Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive from the heart of Manhattan, Rock and Fall Center, New York City, New Stand Studios. Skeleton crew today, Joe. Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels. Hey, hey, hey, hey.
What up, what up? We got uh good to see you. Good to see you as well. And I get to face you for once because we're the only people in the studio. That's true.
Nice. Uh we have for only half the show, apparently, Jackie Molecules out of Los Angeles. What's up? Yo. Yo, yo, yo.
No, no uh no Anastasia the Hammer Lopez. She's in the wilds of Seattle, where apparently, even in our most tech-centered city, the most tech-centered city possibly in the United States of America, there is no signal. And in the upper left, we have uh fortunately Quinn. How you doing, Quinn? I'm good.
How's Vancouver Island? I flew over your island once, like a week ago. Yes. I waved to Nanaimo as well. You are the most upper left.
Oh, yes. So upper left. Not as upper left as I as I as I could be. The plane that uh so I was in Alaska. So if I was in New Orleans, which is why we missed the show the first time.
And then I was in Alaska, which is why we missed the show the second time. The plane, by the way, Alaska again, fantastic. Fantastic. Uh by the way, call your if you're listening on Patreon, call your questions in too. 917-410-1507.
That's 917-410-1507. And Quinn, why don't you tell them how they would sign up for that and why they might want to? Uh, they would go to Patreon.com/slash cooking issues. You get uh priority answers when submitting questions for the show. You get uh deals with people like uh Edward Edwards Aged Meat, uh Kitchen Arts and Letters, Groben Vine, Olive Oil, etc.
etc. And I actually just the other day also uh released a uh Sur Bay recipe calculator. I've been trying to release more of those sort of uh special recipes, and we also release some of uh your recipes sometimes too, right, Dave? Yeah, I mean we could do more because people just need to ask me, and I'll put stuff there. Uh honestly, anyone in our Patreon, if you want some sort of content from me, I have no idea.
For instance, I occasionally put up uh STL models for things that uh, you know, I print out that I use in my kitchen. I have no idea whether people like them or not. So on the Patreon, like let us know what you want, and you know, we will try to provide. You also get uh a lot of times people can ask our previous guests questions if they want, uh, if we didn't get to it on the show, which is most likely because as Joe knows, we like tangents. Is that true?
Or we at least I do tangents. I don't know that I like them. You love them. I don't know that I love them, it's just how I'm built. I love that the show is called No Tangent Tuesdays, and the whole show are tangents.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh the uh the other thing you get to do, of course, is listen live.
And I'll tell you this: if you're not listening live, if you're not a Patreon member, uh, even if you are a Patreon member but you don't listen live, occasionally people will say some crazy business that has to get bleeped out. It just happens every once in a while. That's true. Yeah, that's true. And not just not just curses.
We've had live on the air threats go out that had to be bleeped out for legal reasons. Why? Has anyone complained? No, no, I'm just saying, like if you want to hear the even though it is a family show and we do our best to stay on the rails such as they are. Yeah, because the live show is live show, and then everything else is left up to me.
And like, I'm gonna remove that. That sounds terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you want to hear the again, anything can happen live. Anything can happen live.
I mean, you know, not that we're you know the biggest bleeps are gonna be when you get people like Jim Leahy on, right? Because the man can't not curse. Oh, yeah. You know? Yes.
I mean, in in the real life, you know, I pr I use He cannot not curse. Yeah, I use sailor adjacent language in the real life, but you know, I can tone it down when I'm here on on the microphone, whereas he cannot. Imagine what he's like in his private life. You know what I mean? Anyway.
Um, so yeah, so I was in uh New Orleans and I was hoping to go, because we've talked a lot uh here about Willie May's Scotch House, their wet on wet chicken technique, wet on wet, like fried chicken technique. And how I don't believe we've had said this many times on the air, uh I don't believe in any such thing as the best X, Y, or Z of anything. I think it's absurd. You know, people have been frying chicken since they had oil and chickens, right? So it's like everyone thinks that every group of people thinks that they have the best, except don't care, it doesn't matter.
Willie May's Scotch House is very good fried chicken. Like we're talking like Willie May is like the shortstop. I don't no, no, no, I think it's not like the Cardinal. Okay. No, no, no, no.
No, it's interesting. No, yeah. And there's another there's a Willie's chicken shack, not the same, right, in New Orleans, right? But anyway, Willie May's Scotch House uh is one of the country's more renowned uh chick fried chicken makers. Yeah.
And uh, and I've had it, and I have to say it's extremely good. I did burn the hell out of my mouth because uh one of the times I went there, I've been there i don't know like two three times and uh and and i think i said this on air before but one of the breast meat pieces I got had a giant skin bubble that had somehow filled with fry oil and because I'm meat as soon as the basket came out I was like you know I bit right into it and the oil pocket exploded and for the next uh for the next couple of days my mouth looked like a a cave cavern with stalag you know tights hanging down of my mouth because of the the oil splash but still delicious chicken oh we have a caller it's so good um caller you're on the air what's up Dave it's Josh from Norfolk what up hot dog is this by the way Josh from Norfolk bar owner and the uh has the incorrect social media moniker of a hot dog is a sandwich which factually incorrect factually incorrect and so you're gonna love this okay I'm I'm actually calling with a hot dog question but not a not a debate question. All right. So uh I'm gonna be opening a small kind of uh cocktail supply shop and tasting room here in the fall and uh because of our great commonwealth in order to serve alcohol I also have to serve food so I figure what's more on brand right yeah yeah so my question is I've got this small like 300 square foot space um access to a commercial kitchen but outside of my space what do you think is the best move for cooking hot dogs fairly quickly in a space with no hood I have like some space where I can prepare food, but I'm trying to decide if this is a just buy a roller situation. Do I grab like an ANOVA thing?
Or uh, you know, what's your thoughts? All right. Well, there can be no one thought because there are so many different hot dogs, right? So, first of all, I need to know are you trying I don't have any concept of uh Southern Virginia's hot dog culture. So, like, is there a southern Virginia, Southern coastal Virginia hot dog culture, or is the Navy base loom so large that like it's kind of like a wash with all sorts of different kinds of culture?
It is pretty awash. I wouldn't say we have specific hot dog culture. Um you will find a Sabrette cart every now and again. Um that's maybe mainly expat New Yorkers. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. I don't want to listen, I I've thrown a lot of shade on Sabrette in the past, and I kind of don't want to because the Museum of Food and Drink is doing uh our next exhibition is on um street street food, like so vending, but plus also carts and the history of it in New York. And so, you know, I can't be throwing too much shade on Sabrette. I will say that that the United States and the world gives New York too much credit for its hot dog culture as opposed to all the other hot dog cultures in the country. You know what I'm saying?
So I don't think you're gonna want to emulate New York, although the onion goop is good. Who here likes onion goop? Got one from Joe, anyone else, onion goop? Anyone? Sure.
Yeah, yeah. For those of you that don't know, the new the the two New York toppings, right? And there's only two. We're not like Toronto or Chicago or any one of these like goop dog universes where it's like like any kind of like garbage thrown onto a hot dog, or even the delicious hot dogs, the conies out of uh what's it called, Detroit, where it's like got that beef heart chili all over it. In New York, you have well, three choices.
Four, if you if you want to get a nasty stare, you can get ketchup at a hot dog cart. You can get it. They'll give it to you, right? What they want to do is either, or any combination of mustard, which you all know what it is, sauerkraut, which you all know what it is, although the ones on hot dog carts have been uh pasteurized and jacked with uh benzoate as a preservative, so they don't taste as good as if you made your own, or if you got like a decent commercial brand like Bubbies. Uh Bubbi's a good brand.
I like Bubbies. Uh and three is onion goop. And I think onion goop is the one that is more New York. Wouldn't you guys agree? Those who have lived in New York, the onion goop is the one that you don't see everywhere.
100%. Yeah. It's like it's like a red, not ketchupy, but red, slightly sweet, like they're not like slices of onion. They're almost like squares. They're like little onion squares that have been kind of sauteed, but not like fully until they're soft, and they're in this kind of like semi-sweet, reddish, not barbecue saucy and not ketchupy goop.
And that is the New York City topping, right? That you can, and I don't know whether like a lot of people get it or not, but I haven't seen it anywhere else. The onion goop. And I think Sabrette might sell the onion goop. So who does the relish then?
Is that um Chicago? I don't know. I mean, relish seems like an in like a like a national kind of a thing, but I've never seen someone get that on a New York City cart. You know what I mean? Like a New York City cart, I mean, maybe they do now, because I haven't been to a hot dog cart in a long time.
But to get back to Josh's question, I wouldn't necessarily go for New York style uh dogs, right? Uh but if you're kind of unleashed, if you have no culture you're aiming at, like you're not trying to do uh like the the split, like the ripper style where it's like fried and split, and you're not trying to do like the chart chard style like they like they'll do when they're doing uh on the grill up in like upstate, you know, New York, or you're not trying to do the Coney style out of Detroit. You could do whatever you want. I'll have I'll say that like there is great, there is great honor in a properly made dirty water dog if the dog is good. My issue is often that I don't think that they that they're not serving the best dogs that they can because they're using skinless, right?
And so for me, a great hot dog, I like snap. So I like uh I like a hot dog with a casing. But as I've said on the show many times, absolutely be snappy dogs. Snappy dogs. So if you're doing a snappy dog, like what you can do is you can buy like like a bill, like a bunch of hot dogs and then put them in water and then bring them up to temperature and then make a hot dog stock, and then serve those hot dogs for family meal, they'll be fine, right?
And then just do like a like a hot water hold, like in a even in a static bath, because it doesn't really matter, right? And those hot dogs will stay neutrally hot dog tasting for infinity. And then you could just do a solera. You could be like, you know how like um uh yeah, those people who are like uh we've had the same, it's not the same grease, obviously, because you're removing a little bit of grease and you're adding a little bit of grease, but is there the there's the famous hamburger people who, when they lost their lease, they they moved the grease. They had a citywide parade where they moved the grease from one location to the next so that the new place wouldn't be ruined, or the famous Lambic houses where they don't wash anything because they don't want to ruin their wild yeast culture as though you can keep something static by not cleaning it, or like the famous, like, you know, centuries-old Solera-based stocks that you have in uh in uh traditional Chinese restaurants.
I mean, you could you could be you could be like the like the the never-ending hot dog pot, right? And the good thing about that is is that the temperature is gonna stay the same almost no matter what. And as long as you pull from one side of your holding pot and add to the other side of your holding pot, like nothing really matters. And you can hold it for a long, long time as long as you're not holding them so hot that the texture degrades within a reasonable period. You know what I mean?
Uh so I think if you hold anything, you could hold it at even probably 60 by four 140, which is gonna make the health department wildly happy with you. And uh, I don't think it's gonna degrade the texture of the hot dog even over the course of a whole shift. Now, but if you don't want that, if you want grilled, then you need a hood. If you want a fryer, then you need a decent fryer. Plus also, then you you have to worry about how long your firing time is.
With a dirty water dog, dog comes out bun, out bun, out bun. Roller houses, they say they're okay, but have any have any of you ever visited a 7-Eleven late at night? I have. But yeah. Have you looked at those rollers?
Well, yeah, they're gross. They're gross. Yeah. Disgusting. They're sitting there drying out, they look all nasty.
They're like a wrinkled dog. They're like a raisin-y old dog. That's no good. Not pretty. Not pretty.
Rollers are good hot hold for a certain length of time only. You know what I'm saying? And that length of time is not infinity. Yeah, first thing I thought I was the boil for him. Yeah.
Yeah. Dirty water dog. Easy, simple. Now, it you have to wrap your folks' mind around it. If you called it like dirty water dogs, maybe people would be like, oh, and that's a tip of the hat to New York right there.
If you're just calling it a dirty water dog, they'd be like, oh yeah. And then even though I have no idea whether Boston even has a hot dog culture, but you could be playing Love That Dirty Water by the uh who I who was it? What's that group? Oh my god, I can't remember. It's out of my head.
Standells by the by the Standels. It's the famous Boston Love That Dirty Water about the Charles River and how filthy it is. Love that dirty water, bump, bump, bump. You know the song? No one knows this song?
Yeah, I know the song. Yeah, Boston, you're my home. Anyway, so I I would go maybe that way in terms as long as you like it, why not go that way? Or were you thinking something else? Well, no, I think I think that might be the move.
Because we did a series of dogs at uh at the cocktail pop-up, and they're essentially what we did was dirty water and then a quick sear. And I mean, I can throw an induction cooker in there to be able to just put like a little color on it before it hits the bun, and then yeah, we're it's best of both worlds, I think. Yeah, or hell, you can color it beforehand, probably. Or color the bun. Yeah.
Uh uh, oh my God. Uh no one in New York, no one in New York does the the light, the lightly, the the buttered and lightly toasted on a griddle bun. And by the way, oh yeah. Yeah, I mean thinking of lobster roll, that's that same bun. Yeah, that's a can that's a Connecticut, that's a Connecticut thing right there.
You know what I mean? Oh, speaking of, in a in Alaska, I'm gonna have to look it up. I I went to a and we'll we'll talk about that in a minute after we're done talking about, but do you like the do you like the lightly toasted bun? Place called Yankee Doodle in in uh which was a lunch counter. It's an old lunch counter thing, right?
Like light top split. What are your feelings on top split, Josh? Uh for a hot dog, I kind of prefer the side split. Like I'm a I'm a potato roll guy, lately toasted. Listen, listen, listen.
What you should do is find someone who'll make you your potato roll, but top split. I don't know why the rest of the country is not on board with top split buns the way that New England is. New York, by the way, is a side split house, right? You get north of New York, you get like, you know, up in Connecticut, Massachusetts, up, and like you start seeing top splits, especially with lobster roll people, because lobster roll people know that the top split is the money. You know what I mean?
Top split lobster roll all day. Yeah. Also, top splits don't break open. Like a side split roll, the way you cut a split side split roll, they break open, hot dog falls through it, the goop. That's when it's a sandwich.
That's when that mother becomes a sandwich. You see, this is why like us folks up from here from the Northeast, we understand that when you make it the way God wants with a top split, right? It's a hot dog. You know what I mean? How sorry is it to look at a side split bun and you can see those edges and they cut all the way through it?
It's it's ridiculous. It looks like a catcher's mitt. Get get some top splits. You know what I mean? Love a top split.
You know, you can use potatoes in a top split, Josh. Don't be so close-minded. Hey, I'm opening anything. That's why I call. Yeah.
All right. I love a top split. I want the whole world. Also, top splits easier to make. You know what I mean?
You can because you can, you can s you can side them in a if you don't want that, if you don't need the top splits to look like a brioche. So you don't need so the classic top split, you can actually see the bread on the sides, right? So the only kind of crust you see is the bottom and the top where it's not on the split. And so you can bake them side by side in a pan. So they're also easier to make from a human being perspective.
How dumb is it? How dumb is it, Joe, that in a side split bun, you're holding it and there's like the top side on one side and the bottom side on the other side. It's ridiculous. What's your thought on cheese on a hit on a hot dog? Well, listen, there are there are uh it once you go beyond the standard hot dog, I think all bets are off.
Like if you're gonna wrap it in bacon. No, no, no. I just said just cheese. Like, you know, I'm thinking about like what old school, like the what is those dogs called the ballpark dogs. Oh, they well, I remember Oscar Meyer made a cheese dog that I used to love.
Because the ballpark had the dog cheese, the the cheese whiz in the dog when you bite into it. I mean, I'm not gonna say I don't like it. I we weren't allowed to have it as kids. Really? No, no.
No, boy. Kosher. Yeah, because of the trafeness, the traceness of the milk and meat. But were you like, were you like, hey, there's not real milk? Oh man.
Can you imagine a kosher cheese dog with like a vegan cheese in it? This good the the the meat eater's application for a vegan cheese. Even just the thought of a vegan hot dog is I mean, I don't know. I mean, eventually, like I don't see why you couldn't make uh I mean, uh of the things to make, it would seem like the easiest because it's an emulsified sausage anyway. So like what you know what I mean?
Like I feel you could do it. Yeah. I've I've haven't perused the recent, I'm sure in the past five years, the the the vegan hot dog game has jumped leaps and bounds above. I mean, I've I've played around with the meat analogs for like uh hamburger meat, but I've never played with uh the the hot dog analogs. But anyway, so I'm gonna recommend Top Split.
Man, man, that would be nice. I've never had a dirty water on a toasted bun. I think I would like it. I think I would too. I mean, uh, it's a great presentation because this hot water, I mean, the hot the hot water dog is all pretty much homogenous, one color.
Yeah. And then you get the deck. What's nice about the hot water dog, the dirty water dog, is is it is a pristine looking hot dog. It does snap better. Yeah, it snaps better.
The skin's always perfect. It's kind of a little bit of a glisten from that kind of greasy water that you pull it out of. I mean, uh, there's something to be said for it. There's a purity in it. Americans, in general, we don't necessarily appreciate muchness.
So, like, me too. I'm an American, right? Like a lot of char, a lot of crust, you know, a lot, lot, a lot. But like, uh, I don't know. There's something, there's something appealing about the just the I wanted to do some a concept once where we would have like different styles of hot dogs, but what a pain in the butt.
What a pain in the butt to so you would hot hold everything in like a in like a uh combi or an ANOVA. You'd hot hold it or a CVAP forever at like, you know, serving temp at like 140, and then you'd finish it in a million ways. So, like Josh said, you sear it, or you could throw it in a fryer and do like, you know, like do the rip and have it pop open, or you could like char grill it. But I was like, what a pain in the butt. Why don't you just choose a style?
But what you could do that I think would be fun. This I think you should do is like I think you should source different hot dogs. That's what I've I've always wanted to do that too. So like get get a couple of cases of uh I forget their name, the hot dog of note in Detroit. We, you know, we've talked about it on air.
I have to go back and look up at the hot dog of note in Detroit, get a couple cases of that, get some, you know, uh Zweigels from like up uh in uh Rochester area. If you want to do one of the new uh Connecticuts, like get some hummels, and then like, you know, have let people choose their hot dog based on provenance. Or what about country like Germany? Yeah, you can get but you can get anything you want. Frankford or I'm thinking right away, like the pretzel bun.
I love a pretzel bun. Yeah, I love a pretzel bun. But like in other words, like so you could have customization that way, and you could claim, and you wouldn't be lying, it does make your life easier, but you could also claim that you are trying to stick not to the authentic presentation, because every culture has its own way of presenting the dog or cooking the dog, but to the actual inherent nature of the dog itself by not covering it with anything other than its own broth. You know what I mean? So if you go that far, you know, just sell cups of the broth too.
Get you a big sign, points down, just says hot dog broth house. Well, I I had an idea. It sounded like a chicken. Like clam broth house. Well, there's the clam broth house, which I'm sure is what you're referencing, and you need to get uh you need to get a photo of your hand pointing down towards your towards your privates, male or female, and you gotta say, hot dog broth right here.
Right here. You know what I mean? To point down. Uh, but uh anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, which I'm sure nine-tenths of you, look up clam broth house, which was in Jersey City or Hoboken, one of those. Uh look up clam broth house.
Uh, I think it was originally Umberto's, was it? No, that's and it I think it was just clam broth house. You look up because Umberto's was in a little littly here. Like you look up clam broth house, and it was a bar that that only closed, I think like 20 years ago, and they would have fountains that just had clam broth, like just coming out of them, and you would get drinks, but then when you wanted something that wasn't alcoholic, you just put your mug some tomato juice with it. I you know what that's interesting.
I don't I haven't spoken to anyone that had the clam broth. Oh, but I was wondering whether or not I I assumed it was a white clam broth, but you could be correct. It could be a tomato-based clam broth. It it's proximity to Manhattan and our terrible clam chowder. By the way, no one for those of you who don't live in New York or have not been to New York, we don't eat Manhattan clam chowder in Manhattan.
When people who are from Manhattan eat clam chowder, we eat the correct clam chowder, which is the white one. You know what I mean? Is anyone who's here who has ever lived or like been in Manhattan prefer the red-based clam chowder? No. No, of course not.
It's, you know, there, and I've never even had. There's apparently a Rhode Island clam chowder, which is different, which I've never even had. But I digress. I had this idea, Josh. I'm gonna give it to you because who cares, right?
I think, and I was telling the museum they should do this too. I think a hot dog ramen made with hot dog flavor. So to take take your day, is like amazing. So you could buy ramen bricks and just do like dirty water ramen using the dirty water broth, right? And then you could, you could have in your same hot hold, because the temperatures match, right?
You could have in the same hot hold eggs. So you could do, you could have your ramen pucks, you have your hot water dog, you'd have to keep some in a separate basin that was like kind of near the boil, right? And then you could just put the ramen thing into the bowl, sheboygan, put some of the hot some of the dirty water dog right over the ramen bowl, pull one of the eggs out of the hot dog hotholder, crack that sucker in, and then chop up the dog of choice, put it on money. You know what I mean? This is the sound of money.
You know what I mean? As uh Maximilian Riedel once told me when he was clinking his glasses together, Riedel. Maximilian Riedel from Riedel Glass, where it told me once as he is clinking together, cling is this is the sound of money because he was using his expensive glasses. And then you're gonna buy more when they break. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly. Yeah, listen, money in his pocket. You break his glasses, money in his pocket. You know what I mean? Same with all glass makers.
Only we feel bad when we break glasses because we have to buy more of them. Uh anyway, Josh, any of this helpful or is this all like uh useless noodling? No, yeah. Yeah, this is all great. I think uh I think the hot hold will be the way to go because I the onus is yeah, I want the dogs to be good, but I also have a whole retail shop I need to tend to.
So definitely it being speedy that way is uh is is great. I think I found the answer. But your wait, are you also serving liquor? Or just selling liquor? I can Yeah, go ahead.
Selling uh like bitters, fortified, and things like that. I can do everything except for distilled spirits. Okay. The only reason I say that is that like when you design a food system to be super, super efficient, but then you also have a cocktail program, you get to the weird position where your food tickets come out faster than your liquor tickets, and it becomes problematic. When when your food can like like greatly outstrip your your liquor in terms of a speed, everyone's like, what the what?
You know what I mean? Because they don't understand. Anyway, you know what I'm saying. As a pro, you know, you know what I'm talking about. Most people want their drink ticket to come out before their liquor, the uh their drink ticket to come out before their food ticket.
You know what I mean? Anyway. And by a ticket, for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, when you order uh like a cocktail and or wine and or food, those tickets typically can print out in different places depending on who's actually serving it, right? So you could be in a situation where a bartender is totally in the weeds, slammed out, and they have a bunch of tickets on the rail, and the kitchen could be slow as all get out. So the kitchen could actually do the ticket, like make your food before your bartender even gets to your ticket, especially if there's no conversation between those two groups.
And so you could get your food and then waiting around for your drink, and you think that the and it is their fault. I mean, it is the place's fault. They could have communicated with each other better, but it's really easy for it to happen. You know what I mean? Um anyway.
Uh I don't know if that makes any sense to anyone, but does to me. Um, yeah, so let us know how it goes, what you choose to do. What which uh do you have any specific dogs you're thinking of getting yet? Like purveyors, hot dog purveyors? I'm uh I'm I'm waiting on some samples because we've got some uh local uh manufacturers, and I'd like to do local if possible, as long as they're you know nice and snappy.
Um but yeah, if you've got suggestions there, I'm open as well. But yeah, ask the discourse for their favorite dogs because we got to get people from I've only been to so many places, you know what I mean? So hard to know. You know, I once I think I said this on air a long time ago. One time I spent like a whole day making emulsified duck.
I bought duck, cut it all, you know, cut it all apart, got the fat ratios right, uh, froze the stuff down, emulsified, made emulsified thing, all this, you know, stuffed it. You know what they tasted like? Hot dogs. Because hot dogs taste like the hot dog spice. So I went through all that trouble of making a duck hot dog, and it tasted pretty much like hot dog.
But you were in New Orleans, right? You went to like the Confederacy of Dunts. Oh, I saw his statue. Ignatius, uh, whatever his name. His statue is right there uh on uh Canal Street, you know, next to one of the hotels.
I've never have I had a Lucky's dog. I've had a Lucky's dog in the airport. I didn't have the fortitude to actually get a Lucky's dog on this on the street. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, for those of you who don't know, Confederate's Confederacy of Dunces was uh I forget the author's name, but he's famous and died young. And uh, you know, I think the book only became popular after he died, right? Yep. But uh it's about this guy who has lots of issues, but one of his jobs is selling lucky dogs, which is an actual hot dog in New Orleans that's served from a hot dog-shaped cart. And it is famous for being served by let's you call them interesting folk.
Interesting folk serve the Lucky's dogs, and they're like in kind of like areas that are like John Kennedy Tool. Oh, there you go. Like they're in like they're like you'll get you can get a lucky dog. There's always one parked out of um on uh on bourbon by uh what's that bar? Uh Lafayette.
Uh, what's that bar called? Lafitte's right right there at like 2 a.m. And it's always a crap show there. So I've never bought the dog there, but next time. Good book to read.
Yeah. Yeah. David, have you gone and had their hot dog? No, I've never been in New Orleans. Always wanted to go.
Yeah, it's right there. I know. I know. I know. I wouldn't go in July.
No, I want to go for jazz. Yeah. Yeah, they have that. You know what I mean? They do.
Yeah. Uh anyway. Uh Josh, let us know. Uh let us know how it go. Absolutely.
We'll do. Thanks. All right, cool. Um, and that's the kind of conversation. I have to hop off in a second.
All right, so what do you got for the week? Or the two weeks. I have a very quick thing I'll leave you with. All right. Yeah.
Well, I had to have another crown. I had to have another crown. I have a gold crown now, so that kept me off of I know, it's insane. Is it is it gold? Before that.
Please, please, is it gold? It is. Oh my god. How many times, man? How many times did you listen to uh Tifus by uh five uh 300 pounds of goo?
How many how many times do you listen to that? Oh man, I hadn't hadn't thought about that. That song is like the greatest song to ever come out of Daytona Beach, I think. I'm pretty sure they're from Daytona Beach. Dropped out of college.
No, you have to go gold. I'm not I'm not an enemy of quality for my teeth. So where which one did you get the crown in gold? Muller? It's a molar in the back.
Okay, in the back. Yeah. No, it's not as visible as you'd hope. It's not like the picture frame one. Um but those that the thing I'll leave you with though, so I I took my girlfriend to a very nice omakase for her birthday like a few weeks ago.
And like eight-seater, you know, Edam May style. And how do they make money by that? Before you before you go, how do they make money? Is this rhetorical? Like I know the answer to this.
I don't know. How does any how do you make money with an eight-seat restaurant? How much was the bill, if you don't mind me asking? I'm just curious about this. And how many turns can they do?
I mean, it was like a 250. So here's the thing it's a sister restaurant to a larger and more expensive, maybe Michelin Starplace. I forget the name. It was Bar Sawa where we went. And then the restaurant.
I don't know. They're allowed to lose money in LA, right? They're allowed to lose money. I got you. Okay, go ahead.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, go ahead. So next to us, next to us, guy on a date. Uh and he's just like clearly not a food person, you know. I I don't want to make that judgment, but like finance or entertainment or something.
I don't know what. He's just one of these like LA looking rich people. How old? How old are we talking? And he's just uh early 40s, maybe late 30s, right?
Okay, okay. And he's just leaving pieces uneaten, like the uni, the toro, right? And the the chef, the Japanese, you know, he's like, uh, sir, I'm so sorry. Do you not like our sushi? And he goes, Oh no, man.
He's like, I I just ate before I came here. I'm good. It's good. I'm just I'm kind of full, man. Don't worry about it.
What the hell? What the hell? I've never seen anything like it. Wow. The whole entire like, you know, there's three people behind the buttons.
Everyone was just shocked and aghast. I mean, was he high? It was okay to just No, no. I think he was just indifferent and the girl wanted it and he couldn't care less. Why didn't the girl eat his sushi?
Great question. But my next question was why can't I have it then? Oh my god, what if you had been like excuse me? Excuse me. That would have been amazing.
I thought about it. I mean, the thing is, right? I've never in that kind of a a meal, right? I've never left being like, oh my god, I can't have another bite. You know what I mean?
No. If anything, the opposite. It's the opposite, usually. I mean I'm like, wow, I could have had another 10 uses. Yeah, I've left with, oh my God, my wallet can't sustain another bite.
But I've never left with That's correct. You know what I mean? So it's like that's just weird. Like, this is what I'm saying. Like, I don't think you would ever see that over here, right?
I don't think so. It felt like a very LA thing, I have to say. Well, what's what's interesting is like, I guess, you know, like a very American perspective is I'm paying, I'll do what I want. I'll eat what I want, I'm paying for it, right? But that's just not the way you're supposed to do that.
You know what I'm saying? I'm paying, I can be wasteful if I want. Yeah. Yeah. He would have been sent out of Japan.
He would have been taken to the airport immediately from the restaurant. If you sent home. If anyone can hear who knows this person, because you would know. You would know. If if you knew this person, you would know that that it was them because who else is gonna do that?
They're the ones that make it hard for us to get reservations in Japan. You know what I mean? Because like everyone's gonna call be like that's right. Yeah. Some white dude from America came to my restaurant and get this.
He said he ate before he came. He didn't finish this sushi. What? And that's it. We're all hosed.
You know what I mean? Right. We can't get reservations. Oh my Jesus. Yeah, because of this guy.
Because of this guy. Yeah. Weasel. Yeah. So anyway, that's my parting.
That's my parting thought. You got nothing else? Two weeks. When was the crown? No, I felt I've soft foods.
Uh the crown was last week. So you know, like uh late like Friday. Do they still smash mercury into the gold before they pack it in your teeth that they don't do that anymore? Week. No, they didn't they do not.
I had a silver filling before, which was the problem. Uh well, why would you get silver? Why would you get it? Why would you get a filling that that you know is gonna oxidize when you could get gold, which is I was a kid, I was a kid, and I had a crazy Italian dentist uncle, and uh that's just what he did. Did he did he do it like at like at dinner one night?
You're like, oh little Jackie Molecules, his tooth is messed up. Hey, I got silver with me. Oh, and then well, unless you want the gold molecular I got on my neck No, no, no, no, my mother gave that to me. Exactly. Is that what happened?
He he did he did live at uh no, it was just it was a house slash office, so pretty much. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah. So listen. Anyway, I'm back.
I'll be eating normal for the rest of the week. Okay. All right, we'll be safe. I hope you don't uh sit next to this fool again ever. God.
What if you ever what if you uh what if you showed up and he was there, you walk, got up and left. Like, nope, not doing it. No, no, that happened to my stepfather made Steve Martin get up once from a restaurant. So they sat down and like they got their meal. Steve Martin walks in, sits down at the table, is looking at my stepfather straight on, like looking at him.
My stepfather picks up by accident. I wasn't there, he told me a story. Picks up by accident the vinegar instead of the ketchup and just goes shablam and pours vinegar all over his plate. Steve Martin looks, sees this, gets up, walks out of the restaurant. That's it.
Over. You know, and my stepfather's meal was run. Twice. Two problems. Anyway.
Uh all right, man. Uh uh, hope you're uh hope you can get on that hard food. Get on that hard food. Everyone loves everyone loves solid foods if they can have them. You know what I'm saying?
He left. Man. Thanks, Jack. All right. Mr.
Lequin, what do you got? Um let's see. This past weekend, we've been, again, hitting a lot of uh new cheeses. We found a second new cheese shop in the other town over. This one did local local cheese.
And uh they had uh their own buffalo mozzarella. They actually had their own Parmesan style cheese. It was pretty good. I mean, it's not like I mean, but they're all over the map here. First of all, where are they getting their buffalo milk from?
Do they grow buffalo on Vancouver Island or are they shipping the milk in with the curtain? Oh yeah, and no, again, this second shop is a shop that's like attached to a farm. Because you wouldn't find the same person doing a cow's milk cheese and a buffalo cheese in Italy. You know what I mean? This is I'm I'm being I'm playing the part of Nastasio Lopez here, where you're like, listen, choose something to be good at and be good at it.
You know what I mean? They did a buffalo brie, which was nice. I don't even understand. I like here's the thing. It's not brie.
Do you know what I mean? It's not brie. You know what I mean? Like, it could be it could be delicious. Bloom grind, bloom grind cheese.
All right. There you go. There you go. That makes more sense. It's like uh this is like the argument I had with uh Sam Edwards about his uh about uh, you know, from uh his wigwam hams and all these where he he makes his sp the the ham that he thinks of his, which is by the way, an American ham, right?
Made in the American style, calls it Suriano to like kind of a uh tip of the hat to Surrey, uh, Virginia, where he's from, and uh, you know, Serrano ham's from Spain. I'm like, why are you doing that? What why are you doing that? It's not a Spanish ham. You know what I mean?
Don't call it Brie if it's not Brie. You know what I mean? People want that name recognition, but I think there's a fine line, right? So I'm sure there's like the I and I'm I'm probably economically wrong. I was uh because the average person wants to buy something with some name recognition.
But I think the actual, if you're trying to cultivate like people who actually care, right, they are gonna be turned off by the fact that you're using a protected name that you don't have the rights to in your in your name. You know what I mean? Because then you are uh uh an erzatz. You know, you are a false or a a a Brie imitation rather than your own, like, you know, uh, you know, bloom rine cheese. You know what I'm saying?
Like, you know, I don't know. Like call it like protected. Well, I mean, I don't I'm I'm sure in in in France, you're not allowed to just, you know, set up shop, make cheese, and call it Brie. I I have you know, I didn't know we were gonna talk about it, so I didn't look up the actual statistics of it. But like there's plenty of places, like for instance, there's all these things that are called Cammon Bear that aren't Cam Bear.
You know what I mean? Like, it's just I don't know, it's always odd to me. You know what I mean? Um, when you're in Italy, then your cheese has to be D-O-C-P. I I did not look into it all all the but like my point being that even if it's even if it's a name that's been so polluted that you can't claim a protection for it, it does come from a place and is a thing.
So why not just you not use the name? Especially because there are so many different bloomed grind cheeses that have this similar uh you know, candy candida or candida, I don't forget, mold on the outside of it, right? So you have like Brignata, which is I believe peck green, I forget, out of uh out of Italy, you have a whole bunch of different bloom rind cheeses. Why you why you gotta why you gotta jump on the Brie Wagon, you know what I mean? Because it's the most famous one.
Uh I understand it. Listen, if you're out there and you make this product, I'm not saying I'm what I'm saying is do what you need to do to make the most money, right? Who am I to tell you not to feed your kids? You know what I'm saying? Like do what you do what you need to do.
But I'm just saying I wish it wasn't the case that for economic reasons you had to go ahead and name your s your product, which I'm sure you care about, you know what I mean, after some other product. Because it it puts you in the same bucket as like craft, who then will like, you know, call their cheese Swiss cheese or even, you know, I don't I guess maybe I don't know if they're allowed to use Emmentoller as a name, but you know what I mean? And it just puts you in that same bucket of people who don't necessarily care about their product. That's all. Not saying now I'm insulting craft.
I'm not trying to insult anybody. You know what I mean? I'm just trying to say, you know, be your own person. If you can, but I mean, I I I felt like I feel like breeze are pretty, in my opinion, cat like just a category. Nah.
I I don't consider that. No. You know, I don't know. Whatever. But how was this Buffalo milk product?
I'm also I'm also a how was it? There was definitely a lot uh milder. I had another, a different town milk cheese from that bloomer from a different local producer. Definitely think a bit more soft and sort of flunky, but the Buffalo uh version was you know a milder firmer, but I don't mind that for certain I mean uh applications. Most of the times when I want, I mean, my application for cheese is usually eating it.
And like for my money on bloom rind cheeses, my although there are, for instance, that brinata I mentioned, which I can't remember which milk, is like supposed to be young and taste more like the milk, but in you know, I'm I am much more of a fan in bloom rind cheeses that get that kind of mushroom y note and kind of like you know, are more yield yielding, right? Uh I mean, look, you know, there are some like well-known industrial triple creams that are they're delicious. Who's gonna lie? Like San Andre or something like this that is industrially produced but still tastes good, you know what I mean? But uh, yeah.
But here's another thing, and this is gonna be unpopular. For however quote unquote authentic or inauthentic it might be, I really like American style, especially like, you know, New Jersey style cow's milk mozzarella, like Italian American style mozzarella. Like I really like it. You know what I mean? Like the milkiness of it, the way it just, and I actually prefer it, maybe because I grew up to the kind of the buffalo milk style, which, you know, and they age differently, right?
So like buffalo milk a lot of times seems to get softer and softer as it's being held in the in the liquid, whereas like the the cow's milk one doesn't. It gets like firmer. But like today's cow, like one that was made just now and is perfect, and like soup I'm a fan of the milky style. Super milky on like bread with some tomatoes, just some oil over the top of it, I think it's delicious. Whereas I've never had a buffalo milk mozzarella that made me want to bang my head against the wall.
You know what I mean? I I like it. But I've never had one that made me like lose my mind. Now, but I've never been to where they make it either. You know what I mean?
So you know, where they make it traditionally. I've never been to where they make it traditionally. Yeah. I like flattery. Yeah.
What'd you say about butter? We uh we did we did find a Canadian butter, although not local. But for me, it's almost as good as the uh really fancy, fancy uh French stuff. Well, again, Ontario. They're different styles.
Which French one did you have? It wasn't the barat or it was the barat. Uh uh St. Igne's. Oh, yeah.
I mean, listen, did you do you have a uh like can you get the Ocelli up there? Uh we've been looking. I I can't find it yet. Yeah, I don't know. Like again, for an uncultured butter, that's the my favorite one I've had for uncultured butter.
Hmm. Salted or unsalted? Um I think it's unsalted. I think it's Bridget. Saint Bridget out of Ontario.
Yeah. That's actually closer to me than it is to you. I mean, like, you know, you could throw a stone from New York and hit Ontario, but you you know, not New York City, but you know what I'm saying. Uh-huh. Yeah.
All right. All right. Any uh any cooking stuff? Uh uh again, we made uh we we've been buying a lot of cheese, so we did a a four cheese risotto on the weekend. That turned out pretty good.
Oh yeah. Four cheese which four you can't just say four cheeses and not say what cheeses they are. And also you know how I hate even numbers. You know how I hate even numbers in cooking. Hate them.
Well, I feel like four cheese is is a classic uh moniker, isn't it? Yeah. I just don't know what which four cheeses were they? We did uh Picorina Romano, uh Manchego, a blue uh yeah, an actual breeze from France. And a cheddar that I think was either Quebec or Ontario.
I forget. You're literally all over the map there, dude. Like all over the map with your cheeses. All right. Four cheeses, four countries.
Yeah. All right. How was it? Really good. Also interesting, a purple risotto rice?
Oh, really? It's like actually like a black rice. And then they almost totally polish it. It's like has like a pinky purple sort of hue to it. But the color is from the rice and not like a bamboo rice where it's added later.
I believe so, yeah. Uh so what was I gonna say? I forget. Oh, polish. What?
About the polishing? No, I mean everyone knows that I'm a fan of this rice polisher. But whatever. I mean, like I think that everyone if you have the money and like want are interested in making your own versions of rice, real good. Also, like even if you buy, let's say you buy it's just it's just a little literally just an agitator, right?
Yeah. It's like it's it's like a it's like a strainer basket that's a little bit, you know how like some strainer baskets are smooth and some are rough? It's like a rough strainer basket and a little like paddle. And it just and it knocks the rice against the strainer basket, and the the holes in the strainer basket are too small to let the rice out. Of course.
But they're too strainer. Yeah, but they're too, you know, but they're big enough to let out the brand. So you get this very finely powdered brand that comes off of it. And depending on how long it does it, you can leave the germ on or you can leave on a portion of the brand, etc. etc.
I think. Did you do anything with the brand? I yes, you can make nuka pickles with it. I haven't because I had such a bad experience doing wheat brand nuka pickles where they're delicious for like a month and then they and then they turn crazy on me. Because I think that like the whatever the temperature of my kitchen is is not the best for wheat nuka pickles.
But you are correct. I could now, if I had saved all my rice, I could have started a rice nuka pickle situation, and I should have, so I feel bad. But what's nice about it is is that the intermediate milling, I think, is, and I use it with wheat too, but the intermediate milling is kind of cool. You know what I mean? And here's another like a pro tip for you.
So if you if you buy a like a large quantity of brown rice and you don't use it right away, when you open the uh that container, because you should keep your rice sealed because of weevils, duh, right? When you open the container, you get that very clear, light painty aroma of rancidity. And you can smell it in old brown rice. And so that's a sign that that rice has been stored too long, right? With on in oxidative conditions.
So like just a light polished, like, dude, just like you know what I mean? Like very light, like number one, like just taking off the outer layer, rice smells clean again. Really? Yeah. You can get you can you can bring that brown rice back and it's semi-brown, but still mostly brown.
You can get rid you can knock some of the uh uh rancidity off the outside of rice that's a little over the hill with it. But um I was gonna say, have we done the power rankings of of uh of uh milks of cheese milks? I can't recall. So uh have we? I mean, I think if you could only choose one, you'd have to go cow, right?
You'd have to, because just so many cows' milk cheeses. But for me, my feeling, and this is what's controversial, I like goat cheese a lot. Me too. But I love sheep's milk cheese. And so if I had to pick like whether or not you kept only sheep's milk cheese or only goat's milk cheese, I'd have to go with sheep.
I love sheep's milk cheeses, dude. Love a pecarino. Uh what anyone disagree? Anyone would take goat over sheep? Or anyone would take both of them over cow?
No. Yeah. Well, I mean, I mean, I it feels unfair because I feel like if we said our country, cow's milk is just so much more dominant. Every country. Um I mean, every what country what country as a whole that is a ch a producer of lots of different kinds of cheeses, does cow not dominate.
And what's what's considered the queen of Italian cheeses? Parmigiano. Cow. You know what I mean? Like, even though like they are probably like the world's greatest sheep, you know, cheese producer, or one of them.
Anyway, um, I guess, you know, places like what, like Bulgaria, sheep is the money. But like they have great cheese, but it's not, they don't have maybe I'm not I've never been to Bulgaria, so I shouldn't say a damn thing, but I mean, who has the diversity of like uh an Italy or a France or an England? You know what I mean? Or UK, I should say. Um Sean writes in, I love the tea time from Liquid Intelligence, uh, which uses milk washing of a tea-infused vodka to remove tannins.
So basically, what anyway, let me finish the question first. I am now vegan, uh, leaving the honey aside for now. I'm wondering if there is any other technique that might be experimented with removing the tannins from tea and or tea infused liquor. So, what Sean is talking about is uh a technique where uh so I always had a problem making um tea shaking drinks, uh tea drinks, because the colder tea is, the more astringent the uh the tannins of appear on your on your tongue, right? Like you think about this, when you overchill something that has either wood or tea or tannins in it, those tannins become more prominent as the other flavors, especially things like sugar drop out, right?
So there's that. And it's also uh accentuated by in in alcohol, right? So I've always had an issue with very highly tea-flavored alcoholic um drinks, especially shaken ones, because they're typically colder and they're more diluted, so there's less of the alcohol profile and sugar profile there to cover up the tannins, so they become very astringent. So in order to get around that problem, I looked to the English who add milk, and plenty of people add milk to their tea, right? And what the milk does, the casein in the milk binds with the tannins in the tea.
They complex, and then if you remove the casein by breaking it with an acid, right? This and then this, by the way, is functionally equivalent to what milk punch is, right? Uh or what people now I think incorrectly and crazily classify as milk clarification, right? Because milk is there to strip out flavors. So it's being used as a stripping agent to strip out these uh polyphenols.
As this so that's where the tea time comes from, and it's that and it's a mixture, you know, it's originally envisioned as an alcoholic shaken Arnold Palmer. So it's a honey syrup, a uh which is, you know, 640 grams of uh honey, sorry, 640 grams of water per kilo of honey, that equals a 50 brick syrup. So it's two, you know, of the of the milkwash, uh half of or you know, half or fat half of the of lemon juice and fat or la fat half of of the uh honey. And the honey has proteins in it, which help the foaming. Crucially, and this is what I'm gonna talk about when I'm answering this question, crucially, there are two things that the milk is doing that if you want to do a vegan thing, you'll have to mimic.
One, the casein is binding with, as we said before, is binding with the polyphenols in the tea, and um you're extracting them when you then curd the casein together and filter it out, right? So that's the first function in the tea time that the milk is doing. The second function in the tea time is that the whey proteins that are left over in uh because the whey is not taken out, and this is why like traditional whey-based cheeses, like traditional ricotta, not whole milk ricotta that you know we use a lot now, but like whey based ricotta. Um, those uh proteins stay soluble for a long time in the in the milk wash product, and they are great foaming agents. So the honey, which has protein helps foaming.
The uh lemon, which has pectin uh and other soluble stuff in it, which promotes uh holding on to foam, and the whey proteins, which are actual foaming agents, right, make the tea time have this nice like head on it when it's shaken properly, as long as the milk wash is fresh, like within about four days. After about four days, the in the alcohol, the whey proteins tend to agglomerate, form a haze, and settle out of the drink after which uh out of the liquor, after which it's lost its foaming powder power. So you're gonna need to do two things. You're gonna need to add a foamer, and you can use you know any one of the commercial foamers, uh the one, you know, the one that we make, we use a mixture of uh gum arabic, uh, methyl cell F50, make sure it's F50, and um Xanthan gum, a little bit of Xanthan gum to promote the foaming. Uh you know, and I think you can buy pre-made mixtures of this with which may also have some guar from Modernist Pantry, check it out.
Um, you know, I make my own, but I think you can buy ones. And then uh in a di and you probably can add that if you give it enough time. It'll probably go take a long time. You could probably add that directly to the liquor base, but it's gonna take a long time. It depends, actually, you know what?
Not the Xanthan might be hard to get in. It's on the edge. If you get enough time, it might it might go in. It's always better to dissolve that stuff in water and then add it. So if you have the time to dissolve that stuff into your your the water you're gonna use for your syrup, that might be a better alternative uh because it can definitely go into water.
So, anyways, so now the problem you have is the complexing. Now, what's doing the work of complexing? I don't know that something like oat milk or coconut milk or any of these other things that you can add actually have the binding capability. And so I think soy might, I don't know, you're gonna need to run some tests. Um there are some tests with pea protein uh using pea protein and its ability to uh bind with polyphenols, and then you can curdle them out the same way.
Uh, but I just haven't run the tests on it. You're gonna need a protein that is soluble, uh, and then you're probably gonna need to pre-soluble it because a lot of these things will drop out of solution once they bind to the polyphenols and tannins. So it's just gonna take some experimenting with other very active, uh, I would look at things that are used as casein um replacers, any protein like that, but it's gonna be protein-based. So maybe there's some soy proteins, things that will work, but they have to be fully functional, not like you know, denatured or whatever, or they won't do they won't do their job properly. What do you think?
Uh Quinn, I got that covered in smother or no. Yeah, I think so. All right. Alexander writes in, hi. This is something I've been struggling with a bit in general, but now have a specific uh case to solve as well.
Are there any emulsifiers that can handle acidic environments without splitting? For instance, I want to create a nutslash seed milk in milk in quotes and use it in a drink. But whenever we introduce even a small amount of acid like raspberries, it splits. Are there any emulsifiers that can work for this? Uh if it matters, we're currently working on sesame seeds, but would love to have something that works in a broader sense.
So the real question is what are the best emulsifiers for an acidic solution? So you there are two things with oils. Uh, first of all, uh the the one that I use in the book uh and I've been using for years and years, works very well in very highly acidic environments, and I have used it with sesame, is a mixture of gum Arabic and Xanthan. Uh and uh I gotta look up the exact ratio you use, but it's it's mostly gum Arabic with like a little bit of xanthan. Then the gum arabic is the emulsifier, and gum arabic has the great advantage that it can work in uh acidic, non-acidic, and it can go from non-acidic to acidic without breaking.
It can go from cold to hot without breaking, and it can stand very big changes in dilution without breaking. So gum Arabic is the one, it's expensive, right? But it's very good at this. The problem is it, and this is what you need to look at splitting, it's greatly uh in enhanced with solids. So once you increase solids in your like like sesame paste.
So, so like for instance, tahini versus sesame oil, it's a lot harder to stop like emulsified tahini from breaking when it's shaking. Or like coconut milk is different because it's it's got a very high solids content. So that's why if you look at the back of a Coco Lopez container, it's got a spray of things in it, like guar, locust bean, like uh Xanthan, it's got all of them in it, polysorbates, because those ones are very much harder. So, like if you give me the specific application, if you're using sesame oil, then Arabic Xanthan is gonna work great in all your environments. As soon as there's solids in it, you're gonna need to add a couple more things.
So, Alexander, please send me more specific recipe, what you tried, uh, and like what kind of your your solid solids level is. Uh, because strangely, if you overstabilize with xanthan, like I've done before, you can actually cause it to break even more. But I can get more into that later once I know your specifics, so I can help you solve your specific problem. This has been cooking issues.
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