Vacuum is useful for impregnating liquids into particles, right? Uh but and it's vacuum is also very useful for reducing air bubbles when you are uh hydrating hydrocolloids that have a tendency to foam, right? So vacuum blenders can be very nice for hydrating uh hydrocolloids without um so this is like what we used to do when we were making like you know, I mean, those rancid uh alginate beads, like that you always have to whip a lot of air into them. So if you can whip it, if you can if you can blend under vacuum, then you don't whip nearly as much air into it, so you don't have to wait as long, and it sucks sucking a vacuum on those things afterwards because it foams up, you know, methyl cell, a bunch of things like that. Um, but I don't know of any, I don't know of any effect of vacuum on the actual solubility.
So you I don't think that you're uh in fact, you can't hydrate certain hydrocolloids when you go up a mountain. So like if you live in aspen, right, it's hard to hydrate agar agar because everything boils at a lower temperature. So it becomes difficult to even get the stuff to hydrate, and that's the equivalent of a partial vacuum. So I don't know, I don't I don't I don't think it's gonna do what you want to do. Uh, what do you what do you think, Quinn?
Am I good on this? Yeah, I mean, I think what you gotta do is just figure out some other portion of your overall recipe that you can bring to the high temperature, bring it, chill it, and then add your delicate ingredients. Right. I mean, the issue with gel-an specifically that um it sets so agar, like, you know, as long as you as long as the average of the temperatures that you're mixing doesn't go below about 30 Celsius, the agar is not gonna pre-gelate and you'll be fine. So that's what I do it with lime juice, right?
So you take that you you boil fundamentally water with with agar, and then you take uh, you know, your other stuff at around room temperature or a little higher. If you take if you can take it to 30, then it's never going to, then you can just wait for the other stuff to cool. If you take the other stuff up to like 30, 32, you can wait for the the stuff you boiled to even cool a little bit and then whisk the stuff in, make sure it never drops below the setting temperature because it sets relatively quickly, then ice bath it and set it. Um with gel-an, depending on what you're doing, you can um you can sequester the gel-an such that uh you hydrate it in water and it won't set when it chills. And then you can mix in your product and then cause it to set.
But it's a little hinky. I don't know how you'd get it to set perfectly, but I think you know, Wiley could do it. Wiley could do that. Uh, because you know, he's a gel-an master, but um, yeah. Or you just pick different hydrocoloids.
Yeah, but I mean, like, it maybe depends. Like, you know, obviously, like I'm sure Thomas wants to go, sounds like he wants to go vegetarian because obviously gelatin works for this. You know, gelatin can be hydrated uh relatively low temperature and added, but um there are also room temperature agars that don't work well for things like freeze thaw, but I think can make a stable agar. Yeah. Uh caller.
We have a caller, a caller, you're on the air. Hey, what's up, gang? Josh from Norfolk. Hey, what's up? Um, I've got a fun problem.
Uh I have too many rainier cherries. That's a not uh there's no such problem. First of all, all right, fine, fine. Fine. By the way, for those of you who don't know, I mean it's we're talking to the the man with a spinzall tattoo, so yeah.
Uh and also, have you how much work have you done with uh with uh any different you did a presentation on uh alternative milks at at Kampari, right? For for for break breaking. Do any of them break as clear as milk? Milk milk? I mean, soy I bet would break as clear as milk, but do the other ones break as clear as milk?
Soy is great. Pretty high protein nut milks do well. Um I find that like what I kind of talked about in the class was making sure that you're maximalizing either acid or tannin. And I find that you can get anything to do to like be pretty clear as long as you're like pumping in enough stuff to make it break. Yeah.
Like coffee, for instance. We all know coffee breaks things like a mother. Yeah. Coffee's great. Like, I mean, tea works.
Um, I would say like second to milk milk. Um, coconut milk actually did really well for me. Yeah, but doesn't coconut milk always stay a little bit cloudy? Um not. All right.
Uh maybe a little bit. It was pretty good. And uh tastes better than coconut, not better. Tastes more coconut than coconut water. I've never loved coconut water.
I know that that's just me and that the whole world, Rihanna freaking loves it. Uh everyone loves it. I agree. Yeah. Um I mean, have you ever had it out of a fresh coconut?
Yeah. I did a drink with it once at Booker and Dax. We got the little mini Thai ones, and then we served it in the coconut it came out of, and then everyone was like, Dave, you're an idiot. What are we gonna buy a zillion of these damn coconuts? We can't reuse them.
Go go back home. I'll look fine. So we did it for like two days. But yeah, it's good. Yeah, it's not, it's just not, it's just not my flavor.
I think it's like it's just not my flavor. So I have had coconut waters that people are like, uh, this is great. I'm like, it's like cold brew coffee. I don't love it. You know what I mean?
So I'm not saying that it's not good. It's just not what I love. You know what I mean? I don't hate it. You know what I mean?
I don't love it. Anyway, uh so what was your uh what was your what was your question? I forgot. I I sidetracked you. My bad.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm uh I'm abundant in reindeer cherries right now. And uh I'd like to use some of them to uh play around with some cocktail cherries, but I'm looking for some advice on how to best do that, but kind of like maintain their uh rainierness. Yeah. So once a long time ago, long, long time ago, I uh I did I had access to novozymes, pectin methylesterase, and I was able to like really firm up cherries, really firm them up.
But there are native uh pectin methylesterases, which are the you know exact opposite of pectinases that are in cherries. Uh online there might be some there might be some stuff on how to um use those native ones with calcium. So you would have to add fundamentally you would make a brine with uh, you know, sugar alcohol and some form of calcium. Uh you know, sour cherries are kind of a pain in the butt because they turn to mush so easily. Raineers have a little I have some in front of me that Joe brought.
Very nice. Uh they're, you know, they're a little more hardy and they don't you know how like sour cherries turn that disgusting color when you when you break them? That gross, gross color. Uh rainers, I don't think are as bad with that, but um I would probably use some form of antioxidant like vitamin C and some form of calcium, probably calcium uh uh chloride, even though it's gross, it's very available. So and then vacuum impregnate that into the cherries and you might have uh some luck.
But I have not personally done it without the enzyme, so I so I don't know. Um yeah. And then when you're doing most of those things, you know, you want to if you're gonna osmotically mess with the cherry, which is what you're gonna do, you're gonna osmotically mess with it, like infuse it with sugar and alcohol over time. Everyone does it in stages, right? So I would do cal I would do like an initial calcium infusion with probably some sugar and maybe some booze, and then kind of replace it as you go, keep the calcium in it so that it doesn't leach out.
Uh, but then you can constantly reduce the level of you need minute amount of calcium to at the end to keep it good, right? So think about like when you eat canned tomatoes, the vast majority of canned tomatoes have been jacked with calcium uh chloride. You can't taste the bitterness of the calcium chloride because it only requires a little bit of residual calcium, not like a boat ton, like the amount that you would use to set algorithm. Uh, but I wish maybe someone on the Discord, you know, like Kevin or someone um, you know, uh has uh a good what's it called, um, protocol. But uh that's where I would start looking.
All right, awesome. And uh do you think I can speed this all up uh by using a chamber back? Yeah. As long as you don't break, as long as you don't burst them, you know what I mean? I mean, the issues with cherries is is that um, you know, I don't know how permeable the skin of the cherry is.
It doesn't, I'm holding one in my hand, it doesn't feel very permeable, right? So uh I mean that's I figured I would pit them. Oh, well, then it's no problem. It'll infuse like a mother. But if you pit them, then you can't put them into a drink and have people pick up the stems and tie them with their mouths and do all that other, you know, fun stuff.
You know what I mean? Yeah, fair. Yeah. So I don't know whether people like poke a hole in the bottom of them or what when they're doing when they're doing this, because like I gotta say, the skin of a cherry is feels pretty relatively impermeable. It's got like a good waxy coating on it.
So uh uh someone who's actually done this a lot before, because when I was making them hard, I did like you say, I pitted them. But like yeah, on the other hand, Toby Chicchini. If anyone, you know, uh has his uh saw him at Tales of the Cocktail, but I didn't think to ask him. You know, he's been making uh brandied cherries for you know decades, but with sours. But I'm assuming that you know the technology of preserving a sour cherry and uh sweet cherry probably isn't too different, it's just the taste result that's different.
I would guess. Yeah, so you could also just look up like what people do traditionally to preserve them and then just you know use your technical mind to make it slightly better, you know what I mean? Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. Too many reindeer cherries.
Why don't you just sit and eat them? I I have sat and eaten many on many, but the problem is uh blackberries are also really good right now, and uh that's a that's an easier thing to shovel into my face. Quinn had some very good uh well, just hire someone to pit the cherries for you and you can shovel infinity in your face. But you know what I have to say? The act of spitting out uh a cherry seed when you're like outside and just going th boom is like you know, like none other.
It's a good feeling. Poop. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean I'm in coastal Virginia, nobody wants to do anything outside right now. Uh, fair, fair.
Uh disgusting. Uh Quinn also made some delicious gelato out of it, which you could then use as uh you can do uh you know, some sort of like uh afogado situation or something, you know what I mean? Yeah, that'd be good. Yeah. You have a refractometer.
Of course he has a refractometer. Yeah, what are you talking about? Of course he has a refractometer. Okay, it's not an amateur. I mean, if you want he's not an amateur, the man's professional.
If you're if you want to start base back, let me know. Go up go on the Patreon and and uh and and look it up. Anyway. I don't post it. Yeah.
All right. All right. Let us know what you do with it. Let us know. If if you come up with a good protocol, uh give us a holler back and let us know.
Cool, yeah. I'll play around. Thanks a lot. I go. I'll talk to you soon.
I bet. No tangent Tuesdays on cooking issues. All tangents. All tangents, all all tangents all the time. Uh they had a radio station in Juneau, K T O O.
I was imagining like, you know, K2, K T O O Bringing it to Juno. I was like, man, I love a job on that radio station. You know what I mean? I could have done that for a living back in the day. I could have done that.
Oh yeah. Oh man, you'd be good. Yeah, like, you know, announcing the monster trucks and like, you know, you know, whatever, you know, whatever. The current salmon run. Sock eyes coming in to Mendon Hall Glacier.
You're right. The weather. Yeah, the weather, whatever. It's still rainy. For the farms.
Yeah. Well, I don't know what they grow. They have farms. I guess they have farms. I don't know.
Uh, by the way, in Juneau, they also uh saying like the the Klingit have like a huge number of herbs uh and things that are are foraged and cultivated and grown that are unavailable. One of them is available. I didn't buy it there because it was too expensive. But uh it's also grown in Siberia, and it's uh fireweed tea. And so uh Quinn, you're gonna get some too, right?
Because they grow it locally on your island. So fireweed. I gotta I gotta talk to my uh forger buddy. Yeah, so they they this it it grows everywhere. It's these beautiful kind of purple flowers that you see, and you can use the flowers to add color and they make jams out of it.
But they the tea the leaves itself don't have a lot of flavor when they're on the thing. I know because I was chewing on them, hoping I would get some good flavor out of them. But they're made into a tea almost like tea is made into a tea. So you roll the leaves and uh, you know, crush them and then ferment them for, you know, different amounts of time depending on the effect you want to get, and then dry them out and make a tea. So I have some being uh shipped to me, so I'm super, super excited about that.
They have like we like they have a lot of interesting products uh in Alaska. I'm gonna try to get uh some shipped uh to tell you guys uh more about them. Um Kirk Gibson writes in, I live in a cocktail bar desert, Provo, Utah. But uh I love experimenting with new flavors and drink ideas, so I decided to turn my basement into a little bar where I can experiment and share with friends and family. For the last 10 years, I've been amassing a collection of spirits and liqueurs to fuel this bartending hobby, and historically we'd host a party about two to three times a month.
However, since welcoming our first child 18 months ago, we stopped hosting nearly as frequently. Yeah. I mean, that's what happens. Anyway, um, so the question is what to do with all of these liquors. Well, I'm not super concerned about the shelf stability of the higherproof spirits.
Um, and I know our refrigerator vermouth or other wine-based bottles need to be finished within a few months of opening. I'm wondering if I need to start giving away other bottles as well. We have a lot of Amari slash liqueurs sitting on shelf that probably aren't going to be used for the next three to four years. Uh I've heard that with, well, wait, wait, when you've had the kid even longer, you're no, I'm kidding, I'm just messing with you. Uh I've heard that with bottles uh over 17% ABV, I don't need to worry about food safety.
But are there any uh Amario liqueurs that will keep their flavor potency until uh our kiddo is old enough to make his own breakfast and let us sleep late at night? Or are they all destined to be gifted out gifted out? Um, so here's the thing. Uh some there are liqueurs that are more stable than others, but the vast majority of them are gonna be quote unquote okay, right? So they might change over time.
If you're really worried about it, Theo Uya, who's the head bartender at Contra Bar Contra in New York, our new bar where you should go on 138 Orchard Street, uh right now, Tuesday through uh Tuesday through Saturday, you should go from five to midnight. Um, he came up with a new technique and it's worth doing just once if you really want to seal up a bunch of bottles. So go to a welding supply with a thermos. And uh I'm assuming in Provo, Utah, there's not too many people doing this. If you live in New York, they won't do it for you, but a lot of other places will.
Pay them to fill up a thermos with uh a Stanley insulated or Yeti, whatever, double insulated stainless thermos. Do not put a lid on it. Do not put a lid on it. Uh, you know, have your car windows open and and whatnot. Do not transport liquid nitrogen in a closed environment.
You know, hope maybe you have a pickup truck, which is even better. And uh just get a couple of liters of liquid nitrogen, then take your bottles, open the bottle, pour a little liquid nitrogen in and rest the cap or cork on top. Do not cork it. It will spray nitrogen out of the top of the bottle. This is what I used to do when I bottled cocktails, and my vermouth-based cocktails stayed perfect and intact, unrefrigerated.
The longest I ever had one was five years, right? And it was perfect. So, but Theo just started doing it with all of our uh low ABV liqueurs and vermouths so that we wouldn't have to refrigerate them all, right? So you put that in, and then as soon as it stops actively making uh nitrogen, phew, cap it or smack the cork down on top of it. There's now no oxygen in that bottle, and you can have a half-open bottle that's gonna be as good as the day you opened it until you are ready to have as much as you want.
So that's what I would recommend doing. And you know, like I say, it's a small investment up front, but you know, you only need to do it once. Uh, you know, for the ones that you're gonna put away, and then you know, don't open them all until you're ready. You know, put a little tape around them saying that they've been purged so that you can tell which ones you purged and which one you haven't. Uh what do you think?
Good suggestion? Good. Yeah. Read my liquid nitrogen uh safety primer on cooking issues um just to double check all of the safety hoo-ha. Uh, but that's what I recommend.
Uh I thought I answered this one, but I'll do it again because it's very fast. Uh um Cluntasaur says, Does the rice polisher that you mentioned uh on the show require a voltage transformer? And we're talking about uh I I bought a rice polishing, a Japanese rice polisher, uh, and I use it to actually take the outer layer of the very outer layer of brand with the brand hairs, which are you know part of the thing that it's a very, very outer layer has the largest impact on low volume for uh mostly whole wheat or high extraction flour. Uh so I use it to do that so I don't have to sift my flour after I grind it. Uh it does not require a voltage transformer uh because um the only difference between uh Japanese power and American power is the it's not the voltage, I mean it's a couple of volts different, but not enough, is the Hertz, right?
So they're at 50 hertz, 50 cycles per second, and we're at 60. And I can tell you from experience running, it's fine. It's fine running. It it it it's I think it even says it's designed to run 50-60. So you're you're good to go.
You don't need to worry about it. You do need to worry about reading the manual because it's not in English. So Google, if you don't speak Japanese, Google or read Japanese rather, uh, Google Translate is your friend as it is mine. And I put little stickers on the on my actual unit so that I don't have to keep looking at the manual to remember what the buttons mean because you know it's you know Greek to me. Uh from DJ R N D.
Uh hi, Dave and Croove. Uh fish fragrant eggplant is one of my favorite dishes. If you haven't made it before, if you should done last recipe in the food of Sichuan is a great starting point. The eggplant is basically cut, salted, drain, and then naked, that's important to say naked, deep fried, and then tossed into a sauce. It ends up amazingly creamy.
I was uh recently listening to uh Dave Chang's recipe club podcast about eggplant, and he discusses a version of fish fragrant eggplant made by a restaurant in Melbourne called Dainty Sichuan. The key difference is they make it with some sort of super crisp, uh slightly sweet batter that provides a great contract to the molten creamy interior. Uh uh Chang thought it might have been isomalt, but uh it sounds like that wasn't it. Do you have any idea what they may be doing thanks in advance? I don't.
Uh I didn't get a chance to go read the recipe club, but there are a bunch of people who, when they do this, um, will fry the eggplant in uh like we'll starch coat it. So like I would just I would work on making the crispiest freaking starch-based coating that you can, one that can tolerate some waterlog uh situations. But if anyone in the Discord has like a recipe that they use for that stays hyper crisp, even when you're using a notoriously soggy vegetable like uh eggplant, you know, uh let me know. And I I can think about it. I'm sure someone out there on in our crew has done it and is gonna give you the hypercrisp.
I don't remember what the, and I can't find the old recipes, what the batter was that we used on our pickle fries back at existing conditions. I gotta find that recipe because those things stayed crisp as hell. And I bet you uh the same recipe would work here. Lord Nabu writes in uh my mother has bought a slush ice machine, and for the inevitable day when she gets bored with it and I grab it. Has anyone have some decent figures for sugar acid xanthan for decent results, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic?
Uh yeah, I don't have any non-alcoholic ones that I love, uh, but they generally start at 12 uh bricks and go up. I would stay below one sixteenth of one percent of Xanthan. I can get you the exact figures for next week's show. Quinn, keep it on there. Because as it freezes, the Xanthan, uh the Xanthan becomes more and more concentrated.
And so something that doesn't taste too Xanthany when it's not frozen, it's gonna taste too Xanthany when it is frozen. If it's not meant to do alcohol, it probably is if it's a consumer-grade machine, it doesn't freeze based on texture the way a professional does. It freezes based on temperature. And so you may have to modify it. And I think I did a post on that.
Uh, I forget whether I put that on Instagram or whether I put it on Patreon or what, but uh get in touch. Uh Brandon Bird, uh, do you have an instant frozen dessert base or recipe? It'd be nice to be able to produce ice cream gelato or survey on demand with minimal prep work. I have access to dry us in LN. Don't use dry us, use an LN.
So I'm minutes away from frozen deliciousness, but making the base can be a pain, especially with custard and dairy-based ingredients. I am hoping there is a uh Q Dragon secret. Well, you're gonna have to go to the Patreon and check out Q Dragon's uh secret. Uh Justin Cheryl, I'll give you the Shag Bark recipe uh next week's show. Uh also Alexander asks about black garlic and talks about ferment actual fermentation, which you know, everyone says it's not, but gives me to uh sent me to a paper.
I don't have enough time to research exactly what that paper is, but um my guess is that even if bacteria can survive making black garlic, they are not the reason black garlic tastes what it uh the way it does, and the paper you pointed to doesn't really say that it does, it just talks about microbial colonies on the black garlic, not any flavor contribution they might make. Uh Johnny from uh Johnny Midwest wants to buy a smoker. So peace people write in your recommendations for smokers. I only have like minimal smoker, uh outdoor smoker information because I've only had to use the restaurant ones, Big Chief and Little Chief, which you know, I don't know that that's what you want. So please send us your smoker recommendations and we'll talk about them for Johnny Midwest on next week's show, Cooking Issues.
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