Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Hunter with your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City New Stam Studios, joined as usual with John Acrossman. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. Yeah?
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels.
What's up? Hey, how are you doing? Welcome back, everyone. Sorry for last week. Yeah, I know.
We were gonna do an LA version with uh we're gonna have Mike Capafari again from Night on Earth to discuss there are uh freaking uh what's it called? Uh the uh Booker and Dax one night pop-up, Booker Dax Contra one night pop-up. Uh but whatever, whatever. Uh we do not yet have Nastasia the Hammer Lopez or Lopez or uh Quinn, but I think they're gonna call in later. But we do, thankfully, thankfully, on the West Coast, have our boy Jackie Molecules.
How you doing? I'm great. Yeah. Feeling good. You sounding the party.
I've been eating nothing but eggs all week. Ah, we listened to it. Eggs every day. Money bags, Jack in my life too, man. Man.
Man, Dan's just Jack Jack's like, you know what? I've never ate an egg in my life, but now that they're ridiculously expensive, only eggs. Only eggs. You're that person like you're that person in like, you know, 1890 throwing lobsters back into the ocean. What is this bug?
What is this trash? This mud bug. And then all of a sudden you just as soon as they're expensive, you're like, I wanted that. I wanted that. Yep.
That freaking freaking ocean insect. That's for me. Anyway. Egg white cocktail. Oh god.
Yeah. What do you do with the yolks? Without an egg. What do you now that now that eggs are a billion dollars? It used to be, right?
It used to be that you'd be like, you know what? I'm gonna make an angel food cake, and if I figure out what to do with these yolks, I figure out what to do with these yolks. And if I don't, I don't. You know what I mean? But like, or like, you know, hey, I'm gonna use these yolks, I'm gonna make a Zabayon.
If I have something to do with these whites, God bless. Otherwise, you know, who cares? You know what I mean? That's just not the way it is anymore. You know?
Yeah, no. Yeah. Sell it on the secondary market. Yeah. Yeah, well, I have more on that.
Well, well, what cocktails are you making with egg whites? Yeah, I don't actually make them. No. But you're buying them out. You're like, you got an egg white cocktail, you charge more for it?
You charge them more? No. You know, for those of you that make egg-white cocktails, problem with egg white, first of all, you know, there's the question of whether you shake before or after, or both, a a dry shake before you have to do one or the other. Either dry shake beforehand or you uh shake it after you dilute it with ice, you shake it again to make it fluffy. You know this, right?
Please tell me you know this. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now, the question is, which one do you prefer?
So it is without question, fluffier if you shake it afterwards. If you shake it first with ice or do whatever you're gonna do and then shake it again afterwards or hit it with one of those Hamilton beaches, it is without a question fluffier. Now here's the real question. Does that mean you like it more, or does that mean you like it less? Booze hounds often like it less because it's so airy that it dilutes the flavor of it because it's turns it into much more of a foam.
So you have to decide it's between you and your taste buds what you prefer. So as usual, there is no better, there's no worse, there is different, and you must understand the difference and make a choice, right? All right. Right. Yeah.
Now, back to eggs. You cannot buy an egg in in Manhattan. So, like at Trader Joe's, Trader Joe's is all about like just in time. So, anytime there's a problem, they try to like they restock every day and they sell out alm almost all their fresh stuff. They calls short code.
Remember the from the Secret Life Groceries guy that came in? They sell out almost every every uh every day. So they have not had eggs since for weeks. Jeez. And then when they do, they get a couple in and it's they have a big thing, one one carton per customer.
The fine fair across the street, which is our see town key foods equivalent, they're sold out. I go to Target. Target yet hasn't figured out how to do store by store price gouging. So they have uh they have like the eggs, they got their egg shipment, and I walked in on a Saturday morning, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, and uh a lady was walking out with as many as she could carry in her shopping cart. I got in, there was like two cartons left at like 8 30 in the morning.
There was like two cartons left because this lady had bought all of the eggs that my local crappy Target had. And I'm like, is there really that much of a secondary market in eggs right now that this lady is like doubling her cash on eggs? Well, now that the show's on, I can tell my story. Yeah. Uh in Pennsylvania last week, there was a truck heist of someone stealing a truckload of uh Pete and Jerry's eggs.
I think they're worth like a hundred thousand dollars, and they have no idea what happened to it or who took it or anything like that. Egg rich. Yeah. Egg rich crazy. Egg rich.
Mm-hmm. It's not just Manhattan, though, it's here too. I mean, in LA, I can't get eggs. Like, yeah. Really?
It's just crazy. Now here's the question. Our company so like for those of you that don't know, I mean, there's a standard of identity. This is why you can't call uh miracle whip mayonnaise, and this is why you can't call things that don't have egg in it, vegan mayonnaise. They can't really be mayonnaise.
They have to have a different name because there is a standard of identity for mayonnaise, and mayonnaise must contain egg yolk. Yeah. So uh, but the mayonnaise industry was one of the first people to figure out that if you freeze egg yolks and then thaw them, they get like thick or solid, and they can use minuscule amounts of egg yolks. So they don't need that much of it. But how long how much longer until the mayonnaise people, until Unilever and Hellman slash best made, which of course is the mayonnaise of note, right?
How long until they're like, well, the price of eggs is going up, so the price of mayonnaise has to go up too. Even though it's like even though it's like 99% not egg. You know what I mean? That's the question. How long until they gouge us?
The same way that like, you know, we get gouged. As soon as a tariff goes up on something, which is hey, enjoy. We have no idea what's gonna happen to our prices on centerfuges, by the way, yeah. We just don't know. But like uh everyone raised it.
It's not like it's not like uh the people who make stuff domestically are like, oh, well, we'll keep our prices low. They raise their price to meet what everyone else's prices is. You know who pays? You, whoever you are listening, you, you pay. You enjoy, enjoy, you pay.
Uh anyway. So uh they didn't catch these egg thieves yet? No. You know, eggs last a while, they have a while to sell those things. They really do, yeah.
Have you noticed that the quality of the eggs you've been getting now are also crappier? Yes. 100%. Yes. I just freaking hate a crappy egg where where it's just like all thin white.
Yeah. And like all pop poppy yolks and thin white. Yep. Oh, God. I think someone joined us on the phone.
I'm not sure if it was our friend Quinn or if it's our friend Nastasia. Who do we got? Hey, Quinn. What's up? Yeah, yeah.
All right. Yeah. Yeah. Too bad. I know you were about to go into uh a steel importing uh steel exporting business from Canada to the US, so sorry, we threw the kibotch on that.
So I know yeah. Yeah. You weasel Canadians with your fentanyl. Sending that your fentanyl. What?
Yeah, okay. What's your strategy? I have a strategy for everybody out there who is, you know, concerned about egg prices. Okay, what do you got? You buy from a bunch of local farmers, and you're always pay through the mallets.
And then when the regular prices go up, you don't even notice it. All right. Here's what I'm gonna say about that. While I I heartily endorse supporting local farmers, I have to say, when I'm going through like just a scad of eggs for like a recipe where I'm baking, and I'm just using eight tons of eggs, which I do because you know what eggs are fantastic. You know what I mean?
I just can't see spending that kind of money. You know what I mean? Like I I wanna say that I like if I'm gonna eat a poached egg, I'll be like, you know what? Give me the good egg. You know what I mean?
Or like when you go to England and you get the really, really like orangey yolks that are kind of like they they look good and they're real nice, firm white and they sit up real nice on on on your toast. I appreciate that. But I'm just like like going through them like they're like they're nothing. Yeah. I mean, we were talking about this right before the show, but the fact that Waffle House has added a 50 50 cent per egg charge, like surcharge to all the egg dishes there is crazy.
Yeah, that's how much the markets have charged. So if I if I order like a uh a three egg omelet, that's a buck fitty. Yep, extra. Huh. Egg tax.
Sounds like a bargain, actually. No, an extra buck fifty. I mean, don't don't don't hate. I've never been to a Waffle House. Whoa.
I've never been to a Waffle House. I'm not saying that I'm anti-Waffle House. I'm not opposed to Waffle House. It's not like they've done something where I'm like, I won't step foot in a Waffle House. But I've just never been in one.
Interesting. Food good? Yeah, from what it is. I mean, yeah. How are their waffles?
You don't like them. Have I had a waffle? I'm asking myself. They're just really soft. Um, so that's why you gotta get some pecans in there.
Are they like are they like uh an ego style? What are their words? Yeah, a little bit, yeah. Yeah, echo style. All right.
So like run in the mill, like middle American waffle. Yeah, yeah, basically. Um but it's also fun to just watch the whole system happen there and just like experience it. I don't know, like also from your perspective, like watching those line cooks do their thing without any tickets and just how things are positioned on a plate is how they do it. They don't believe in tickets?
They don't do tickets. Huh. It's how the server puts a plate for whatever order that is, and based on how they put certain things on the plate is how the line cook knows how to cook something. I kind of not that I wish anyone to have a natural disaster, but since they're known for staying open during a natural disaster, I kind of want to be in one in one of those circumstances as my first time. Have any of you ever been in a Waffle House during a natural disaster?
I have not. I mean, they're known for you. No, that's like the the FEMA actually rates things in terms of how whether Waffle House is open or not, as a as a indication of how bad things are. We're toast. We're done.
Don't even bother sending in the National Guard. The waffle if the Waffle House can't open, what's the National Guard gonna do? You know what I mean? But someday, someday I'll get to go. Yeah.
So but so if it's not waffles, like what's the money order there? Uh eggs and then the the hash brown setup. Ash browns, all right. Yeah. What kind of hash browns?
Like pucks that are deep fried or like like uh skillet? Uh griddle, like proper hash browns, and then you know you get them scattered, covered, smothered, and eating means covered and smothered. Boom. There we go. Yeah, I use that term enough.
I should I should go. Yeah. Yeah. What's the far farthest north they have them, you think? Pennsylvania?
Yeah, I think so. Next time. Next time in Pennsylvania. It's probably one in uh around New Orleans, right? That's not north, dude.
So New Orleans every year. I do go to New Orleans every year, yeah. Yeah. The last thing was the duck farm. You know, Crescent Ducks out in uh Long Island, fourth generation duck farmers since 1903 and 1905.
They had to call all 100,000 of their flock and might not be able to reopen because their flock got the evening flu. They wiped them out? Yep. Let me ask you a question. Is there any use for the meat once they have avian flu?
I think it just all has to be destroyed. Huh. Huh. So they can't like they can't sterilize it somehow and turn it into anything that with any economic value? No.
I wonder if there's insurance for this sort of thing. Yeah, I have no idea. It's a nightmare. Yeah, it's terrible. That sucks.
It's so crappy. Like force major? That's just come from the sky, right? I don't know. But like if you have a I mean, like, there's gotta be something where people can um what's it called?
Spread the spread the risk out amongst all of the I mean that's what insurance is for, right? Spreading the risk out. We all pay a little bit, so then oh man, I wonder what that's gonna do to uh how big of in the duck industry were they? Uh for the North He's pretty big. So have you already seen a dent in your price or your supply?
Yeah, it's gone up a little bit. Uh now I'm getting Bell and Evans duck. I didn't even know they did duck, but yeah. Yeah, neither. I I think of them as a chicken folks.
Yeah, exactly. But duck too. How are their duck? Uh haven't broken into them yet. Just got them in last week.
In which style, all peckin', or do they do any like uh they do any like mular? They do any I think it's just all bacon. Yeah. I mean, I like them. Yeah, I don't know, I do too.
Uh but yeah, just unfortunate. I loved Crescent duck. It's great, consistent, nice size. Well, if you know them and you can help support them, help them in this time, please do because I hate to see someone go under for something like that. Yeah.
Be come totally beyond their control. Boy's anyway. All right. All right, Quinn, other than uh telling people to spend uh unconscionable amounts of money on eggs, you have anything this week uh for eating. Uh last week we actually made chicken.
We made uh KFC spice karate. Well uh which turned out pretty good. I don't know whether you know this or not, but that's actually impossible because nobody knows KFC's recipe. Do you know that I mean I know I met someone that had okay, so I'm not allowed to say this, but I believe everyone involved is dead. So Hennypenny, the deep the pressure fryer for uh KFC, right?
The guy who invented it was a guy named Winston from Winston Industries who makes the CVAP, made the CVAP. Last time I met the guy, last time I talked to the guy, he was in his 90s, and that was like 10 years ago. I'm sure this dude's dead, so I'm not worried about it, right? So he started the CVAP, which is the uh where, you know, the first piece of equipment where you literally just set the wet bulb and dry bulb temperature, and it was designed specifically to hold chicken for Colonel Sanders. He was a personal friend of Colonel Sanders, designed for KFC, and then went on to be used all over for all kinds of hot holding and then for cooking uh at the dawn of the Sous vide revolution, especially because it didn't require putting things in vacuum bags, and you could cook things in CVAPs for long periods of time.
And that's why in New York City, they became popular very, very quickly because all of the four-star, three, whatever you want to call them, three or four-star restaurants like Jean Georges and all these places when we were no longer allowed to use vacuum bags in the early 2000s when the crackdown happened, we all wanted a way to do this kind of low temperature work and keep things going. And so everyone all of a sudden, overnight bought CVAPs because of a guy named Howard Richardson. Anyway, Howard Richardson was talking to me during this whole debacle, and he was like, you know, at uh Winston Industries in our safe, we have a copy of the Colonel's original herbs and spice recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was like, no way. And then when I was when I when I was writing for Food Arts magazine, which was, you know, the magazine, the trade magazine of note, it really kicks him serious, but it was a great magazine.
When I was writing for them back in the day, I wrote that. I quoted him as saying that, and he, you know, because we were a trade magazine and not like, you know, New York Times, we would send things to people to be like, this is what we said. Because we're not in the we weren't in the business of messing with people's business. You can't write that. No one's allowed to know that.
But since I'm sure Mr. Winston is dead, and Colonel Sanders is also dead, I'm telling you guys now. It was in that safe there. So, where did you get your knockoff recipe for uh KFC Clinton? I'm sure it wasn't from Winston and Winston Industries.
Are you aware of the situation of franchises for KFC outside the states? I mean, I know they exist. I've been to them. Colonel Sanders owned international KFCs longer than the like American corporate entity while he was still alive. So the Canadian and UK restaurants were working from a unmodified recipe longer than the modern restaurant.
And so in the UK right now, a bunch of restaurants switched from being KFCs to being this sort of other brand from the person that was managing the UK franchises. And to this day, they still sell a flower blend with the spaces built in so that like other restaurants can like sell the recipe of chicken. Now I wonder if they actually give you the real thing. For instance, when you buy Peter Luger's bacon, you know what you are not buying? Peter Luger's bacon.
You're not buying the bacon, they sell at Peter Luger's. Peter Lugers is like, let these other idiots think that they're having Peter Luger's bacon. Enjoy. You know what I mean? But it's not the same.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. I'm not saying you're wrong, Quinn. I'm saying I don't trust it. Especially something that's so closely held, like such that the franchisees don't even, they don't compound their own. They don't have a recipe.
That stuff's sent to them. You know what I mean? But you're saying that they sell the exact same mix. You're saying you're saying they sell the exact same mix to you, Quinn, that they sell to Jimmy Joe, Jimmy Joe jerk, the uh franchisee owner. Basically, at some point, no offense, Jimmy Joe.
There was there was UK franchises stopped. Like, like sorry, described this. They they switched the model, so now they only sell the spice, the spiced flour. And on the flour is you can get the ingredient list. Yeah.
I don't know. Somehow I just don't. A secret that that intense. It tastes pretty good. It tastes pretty good.
Yeah. I have to say that of all of the, well, of the two fried chicken restaurants that I go to on a well, semi-regular basis, right? KFC is by far the least consistent in terms of the quality of the product. Right? And first of all, are you a are you are you doing crispy style or you're doing original?
Because the original original, even though most people don't go for it, is a much softer style, physically softer. And that's like the one with the original. I'm an extra crispy guy. Yeah. Yeah.
You know why? Delicious. Yeah, yeah. But you know what's even better is Popeyes. Spicy, crispy.
That like that is the chicken of note. Yeah, yeah. I uh the only thing that makes me angry is that Booker doesn't like it spicy, and so I have to get 50-50 boxes, which is ridiculous. And they won't give you like 30-70 boxes. You know what I mean?
And then it's the wing that's spicy, or like the bread, who cares? Just give me just a box of spicy thighs and call it a day. You know what I mean? You can't walk into Popeyes and just say, give me a box of spicy thighs. Wouldn't that be nice?
No one. So when you were doing your uh your when you did the double fry technique, Quinn. No, we didn't double fry this time. It was a bit of a you know workflow thing, but next time. Again, I mean I need to try to find a few.
Well, so in one second, in what sense, Kara. Well, I mean, it was marinated small bits of chicken. We did a little a small amount of uh a soy ginger marinade, and then we dredge in uh in uh flour starch mixture. Gotta double fry. Gotta double fry next time double fry.
Doesn't take that much longer to double fry. By the way, next time I fry, I'm really getting jazzed up on this uh on this no-soak, very long low temperature initial oil cook. Super jazzed. A the workflow is a lot easier. French fries.
Fruits. Frit. Um just because now do you know, John, in uh in Belgium land, which by the way, don't even talk to me if you haven't gone. Seriously. Like, don't be like, don't be don't tell me about all of your French fry knowledge unless you've gone.
Because they're just better at it than like I'm not saying that they have the that the best French fry maker in the world is from Belgium. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the average run of the mill French fry in Belgium is better than a very good French fry here. Okay? So if you're the medium, the medium Belgian French fry is like the top 90% of America.
Correct. And everywhere else. So the the point of this is that if you want to know how to do it the best, maybe go see how the people who on average are better than everybody else, how they do it, and then see whether there's anything in your technique, as good as it may be, right? Whether there's anything in your technique that might be better served doing something the way that they're doing it. Because, as we all know, there are uh eight million ways to fry a potato.
There are eight million ways to skim cats. You choose you whatever you want, but there's a million, there's no one, regardless of what Cooks Illustrated used to say back in the day, there is no one perfect way to do anything. And this is by the way, when Cooks Illustrated came out in 1993, I believe, I had I had all the charter issues, amazing magazine, life, life changing, the whole concept. But one thing that always stuck in my craw from the beginning is they would always write in their recipes the perfect this, the perfect that. And the biggest lie about that is that they would then two years later publish another recipe for the same thing that was now perfect, but wasn't it perfect before?
And it just goes to show that there's always things to learn and that there's different ways to achieve the same or different but just as good results. So go to Belgium if you care about fries. Just do yourself a favor because you also have a lot of other delicious things you can eat. You could eat the waffles, the specklows, chocolate, beers, tiny shrimp. The beers alone.
Any one of these things. I mean, I don't know that I would go there just for the speckles. But like other than that, like any one of the tiny shrimp. I mean, like you eat the tiny shrimp. Or the freaking liege syrup.
Oh, yes. Yeah, with the mustard. What's up with it? Oh, the mustard. Yeah, the mustard was phenomenal.
It's still going. Yeah. Yeah. Wait, what's up with the sea monkeys? Oh, talk about tiny shrimp again.
So there's these tiny little shrimp covet gris. They're I don't know, yay big, like a quarter of an inch. There's actually a restaurant, a Belgian restaurant on the upper east side, supposedly serving them. I'm so curious as to how expensive those must be. You want me to go throw it through a conniption fit there?
You want me to go crazy and just like shut them down so it's only you? Only you? Are they like wild-caught shrimp? But yeah, wild-caught shrimp uh traditionally like my hand? Yes.
I used to go fishing for them with my siblings when um were younger. It's uh like this rake net, and you just kind of like push it through the low tide sands and it just collects all the shrimp and yeah, larger scales done with the big uh Clydesdale horses. Um like poeboys. No, it's done in like little croquettes or cold tossed with mayo stuffed inside a uh hollowed-out tomato. Really bad tomato.
Like just a trash can tomato, just like the worst tomato in the world. It's the weirdest thing. But the shrimp are that good. Yeah. Yeah.
Nullifies. Like like a 1982 salad bar tomato. With the kale dressing? Yeah, I guess. Pizza hut?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Such a weird dish.
Yeah, a nightmare of a tomato. Like even thinking about it. I remember it came on the plate. I was like, what the hell is this? You know what I mean?
But like they're like, hey, we don't have sunlight, we don't grow tomatoes. So they're like, what do you what do you want? Uh yeah. Yeah. Anyways.
I guess if you go during spring, you could do asparagus. Yeah, true. They know that stuff too. White asparagus, yeah. All right.
Uh, what about you, Jack? What did you have in the past week for uh food and or beverage other than your fake uh egg testrophy? Like I said, yeah, nothing but eggs. Um I had I had these really great drinks at this pop-up in uh Los Angeles at this place Night on Earth. Oh did that idiot Dave Arnold go?
I think I saw him there. Yeah, he was wearing a uh uh piece of a stenzole uh decked out as a disco ball. All right, so for those of you that don't know, I posted it on Instagram. You can go take a look at it. But I go to Night on Earth and I'm working a shift.
First of all, they really do put their money where their mouth is. All of their shaking drinks that aren't pre-diluted because they dilute mo pre-dilute most of their shaken things and then like whip them or hit them in a Hamilton Beach. But the ones for the pop-up that we did, we did four drinks. We did uh the Oja Santa, which is actually not a contrary drink, that was an existing conditions drink, where it's oasant, fresh oja santa leaf, a little bit of cilantro, and oja santa is is um it's uh it's used a lot, I think, in like bean dishes and whatnot. Enrique Olvera famously put them in between two layers of masa and had like a tortilla you could see the oja santa leaf in.
And they look almost like uh like uh spade from a deck of cards, but green, right? And they're related to pepper, like they're they're a pepper family leaf, right? So that means they're also related to beetle leaves, but unlike beetle leaves, which to me, you know, beetle leaves are the ones that you wrap, uh put beetle nut in and chew it, or or pawn, you know, in um in India, those to me taste like burning electrical transformers. But oh santa does not taste like a burning electrical transform to me. To me, oasanta is delicious.
So nitro muddle that with tequila and lime juice and orange syrup. So it's a margarita loid with nitro muddled oasanta. So that was one that from existing conditions because I didn't want to bother trying to get the fancy Mexican tarragon that you know we got for our drinking. So uh, although I'm sure Mike could have gotten it because it's LA. Well, dummy.
Anyway, so uh we did that one, and then we did the Firefly, which is a, and by the way, someone asked a question later about the drinks that we did at the pop-up, but they didn't mention which specific drink. They said, uh, read the question. Uh from Tri-Tip. Well, we were talking about the Soltera. Yeah.
Well, why would that be the one? It just says Tri-Tip says, was the drink, what was the drink of the evening at the night on earth event? There seemed to be one on every table. What are the origins of that cocktail and how do you make it? But I don't know which one they're referring to.
I mean, they could be referring to the salt air. We did the saltera, which is a variation kind of, came from the corsera, which was a the corsair is a mixture of tequila uh preserved lemon juice, where we just juice preserved lemons along with their brine, salt preserved lemons, uh, lime juice, and simple syrup. But uh, the corsair is tequila, and we take these super fancy. You know that, John, did I tell you this? The the umboshi, we use umbiboshi.
It's but it's this husband wife, Japanese husband and wife um like team that makes these like fancy uh like shiso umiboshi that are ridiculously expensive. So the umiboshi costs more than the liquor. It costs more than anything else. So the amount, and I'm not talking like, you know, when we I'm talking about in the drink, the amount that's in the drink, the plum is the most expensive portion of it. So we take the umiboshi, we pit them, we do a Hustino where we blend and spin in the spinzole, the pits, I mean, sorry, the uh the plum and tequila.
We then soak the pits with pectinex and tequila, uh, and then use we and then we take the puck and we r uh, you know, remouillage it, and then with more tequila, and then we create like three streams and add them all together to create this um umiboshi tequila, which we then shake with lime juice and simple syrup and serve with a tiny motolito beer. Delicious, pretty cocktail, beautiful. That's a pounder. You can get it at Contra. And we just can't take it off our menu, even though it's such a pain, it's so expensive.
But uh, you know, it's like we're using a chop top, top, top shelf like you know, spirit, but we're not. It's just the umiboshi is top top top shelf. We tried using the cheaper umiboshi. It's not as good. Just not, it's not as good.
You know what I mean? It sucks. The other, uh, then we did a firefly, which is uh our uh our ginger turmeric galangle uh mule, which is uh the trick there is just uh, you know, we juice the the turmeric, the ginger, and the gollygold fresh, juice them fresh, then cut it 50 50 with uh vodka, and then add half a percent of acid to that and pectinx, and then you you just let it sit in a tall cylindrical vessel, and it'll like all the stuff will drop to the bottom, and then you just rack off all the clear stuff on top, and you do that like two or three times with in progressively narrower, taller vessels, and you get fairly high yield. So you get like 80% yield or something like that. Um, and it's I think easier than trying to spin that.
And then you add to that gin and you know, clary lime and/or acids, depending on how you're gonna do it, carbonate it, delicious, delicious. A little simple, simple syrup. Um, and then uh what was the last one we did? Oh, I think we did the uh we did Gwyneth Paltrose's favorite drink from Contra, which is the um what's that called? The Sly Stone.
So that's a mixture of uh we did it with wild turkey there, although we use Elijah Craig at the bar. Uh we did uh a mixture of Blenheim apricots, dried suffaney applicots dried, which are a little like um, they're sweeter than Blenham's and also like a little less dry than the slab blendums that we get, and then fresh frozen peaches. A little bit of hellfire bitters to like, because not just spice, vinegar as well, because it's a shrub, right? So a little bit of that volatile acidity, a little bit, a little bit of the spice to round out the fruit flavors, and uh orange twist. Good night, done.
Sounds delish. That's good. So I don't know which one of those drinks Tri-Tip was uh referring to, but that's all of them. So anyway, so I show up and we're making these drinks, and then they're like, Mike's like, we got a present that the bar crew made you. I'm like, okay.
And it turns out it is a giant necklace on it, is a spinzall rotor. An actual not a not a replica of a spinzall rotor. An actual spinzall rotor that they've mounted on a fidget spinner bearing so that on the necklace it can spin. Like spin. They then hand glued a billion tiny mirrors, including in all the little crevices, such that it became a spinning spinzall rotor disco ball necklace.
Thing was nuts. That's pretty amazing. I wore it for I like that. I got halfway through the shift. I I put it on, and then I wore it the rest of the shift.
Unfortunately, for the shift, we uh we kicked in like an hour and a half. So we we were supposed to be there for four hours, but like we wiped out all the drinks in an hour and a half. So I apologize to anyone who came late. My bad. Nastasi's like, go to Ralph's, buy some more herbs, and then make a drink.
I'm like, no. I was like, I was like, normally I would, but her idea, wow. The problem is is that like they were like, unlike at when I went when we were in Harvard and Stone and I did that, right? They had a whole nother bar operating, and the bar where I was ostensibly was only normally for the drinks that we were making for the pop-up, right? These guys were doing all of their other drinks, and they had switched over to doing their normal drinks in a normal service.
So then I would have had to be like, can you get me the stuff I didn't ask for? Can you blub bleep blop? You know what I mean? Can I go in the back and prep biddy bitity booty boop? And then like I would be making it not with my normal technique, but using a technique that I wasn't used to.
So I would have put them through all of these hoops, then to make a drink that hadn't been vetted with their system, and I was just like, nah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Nah. I mean, if if I thought I could have put out with minimal impact to what they were trying to do with their lives, if I could do that and put out something I knew was top notch, sure.
You know what I mean? But I was like, nah. Not just because I'm old and lazy. That is also true, but that's not the reason. Right?
Jack, you were there. Is that accurate pretty much? Very accurate. Yeah. We did kick quick though.
Stas and Jack are like, we'll be there by six. Show up at 6 30. And then Nastasia is just staring at me about why I'm not getting her a glass of sparkling uh, you know, rose. I'm like, I'm in the weeds here, man. Come on.
Oh man, do I have a story about that? All right, what do you got? It involves let's just say Stas was hungry. That's why we were late. Because 100% checks out.
You know what? Her entire life she could have eaten beforehand, right? Well, I don't know. She's probably busy. She should work.
But either way, it ended with me having a bite of her hand roll that she got like across the street from some very sketchy looking place. Um, she took a bite, didn't like it, and gave it to you? Is that what happened? Well, I yes. And uh has to be one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.
I'm convinced I got sick from it because I did get stomach issues the next day. It was really gnarly and bad. But what do you put in a hand roll that could be that bad? Like, what do they do? The fish itself.
Well, first of all, it was like it's supposed to be distributed evenly throughout a hand roll. This just had like a big glob of of bad tuna like on the top of the hand roll and then nothing else. Do you know what I mean? It was kind of like uh the cone shapes, which is like all the bad tuna up front there. Um like uh yes yesterday's poke all mangled and gross.
Mangled and mushy and it tasted like what I imagine like fish food would taste like it was really bad. It tastes like an old stale fish tank. And it and it and it wasn't because they put like furacake on top of it that it tasted like fish food. By the way is is uh is bad tuna your hot tuna cover band you gotta do that. Now I don't even think anymore you need to have a real cover band.
You could just create it with AI right couldn't you relatively quickly just like create a fake hot tuna cover band with AI? Yeah. Hey Siri give me bad tuna the album now now everybody is now everybody's you know you know who is doing that who's listening to this now you've toasted everybody. Do you know that like it it can't understand anything I say. So like which is weird like you know it's like every week for the past you know billion years we've been going on the podcast talking to people and yet my phone presumably people can understand what we're saying because they keep listening.
My phone can't understand what I to the point where like I could be talking to anybody and it starts, it thinks I'm talking to it. I'm like, didn't you choose a name that isn't unlike anything else that people normally say? You know? I mean, you had problems with this right before starting the show and texting me. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we saw it. We saw it. We saw him talking to Siri, which ended up sending the text message to who knows. Yeah. Maybe that's where it's going.
Yeah, well, I have to pronounce. I have to pronounce your name like she does. Or she won't listen. No, no. It's just a that's why I like it.
Oh, your name, I have to say Quinn Fusile, or it won't listen to me. And sometimes I mess up when I'm speaking in the real life what it is because I say it more to her, it, than I say to any live human. And so like I'm more apt to use the mangled version of your name than the real version of your name, because it's that dumb. So dumb. You know?
Artificial stupidity. All right. Um Andrew C writes in. And I suggested that the person working on it try galangle as an interesting inclusion. By the way, galangle in general, for those of you that I mean, do most people know what galango tastes like?
Like if you had to guess what it tastes like on its own. You've had it if you've been to like Thai restaurants or what. It is galangle is like turmeric and like ginger, it's related to ginger. It's a ginger ballast, right? Now, uh, you know what?
I've never had I've never had the um the blue ginger. Is that any good? You ever try it? Any of you ever had it? I have not, though.
No, I haven't. Yeah. And there's a couple other, like uh there's a couple other gingers that I'd really like to try that I've only ever had dried, like sand ginger, which is the one that's used in the um, do you know the the salt chicken that like southern southern China like like a Hakka salt chicken recipe that they make a special spice packet for. That's got the sand ginger in it, but I've never seen it fresh. Anyway, there's a zillion gingers that I would love to try before I die.
We'll see what we'll see what happens. But the specifically galangle is um, and there's there's a lesser galangle and there's a greater galangle. Anyway, uh it has a very I love it, but it it if you use too much of it, it can go very detergent y. So just be careful with galangle because it can give a bit of a detergent note. Um anyway, and you can buy it frozen.
It's not good, it's not as good frozen. It like when you free the frozen galango that I've gotten, it maybe the aroma of it is fine. But it just when it thaws, it gets real spongy. I don't like it. You know what I mean?
Yeah. I've tried to freeze it at home even and it doesn't really keep that well. Don't enjoy. We have a caller on the phone, but I'm not sure if that might be Nastasia Hammer Lopez. Stas, is that you or is that somebody else?
Sorry. It's somebody else. Sorry. I'm relieved. I thought I was gonna get yelled at for telling the tuna story.
Yeah. Well, but if sauce is not, does that mean I can answer uh ask as many questions as I want? I don't know. What do we got? What do you got?
Or like it's or like it's smoked from the from these coasts. Okay, I got a chicharron question. Ooh. Okay, before you start, before you start. What style of chicharron?
With meat, without meat, skin. Wait, j wait, just skin? Just the skin. Okay, okay. Okay.
Uh many years ago, I dialed in a process and got really good at making chicharrones or chicharone sort of uh analog using salmon skin. Okay. Um part of that process uh involved steaming it rather than boiling it, because if you steam it, they curl up and there's there's no saving it from there. Um I no longer have a can a combi oven. Um and I'm curious if you could achieve a similar effect by just baking the salmon skin until it's like gelatinized or cooked or whatever rather than steaming it.
All right, here's what I would say. Uh no. But even if all you have left on earth is a home range, right? As long as do you have gas still? Right.
Uh I've got I still have a commercial uh kitchen. I just don't have a we had a combi oven where I when I developed this perf pan. And I don't have a combi oven anymore. Go perf pan. Just get like a get like a a four-inch or a six inch uh hotel pan, then get like uh the countertop steamer thing.
Well, and a two-inch perf uh a two-inch perf insert and then like a uh a steam table lid. And that's what I use for, you know, when I'm steaming potatoes or I'm doing like mass amounts of dumplings and stuff like this. I just use that rig. It fires up real quick. It folds up real real small, and you know, you can like even if you need to, you can shuffle that crap in with the rest of your hotel pans.
I mean, the lid's a little bit of a pain in the butt because the handle doesn't fold in right, but it's so convenient. I mean if you don't need the lid, you could just I'm pretty sure a sheet trail fit over the top of it, but the lid's nice. Right. It's nice to have the lid for the extra 15 bucks. I've actually I've actually got a really good steamer rig because whenever I'm cooking like hard boiled eggs to make doubled eggs, I steam them rather than boil them because I just they're easier to peel.
Um so I actually and what that is is you can buy these uh for walks, you can buy like steamer racks that are like circles that are it looks like a rack and it's got feet that fold out, and so I pop one of those and then 18 inch rondo which has a nice tight fitting lid and that thing can steam like a steam like a demon. I bet. Yeah but for salmon skins I think it'd be better for hotel just because you'd want that big s rectangle you know what I mean? Right and that's and that's the problem is like I tried to you can't because the the trick with doing this method is you sandwich the salmon skin between two um silpats, two silicone mats. Right.
And so that keeps it weighed down keeps it from curling up. Unfortunately you can only fit a quarter sized uh silpat in this steamer rig that I've got so yeah I'm just trying to figure out what the best alternative would be and I was really hoping that doing it in the oven would work but uh I'll just have to tinker with it. I mean I would say like uh the the hotel pan and then uh the pain is I did find um uh you need to get you need to get um uh cooling rack inserts that fit nicely into the hotel pan because you're gonna want to probably suspend it off of the holes in the perf. So I would probably do a cooling rack which might be I can't remember whether it's easy to get a good size if it's in there and then the two silpats like half sheet pan half sheet pads or you could you could custom cut out of full sheet so that they fit exactly in the hotel pan one on top of the other and I think you'd be good to go and you could probably triple stack them right so you could probably do your your silpat layer and then another rack on top of that and then another layer of silpat you could probably fit at least two maybe three into into one hotel pan setup depending on how deep a perf you get I don't like to get the perf too close to the bottom of the main hotel pan just because otherwise you get like sputtering up into it, and you need to have enough water in the hotel pan such that it never runs dry. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I'm a huge I'm a huge advocate for the eight inch deep hotel pans, which aren't seen very often, but man, I've got those for sous vide cooking and storage and stuff, and those things everybody's like, Hold on, why is that so deep? I'm like, Because it's just awesome like that. That's crazy. Yeah, we don't have in New York six is the deepest you go. You know what I mean?
Yeah, I mean, you can get them on Webstron. That's where I get most of my stuff when I'm buying things. But yeah, you've got I've got third pans that are eight inches deep and uh clear plastic. Yeah, I'd look into it, man. It's a game changer.
All right. Because uh a sous vide, especially for like sous vide stuff, the uh the current ones on the market, I just have uh two ANOVAs and one of the chef steps ones, the uh jewel, but they fit like perfectly. Like if you clip it to the and you I mean you gotta take uh you take the lid and then you take uh a um what do you call it, little saw, uh a coping saw, you use a coping saw to cut it out, but it literally stands like perfectly perfect height for an eight-inch pan, like one of the sous vide machines. So highly recommend I'll I'll post a picture on uh the the Discord whenever I get around to doing it. But yeah, I always I always do the uh half lexans for uh like uh full lexans a little big.
I always do the half lex hands. How does this size trying to picture it versus a half lexan? Um So I mean, granted, it is it's not for high volume. You use some of that stuff like the third pans. I I primarily use third pans or or half pans, and I'm not doing super high volume stuff because I just do private chef work, so you're talking about feeding ten people instead of like 200.
Right. Um, but I do also have the giant 20 gallon um Canberra food storage containers, and I did the similar treatment with the lid where you take a coping saw and just cut out a hole so that it fits the uh the circulator. So I have I have many, many sizes, but for something small, especially for like if you're just feeding a couple of people, family of two, family of four, uh, they're pretty great because they don't take up a lot of space and they heat up in a matter of minutes. Yeah, my my standard small is the seven and a half, whatever it is, liter cambro with cut-out top, like the square square cams. And then um the half the ha what's nice about the half Lexans specifically is that uh quarter sheet cooling racks fit in them, and then you can still fit the circulator behind the quarter sheet racks.
So you could have your circulator, and then you could start putting quarter sheet racks in to separate out your products because you know the the the trick that you know a lot of people when they're starting mess up on is allowing the food to touch each other so that they become effectively much larger pieces of food. Uh you know, that's the first that's the first that's the first mistake. Hey, I wonder if you could bag I wonder if you could bag your your your skin and cook it in a bag. Probably not. Hmm.
I mean, that's and that's kind of ultimately what my question was is like, does it have to be a wet method? Because like you can still gelatinize, you know, or like you can get all that gelatin breakdown from dry methods. I mean, you see people that have like a porchetta, like a pork loin that's wrapped in skin that you can get all puffed up, and they're not boiling that. You know, that's something that's done in the dry oven. So there's dry and there's a lot of things.
When you put it in an oven, it is getting drier and drier every second, right? And then there is is there enough moisture in the product to gelatinize itself? Two different things. Right. Right.
Fair enough. Yeah. Okay. Well, I appreciate the insight. I gotta go serve lunch to some folks to do it.
Let us know, but thank you. Uh all right. Back to Andrew C's question. Uh okay. So uh was the by the way, for those of you that don't remember, we're talking about Galangle in non-alcoholic drinks.
Uh I suggested the person uh try galongle. They ended up running a blended slurry in water on a Eurovap, which is kind of like a um it's kind of like a rotovapy situation, but it doesn't rotate. It's kind of like, you know, a distillation rig that's under vacuum-ish. Right? Okay.
Um anyway, and the resulting distillate was interesting. Notes of eucalyptus, pine, menthol, and reminded me of carrot tops, presumably keratops of vegetable and not keratops, the crazy bodybuilding comedian. Um but the remaining spent slurry was more interesting. It had very little flavor, but all the gingery galongal burn. Have you experienced this?
And do you have any ideas on how to clean it up further? Will it distill at a higher temperature or is centrifugation with ginger clarification method the way to go? Um here's the problem. Oh, uh also you say I found out that the temperature of the distillation meant that the leaves produced were pretty unsafe to consume. Glad we didn't get botulism, but gotta figure out a way to make that food safe.
I mean, it depends on how long you were distilling it. I mean, I doubt I mean it's under vacuum and it's, you know, quote unquote in the danger zone because it's not uh because just because, but uh because you're you're doing vacuum distillation. But I don't think it's gonna be distilling long enough usually for you to I wouldn't worry about it. And then I really wouldn't worry about the botulism in it too much. Especially you can just increase the acidity of it.
You could just dope it with acid if you want, and then there's not enough uh then the uh acidity will be too high for it to uh have botulism growing in it. Um, especially if you use a non-sour acidifier, like for instance, uh sodium bisulfite or eight. I gotta look it up again. The one that is uh sulfuric acid with one uh one of the hydrogens gone. Um the problem you're gonna have is this there is no way to clarify that I know of.
There is no way to clarify a ginger style product, so ginger turmeric or galangle, uh, without alcohol that preserves the burn. So if you want the burn to stay in it, you have to use it in a cloudy and or non-clarified situation. Now you can get rid of some of the solids, but if you fully clarify it, uh it just wipes out the wipes out the burn because I think it's like whatever principle is making it cloudy is not fully soluble in water. And so when you remove the suspended stuff, you remove the burn, uh, unfortunately. You think propylene glycol would be worth a shit?
Alternative solvent? I've not tested it. But uh it's not, I'm not going to say that it's impossible because I have not tested it. I mean, I would if someone else would test it for me and let me know, that would make me happy. But uh, you know, I've tested different levels of alcohol, and uh the sweet spot seems to be about, you know, 50-50 with vodka, so it ends up being about 20% alcohol.
Uh I did it where it was a lot higher alcohol and it didn't help. Uh and the lower alcohol one, um, I needed to use a lot more of the product so the yield didn't seem as high, so it didn't seem as effective. So uh, but you know, if you could try it with uh propylene glycol, I mean, try it. Or I would try glycerin, uh glycerin, you know, I don't I don't know. I've never used propylene glycol as a solvent.
I mean, it's antifreeze. I don't want to I use it as an antifreeze. I wouldn't, and it's not food unsafe, but I you know, I'll try glycerin probably. Um why propylene glycol? Well, just when like Darcy's uh content when he's talking about ethanol alternatives for extractions, he recommends like USP or propylene glycol.
Yeah. A lot of these things also depends on how much you're gonna use, right? So, like typically when you're doing ginger, you're not using it by the drop. And glycerides and probably things that are using propylene glycol are things that you want to use in a relatively small amounts. So you need to have something that is so strong that you're because no one's being like, I'm gonna drink a cup of propylene glycol today.
That's just not how it works. You know what I mean? So it's just like a question of like uh, you know, whereas people don't mind drinking, you know, a relatively large quantity of vodka, like an ounce. You know what I mean? Something like that if you drink alcohol, you know what I'm saying?
Anyway, so anyway. Or if if it was about getting it, if it was about getting the final product under like that really minimum threshold, I wonder if you could use uh a combination of solvents. I don't know. And then you know the final drink would still be, you know, under the under the link. I don't know, it makes me nervous.
And also, like I say, you want maximum burn. So the question is really just I would just not try to use it in a clarified situation. Because I just don't think you're gonna get what you want uh in a non in a non alk drink. Simon B, what are the biggest trends in cocktails that are breaking through with the public right now? Simon, that's such a I don't know.
You know what the biggest trend is? Going to Contra. Go to Bar Contra. That's the biggest trend. Second biggest trend is going to uh temperance bar.
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean? Those are the two biggest trends in drinks right now.
And I say the third biggest trend is going to night on earth in uh Los Angeles. That's the third biggest trend. Those are the biggest trends in cocktails right now. I don't know. I don't know.
Uh I'll think more about that. We'll we'll get back to it when I have more time because we only have six minutes left. Uh and like I could probably spout about that forever. Um Wenrick, I have a whole beef heart uh from a cow share and haven't cooked it before. Seems like high heat skewers are a popular use, but can you share any favorite ways to cook it?
Wenrik, I don't cook a lot of beef heart. Captain Beefheart, I like it. Oh, I do. You do? All right.
What do you uh do you listen to Captain Beefheart? Yeah, I don't know what that's okay. Anyway, all right. So what's what's your what's your beef heart? My favorite heart is chicken heart.
My second favorite heart is duck heart. Agreed. Agreed on both fronts. Yeah. And those things, high heat on skewer, marinate those suckers, marinate those suckers with oil and like salt and pepper and garlic, maybe a little bit of acid.
You know what I mean? Marinate those suckers. Oh, yeah. Put them on a skewer, uh heat off on, off on, off on till the outside gets crunchy inside delicious. And that's dinner right there.
Maybe some parsley over the top of that. That's exactly what I would do with the beef heart. Yeah. But I've never done beef art. Anyway, go ahead, Queen.
What do you got? Yeah, I would try and when you're butchering the heart down to remove all the like connector tissue and the bigger blood vessels. Try and preserve it in for me as bigger chunk as possible. And like, oh dear. A rare severe and a hot fish, or street turtle.
Or sometimes I like doing a really, really hard sear, and then it is rot in the middle. And then you just chop that whole thing up and dress it like tartar. I've never done I've never done hot tartar. Well you got some tart yeah really good. Never done hard tartar.
I'm a big fan of off on off on off on I believe historically it was one of like the choice pieces to make tartar if memory serves. Because it's low in fat I mean to me it's like a denser firmer tenderloin with like more flavor. I don't know about that. Again, but I'll defer to you I don't cook a lot of beef art. But you gotta go listen to Captain Beef.
Actually you probably won't like it. You like Captain Beef heart right Joe. Of course I do. What about you Jack? Is that is that is that in your wheelhouse or not?
Totally come on. Alright I'm sad that uh that twin doesn't know what he is. He doesn't listen to that kind of stuff. You know much music at all so yeah but it's called beef heart I'm not a music guy Captain Beef Heart's a kind of that's a tough ask. You know even even music people sometimes have trouble with him.
Yeah he's kind of like the harder to listen to Zappa. Oh I was just gonna say Zappa. Like burnt weenie sandwich that's a hard record to listen to it is. All right. Robert Johnson writes in.
I work at an Italian restaurant at high altitude. And we have a lot of problems with oxidation of our pasta dough. Before anyone starts. It's an egg dough. So before you it's egg dough.
I don't know if it's because of different ingredients or because of the altitude, but using the same flour and recipe, our dough goes brown and speckly about four times quicker than normal. Do you know if the altitude would have any effect on this? It's very dry up here and the pasta dries quickly when rolled. We make fresh dough and roll pasta out every day, but even making the dough in the morning it's starting to discolor by the evening service. I'm not sure why altitude or humidity would make a difference, but struggling to think of any other factor that's different to usual.
The only other change I can come up with is that I'm in France where I believe the eggs are pasteurized before sale. I don't really think that's gonna that I don't think it's gonna be anything. And normally work in England where they are not. If it's relevant, we make a rich rich person's pasta dough with uh double zero, although we are double, you're not during uh egg yolk and a little olive oil, no egg white or other ingredients. Thanks.
So you say it's brown though. So t typical egg pasta discoloration is kind of gray, greenish gray, and it happens after a while. It's definitely gotta have something to do with your high altitude, which is gonna cause a flashing of moisture. And I'm wondering if it's just you know, like what I would do, uh, Robert is post to the Discord, because we have a bunch of people that do pasta, right? I would post pictures of the discoloration.
If it's oxidation, right, then you know, then it's oxidation. But I don't know whether or not the oxidation is going to be enhanced by the fact that it's drying out so quickly because you're at altitude and the moisture is just gonna be leaving it like a mother. But I I don't really know. You guys got anything? I don't know.
I had this kind of issue, but I ended up being the eggs. I switched to eggs and then my problem went away, but I'm not sure. Yeah, you could try adding an antioxidant to it and see whether or not that helps. Yeah, also just like throw a sheet of dough and give a vacuum bag and see if it stays. Yeah, but that's also going to stop it from evaporating.
So it's like if it depends like that's not gonna like that's like you'd have to I I I would get some vitamin E maybe and see whether or not vitamin E would uh wouldn't that be the antioxidant to choose for a uh for a pasta bill like that? Or toco from the biggest. No, that's for lipid oxidation. People use a little bit of acrobic acid or anything and make it add that to them. But it depends on what you're doing.
So like like like vitamin E is gonna help with lipid oxidation and uh like things like vitamin C is gonna help with like uh other kinds of water-based oxidation. So I don't know which one is happening here. Tony Tony says I just bought the way too many uh kefir lime leaves to use in the Thai soup I make today. Is it worth my time to dry them? Uh or should I suffer buying fresh leaves again?
Yeah, just freeze them though. Freeze them. Freeze them. Freeze them. Yeah, just freeze them.
Uh Lucas H, hey, uh I have an issue that's been discussed a great deal, but I can't find an answer. What's the best way to store vermousil and non oxidize and degrade? Uh I don't have uh liquid nitrogen. Here's it. Just get small bottles, glass, preferably.
And if you need to use plastic, you can, but if you're in England, you're in luck because they have uh vapor better vapor uh barrier plastic bottles. But get small glass bottles, fill them all the way to the almost all the way to the top so that there's no oxygen, cap 'em. If you if you don't fill them all the way to the top if you're gonna freeze them because they could explode. But if you use glass, you can like judge it and you get them and you put them in. That's that's the way to do it, and then open one and use it quickly.
And frankly, just uh drink more vermouth, and then it's not gonna be a problem. Nick, I'm gonna give you the recipe for uh the tomato BS uh next time. I I have no problem giving it to you. Um, but oh man, we're out of we're out of time. We're out of time.
Sorry, Matt from Mystic, I'll get your question on uh mucore aging and Tony Tony will talk about skate wings and whether or not they're actually used as scallop substitutes. Joe, can I say this? Skate wings, so it used to be said in the 1960s and 70s that skate wings people they're trash fish, so people would throw them away and they would punch scallops out of them and sell them as fake scallops. Now, this is in a time when maybe a lot of people hadn't had fresh scallops. Like fake scallops aren't made that way anymore.
Fake scallops are made like sure me. Uh, and they look fake and they don't taste like scallops because they're not scallops. I mean a scallop is a scallop and they're delicious. But scate wings are delicious on their own, shouldn't be a substitute anything. And the easiest way to you buy them, hopefully cut by already taken care of by your fishmonger, such that they've gotten rid of the cartilage, and they just look like wings, like angels' wings.
And all you gotta do, they're the easiest things on earth to cook. Easiest things in the world to cook. Just salt, pepper. I add a little bit of sugar, but that's me. Then flour, butter and or oil, whatever your mix is.
Flip. Put the butter over the top, and serve that with a little lemon, and you're done. You can hammer it, it doesn't matter. Don't undercook skate, but like you can hammer it, it's not gonna go nasty on you. And skate is delicious and so good.
Cooking issues.
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