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 Fellow Center, New York City News Stance Studios, joined as usual with John. How are you doing? Doing great, thanks. Got Joe Hazen rocking the panels.
Hey, hey, hey, hey. And it's a no-tangent, slightly shorter, and New York only broadcast today. So uh strap in, because we're gonna get to uh all these questions that we haven't uh already gotten to. But uh what uh anything uh, you know, we still have to go over the week, the week of weekend review. What do you guys got?
A relatively uneventful week. Yeah. Yeah, just yeah. Well, I'll start. Yeah, go for it.
So uh the last thing I did of note was uh I remember I did uh like a I don't know, a couple months ago I made a Westphalian pumper nickel and I got I I had to do these huge Pullman pans, so I ended up with like 500 slices almost of like because you have to slice this Westphalian pumper nickel for you don't you don't know, right? It's you take cracked rye, but you know, and if you make flour, you're hosed, you're hosed, right? And you s you uh, you know, according to the rye baker book, which is the one I followed, right? You do a scald, the hot water, so you he he does boiling water and and room temperature grains so that when they it's like almost like doing a mash, the strike temperature gets to in that like uh 65, 70, you know, 65 so Celsius range uh for a little bit so the enzymes get going. The amylase enzymes go break some sugars down, and so sugars that are gonna like make it turn brown, make the pumper nickel turn brown because there's no caramel color in real pumpernickel, and you know, there's no any kind of color.
And it's baked at a relatively low temperature, so it's not like browning in the way that a normal bread would brown from that. So anyway, and then after that's called, then you make it into this dough, which is more like cement play-doh, and then you pack it into these, uh into molds and you cook it in a steam oven for 24 hours, right? This was caused all manner of problems in my house because the you know, first generation A Nova steam oven that I had leaks. So 24 hours of running it a at full steam meant that like, you know, my kitchen was a swimming pool, basically, and everyone was like, oven's leaky, what's wrong with you? And they're like, how much longer is it gonna cook?
I'm like, 20 hours. And they're like, What? What? Like, yeah, another 20 hours. I'm sorry, I gotta do it.
You know what I mean? And then after that, it's a whole nother day letting it sit. And then you have more rye bread than you could possibly eat. You know what I mean? And I could have made a smaller loaf in in, you know, in defense of the recipe.
Anyway, so uh I decided, like, hey, listen, if instead of just striking it with hot water and then letting it cool and sit for 16 hours, what if I just hold it using either like uh uh immersion circulator or I use the steam oven again, just hold it at that strike temperature. So I chose 149, you know, Celsius Fahrenheit rather, uh, and which I don't know what that is, 60 something. I don't know, you know, uh with basically 100% hydration with this cracked uh dough. So I used uh I was gonna fit it into two uh pint mason jars. Okay, you'll see why.
So I did 360 uh cracked rye, 360 water, and you hold it at that temperature. I stirred it once in the middle just to because it there's no convection, right? So if you really want to get up to temperature in a reasonable amount of time, hold it that way three hours. I figured that's enough for anything to happen. No one when they're mashing beer holds things longer than like at re really an hour, and there's not much attenuation after that.
So I figured, and and at that temperature with the crack rye, I was it was soaking through in that time. So I didn't really feel like I was getting any benefit from having it go longer than three hours. So that's you know, 16 minus three is that's 12 hours or whatever. No, 13. That's 13 hours saved right there, right?
Then I made the dough, I put in into what I told you, I put in 5.7 of salt, kneaded that in, put in 168 more of cracked rye, kneaded it by hand. Don't attempt to use a machine. Uh, and then packed it, degreased my pint. The reason I use pints is they make a 24 ounce. They used to make a 24 ounce mason jar, but it doesn't fit in my pressure cooker, right?
And uh, if you use anything other than uh the pints, wide mouth pints, they they neck in. Wide mouth pints are like you know, slightly conic, so you can get the stuff out. They're a tube. You don't need to like, there's no necking, right? You see what I'm saying?
Yeah, yeah. So you pack it in, which is kind of hard because there's a little voids in it, right? Then you lightly screw the lids on so that if it's you know, if air goes can go out, it can get out, but stuff doesn't get in, right? Put it on a trivet in your pressure cooker, cold water. If you put um mason jar into boiling water that's closed, it'll blow the bottoms off of it.
It sucks, right? Bring it up to a boil, let it boil first so that you get steam only with the lid on but not sealed, then seal it. Second ring, which is 15 psi, 259 Fahrenheit, hour and 20 minutes. I chose an hour and 20 minutes because I figured the reactions that are happening at uh regular boiling point, if you believe the old you know, saw that it doubles every 10, you know, reactions like that double every 10 degrees Celsius, and it takes X amount of time to get to the middle that I was roughly in the range of 24 hours worth of coloring if I let it go for an hour and 20 minutes. Uh and that's kind of what I do with eggs, right?
So things that would, you know, when I'm doing like how mean eggs in the pressure cooker. Anyway, so I did it for an hour and 20, let it come down naturally, please. Open the lid, sealed it tight in the fridge to set the crumb. Because the other thing you have to do is let rye bread doesn't, like the crumb doesn't set right away. So I figured since starches and whatnot retrograde much faster in the fridge than they do on your counter, that I could accelerate that.
So I put that in the fridge for a couple of hours and then slice. So I went from 48 plus 16 hours down to, you know, one, basically one shift. You know what I mean? And uh it was really good. Round, you know, so not your normal shape.
The one thing that I need to work on, I'm gonna maybe get like a little, I'm gonna put like a little piece of parchment on the inside because getting it out sucks. And I would like to actually work on finding a square container. I have square glass containers that can seal, but the lids, I if it was polypropylene, theoretically I could do it, right? Because polypropylene and silicone won't break down at pressure cooker temperatures. You can retort polypropylene barely.
But uh if there's any polyethylene in it, the pressure cooker will melt it out. So like if I could get a sealable, retortable square thing that I could stick in my pressure cooker, I'd probably up the time because the transmission through it would be a little longer. So I'd probably do like an hour and 30 or an hour and 25. But I'd love to try it on a larger format loaf. Do you know of any retortable or glass glass-lidded?
Not that I can think of. Glass-lidd, squarish, glass-litted baking McGillas. The other thing is, by the way, get this. So you if you look up canning bread on the internet, the U.S. government is like, you can't can bread.
You could get botules. Because the way that they do bread, right, is you bake it and then you screw a lid on. You bake like you're doing normal baked bread. You just bake it in an oven and then screw the lid on afterwards. So it's like making like banana bread and whatnot.
And then, and people are like, you can keep it for six months or a year, and the government's like, no, it's not safe because this is true. Spores can survive, and then it's not a high acid environment, and we don't know the water activity. So potentially you could, oh my God, we're getting a lot of people past this. You can get uh you can get botulism, right? So then I did what you know any rational person would do, and I looked up on the CDC.
Has there ever been a reported case ever, ever, of someone getting botulism from a bread product? Answer, no. It has never happened. In the history of all recorded medical history, it has not happened as someone has gotten botulism from bread. The closest you can get, I believe in 1983, in the middle of the country somewhere, there was a patty melt botulism outbreak.
The culprit, they had improperly canned the sauteed onions. Killed some people, I think. Yeah. Or maybe almost killed people. Okay.
Anyway, botulism. Yeah. Onions. I I feel real bad that one of the main botulism outbreaks that's uh in recorded history is with uh what I think is God's burgoloid, the patty melt. The patty melt, the only real question with a patty melt is what cheese do you use?
So if you've never had a patty melt, first of all, rye bread. Let's just start that rye bread. If you're like, what kind of bread do you want your patty melt on? I'm like, I don't understand. What are you what what are you talking about?
It's not supposed to be an option, yeah. Yeah. How many wheels do you want on your bicycle, sir? Uh, what do you mean? It's a bicycle, it's got two wheels.
You know what I mean? It's a patty melts on rye. Period. You know what I mean? And they're like, Do you want onions?
I was like, I said patty melt. You know what I mean? So it's like it's gotta have the sauteed onions on it. And then you got the burger in it, right? I think the power move, honestly.
The power move is to make the burger and the grilled cheese at the same time, then break the grilled cheese, put the burger into the grilled cheese and close it again so it gets real gooey. That's what I like to do at home when I'm in fast patty melt mode. And if you remember, I did the I did the bread omelet. Yeah, thinking about that the other day for some reason. It was good.
It was real good. It was a catchy song, too. Yeah, Dax uh Dax uh still requests that. I gotta I gotta start making those again. Anywho, uh the real question is the cheese.
A lot of people use American cheese, but I like a Swiss. Yeah, same. Are you a patty melt person now, Joe? I yes, I do love patty melts. And what cheese do you do?
American. See? It's like this is the one this is the one place I think we can have this. But I like tuna melts more. Yeah, I like you know what?
I never make tuna melts, but I do like a tuna melt. I like a tuna melt a lot. And didn't we talk about this recently? What are your thoughts on tuna mac and tuna casserole? Not a fan.
Yeah, I can do it. I can do it too. Yeah, I can do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can do it hot melt.
Not a heavy amount of tuna. Not a heavy amount of tuna. Not a heavy amount of tuna. I like a hot tuna. You know what I like?
Like uh you like a tuna melt? You know what the the the one I like the best is when they do that tuna melt mix, but like on an English muffin as a breakfast situation. Thank you. English muffins the the uh the the um it's an amazing piece of um yeah artillery. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
English muffin, good product. Yeah, good product. Uh almost all of the home English muffin recipes, I believe trace back to an old Alton Brown recipe that contains, unless he got it from somewhere else, that contains uh dried milk powder. So it doesn't use, I don't think it uses milk. I think it uses water, but then uses dried milk powder.
And uh I think I might have asked him, he was at Contra, and I don't think he remembered why. But like any recipe I see that contains dry milk powder, including the one that I make that my uh mother-in-law makes, I'm like, I'm pretty sure that goes to Alton Brown, and I don't know why, because Thomas's English muffins does not contain that. Oh right? Yeah. Yeah.
And I think we can all agree that that if there is an English muffin by which you gauge other English muffins, it is the Thomas Corporation's English muffin with their trademarked nooks and crannies. Yes. Yeah. But uh going back to patty melts for a moment, and I think maybe different from a tuna melt, is that a patty melt is good with ketchup, but there's someone in this studio who doesn't like ketchup. Yeah.
No, what do you put on what do you put on your patty melt? If I put anything, it's probably mayo. I don't know. Ketchup is just not ketchup for me is only good on onion rings, and it's good for barbecue sauce and other similar kinds of things, but I don't enjoy it on its own. Okay.
Yeah. It's just not used to be onion rings and hot dogs, but with mustard, and now not even with hot dogs anymore. I've I've grown. Why would you put ketchup on a hot dog? What do you think?
Because I was a kid. An animal? I was a kid. A freak. I was a kid.
I'm talking about my entire history of ketchup painting. Yeah, but but I was a child. I didn't know any better. Okay. But yeah, so I learned, and now ketchup only goes on onion rings for me.
Okay. Just yeah, it just I don't know. It's too sweet and too. You know what? I'm gonna I'm gonna call you out.
Because here's what here's what happens. He before he's like, I like ketchup when you make it into barbecue sauce. Talking about sweet, you're like taking sugar and adding more sugar to it. Yeah, but I don't know. To me, barbecue sauce is not to sound snooty, but more complex.
I don't know. There's just like more going there for me. That's uh oh, this is a weird one. So speaking of sweet condiments, I was thinking when you were talking about barbecue sauce off air about Chutney. I had the weirdest conversation in line at a grocery store, and not like like a high-end grocery store, Letel, right?
Which is like the like the for some reason, like part of their shtick is we're gonna make this shopping experience as unpleasant as possible so that you really believe that these prices should be this low because obviously we should pay you for this shopping experience that you're having. I'm in line, and the lady she looks at me, she goes, Hey, whatever happened to Chutney. I was like, wow, that is a great question. I was like, you know, because in the 70s and 80s, like major gray's chutney, there was a bottle of that in everybody's fridge. In, you know, at least in the in the east coast here of the United States.
Like everyone I knew had like, you know, you're like, hey, major grace chutney. People weren't like, Major, what are you talking about? Who's got some chutney? You know what I mean? They were like, Oh, yeah, here.
Yeah, have the major grace chutney. And it is a good product. Yeah. A non-spicy mango chutney. Yeah.
And you're okay with that. Yes. I was actually looking for some of that the other day. I was just making like an Irish curry sauce for family meal. Yeah.
And yeah, didn't have any, but one. Interestingly, the brand that of note when I was growing up was Cross and Blackwell. And the Blackwell from Cross and Blackwell, one of that family was Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records. Yeah. Yeah.
You know? Uh I mean, think listen, I don't know anything about the guy other than where would we be without like early island record stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know what I'm saying?
Anyway. True. Okay. So you fight figure out anything from the week before we go into it? It was just an admin heavy week with very little eating.
It was boring. Sounds fun, man. Yeah, it was not. But yeah. Loving it.
Yeah. Let's get just cruising on with these questions for everyone. No tangent Tuesday. All right. Uh, did you put on the Discord by the way?
Wizmard wrote in like weeks ago about the uh Doc Dish and wants to know if anyone knows of any West Coast equivalent. Is that out on the Discord yet? I don't remember seeing it, but I think there's somebody on the West Coast with the Instagram handle C Stephanie Fish. S E A, and I believe she is kind of connected to that world. I don't know if there's anything exactly like it though out there.
All right. I mean, I mean, I wouldn't know. Because the whole point is they wouldn't ship over here. Yeah. No.
I know I know there is in like but I don't think they're very local. Like I know that up in uh Alaska in June, there was a c uh there were a couple of people who were trying to do this who were trying to, you know, agglomerate like local catches and sell to local restaurants, which you know makes a lot of sense. But uh anyway. Yeah, at C Stephanie Fish. I'm gonna put it in the Discord.
In Alaska. I still thinking about fishing in Alaska, the ridiculous size of those halibits. Because I just never thought about how big a halibut could be. I know it's not, I know it's not our halibut, it's not our Atlantic halibut, which I think can also get big ears. Pretty big, yeah, but not like 400 pounds.
Yeah. Can you imagine a 400 pound flatfish? Landing that, reeling it in. In what world is that still a flatfish? Right.
When it weighs 400 pounds. Halibut's considered a flatfish? Yeah, yeah. Flatfish. Really?
Yeah, yeah. It's I I I believe, and I don't know this, so I'm just saying it. It could be fake, right? But I believe that the flatfish are born with eyes on two sides of their heads, like a regular fish, and that it migrates over. Is that true or false?
I have no idea. I mean, I could have just made that up. That could be. If you ever the older I get, sometimes things happen in dreams, and I wake up and I think that this is something that I have actually verified, and it's not real. So someone check to see whether that's real, but I believe that's real, in which case it's one of the crazier biological things.
Oh, speaking of which Yes, flatfish are born with eyes on both sides of their head, like most fish, but one eye migrates to the other side as they mature, resulting in both eyes on being on the same side. Crazy. Can we do that with people? Like when they're born, just like slowly try to migrate one eye over, you imagine? True or false.
The a child of the Kodak family changed their name to Trout Fishing in America. After the band? The book. Oh. I'm gonna have to go true, otherwise, why would you mention it?
I'm not sure. I can't remember why, but I I thought I read something about it. I was very intrigued. I I don't know the book. I mean, I've heard of the band.
But yeah, interesting. All right. Uh oh, speaking of uh fish, you know the uh how do you pronounce it? Axolotl? Axolotl?
Is that how you pronounce it? The the critically endangered uh lamphibian? Yeah, well, it's an it's a salamander, but it doesn't ever go on land, so it stays uh aquatic and it keeps its little little tree like external gills for its entire life, but it gets to be like 10 inches long or 12 inches long, so of course, and it it's only indigenous to like the lakes around Mexico City. So obviously Mexico City has gotten huge, and like those lakes have, you know, been, you know, uh the habitat's been encroached on, so now there's only like, you know, very few, it's critically endangered. But it's a good aquarium species.
So and it's a good model species to test for this neonatism, right? So that there's a lot of them in the world, just not, you know, wild. Anywho, so there's a restaurant in Japan that like 10 years ago in Yokohama, so they had deep fried axolotl. I was like, I looked it up, I was like, 'cause it turns out that back in the day, it's used to be like a a, you know, a luxury cuisine in Aztec times. You know what I mean?
Back when they were still a dime a dozen, then wild axolotl. And uh, you know, and they're like, I think they have ceremonial significance, like anyway. So, yeah. So I looked up axolotl taste and they're boom, deep-fried axolotl. I'm like, kind of want.
If Jack was on the show today, yeah, I was just thinking about him too. I'd be like, I'd be like, yo, Jack, would you go for the deep-fried axolotl? He's like, oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, yeah.
With a with a side of monkey. Yeah. Hey, Wenrik writes in, uh, I think we might have covered this a little bit, but I'll do it fast. I have some peak season strawberries that uh uh friend freeze dried for me. That's nice.
Very. I want it, you know, my only freeze dryer I ever had was that one that was really hard to use. Yeah, yeah. Uh I've never tried the new ones. Anyway, I would like to make some ice cream with them, but resources out there are limited.
Uh Stella Parks has a no-churn freeze-dry blueberry ice cream, but you know, and not so happy about it. But look the no tr any no churn ice cream is gonna be exactly somewhat problematic. I think the closest you can the best no churns that I've actually done are kind of pre aerated. So like you make like a stabilized uh stabilized ice cream base and then you put it through an EC, you know what I mean? Uh, and then you f try to freeze that as fast as possible, but still not as good as ice cream.
Yeah. You know what I mean? There's a reason why that's not the way anyone makes it who is gonna sell it to you for money. You know what I mean? Like uh anywho, uh, you know, McGee tried, Harold McGee tried to get to a situation where uh one of his things was we're we get so hyped up on particular textures that we can't appreciate alternative textures.
And so he was like, you know, there's ice cream as we know it, you know, but then there's this French ice cream, which I think is called like pins and needles in in France or something, where you freeze it very slowly and it's meant to be crunchy, right? Also, like Kool Fees like things like this that are meant to be crunchy, right? And also uh celept on Dharma, which is that stretchy ice cream, right? And so he presented these things, and no one could wrap their head around. They're like, nope, don't like ice cream creamy.
Yeah, it's got the word cream in it. Ice cream, not ice crunch. You know what I mean? So like he couldn't convince any of the students that we had on the crunchy one. The stretchy one, yes, the crunchy one.
No, anyway. I mean, I would say if you can't make good ice cream like this, maybe it's not the right application for the freeze-ried strawberries. Well, but uh that's just the no-churn aspect. Yeah, but here's how you do it. What I looked up, and you could know this because you know how many strawberries you handed to your buddy and how many they handed back to you.
It's about a 10 to one ratio according to AI on the internet. And so uh, you know, I would just use that as a as a gauge. So you're looking at a 10 to 1 ratio. Uh anytime we did stuff like this, you would rehydrate in, so I would probably rehydrate in the milk so that you could use a blender. Um, just knowing that the amount of strawberry you add is, you know, 10 to 1.
And then I would strain out most of the solids, some of the pectinum will get solubilized. That's fine, that'll just increase the texture a little bit. Um, but I wouldn't leave all of the CD seeds in anyway. Uh that's what I would do, right? Yep.
Yeah. Okay. Um Davis wants to know our perspective on cocktail and beer pairings on a prefix menu. Uh I've had the bandwidth, uh, I finally have the bandwidth to do more than just uh table wine at my supper club and would like to incorporate cocktails, but for some reason, I feel like people are often pickier with their cocktail preferences than food. My gut tells me not to include any high ABV drinks, knee drinks, or wet martinis, which are all things I like.
What has your experience been like? Um also thoughts on portion size and service. So uh I'm gonna hit the last part and then we'll toss it off to each other. Uh one of the interesting things about pairing menus, if you're gonna pair menus, if you're gonna let people order a drink, right? Then that drink has to be something that a whole glass of tastes good, right?
So even think about with food, with a with a pairing menu or with a prefix menu, right? And typically you're serving a small amount of like a number of dishes, right? So you you think about the foie gras problem, right? Aside from we were talking last week about Pied de Cuchon with a giant thing of foie gras. Aside from that, most of us who like foie gras, we love a small amount of foie gras.
But a large amount of foie gras is a punishment. You know what I mean? It's just a punishment. So and the same is true with many cocktails, right? So like a daiquiri that is a full glass is a delicious experience.
A gin and tonic, a full glass of wine is delicious. But your like a million different flavors, highly spiced beef cocktail is delicious for a sip, but not delicious as a five and a half ounce drink, right? But I think the interesting thing about a tasting menu is that you can give someone a s very small amount of a drink that is very, very good. And it doesn't need to be the drink that they would plow into, you know, 50 of or even want five and a half ounces of. But that one sip can be transcendent.
So I've I fundamentally think that making cocktails and drinks that are that are going to be like served without someone ordering them, right? In other words, like they'll order a p a flight, but they're not going to order that particular drink. You can do really interesting things that I think are inappropriate to do in a full-size cocktail. Does that make sense? Yeah.
Yeah. Uh and I see this time and time again. So and you want to keep those pairings small. You want to look at your pairings and you want, you know, uh, because you can always the trick is with a pairing, right? Is that if you get someone, there's no such thing as one.
It's even harder, I think, to pace people's drinking habits than it is to pace their food habits, right? Um, so I think you should just be willing to, you know, go a little more than the lightest drinkers would want and be willing to refill somebody's uh thing a little bit. If you're if they're paying for a flight, you know, be willing to top them up a little bit. You don't want people to get bent. Yeah.
Um, but in terms of uh, you know, I'm actually not good at like this theory because I like wine with I'm I'm a wine with dinner guy. Uh, but I realize that like anyone younger than about 40, like cocktails with food is much bigger now than it was 15, 10, 15 years ago, you know, even. Um, but I think a lot of people like high ABV uh drinks, maybe not huge ones, with certain dishes like steaks. You know, martinis with steaks, people like a martini with a steak. Um, what do you think?
Yeah, I agree. I think the what you're worried about, you know, with like this high ABV cocktails isn't necessarily a problem as long as it's paired with the right course and at the right time of the meal. Um I got a one old fashioned right in the middle of my meal. I don't really want that ever. But but you know, the same thing in there.
No, no, I mean it's it's not my thing. Um I see bitter, yeah. Bitter. Yeah, dude, I I we've been over this. It's yeah, just one of those things.
It's terrible. Terrible. I'm sorry. Andrew uh writes in uh hopefully this already hasn't been asked about. I remember Dave somewhat recently, uh well, it was recently, not anymore, found out that powdered lactic acid uh is not entirely lactic acid.
It's not. It's like uh the stuff I have is only like 55% pure the last time I checked. Most of us in the brewing community use liquid lactic acid, typically an 88% solution. That's what I use now. I'm sure I could spend some time trying to reverse engineer the math, but could I give a quicker, more accurate answer?
Yeah, sure. So you just divide however many grams of lactic acid you want by 0.88. So one gram of lactic acid uh pure is 1.14 grams of 88% lactic acid solution. So to make champagne acid, which would norm which would is you hope three grams of lactic acid, three grams of uh tartaric acid and 94 grams of water, instead of that you do 3.4 grams of the 88% lactic acid solution, three grams of tartaric acid crystals, and 93.6 grams of water. Done.
Oh, fast one. Boom. Um Ruben, uh, I have a question. Is there a technique to make an espresso tonic to avoid an explosion due to nucleation? No.
First of all, the explosion is kind of the point. People want like that like foamy Guinness thing. And secondly, it's it's it's uh I'm gonna say this. Could you make something that tastes kind of like an espresso tonic that didn't nucleate? Yes.
Would it be espresso? No. Because espresso is an like it, it is an emulsion, it contains nucleating agents. So anything that you would do would make it there for a an espresso tonic alloid, a an espresso tonic similar beverage, but it wouldn't be espresso tonic. So uh Mike Capaferi has a brand of uh kind of uh stabilized espresso liquid that he uses that's not a cold brew concentrate, it's a hot and uh because cold brew doesn't foam that much, right?
But does not taste like espresso, okay? To me. So uh, but I'll ask him for the brand. I don't think they were distributing in new in uh in this area, but uh I don't know where you live, Ruben, so I can't I don't know. Maybe you can get it.
If you're in LA, let us know and I'll get that uh I'll get that uh spec for you. Um it's not Manhattan Special? No, but Manhattan Special is an interesting uh coffee soda, uh old school, very old school, like I think like 1880s it came out or something like that. And by the way, not from Manhattan, from Manhattan Avenue in Brooklyn. Yeah, it's a Brooklyn soda.
It's crazy, right? Anyway. Uh can you imagine? You're like you're like so close to like the island of Manhattan, you're on Manhattan Avenue, you have this soda. Oh what am I gonna call it?
Manhattan Special. Do you know who drinks that? The the like uh you know DiPalos? Mm-hmm. Right?
The like one of the matriarchs, they s they if you want Manhattan Special, you don't know where to get it, you're in Manhattan, the real Manhattan. Go to DiPalos. Dipolo's always has a couple of bottles of Manhattan special around because one of the owners, that's her soda. Same at uh Faikos, the butcher on uh Bleaker Street. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So one of them drinks it and loves it and has it on stock all the time. There you go. See, we're here for you, people. Exactly.
We're here for you. Uh Thomas T writes in uh hey Dave and crew, I've acquired a set of five ply pots and pans from the so-called cook. Mmm, cook, I don't know that line. Uh by Movie, say Movio. Moviel.
In the hopes that it would improve my home cooking experience, but mostly it makes me worry that I'm gonna destroy the pans when I use them on my induction stove. Is it true that I must never go higher than seven out of nine, even when making pasta? I'd love to understand how induction interacts with this type of pan. Well, Thomas, nah, nah, it's gorps. Yeah.
Here's the deal. Um, I mean, no, no. No. It's the the the the deal with five five ply pans is this, right? So people are like, why would you want a five-ply pan?
Because the the original three original, original original, right? You have an inductive layer on the bottom, right? Inductive stainless, that's actually making the heat. Then a layer of aluminum. That layer of aluminum is what is what provides the very fast, very fast heat transfer because aluminum's a great conductor through the pan, right?
And then uh uh a stainless layer, the non-magnetic in stainless layer on the top, that's the food contact surface. That's easy to clean, easy to scrubs. That's traditional. Why add more plies? Well, if you add more plies in between, they're actually heat breaks, right?
So the idea is is that in the aluminum sections of it, you get very rapid heat transfer, but the thin heat breaks make that spread out. So instead of having, if you take a if you take just a straight aluminum pan, uh with like an induction three-ply and you put it on an induction heater and you and you Yeah, you can use black spray paint or just a thing of flour. I've used black spray paint. If you don't want to put black split paint on your on your pan, if you get a candle or uh uh an oil lamp and you and you tune it so that it's making a really sooty flame, you can coat the inside of a pan with soot that wipes off very easily that's kind of food grade-ish, so you don't have to worry about putting spray paint on it. Then you can take a picture of it with your IR cameras or your IR guns, right?
You can't otherwise look at the temperature with an IR gun because it it it's shiny. You're gonna when you when you put an IR gun into uh a pan that is dry, uh what you're seeing is the temperature of your ceiling, right? Because you're you're basically shooting it into a temperature mirror. So yeah, you can't do that. So anyway, so uh if you do that, you'll notice you can see a very, very pronounced hot spot where the uh heat is going up because the heat goes up much faster than it can go out, even though the aluminum is a relatively awesome conductor.
So the the multiply is supposed to do that. Now the problem is is they're worried if you crank it that you can warp it because you're going to overheat one of the layers before it can translate through. I just don't think that's I just don't think so. Yeah. Especially not with your home induction unit.
Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'll tell you what. Back at the museum, remember in Chow, we used to have an induction burner that was for walks, and it was five kilowatts.
Now, for reference, like any home induction, I mean, I don't know what you have, but most home inductions are more like 1700 watts in that range. Five kilowatts is a lot more than 15, 1700. So that wok, you would turn it on, it would cherry out. It would be like it would go right to the Curie point. So induction, the way induction works on a for a stove, it can't go above what's called the curie point.
So you're never gonna melt your pan. You'll ruin them, but you're never gonna melt them, right? Where this this these walks would just go we're like, oh my God. That was wild. So that one, I wouldn't put my I wouldn't put my five by Moviel Wok into the five kilowatt walk burner and go go to town, but I wouldn't worry about it too much.
And I think even a professional induction would probably be fine. And can I tell you this, Thomas? Don't spend your life worrying about your pan. If your pan dies because you cook the way you want, that pan was not meant to be. Truth.
Uh Owen K, uh heading into the winter season, I'd love to have a sparkling non alk uh available for visitors who are driving and thought of mm the myrrh notes in the bar uh Contra Cesandra cocktail. Have I given the Cesandra out? No, I don't think so. I forgot to look it up. I'll give it out.
I'll give it out. Put that on the list. I'll just I'll I'll shout it out. It's a the problem with all of these drinks is that uh the non alk drinks is that the Schazandra myrrh is one of the notes. The the actual myrrh resin, we get like the medium to small size pieces of myrrh resin, not the powder.
And it is myrrh, like the stuff that whichever the wise people gave it to the baby Jesus. And I have to say, myrrh, so frankincense, like Churchy, right? Yeah, myrrh death. Like myrrh is foreshadowing that Jesus is gonna get like crucified, right? Got it.
Gold is gold. That's self-explanatory. Whichever one of those three fools got to bring gold. He's like, I already got gold fools. What are you gonna bring?
And I was like, oh crap. Like I was like frankincense. Oh god, what do you I don't know if with myrrh? Yeah. Anyway, but myrrh is good.
So uh we do what's called a 3200. So all of our infusions, unless they're weak, right? So some of them are too weak, are 3200. And I'm pretty sure the myrrh is a 3200. So what you do is is, and the reason I chose 3200 is I use 200 milliliter mason jars, right?
Uh to do my tests. I scale it up or down. Anything smaller than 200 milliliters, and you're not really gonna get a good uh, you're not gonna get a good gauge on it because it cools down really quickly, and you don't really have enough to experiment. So you put three grams, that's the three and three two hundred, into the mason jar. Then and the other reason I do this 200 is that I can just top it up to the fill line, not all the way to the rim, but to the fill line, and I know that's 200 mils.
So it's very hard to measure boiling water. You know what I mean? So you just pour it out of the pan into the sink, then you close the mason jar with your lid, you know, with gloves and pop up, turn it around, keep until it cools, let it sit for a couple of hours, just let it ride, then strain it. That's the infusion we use. Okay.
But this one has a bunch of other stuff in it. It's got grapefruit olio, its main base is Czandra berries, which is omega, which is five spice, which isn't isn't really five to me. Not five spice like five spice powder, but five flavor berries. Uh, but I'll give the whole spec. But there's like there's like four or five infusions in that.
So it's not necessarily the easiest to reproduce. And the Schezandra, you have to buy high grade Cizandra. If you don't buy, most of the myrrh, I think, is relatively equivalent, but if you buy low-grade Cezandra, it's just terrible. No good. High grade Cezandra.
Get it from a Korean, a Korean store. The best stuff that we've gotten is is Korean. But I'll give you the full spec uh later, Owen. All right. All right.
So let me see. From ALD, long time caller, long time caller, first time listener. This winter I'm looking at hot cocktails, not the poker and torch drinks that are covered in the book, but drinks just heated to high temperatures, ideally very high and served from a batch, uh, milk warmers, bottles with circulator, etc. Do folks have been best practices on A V A B V flavor perception and or temps above which the boo gets a booze gets a bad nose. Uh yeah, you want to go lower.
Uh you know what? Shoot. I I uh ALD, I'm gonna have to put this on the list to talk about again because I actually did measure the hot poker drinks, how much is burnt off, but I don't have it in my head. I just have the numbers on a spreadsheet somewhere. Um but yes, the first thing is that you're gonna have to lower it.
Think like, you know, think about like mold wine. You add you have mold wine and then you you boil that and you add some liquor back to it, but also think wide cups. The most important thing you can do is just serve them in very, very wide cups. And all you need to do to test that is just make the same drink, serve one in a tea saucer, and serve the other one in any standard glass. And bringing the hot alcoholic drink up to your nose is just unpleasant.
It's like when you uh, well, no one's gonna have this experience, no one's gonna know what I'm talking about. But if you go to Saratoga Springs, if you go to Saratoga Springs State Park, Spa State Park, they have a uh at a place called uh what is it called? Hayeswell, they have a uh a CO2 snifter, which is a thing you just stick up your nose to and can get a f a whiff of straight CO2 coming out of the earth. It's unpleasant the way that's unpleasant. But again, that's a reference for three people.
Three people. Uh Sherry says, I've got 17 pounds of fresh Yuzu off my tree. Planning to distribute some to local Discord peeps. But would love more ideas on preserving, especially low effort things. I'm hoping to make some ice cream, but my time is limited for the next month.
In the past, I've made cordial, good one. Uh Yuzucello, good one. Headspace infused liquor, never done it but heard about it. Oleosacrum and Yuzu Kosho. Okay.
So um hmm. What haven't you covered here? How about preserved peels? Yuzu peels, like candied peels. Marmalade.
Oh, marmalade. Yeah. Marmalade. You know what? My uh my niece, Ellery, uh, she made Linzer torts for me because I love Linzer tort.
Who doesn't? Yeah. Not really a tort, but so delicious. Almond cookies with raspberry jelly in it. But and she made the raspberry jelly, kudos.
And the cookies. But uh she also made a marmalade-based one. I'll tell you this. Marmalade Linzer tort, good. Pro.
Yeah. I like the bitterness of marmalade. Yeah. And that it works. I'm a fan.
Uh Morgan writes, so I'll think more, Sherry. Think more. Uh Discord, you gotta help people out, man. Uh many cocktail recipes I find in books don't specify brands for liquors in the same way that Amari's or bitters are usually called out uh with specifics, even though the liquor itself is obviously a huge impact on the drink. Uh furthermore, I found that I personally prefer any cocktail that uses Kampari to be made with a local Kampari mimic in the place of Kampari.
Uh I don't know about that, Morgan. Uh as a philosophical question, when do you consider a variation to be no longer the same cocktail, instead take on a whole new identity? For example, a Negroni with Kampari uh versus a compari mimic and a groni with compari using a different base. Uh also are there any widely called for ingredients that you don't care for that you think there's a better alternative? Many, but I'm none that I'm willing to insult in case I work with them someday.
Uh but uh I look I everyone now just calls everything a Negroni or a martini or a Manhattan, you know, and uh I I used to hate it so much, and now I just it's it's just as you get older, it's just so hard to care. You know what I mean? About that. I have so many other things I need to care about. But uh mainly um in recipes, those things aren't called out just because you don't want to be loyal to a particular brand.
For tomorrow or Amari, it's a specific taste, but in general, you call out just what style of whiskey or what style of rum you want because you want to be slightly more inclusive. The opposite of that was Garrett Richard in Tropical Standard wrote exactly what he used at all times because he thought it was integral and then said, use whatever you want, this is what I use, which I think is a nice I like that approach, yeah. But then when you go and let's say you're going 10 years later, you look at a book, the juice is changed. And you can't go back into everyone's book and say, you know what, that doesn't taste the way it used to. Zuka doesn't taste the way it used to.
So you have to like take it's it's hard, it's a problem. It depends on how long you want the transit, you know, the uh the staying time of the recipe. Uh uh let me see here. Non-domesti. I've been making Neapolitan style pizza using Caputo Double Zero, and I've been happy with the results.
Was wondering if there are any flowers you might suggest throwing in for more pronounced and unique flavor profile, not the type of thing I start milling my own for. I think it's real tough. Anytime you change the flour, you have to change all of the techniques, everything. Uh I'm gonna ask Wiley. I think Wiley is mainly, I forget what he's using.
He might be mainly a Galahad situation, like, but that's not like what you're looking for. Most people with pizzas, they're doing like 10%, 12% of a different flavorful flour in. I just don't have a lot of experience with it. Um Rock Baker, there's a pet peeve question. Do you have another pet peeve?
Rockbaker hate of the timers, but we'll wait till we'll have it. The next time we have a chef on, we're just gonna ask every chef for their pet piece. Make sure there's a note that any time we have chefs on, we ask, or like, you know, turning the sink all the way off after you wash your hands, a little drip. This is true. This is why you should have foot pedals at all times.
All times. Foot pedals. Uh all right. Do can we do uh one more real quick? One more.
All right. Uh Ray. I'm working on making a forced carb latte that incorporates some fun things like doing milk punch with a coffee kombucha uh as the acid to cursa uh curdle it. First go around came very tasting good, but forgot that Way impacts the CO2 bubbles. I was looking into other uh milk sodas and have no idea how they make that stuff.
Well, there's a book, uh not a book, a uh uh article called Carbonated Dairy Beverages. Uh new new bold uh et al. 2018 that has like uh you know a list of what the current carbonated beverages are. And it looks like the answer is they're just very, very lightly carbonated, like 15 psi, like low carbonation. Also, many of them are acidified already.
So like yogurt bases and things like this. If you use an acidified milk base, it's easier because the higher the carbonation is, you don't just have foaming, you have milk breaking problems. And curdle milk is nasty. Um I need some help on Discord for non-alcoholic rums because I don't have any. I don't use a non-alcoholic rum.
So if anyone has a good hogo rum uh solution for desert platypus, we'll get to them uh next week. Uh as well as Maddie with their pasta problems and uh helping. We need help from the Discord for people who want to tell their friends how to get better. Not get better as a cook, but just expand their horizons. Yeah.
Books, websites, whatever. Get your questions in for Joshua McFadden. Yeah, next week. Next week, I believe so. Yeah.
Cook is it next week on a Tuesday or next week or Monday? Tuesday. Normal time, normal place. Cooking issues.
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