Hello and welcome to Cooking Niches. This is Dave Harnell, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the Heart of Manhattan, Rockefeller Center, New York City News Dam Studios. Join not with John, no John today, because we're not on a normal day. I was coming home from uh Lake Placid yesterday, so I couldn't uh do the show. But uh I got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels.
How you doing? I'm doing well. Good, good, good, good. Good to see you. Good, yeah.
And uh over there in Los Angeles. We have also don't have Nastasia de Hammer Lopez because she's currently on an airplane flight, but we do have Jackie Molecules, thank goodness. How you doing? Yo, I'm here. Everything good?
You're in Los Angeles? Yeah, got my uh in LA, I got my six-year-old niece and my brother visiting today. So that'll be fun. In the real life, or like that'll be fun. No, oh my god.
This is like my favorite. I'm super stoked. I'm nervous because I don't, you know, I don't have kids. I don't really have like what I would call the most kid-friendly apartment, you know. Once you're six, you've already figured out not to like, you know, stick your head in a deep fryer, otherwise you'd already be toast.
I mean, at that point, you know, I think you don't need to really sweat it so much anymore. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah, I don't mean like dangerous in terms of kid friendly. I just mean like, you know, you walk in here and it's a bunch of music equipment and like a a huge collection of mezcal. I'm like, I haven't toy or anything.
But the other thankful thing is kids usually don't like the taste of mezcal. You know what I'm saying? Usually that's it. Yeah, I mean, like, I might be a little worried about your musical instruments getting a little bit toasted, but you know, that's on the instrument. I mean, the kid'll be fine.
You know what I'm saying? Right, right, right. Yeah, you're gonna be, you're gonna be like you're gonna be freaking like, you know, rinsing Cheetos out of your keyboard, you know, for the next like 20 years. But other than that, oh my god, isn't that disgusting? When someone walks up with like super filth hands and they like walk up to a keyboard and you're like, no, don't touch, don't touch, don't bing.
You know what I mean? Yeah, it's the best. Do they make like I know they make them for like uh typing keyboards, but for regular keyboards, you can't really have a keyboard condom, right? Because that would kill the that would kill the action. I think so.
Yeah, I don't know. Too bad. Yeah. Joe, you you have any experience with keyboard condoms? Uh no, I don't.
I don't have any experience with keyboard condoms. I did play a I played uh classically trains or I could read music and I played over 20 something years of classical piano. So one thing I do know is we do not we cut our nails. Oh, see we the clanking clanking. It's terrible.
But I you know what? Weirdly enough, there's this Polish artist, uh Lubinir Vel Mel Melnick. He plays with long fingernails and it clicks and it sounds really cool. Yeah. Really cool.
Really, really cool. Well, you know, like going forward, like that's gonna be like remember in the old days, people used to when they were uh taking 35 negs and they wanted to prove that they didn't like mess around, they would like file out their the the neg holders so that when you were taking when you're doing prints, you could literally see the edges of the film to prove they hadn't cropped it in any way. So maybe going forward, the fingernail clack is gonna be yo, still human here. But then the problem with that is is a computer could fake that. Yep, yeah, yeah.
It's already faked. It's already been faked. Wow, yeah, yeah. Yeah, already fake. Clean keyboards.
Yeah, yeah. Uh in the uh upper, upper left, we got Quinn. How you doing? Hey, I'm good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right. Uh and then uh two special guests calling in, I think from two different places, right? Uh we have, of course, longtime friend to the show uh and author of the first and maybe still only real book on the subject of Koji. Koji Alchemy. Uh Rich G, how you doing?
Hey, I'm doing well, and uh always an honor to be here. And I forget uh how much banter there is. That's super entertaining. Well, yeah. And you're so you're also the co-founder of what you're ostensibly here to talk about, even though unfortunately, because we're late, you're already in the middle of it.
KojiCon. And you're a co-founder in KojiCon, uh, Jennifer Rothman is here, who's also the founding director of Yellow Farmhouse, which is an educational farmhouse in Stonington, uh, Connecticut. Is that correct? That is correct. Yes.
Thanks for having me. Yeah, welcome. So wait. So since this is the first time that you've been on the show, Jennifer, I have a couple of usually we just, you know, kind of shoot the breeze for a couple of minutes, but I'm gonna pepper you with some questions because I have no idea. So since you're in Stonington.
I'm ready for it. Yeah, a place that I, you know, I don't actually go to Stonington. I gotta be honest. I go to the Stonington side of Mystic. That's kind of as far as I go, right?
Sometimes I'll go see uh, you know, I'll go see the Moromi folks up there, which you know, they say Mystic, but really Stonington. Come on, please, right? Uh but uh my question is is as an educational uh outdoor, you know, farm person, do you ever hook up, and this is this is a deep cut, but do you ever go to the Pequatzipus Nature Center in Mystic, Connecticut? I do. In fact, um both of my sons went to preschool there.
So yes. And actually it's one of the big reasons why we moved here. Um I love we we were from New York and we're looking at the area and found that preschool and I was like, oh, I want to go here. So for those of you, this is another thing. Like John's not here, but like I'm a huge Connecticut booster because I love like everyone's like, oh, Connecticut, it's just like some sort of weird carbunc on top of New York.
Nobody cares about it. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I was with you.
I was right there with you before I moved here. Yeah, yeah. So Pequatzippus is this weird little nature resource center where it's like, but you go, you can have birthday parties there, P.S. Uh, I wanted so why my brother-in-law Wiley Dufrein has a pizza restaurant here called Stretch. And I was like, listen, you gotta do something up there and call it Pizza Quatzipus.
And he's like, nobody would go to a restaurant called Pizza Quatzipus. And I'm like, I don't know. I think maybe I think maybe you can make it work. Pizza Quatzipus. But anyway, they have like the birds, they have their a pigeon who wears a diaper and walks on a leash.
I forget the pigeon's name. I don't remember the page. I swear to God, they have a pigeon, it wears a banana, a diaper with like a banana on it, so they can walk it around inside without like you know, you know, picking up bird poop and a leash. They have they have this, like, for instance, they they always get these owls in there because what happens is is that uh there's a roadkill. Okay, I'll set the scene for you.
There's roadkill, right? There's these little roadkill on the side of the street, and owls are like, oh, I'm gonna eat that. So the owls swoop down and they get hit by cars all the time, or like plows or whatever, right? And so uh they have all of these owls that have been kind of like knock silly, and they're awesome. They just kind of hang out, like it's just the best but quatipus is like the best place, anyway.
Sorry, sorry. Deep cut, not food related, but cotton. And listen, I it's it is kind of awesome, and uh it's this tiny it is it's like tiny little nature center that has an amazing bird rehab center, and then their preschool is like magic because the kids are outside all day. I used to go pick up my kids in with like a trash bag because they were so filthy by the end of the day. They just rolling around in mud.
Awesome. And we strip them down the parking lot, stick them in the car and go home. And it was the best. I love it. I love it.
So so what are you teaching at uh the yellow farmhouse? Yeah, so we are doing like mostly cooking classes and um sort of outdoor um food and farming classes for kids and adults. We work a lot with high school students, so we have a particular focus on um high school culinary classes or what's called family and consumer sciences. But when I was in school, it was called home ec. Yeah, yeah.
Um and so we're working with those teachers to kind of like shift the curriculum a little bit. So it's still covering basic culinary skills like knife skills and how to make soups and the eggs unit, but then adding this layer of food system information so that high schoolers have some exposure to where their food is coming from. Um a couple of things. Well, are you telling me that they no longer have home ec? I mean, no my kids didn't, but that's New York City, so like is it not like is it still?
They no, they do. It just is rebranded family and consumer sciences. But everybody says family and consumer science is you know, home ec. So it wasn't a great rebrand, I don't think. Yeah, that's like social studies is now humanities, which my son Dax calls O The Humanities because he's like, I guess, likes old Hindenburg broadcasts.
But uh I'll this will come as no surprise. I loved Home Egg. I for I freaking loved home ec. I thought it was great. You know it was great, and so do so many kids.
They still love it. It's like the most popular elective at Millet High Schools, and um, and so you have these like kids who are like excited to be there and kind of open to hearing a little bit more about food and farming. Yeah. It's not food and farming, but do they still teach sewing in home ec? Everyone should learn to sew.
They do. Actually well, it's not so not all not every school offers that. But that was my favorite part of Home Ec was the sewing unit. I think I made a pillow. Yeah.
Well for us they're a stuffed animal. Yeah, plushie. You get make a plush and you're like, you can make a you can make a plush. What? Exactly.
And you know what's like interesting. So I mean, sewing is like an important skill, weirdly, for like, you know, if you go to the medical field, it's good for s you know, uh you know, early intro to uh doing stitches. But but up here, the boating industry is still is kind of big and they can't find people to sew sails. And it uh because there's no home act you wouldn't like make this connection of of just like basic sewing skills you're seeing an important skill set to potentially have. Yeah, plus you're out somewhere, your pants rip, what are you gonna do?
What are you gonna do? You know what I mean? If you don't know how to same thing like not know how how to cook it, like you're like you got these ingredients, you don't know what to do. You're like, what am I gonna do? It doesn't necessarily people can't just pick up a needle and go, you know what I mean?
Anyway. Exactly. Uh I just showed my my son's pajamas uh buttons back on. There you go. My wife was so like, what you sewed?
Come on. Yeah. I should see my home sweater. Yeah. I made one.
Oh, sweater? That's pretty sick. But it was like a three piece panel, like, you know, um American apparel sweatshirt type of thing. Yeah. Yeah.
I like it. It's very off. But yeah, I mean my cancel has it. Nice. Well, you know, someday it'll show up in a thrift shop.
Someone will be like, What is this? You know what I mean? And Anastasia who's not here, she'll buy it, and then that's it. All right. But uh all right.
So before before we get before we get to uh KojiCon and also we have some questions related to molds and spores and koji and whatnot. And we could say spore because Nastasia's not on the air now. So you can say spore as much as you like. Yeah, it's a safe space for spores when Nastasia's not here. That's one of her trigger words.
You can't, you know, can't do it. Um but uh so any of you guys have any uh good uh food-related uh business over the past uh week or so um I'll very quickly very quickly put out that um my girlfriend and I are planning a trip to Taipei, Hong Kong, and uh Chengdu. So anyone in the Discord wants to bless us with some recommendations for those three locations. Yeah that's where our minds are then. Uh yeah, I I toured all uh the whole island uh of for fermented foods, but ate some really badass stuff there, so I can totally uh help you out with all the connections.
I haven't been since the pandemic, but I haven't been since the pandemic, but like Taiwan is ridiculous. And I was only in Taipei. I didn't get to go out to the forests or any of the other beautiful stuff, but man. You know, yeah. Yeah, I mean, just I mean, just simply hit up any, you know, any uh major night market and you're you're eating like really good food items.
I might I might have already said this on air before, so if I didn't, I mean, if I did, I apologize, but do make sure you go to the National Museum. Do I don't care? It's not food, it's not food related, but you gotta go. You gotta go. Okay.
If you like, because you're never gonna have an opportunity. Like the greatest like cultural patrimony of all time is in the National Museum in Taipei, because it all got taken by Changhai Chek when he came over to Taiwan. Uh, and it's just a crazy museum. If you like, if you like any sort of uh Chinese cultural history at all, you have to go to that museum. Anyone else been to that museum?
It's a great museum. Fantastic. Um gotta go. Everyone goes for food and they never they don't make the time to go see the museum. You know what I mean?
It's like when you go to Paris, people are like, I guess I have to go to the Louvre. And yes, you do have to go to the Louvre or the Dorsay or whatever, right? But when the people go to Taipei, they're like, uh maybe I won't go to this museum. You're like, no, go to the museum. You know, just do it.
You know that there's gonna be a period when you're not eating between, I don't know, like after you have breakfast and before you have lunch, just go. You know? Nice. Uh it's true. Yeah.
And uh if that's you gotta walk it off. If that wasn't enough, and I know I've said this on air before, like, one of the most popular things in that museum is the meat shape stone, which is like a uh Tung Po pork, like a rock in the shape of Tungpo pork. And I think the rock was natural, but it's on an unnaturally, it's on like a human made setting where someone was like, Oh my god, I found this tongue po pork rock, and then that's it. And then you go, this is not necessarily worth it for lunch, but you go to the restaurant and then they make tong po pork in the shape of meat-shaped stone. Have I talked about this on air?
Right. And so then what I want to do, I actually, I actually own P.S. I own the Instagram uh handle, meat shaped stone. Okay. So what I wanted to do, what I wanted to do, and I've never done it, is I want to find people who don't necessarily know about the meat-shaped stone, and then either mail them a piece of art in the shape.
So first you start with the meat-shaped stone, then you make the tongue po pork in the shape of a meat-shaped stone. You serve that tongue po pork to an artist. Then you tell the artist, make that. Don't tell them anything else. They make that, then you hand that to a chef and you say, make that.
And you keep going until and my theory is eventually it'll turn into a meatball. Because first you start with a meat-shaped stone, and then what I had at the restaurant was meat-shaped stone shaped meat. But then I want a meat-shaped, meat-shaped stone. And then you keep going and you see how many layers of meat shape and stone before it just turns into a meatball. Anyway, uh, I think it's a great art project, and that's why I have meat shaped stone as my Instagram uh as an Instagram handle, but uh, you know, but I haven't really I haven't really used it yet, although there is a picture of the meat-shaped stone up there.
So, you know, if anyone wants to do that with me. Could you just take no but could you just build on the meat shaped stone so then you just have layers like uh sort of like a turnout game? Like internal and then cut it open? I don't know. Look, we could do anything we want.
It's a it's a it's an as yet unrealized project about kind of a game of telephone with meat and stones. Do you know what I'm saying? So it's I mean like in my mind, it's one thing, but what it is in my mind isn't necessarily the best thing it can be. This is the problem when people don't take input from outside. You know what I'm saying?
What it is in my mind isn't necessarily the best it. I know there is something there, but I have not as yet realized that something other than to take the Instagram handle, which of course is the first thing anyone has to do. Um yeah. I will say Jack has posted the image of the stone in the Discord. Everyone should join uh the cooking issues, Patreon for access to the Discord.
That's a meat shaped stone. Yeah. It really is. Okay, I just I just Google the meat shape stone. Uh yeah, I see it.
That is a crazy um platform for it. Yeah, it is crazy. You know what's even more kind of crazy is that much more culturally important and right next to it is the jade cabbage. There is a jade Napa cabbage, a jade. It's not jade, it's jade cabbage.
Yeah. And culturally, as a work of art, the jade cabbage, much more important, right? As a work of art. Nobody cares about the cabbage. You can get right up to the cabbage, no problem.
If you want to get up to the meat shape stone, you have to beat back lines of people because everyone wants to go see the meat shape stone and and nobody cares about the cabbage. Ain't nobody cared about the cabbage. Are you thinking that people are gonna have to make the platform also? That's the more crazy part. Do you bake that?
Like a pastry. You know, it's uh it's it's it's uh I'm getting fishbowled over here. It's uh well I I I don't know how much like kind of prompting you want to give to people and how much you want it to be up to them. I guess you need enough prompting such that some sort of differentiation stays long enough. I don't know.
Uh uh again, I'm agnostic about how we do it. I just think we should do and by the way, once you leave these basically you the first thing you do when you go to the museum is you rush to the room with the meat shaped stone and the jade cabbage just to get it out of the way. But then like every single case of like of like all the the porcelain there, it's like like piece after piece where you're like, I can't believe humans can make this. You know what I mean? It's just so beautiful the stuff, but whatever.
Whatever. And then they also had it won't be there. It was on uh what's it called? Semi-display, you know, whatever, uh non-permanent display. You know oood, the the the the smell, the uh incense, the wood.
Am I pronouncing it right? Oud, yeah. Super fancy, super expensive. So like they have the world's largest collection of carved ood wood, where like each piece is a huge c intricately carved, like with you know, like all with the flavor all like spalted out or whatever, ooh, you know, whatever the fungus is that ood is. And each one of those things, if you were gonna buy it, it's like a zillion dollars.
It's crazy. It's nuts. Anyway. And of course you can't go up and smoke one of them because it's like freaking, you know, a f also a sculpture made out of incredibly expensive hyper rare incense wood. So yeah, go.
Don't not go to the museum. All right. Uh hey, Quinn, you tease it out a little bit. Talk talk talk about the Patreon before we go any further because I'm gonna forget. Yeah, I mean Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
Uh you get announcements of when we have guests, you get uh prioritized questions, you'll get uh deals with uh Kitchen Arts and Letters and other people that we work with, and you'll get uh access to the Discord, which is already a great community to like talk about all sorts of uh hyper specific uh cooking ideas and just general good conversation. Yeah, yeah. And Quinn, uh before I forget, because I'm gonna forget, you got any food, you got any food trash from the past week or no? Uh my dad was sick, so I lost my helper. But I did make a avocado lime sorbet and a blood orange sorbet, but I still need to spin them.
So how is the avocado sorbet? How's the avocado sorbet? Oh, you didn't spin it. Yeah. I don't know.
I made an avocado sauce once that I was surprisingly like, but I like avocado so much, it makes me kind of nervous. Do you think it's gonna be good in the way that a coconut sorbet is good? Coconut's God sorbet. Come on, let's be honest. Coconut like coconut basis for sorbet's so good.
Unless you don't like it, in which case we can't have a conversation about it. I mean I think for the have you uh uh uh like I find that avocado honey is super savory and rich. Have you considered sweetening the avocado sorbet with avocado honey? Ooh. Although what Rich says is sounds like a very quin thing to do.
If I was gonna say if like I mean Oh yeah. If I had it, I wouldn't use it. I mean the pain in the butt about honey in general is that it's got twice the uh AFP as sugar because it's uh all monosaccharides. Yeah. Yeah.
Isn't there all monosaccharides? Yes it is. Okay, Quinn. Once you're over 90% once you're over 95 or 98% monosaccharides, it's monosaccharides, a hundred percent. I mean, like what's the point?
You know what I mean? Like think of mentally it's easier to think about it as completely inverted than think of it as anything else. You know what I'm saying? I mean, there's also like protein in it like that. All right.
Well, you should go look you look. If you're if you join the Patreon, you get access to all of Quinn's uh freaking uh sorbet and ice cream spreadsheets with all the with all all this kind of stuff. But uh classic mistake people make when they're just formulating is think they can just swap out based on the eighty-two bricks with uh disaccharide, and they have made a horrible mistake if they do so. That's my only point. Yeah.
You know what I mean? That is a horrible mistake. Yeah, none of these things are wrong. None of these things are right. Um Rich though, you bring up interestingly, avocado honey.
What's the flavor of a avocado honey? It's it's just it's really rich. It's uh it's almost fatty when you eat it and it's vegetable. It's it doesn't taste like honey. It's it's kind of a interesting phenomenon, and I just I got addicted to it.
I was like and whenever I find it, I have to have it. Would it work in a cocktail? I need a fancy. I need a fancy honey for a cocktail. I think so.
Huh. Absolutely. Is it yeah, I could I could see that in like a bee bees knees or something? Yeah. Is it darker or lighter?
Is it is it like more like a buckwheat or more like a dark kids. More like buckwheat. It's super dark. Let me ask you a question. Does anybody like buckwheat honey?
Is there any human being on earth that likes buckwheat honey? I don't mind it. You guys are crazy. Amazing. What's so bad about buckwheat honey?
Because here's why. No one has ever on the history I like buckwheat a lot, but no one has ever woken up and been like, ooh, uh buckwheat honey. Let me get some. That's never happened. Not once.
In the history of humanity, it's never happened. Do you wait do you wake up in the morning and say, like, oh, I want some wildflower honey or like clover honey? No, I'm in butt I want some clover honey? No. But but like you sometimes you'd be like, sometimes you'll be like, I want some honey, and clover honey is like clover honey is the wonder bread of honey.
So it's just there. No offense to clover honey. You know what I mean? But it's just kind of there. So like if you want if if you wake up and you really want honey and someone hands you clover honey, you're like, all right.
If you wake up and you're like, I want honey, and someone says hand you buckwheat honey, you're like, Are you are you crazy? Are you nuts? You know what I mean? Like you're like, this doesn't work. I can my recipe can't use this.
This is filth. You know what I mean? It's like uh I can't the level of disappointment, the first three or four times I had buckwheat honey was the same level of disappointment. So they don't grade maple as you all know, they don't grade maple syrup A, B, C anymore, right? Uh there's great debate based on color.
But you know, basically you used to only be able to sell A and B, and C was like not really, it wasn't even a real grade. You couldn't have it. So anything below C, right, you'd have to kind of buy on the slide from somebody. And I was so excited when I first bought it from like a producer because I was like, oh, B is so good. This stuff's gonna be even better.
No, trash. It tastes like you're sucking on metal. It's the worst. You know what I mean? It's like it's terrible.
And it's the same thing with like probably buckwheat honey. Nasty. And okay, now I'm gonna get people to be like, don't hear no buckwheat honey. I grow nothing but buckwheat and I live on buckwheat honey. Well, I'm sorry for you.
You know? People are people are losing business now because of the thing. Nobody's nobody's losing business. Let me tell you something. If I if I had field after field of buckwheat, right, I should pay the beekeeper twice as much to come with their with their supers to hollinate uh to uh pollinate because they know that I'm making their bees make trash honey.
You know what I'm saying? So it's like for those for any beekeepers listening, I want to know do you charge buckwheat people more because you know that that honey is filth? Look, someone's gotta like it. It's just like anything else that tastes bad. Somebody's like, well, it's gotta be better for me because it tastes like trash.
So it's gotta be good for me. Um anyway. Speaking of Well, think about this. There's there's a market, there's a market for it. People are buying it.
I think people buy it once. You know? They're like, ooh, buckwheat, that sounds good. I'm sure it's gonna taste like buckwheat. Nope.
No, it will not. Uh before we get into the the the we're almost halfway through. We haven't even gotten to anything yet. But Jennifer, question for you. Because this is what I ask everybody, and I I just let me preface this.
I hate it when people don't give me a straight answer. I was where was I that someone didn't give me a straight answer on this, and it really bent me. What is it in Stonington? Well, first of all, like there could be many different places in Stonington, Connecticut, in terms of different microclimates, different kinds of soil, for all I know. Because Connecticut, I don't know if you know this, very geologically diverse state.
Very, very geologically diverse state for such a small state. But what comes out of the dirt best in Stonington? Like, what is it that Stonington was built to grow? Oh, that's a good question. I okay, so I have a garden, and I I am the laziest of gardeners.
I like put seeds in and hope for the best and pay attention to them only a little. Um I cannot grow basil. Other people seem to be able to, but mine gets eaten every year. And then, but what grows well? I mean, I grow the like the little orange tomatoes, and those I get tons of them every year.
Let's go with tomatoes. And then don't get eaten by voles and whatnot. Um, no. That's good. No.
And mine never get eaten. I had to when I was in uh place in Chester, Connecticut, I everything grew well one year until all the rodents figured out how to where it all was, and then I've got I glue grew great plants with no vegetables on them. You know what I mean? It's like it was a nightmare. I had to before I put the fence around my garden, I had a um groundhog that was eating, I think it was a groundhog.
Oh man. She was eating all my cucumbers, which I was growing specifically for my son who only eats cucumbers. I hear it. And at some point though, I was I had so many. I had like plenty of cucumbers, and I like looked at her.
I like we made eye contact, and I was like, you know what? You seem to be a mom, also, like we'll each take what we need, and we're good. You're too nice. You're too nice. Then I put a fence around it.
Yeah. And that was that. But uh I'll I will round that conversation out with: I've never eaten a groundhog, but I hear that first year groundhogs are delicious, but that after that age, they're not quite as good anymore. I've read this. It's good to know.
I don't have any experience with that either. Yeah. Does anybody have experience firsthand? I'd like to know. I don't know.
On the on air here, probably not. But like, you know, it it used to be a relatively back when people used to like shoot and eat uh meat on the regular uh, you know, in this area. Because like, you know, they're big out. I mean, obviously Punxatawny is in Pennsylvania, and they used to, in Punxita, used to publish a recipe book for a groundhog. Now you wouldn't eat groundhog on groundhog day because the you know the new groundhogs aren't out yet.
You want to eat them later. Like I say, you want like first seat, you want like the lamb equivalent of a groundhog, because they're already sized up, but they haven't gotten all, you know, musky and whatnot yet. So I'm told I've never eaten a groundhog. I would totally eat a groundhog. I've eaten many other like rodent-y style things, but uh, you know, I've had cooey, I've had capibera, I've had uh, you know, obviously rabbit.
I mean, they I've never had a rodent that wasn't good. What about the vole? Never it's small, right? Well, still, I mean it's a one bite little appetizer. One bite one bite, one bite rodents.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know, man. I don't know. You know what I hear is quite good. Muskrat.
I hear muskrat's quite good. Uh but again. Oh, how is the cafibara? It's good. It's a little tough, you know what I mean?
Like, but like I've only ever had it kind of grilled. Like, if I was gonna make it, I would have probably pounded the hell out of the pizza that I had. I would have pounded. I've had it two or three times, both times kind of grilled and on the tough side, but good. So I would have probably pounded the the the snot out of it and then maybe acid marinated for a little while.
You know what I mean? It would have been good. Yeah. There's a Capibara bar in Tokyo where you can hang out with Capilara. Do they serve copy bar or you hang out with a copy barra?
They don't they don't try to fake you out and give you a neutria instead. And you're like, this is a nutria. This is ridiculous. You know what I mean? I I hear Nutria also tastes good, by the way.
I don't know. Yeah. I mean, again, if a small rodent tastes good, why wouldn't a big rodent taste good? Um all right, hold on. Before we go too much further, let's talk about KojiCon.
Good. Uh Jen, do you want to start? Uh sure. Yeah. KojiCon is going on right now.
It just started two days ago, and they are still plenty of time to buy tickets. Um it's a two-week virtual conference. And so every day um we usually host like two or three sessions um exploring all things Koji. And uh the participants are from around the world, and the speakers are from all around the world with all kinds of different experiences, and um it's pretty awesome. It's uh all of the sessions are streamed to our YouTube channel, so you can watch them live or anytime after.
And um we are uh we also have a Discord channel that that people join and you know have lots of conversations, share pictures, share information. It's a pretty amazing community of people who come together. Rich, would you add anything to that? Yeah, I mean, I I think uh so basically it's uh this hatched idea that Jen and I had at the pandemic where originally we were going to have an in-person conference and the pandemic killed us so we went to virtual and it's an extension of essentially what we do as uh Koji and mold base for mentors is we just sort of socialize and talk and bounce around ideas and this is just more of a formalized and more cohesive way of doing it uh to make people feel supported and knowing things and and also not knowing things and uh there also there are a lot of neat exchanges that come out of it and folks who have no idea what Koji is show up and they're also scientists of like the nth degree and chefs and you know culinarians and artisans and makers so it's it's quite the crew and um especially this year has been interesting is I actually don't know a lot of the names which is part of uh our the outreach that we did this year to you know ask basically ask the community who should be talking at the conference so that's been really cool to see as a variety of perspectives. Yeah and tell them again how to sign up for and so the stuff that they've already missed unfortunately people who are not Patreon members which you should be a Patreon member but if people who aren't a Patreon member they you know that they'll hear this on Friday but how do they sign up to see the things that have already happened or it's just tell them again how to get to it and whatnot.
Yeah so it's the the website is cogicon.org and um you can buy tickets really right up until um the last day of the conference, which is March 2nd. So everything that has happened so far, there's a link um on the ticket holder access page, and they can watch it at any time. And um and then anything that's coming up they can watch live or whenever is convenient. And then we also include all of the content from the previous four years in the ticket holder access. And you have ac you can check on that anytime through November of 2025.
So there's so much time to watch everything. And there's I think something like 200 hours of content at this point that's included with the ticket holder access. So all the new content from this year plus all of the previous four years. That's awesome. Random question.
When you buy a dot org, are they like prove it? Or could I buy a.org for something that's not a dot org. Anyone can buy a.org. Wow. Or something that's not a dot org.
That's like the ice cream or it's like the ice cream museum. Not a museum. Ice cream museum. I feel like you need um I was gonna say meetshapestone.org. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I should get that. Well, you know, uh, Jennifer, you're a museum, you're a museum person. It's like what doesn't it I mean, like uh I mean like you, I'm sure deserve your you know, your dot org website, but it irritates me no end that places like the ice cream museum can pretend to be a museum and you know I'm sorry, even today words have meaning. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Yeah. I I I definitely uh bristle a little. Yeah. Sort of like grateful that people are, you know, wanting to adopt the museum word to do something kind of cool. So the museum word.
I don't know. The M word. I think it maybe maybe gets people to do the book. Yes. Yeah.
What do you got, Clay? I just spun the avocado lime through me. I tasted it. So when you say you just spun it, was it in the creamy? Worst name ever?
Yeah, in the ninja creamy. Yeah. Oh, I like it. Not not any creamy, the ninja creamy. All right, yeah, all right.
Well, they did send you one, so I guess it's fair to push them out. So how was it? Yeah. Um, again, it's accomplishing what I wanted, and that the the flavor is totally dominated by the lime, and then the avocado is providing a good texture, but it needs uh even more sweetness. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You're not really selling it with the well it accomplished what I looked for. Well, it's not really selling it. Yeah, yeah. I'm developing the recipe. I see.
All right, all right, all right, very good. Um just add buckle honey to it. If you want if you want to add a if you want to add like a a sous of poison, um yeah, put in the buckle honey. Um wrote in, can I use my Innova oven to inoculate my Koji spores? Uh I struggled with a sous v setup to try to maintain the temperature while inoculating.
Uh when you're saying sous vasco, I'm assuming you actually just mean an immersion circulator in a bag. You're not vacuuming it, right? Anyway, go ahead. What do you guys think? Uh so I'm trying like so when you talk about inoculating, like he's not inoculating spores.
He's he's growing he's growing the mold with the spores. So I think he's talking about just creating a humid environment. And you can definitely do that with uh your ANOVA, no problem. Yeah. You know, just creamy tried this.
I will say I I struggled when you have the temperature so low on the ANOVA, I struggled to get uh high enough humidity. I think a lot of the you know humidity production here tied to the other is there so I I would say you could just put a um damp towel over it. Uh or you could put some plastic wrap and perforate it and that should uh solve the drying problem. Yeah, I don't have first of all we should note that uh Lasco did not say whether or not they're have a one point oh or a two point oh. All my experience with an ANOVA is with a one point oh.
So I have no idea what the differences are between a 2.0 or a 1.0. If anyone from ANOVA can hear my voice, you could send us one and we'll test it. I'll let everyone know how different the 2.0 is from the 1.0, if in fact it is different. Uh I tried that already. But the well I'm saying it again.
You know, Quinn, you're not a believer in multiple tries, right? Like unless somebody says no, eat poop and and die, then you know, they haven't said no yet. You know what I mean? Like like absence only in the business of television and media is absence of yes always no. Like in other businesses, it's not always the case.
You know what I mean? Um, my issue with the ANOVA at lower temperatures at a hundred percent humidity is that everything gets soupy, and then you end up having when you're holding things for a long time. So I don't know how long you're gonna be, you know, keeping it at those temperatures, but like, you know, you get like a you overflow the the drip tray at the front. So when you're doing like when I'm talking like hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of like low temping and in those things, you you like uh you develop these leaks, and so you have to like put towels on your countertop, blah blah blah, blah blah boop. You know what I mean?
I think you're probably better off just using uh which if you're curious, you can get the book Koji Alchemy or you could just join uh Koji Con now and go see like eight billion people's different setups for how to do this. But I think you could do it in a much more energy efficient way than than using an anova I would guess. Yeah yeah. So so here's the thing what I always tell people is that if you uh if you get the book of Miso um basically the there's this there's this uh setup that have like I think it's a sketch of like an old grandma and she just has a box and some um hot water bottles and a blanket so she just takes her Koji trays with hot water bottles and uh and a blanket and puts it over this box and that's it. So whenever people try to come up with all these complex ways of uh creating an incubator like you don't need all that crazy stuff you just need enough humidity that your uh starch medium doesn't dry out and you just need enough well warmth to like you know keep keep it going and that's like you know 86F like you know 30 C is not really hard to get to um and you only have to get keep it there for a day because once the uh Koji starts growing it it goes exothermic.
So you want to then you start cooling it. So you don't even have to worry about heat after the first leak. I think it's like 17 hours but you think that grandma swaps the bottles between her grandkids' beds and her Koji setup? Probably. I mean I like I have a cooler setup that like I can just throw hot, like I can just take uh air cooler, put hot water in it, and then put some hotel trees in it, and that's that's my incubator.
That's it. Yeah. Um you guys familiar with the uh this is Matt from Mystics, so this is also you know, hometown hero for you, Jennifer. But uh are you guys familiar with the YouTube videos, uh Papa Shell Cooks Fish, Papa Shell Fish Cooking? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I've I mean I've I haven't watched his YouTube stuff, but I've seen his Instagram stuff. Okay, okay, fine. So this is quite so this question will make sense, and you know, uh so uh this was written before I know that Matt knew I guess you guys were gonna be on. But can you please weigh in on what the hell this guy is doing? And I will tell you that so you don't have to watch all of the YouTube videos, which by the way, thankfully they have uh YouTube.
I don't know whether it's auto-translate or what, but for those of us that you know only speak English, they have it in English writing underneath. I don't know how good the translations are, but someone can tell me. Um what they're doing is the aging fish and uh uh with mold. And I have to also say that I have never I have not yet been to one of these restaurants or done the dry age fish thing. So I have no personal experience with it, but they're using a mucor mold, uh, mucor flavus, which is like the the cultivated mold for one of the not the one you use which, but one of the cultivated molds for dry aging meat, uh that you know you can go look up, for instance, uh you can go look up uh uh dry aged beef quality with the addition of mucor flavus, sensory, chemosensory and fatty acid analysis for information on what this does in red meat, but they're they're doing it on fish.
So do you guys have any feelings on on this uh technique? I mean, I think it's perfectly fine to be doing it. I don't it's not unsafe. I mean, we have mucor that's in plenty of Asian condiments that are started like you know, like fermented black beans or tofu. So I mean, safety wise, it's totally fine.
I've never I've never had the flavor of mucoral uh uh aged meat or fish. So it'd be interesting. Um I mean you're cre you're creating you're creating emo amino acids and peptides from the fish itself, so it should be easy. Yeah, I believe it's a look at I think it's just like deh dehydration, like uh petitization and and uh and uh dare I say dehydration and uh tenderization. That's that's basically what you're getting with it in meat.
I've never really done it in fish, but if you're watching their video, and by the way, the name of the video is aging fish with mold, but spelled the stupid British way with a U, volume one, Papa Shell's long video, uh comeback edition, and then where you actually see them do it, right? Because the first video is like 18 minutes and they're just wasted the entire time, it's wasted. Uh the second one is aging fish with muc mucor mold uh volume two. And I will say this he does an interesting thing where do you guys familiar with the like the the technique of cutting fish scales off versus using a scaler? Love it.
I hadn't seen it in a long time, and I was like, oh, sweet, because I used to learn have to learn how to do that. He does one half with a scalar and the other half by cutting off the scales, but then doesn't tell you in the when they're tasting it what the difference is or if there was a difference. So I was a little disappointed by that. And also, I don't think his uh I don't think his uh microbiology techniques were too good. So here's a couple of things that, and I haven't done, I haven't done agar plates in a long time.
But uh the the mucor that he got from his his body, right, looked pretty good. And then he went to culture his own on agar plates. I find if but he culture get this, and so you'll appreciate this. So what what he did was he just opens his agar plates and then grabs a chunk and then like all in the open, like with like tweezers and puts it in and drops it. I'm like, listen, like at a very basic level, at a very basic level, use like by the nitro by the Nichrome loop, it costs nothing and flame it, and then keep and at least keep the lid over the thing when you're doing the transfer.
You know, use hot agar, right? So much cross comparation. Yeah, I mean, like, what the hell? Like, why are you even bothering culturing? Why don't you just sneeze into the damn thing and call it a day?
Why are you bothering culturing if you're not using basic culture practices, right? And then Rich, you're gonna go nuts. All right, Jennifer, I don't know you use well, but you Rich gonna go nuts. Here's how he does it. So it in order to inoculate the freaking fish, right?
And again, I don't know the guy, maybe the guy is you know, whatever. He takes the the agar, the mucor off of the agar substrate, which he didn't say what you know what the you did nothing eats just agar, so like malt is a apparently a good thing that you we used to use uh broth, but you can use malt extract, right? So like 5% malt extract, uh, you know, five grams of malt extract, five grams of agar, 250 water, boom. Cook it all up, pour it into your casket, pour it into your plates while it's still boiling hot, which is an advantage of agar, because you have to boil it, put the lid on it, boom. Now it's now it's good to go because it's sterile, it's not sterilized, but it's you know, whatever.
So he then takes the the the mold out of the agar and he suspends it in purified, which I guess means like distilled water, and I'm like, hello, buddy. Like you're basically like you're destroying the viability of a huge amount of that stuff by putting it in such a in crazy hypotonic solution. You're you know, you're if you ever played Dig Doug, you ever played the game Dig Doug, where like the the Dig Dug dude like has that air inflation thing and he shoves it into the creatures and inflates them till they explode? Like that's basically what you're doing with purify water. Like use something at least isotonic with the freaking growth medium, my guy.
Come on. Come on, please. Uh so those are my comments. Do you have any more comments on this uh style of thing or no? No, I mean uh I I wonder what it I I mean I'd be interested in anybody who tasted the meth, you know, the fish from method.
They did. They said it was mild. They said it was mild. Like they're looking for quote unquote like a nuttiness from the mucor. And I was like, I would be looking more for like increased uh like increased um you know free amino acids, increased like that kind of flavor.
Right. I would like, you know, want to know if there was a lot of things. Those are something that would be better to do with coji. Yeah. You know.
What's the longest have you have you done the whole like long, long, long age koji fish thing or no? No, I haven't. Like you should probably I mean, Jeremy's the dude out of like the long aging stuff. Yeah, so yeah. Yeah.
That's not my like that's not my, yes, not my I uh when I was in uh freaking Sydney, I I wanted to go to the restaurant of like, you know, the the fish aging restaurant there whose name escapes me, but I didn't get a chance to. I w what I really want is to be invited to someone who like is like a fish, one of these long age, whatever however they do it, whether they do it just blank, whether they do it inoculated. Oh, I will say this. Papa Shell did something that I want to go to a restaurant, I want them side by side. I want like the normal mo, you know, standard, and I want age side by side.
This way, technique is removed, all the things are removed except for the aging. I would pay good money for that, even and and I would say without all the gussying up. I don't want it gussied. I just want to taste fish two ways. It's the same way that like, you know, when we used to do Ikejime experiments, you know, like uh spine spinal ablation and and you know, um brain spiking, we would do yes and no side by side, blank.
You know, we would like cook it blank, or we would cut it sashimi, same muscle, two times blank. And that's the only way to really do it. You know what I mean? For me to s actually see what the result is, but like, you know, some you know someone should do it. And then, you know, you know, I'll pay for it.
You know, I mean, I'll pay a reasonable amount. I'm like, I'm gonna go crazy. Uh but what Papa Shell did do, I didn't get a chance to look at his other videos, is that I had this idea when I started doing uh I I'm not talking on air about this a million times, but when I first started doing uh spinal ablation, you know, ekigime techniques, including spinal ablation and and brain spiking and bleeding, uh, you know, I was like, we could totally we could totally um do this on other animals and at the same time use their circulatory system the way that you use with a ham and perfuse them with like uh a marinade or a or uh while while they're still being slaughtered, you could get rid of the blood with a perfusion setup and replace it with a flavor. And he's he's doing that with fish. But I didn't get a chance to look at the videos.
But whenever when I when I recommended this to people, people were like, You're basically Dr. Mengela. And I'm like, what? Like I'm anesthetizing these animals and and and slaughtering them in the most humane way possible. And why is it that using a medical procedure on them to make them taste better?
Why does that make me a Nazi all of a sudden? You know what I'm saying? It's like we're already killing the animal is crazy. But people have a people have a very, very, very, very negative reaction to using anything that looks like a medical procedure when you're gonna kill and eat something. They just have a hugely visceral, non-logical reaction.
So the the FCI would not let me do it. I had people lined up. Whoa. I had a guy at Harvard lined up to do it, and uh FCI was like, No, no, you're not. No, you're not.
Anyway. Uh all right. Yeah. Um, let me see. Let's see what we got.
We got some what you we got some questions. Let me just knock let me knock these questions out. Um I would recommend jumping to uh L Bert question. Well, I was I was I was going to do that. I was I was going to do that.
Wait. Uh but is there though? Well, it doesn't specifically mention anyway. Uh L Butts writes, recently made a dish from the broadsheet Melbourne Cookbook, a restaurant recipe compilation book, presumably from Melbourne, Australia. There was a risotto dish with corn and truffle.
I didn't have truffle because it's summer in upside downtown. Uh the recipe was pretty standard. Rizzotto spec. The only riff was that they infused the corn stock with corn cobs. Uh thought the recipe was a bit boring, so I juiced the roasted corn, which is incredibly wasteful uh in terms of yield, and added the juice at the end instead of the creamslash butter.
The starchiness of the juice did create quite a uh quite a bit of tur in terms of adding creaminess as well as flavor. I tasted the juice on its own and it was delicious and it was quite starchy. I was wondering if the ginger clarification technique would work on the corn juice, or would there be a better way of doing it? Uh also interested in a cocktail uses ideas. I think that my guess is I've never had a clarified corn dish where I was like, I need another ten of those in my life.
And I think the issue is is that there's just something about when you clarify the corn, it loses a lot. I think the starch clarification with uh magnesium carbonate would work. The problem is is that there's no such single thing as magnesium carbonate. It's a bunch of different hydrates of magnesium carbonate, and I haven't figured out which is the one I have that works yet, so I can't recommend which one that you need to buy. It also makes it basic, so you'll need to readjust it with a acidity afterwards.
But what would you thought? What do you think the Koji thing in that was, Quinn? Well, again, I was gonna suggest if the corn is roasted and the starch is gelatinized, they could combine it with either a pure amaly or a natural corn or amaly, like a koji, break down the starch, and then they would clarify uh e beer. Yeah, I mean, I know people who have done it. Don, my old partner Don did some of that stuff.
Nothing nothing comes out crystal, and then it's also fermented. You know? Well it's not fermented, it's just broken down. Well, I mean, but the other things are going on. It's not like you're well, if you're adding a pure enzyme, yes, you can do it in like an hour and you're and you'll be fine.
But if you're adding like Koji has its own flavors, it's doing other things other than just amylase action. You know what I mean? So that's a different flavor that you're adding to it. Everything I think it probably tastes good. Well maybe but it wouldn't be purely the corn flavor.
You know what I mean? I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm saying it's not purely the corn flavor. I think you get corn curgy. It still wouldn't taste like just like corn, you know, in the same way that beer doesn't taste like barley.
You know what I mean? It's like um barley's weird. Uh anyway, whatever I'm not gonna get into barley. Um okay Wenrick writes in this is a great question. Uh by the way, uh, where do you guys stand on plastics in terms of uh like using using are you like are you do you try to stay out of the argument and just like hope that nobody asks you the question in terms of I don't want plastics touching my food blah blah blah which plastics touch my food etc etc do you just try to avoid this entirely so that you don't have to talk about it no I'd say like well the thing is like whether you realize it or not plastics are touching your food all the time like like plumbing for example right like not here.
Here it's still copyright yeah still like you're getting plastic no matter what what you do in your in your water in your food. Yeah. I mean what do you think about this? You know, the recent studies uh that have been coming out where they've been um chumming up human brains and determining what percentage of the brain is microplastics of a modern brain is my you've seen this and it's no I haven't seen it's some incredibly high number, right? For considering that like the blood brain barrier is you know supposedly very difficult to cross.
It's for that, it's an incredibly high number. But when I heard the number and the person was like dun dun dun dun dun dun, and they gave me the number, I was like, is that all? Is that it? I want more plastic in my brain. Um I I don't really think that, but I don't know.
It's like uh it's an interesting question. But um the problem uh here is about plastic wrap. So 99% of commercial plastic wrap is PVC, polyvinyl chloride. And the re the reason, and I don't know that it's just cost, is that PVC of all of the plastic wraps is uh the clingiest. It is the clingyest.
So if you like cling, if you like it to cling, right, then PVC is good. Uh but from a if you I don't like PVC because it smells bad, right? And so if it smells bad, and I I find that it gets a lot more what's called flavor, you know, uh flavor scalping, flavor thieving, you know what I mean, where it's like taking flavor from the by the way, flavor scalping's a technical term, but is it not an offensive term? Do they need a different term? Is it offensive?
I think it's offensive. Someone needs to come up with a different technical term for something that steals flavor from something else. Someone tell me what the new non-shaving. Well, it's shaving it's well, it's like st I don't know. Someone there has someone else is already probably flavor heist.
Someone is already thought that. I mean, uh it goes both ways too, right? So the nasty plastic flavor goes like, for instance, when you wrap certain high fat cheeses in like commercial plastic wrap, and then the cheese is ruined. And the plastic wrap now smells like the cheese forever. You know what I mean?
But like, for instance, alliums, even in polypropylene, which doesn't have a lot of transfer, uh alliums transfer like a mother, which is, you know, how many, how many grape clarified grapefruit juice batches have been ruined in bars I've owned based on quart containers full of scallions, I can't count and do not wish to. Um but uh PVC is uh is the one that a lot of people like to stay away from. The problem is 99% of all commercial plastic wrap is PVC. And I think this is for very kind of bad reason is that when people are shopping for plastic wrap in the store, they're looking for non-PVC. So things like uh saran, which used to be PVDC, which no one uses anymore, is polyethylene, right?
So Wenrik was like, I love Reynolds Food Service wrap, but I believe it's PVC. Does anyone know if any big 15-inch wide commercial food wrap is made of food-safe materials? I believe the better alternative is called alternative is called polyolefin. Thanks. Well, polyolefin is just a category.
Polyethylene is a polyolefin. The other famous polyolefin is polypropylene, right? But what we're talking about here is polyethylene. Olafin, olefin just means uh something with a carbon double bond in it. So ethylene versus propylene, and then you poly it and it gets all polied out, so you get a polyolefin, but polyethylene.
Um I have not found, sorry, Wenrick, I have not found a good commercial plastic wrap that is polyethylene. But if someone can let me know. So, so for instance, if you go to Stretch tight, which is kind of a commercial-sized plastic wrap with a good uh zipper thing on it that you can get at like Costco and whatnot, uh, all over their website, it says, uh, no, you know, no BPA, no this, no that, but it doesn't, and it nowhere on the website does it say it's PVC. But if you look at it, it says recyclable, recyclable number three. And when you look at what recyclable number three is, guess what it is?
Oh, it's PVC. So uh I don't know if do you guys know of any good polyethylene branded uh whatever? No, no. Not me either. Xander says, is there a resource like a calculator which can calculate the viscosity of a solution based off of ratios of water, alcohol, sugar, fat, and thickeners?
I know the viscosity is not climb linear, but at levels of one to fifty, I don't know what you mean, one to 50 centipoys. Uh is it an easy way to calculate? Nope. The question is, why do you actually want to calculate this? You can calculate uh it's very complicated.
You can get close to certain things, but download the program cool prop C O O L P R O P. And it can do some mixtures, but they're not necessarily accurate. But Xander, ask yourself why do you want to calculate the viscosity? What is it that you think that will tell you that is helpful, right? Uh, because the uh short answer is no, I don't think that you can do that.
Uh Quinn, did we get to all the questions? Did I get them all? Do I have 45 seconds of just talking to these folks? All right, well, he's double checking. So what do you guys got to say about what do you got to say about Koji on the way out?
Jack, have you got anything on the way out? I mean, if I feel like a 40 seconds, I'm usually rushing towards the end. Nothing. Sign up for KojiCon. It's awesome.
There you go. You'll love it. Jennifer Robin Branks in with it. Sign up for KojiCon on the way out. That's what I'm talking about.
Jack, you ever go to uh do you ever go to uh you ever do any koji work at home or no? Oh, he's oh, he's gone. I lost him already. All right, whatever. So go to KojiCon, sign up for the next like almost year, you get 200 hours of like Koji goodness, including how to not use your ANOVA to uh grow uh grow your koji.
Uh I still believe Koji is the best seasoning that any culinarian or cut can use with very little effort. All right, well we'll end on that. Thanks, folks. Thanks for coming on and talking Koji with us. Thank you.
Thanks so much, Dave. Send a blast. Cooking Koji issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.